Tag Archives: financial

Personal, Site News

48 Hours until Academic Battle Phase is Initiated

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So I got my financials taken care of at school and it was quite simple… Just a reminder that my interest is 6.00% both on unsubsidized and subsidized loans and not to “eff up” (for slang) my work or I will once again be chased by the feds again. It was my first bad encounter to and from school with rainy roads while fending off wacky drivers at 100+ miles per hour in my soft shelled drop top in a long while. It was a fun journey, but I will say that having great tires means I have great traction for gear transitions.

The last bit of financial junk I need to resolve is paying the school $536 that the loans didn’t pay out. I guess one could consider it as Uncle Sam’s “Are you serious about school?” fee. I should be able to muster out the cash with no issue… However… I also need to get my PSP and DS sets sold off to generate repayment capital for my boon of luck from my family.

I still can’t believe that in about 48 hours I pack my crap up and drive out to my dormatory. It’s daunting, but exciting at the same run. I will be packing modest, as with becoming mobile… I don’t have much crap for save a printer, laptop, phone, and bags. It’ll be interesting being type-cast into the category of “starving college student” with my life on campus and coming back to town to work at the office… but for me, that’s more than worth my time! It is much like my philosophy, sometimes legends are born from a blank slate. This semester is my carte blanche, I will make a new legend for myself!

As far as the new site relaunch… That may be delayed for a while… In the mean time, I will probably search for a temporary lay-out that announces who’s writing what articles at ZeroXR.com so that when Wyno’s writing bug bites her, no one will assume it’s me! However, the new “About Zero” revision is underway and I have to thank my friend Nikkie for going out of her way to do that with me. Expect a very light hearted interview as it’s going to share a side of me that few get to know.

With this, I bid you all adeau so that I may walk into the office.

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Personal, Rant

[Mini Editorial] Gotta love the Feds sometimes…

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Financial aid is quite the “clusterfuck” as my former boss mentioned the quoted term.

A while back, I had a personal set-back and a medical condition that ended up being the one-two punch that basically had me dropping out of college while on a federal Pell grant. Let’s just say the Feds were awful quick to scream “ZERO!!!!! WE WANT OUR MONEY YOU ASSHOLE!!!!!” in a proverbial sense and they were aggressive as hell (like calling the day the semester ended). Once I paid them back… They conveniently kept a record on their files saying “Zero has paid his dues in full” however, the forgot to put it on my FAFSA file saying the same apparently all summer… I had contacted them about this flag since February, with various agents going “It takes time for the computer to flag an account as paid.”

Chain reaction: My school basically found that same flag and said “Zero, we can’t offer you any financial assistance cause your file is flagged as you have not paid the Feds their due cash.”

Cue this morning: I call the Feds up this morning and met with a amicable agent on the phone. Got hit with the standard gauntlet of questions to verify my identity of Zero, so after that I fire off my query of “Is there a way I could get my status immediately send over to my school for verification purposes and have my file cleared?” Sadly, I got the standard “It takes up to 2 business days for us to fax that to your educational establishment…” line from them.

That’s actually a bit ironic as when you ever owe the feds cash, they will hunt you down like a pack of bloodthirsty rottweilers. On the converse, when you pay them off… They just silently clear your file and set you free, while not updating anything else vital. That is almost a tactic that the nefarious credit companies would pull to try playing the game of “Oh… you still haven’t paid up” and conveniently putting off to the side you’ve paid in full.

Ugh… I hope the document updating my status shoots over sooner than “two business days”. We live in an era where electronic facsimilies are possible, it should not be that hard to pull up my file, drop in my financial aid office’s fax number, and then say “Send to this number.” I think I am going to be feverishly worried for a good while until my school goes “You’ve been verified and here is your financial assistance eligibility…”

Personal

A Semi-Sane Blurb Before I Go Nutty

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With the chaos of my job at the office, corporate cannot rally reinforcements to aid me. Due to this, I am going to be at the office for an entire 12 hours. I do get two 30 minute lunches as the law requires, but a person must have something to look forward to endure a mental flogging of sorts. Me? I do my 12 hour shift tomorrow only to walk in 12 hours later and work 9am to 5:30pm Thursday. I may possibly be disgruntled and maybe a tinge insane, only if things at the office mess up continuously. I know the past Friday, I was on edge from the fax machine imploding on itself from the paper feed mechanism choking on itself with me trying to service the machine and juggling phone calls with other offices and clients… I can only hope that I can try to hold my sanity through. I mean, I had an insane Friday and then an insane Monday, so the worst is over for now? I just hope so.

I don’t mind the money, because the more cash… well, the quicker I can get to my 60,000 mile maintenance parts. Considering it’ll be $550 in parts and supplies, I could use all the money I can get. Lucky me, I will be doing the 60,000 mile service with my friend Radioactive from the Dallas Miata Enthusiasts, which saves me $800 – $1,100 in shop labor fees as well as 2-5 days of downtime. My main cost will be 10 – 12 hours of laboring on my car with a buddy who will keep me laughing and conversing. I do look forward to my car running like a properly maintained machine… after the 60,000 mile maintenance, oil change, new spark plugs and wires, new synthetic gear oil… I expect to be seeing a side of Devil that I have possibly never seen. I have never had a chance to ride with Devil in near brand new status and even with a brand new batch of gear oil either. After that, my next task will be to get new tires to ensure I get a proper contact patch on driving. My next major expense for Devil will be the drop top maintenance. I am seriously debating on buying an upgraded cloth top with new seals as I hate the vinyl top limiting me to days warmer than 65F.

I may have to hold off on getting a phone upgrade from my considerations to doing maintenance and potential upgrades to Devil… As fun as it would be to get an HTC Touch Dual, TyTN2, or even a Blackberry device, it’s not necessary as my P990i does the job well enough. Gaming expenses will definitely be taking a hit for me… I may look into DS and PSP hacking and modifications, but that’s a while away. I hope that my school will play nice with Ubuntu Linux, especially with regards to the proprietary Windows applications for some of the CD’s packed in academic textbooks out there… There’s always the route of getting VMware on my laptop, should things get desperate.

Hopefully the office can let me just do weekend shifts while I am at school to get a steady source of income to pay for my car note and insurance. If they can’t… it’ll muck things up a bit more. I just need to make sure before anything… If they can’t I may need to request a transfer to another division where I can be guaranteed weekend shifts on a weekly basis. It does suck to have my car note and insurance payment as my only encumbrances, but far better than being in constant debt. Though for me, it puts insult to injury as I will be the “poor, starving college student” with reducing my work load in exchange for an education.