DarqByte

Sorry, I’ve pulled this post because of concerns over it being too detailed. Please contact me if you’re interested in what it said.

I know I don’t post here on DarqByte anymore, really. I’m resorting to coming here to lodge another complaint to the public at large, much in the same way I did regarding Bar Louie. Hell, that post was actually useful. It got a dialogue going with them and, from what I understand, led to some changes to try to keep that kind of thing from happening again. Didn’t keep them from eventually closing, though. The reason? Poor service. Hah!

Anyway, I’ve decided to take my case against Mint.com to the interwebs. It’s sad, really, because I think when Mint actually works, it’s a phenomenal service. Being able to collect all of your financial accounts into one place and look at your actual total monetary usage across all of them is one of the most useful things I’ve ever really used. Sadly, I can’t really use Mint anymore.

I actually used Quicken Online starting in February of 2008 back before they acquired Mint. I thought QO was pretty good, save for a few things I wanted from the service. When they got ahold of Mint and I saw the feature set that Mint had, I decided to close out my QO account and open a Mint one. After some initial issues where they didn’t actually support connecting to my bank account (or to Laura’s credit card account), we were finally able to get all of our data into Mint. Thus began a happy stretch of actual, usable Mint. It was awesome.

Then came this year. April 7th is the first time I had to email Mint’s support team about issues. This one was a bit minor – my truck loan is with my credit union and the loan was available in Mint, but listed as a checking account. I couldn’t reclassify it as a loan. I got ahold of Mint regarding this issue and it wasn’t resolved until later, due to another entirely unrelated thing. They never really fixed the issue. They said I had to classify it as Other, but it still kept showing up in my account as positive money, not negative. I asked them why this wasn’t possible and never got a real response. In fact, they suggested for me to re-add my credit union account to Mint.

Oh well, I thought. Minor bump in the road, I knew all about my truck loan. Then came April 27th. Well, it was a bit before April 27th, but that’s the email I have with them. My credit union took down their entire online account access section for a couple days. Two days later (likely around the 27th) it came back up again and it was a totally different account management section. Much nicer look, more capabilities, better information. A good change. Mint, sadly, kept listing the account as having a Temporary Issue and it couldn’t collect data anymore.

I told Mint that they totally changed their backend system and I believed this to be the problem. I gave them lots of details too, pertinent details that would be useful to a software engineer. I mean… I am a software engineer, so Mint can’t really get things by me. They got back to me and sounded very confused and said that if I was having problems accessing an account, I had to jump through hoops in their account management interface inside Mint in order for things to get auto-reported to their engineering team. It was a load of bullshit and not even remotely intuitive. I’m a fucking software engineer for Christ’s sake and it wasn’t obvious to me. How about the average person, hmm Mint?

I started getting very irritated in my emails to them. I try very hard not to shoot the messenger when dealing with customer support representatives because they’re not the ones responsible for a problem. God knows the CS reps here at my job get blamed for all sorts of stuff and have to deal with royally pissed off gamers, so I always try to be nice. But it was wearing thin for me, especially since the data access wasn’t restored after over a week.

After two weeks I finally got the formal response that my credit union had changed service providers for their backend. They said I had to close out my existing credit union account and re-attach it in order for things to work properly. I thought this sounded a bit dumb, but I know how software architecture can be and maybe their system couldn’t handle an existing account switching a backend data provider. Thus, I begrudgingly did this. Note now that it’s about mid-May. All of this bullshit happened after I moved here to Los Angeles and Laura and I were operating long-distance on a single bank account. Knowing financials in such a situation is a critical thing!

So I re-added my credit union, and ended up with three problems immediately. On the one hand, I wanted the transactions listed in my now-closed accounts to be attributed to the ones I just re-added. After a few emails to their support team, I got the impression they couldn’t do this, but never got a straight answer. The second problem was that my transactions for the missing period at the end of my “old” account’s closure and the “new” account’s opening were missing, thus giving me an incomplete picture of my financials. These eventually got downloaded and worked out, after I dealt with problem #3. But the biggest problem was indeed #3 – I had duplicate checking, savings and loan accounts listed.

Mint, for some inexplicable reason, kept creating duplicate accounts underneath my credit union’s data. At one point I had four credit union checking accounts listed, each with a small number of transactions attributed to them. I emailed Mint about this, obviously, and they told me that my account was in a batch update mode and that I should avoid touching it for 24 hours. What a solution! Sheesh. It needs to handle customers having no idea what the hell is going on and logging in anyway. I ended up deleting the newly added credit union account and re-added it again. Initially, it held just one copy of checking, savings and loan. But it added a few more again, so I pretty much just washed my hands of Mint at the time and walked away.

About a couple weeks later I returned, hoping to salvage Mint and get things in order. Thankfully, the duplicate accounts had no transactions associated with them and no more had been created. I was able to mark them as closed and move on. In fact, the batch process had downloaded all of the missing transactions that I was looking for. After spending a couple hours classifying transactions and getting the budget numbers in line, our Mint account now finally looked like it should!

Ah, but all was not so happy in Mintland. The next day I saw several transactions with PreAuthorization listed in their description. I emailed Mint about this on June 12th. I’d never seen preauth transactions look like regular transactions in Mint before – my credit card has preauth transactions as well, and those show up in italics in Mint and go away when the real transaction hits. I figured my credit union would operate in the same manner, but apparently not. I told Mint about this happening and their response was to have me mark it as a duplicate manually in Mint. I asked if they could automatically be filtered out and no dice there either. They did tell me that I could delete the transaction as long as I edited some of the details on it. I tried that and never got a delete link like their emails said would appear. All I can do is allow them to show up and then manually mark them all as duplicates. That’s a lot of manual legwork, on top of the fact that the duplicates clog up my view of my transactions, giving me a page of about 1/3 dupes. Thus management of my Mint account had now gotten a lot worse.

So I’d been operating in that fashion for about two months when suddenly Mint was again unable to connect to my credit union to download transactions. Yet again I had to get ahold of Mint customer support. By this point I still had wrap-up emails coming in for prior issues with automated “please take this survey” crap coming in, so I didn’t even know which emails were related to which problems at this point. I explained to the Mint representative that nothing had changed with my credit union website or login information. But just to be save, I changed my credit union password and reflected the change in Mint. It would just sit there interminably trying to login and get transactions. It never got anywhere.

Finally the representative asked for some pretty exhaustive information to send along to the Mint engineering team, so I got happy that they were finally going to get actively involved in my problem. I sent all of that information in about 10 days ago. And guess what? Not a single goddam email back. Nothing. And the problem is still happening, right now.

So right now, I really can’t use Mint, because I can’t access any of my transactions from my credit union. And when things finally do work again, I’m going to have to spend forever and a goddam year categorizing and renaming transactions that represent the gap in access. Of course, that’s assuming that Mint is smart enough to fill that gap. With my luck, it’ll just download the last 5-10 and be done with it, making August an impossible month to step back and financially review.

So I’ve about had it. I want recommendations for a solid Mint competitor that is reliable, usable and actually responds to their customers. This is just ridiculous. All of these problems happened within a half-year window. It’s frightening, really, that my financial information is in the hands of this company. I’ll probably shut down my Mint login here pretty soon, as it’s getting me nothing but heartache and agony in return.

Or maybe I’ll get lucky and some high-ranking person at Mint will actually consider what I’ve gone through to be a travesty and they’ll fucking do something about it.

So yeah… Do you remember that blog post I just wrote? The one where I said I would be working at Guthy Renker? That’s no longer in the cards. I will instead be working for Meteor Games in Beverly Hills. Long story, but they contacted me late in the game and made me an offer that I felt was too compelling to pass up. A chance to start getting into the video game industry in a manner adding to my work for OMGN? Couldn’t pass it up. That is all!

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve blogged here on DarqByte. Really, there hasn’t been a whole lot to talk about until now. It’s been mostly school and work. Laura’s been in law school, so she’s been pretty locked down too. I tend to keep people updated more via Facebook and Twitter.

So anyway, if you’ve read the subject of this blog post, then you know what this is about. I’m moving to Los Angeles.

Basically, the gist is that I was offered a job out in Santa Monica. A pretty kickass job where I can really apply all that I’ve learned as a web developer over the last 7 years and try to do something really great and awesome there. The firm I’ll be working for is Guthy Renker. They’re responsible for those Proactiv ads you see on TV, as well as countless other marketing initiatives and the like. I’ll be working as a backend web developer for them. Somewhat similar to what I’m doing now, except that I’ll be senior-level and within a few months, should I appear to be as good as advertised (and I definitely feel I am!), then I’ll have a shot at heading up a team of developers. A big, big team.

So what does this mean in its entirety? Well, my last day at DataX will be February 25th. I will be officially moving that weekend and my first day at GR will be the 28th. I put in my notice at DataX yesterday, although I spoke earlier in the week with my boss about the offer and that I was considering it. This isn’t an indictment against DataX by any means. It’s just a new challenge and an opportunity to find what I’m looking for in my career.

So Laura? She’ll be remaining here in Las Vegas to finish her law school education. This means we’ll be living apart for the duration of her pursuit of a new career path. Honestly, when it’s all said and done, this may have been the “best” time for me to make a career move that involved living away from Laura. She’s heads-down in law school and I don’t get to see her, talk to her or do a whole lot with her right now anyway. She’s consumed with law school, as is always the case when one is pursuing a law degree.

We’ll be just fine, I can assure you that. Our marriage is very strong, it’s very solid. We’re both very confident we’ll be able to handle this well. Laura was very integral in my decision to take this job. I would not have if she didn’t think it was a good opportunity or didn’t want me to. She understood some of my frustrations at DataX and supported me 100% all the way in this decision. I’ll be driving back on a regular basis to visit Laura and Vegas. How often that is remains to be seen, but I’m anticipating something like every other weekend at the most infrequent. Laura will likely be able to come down to LA and visit occasionally as well, but that will be a rarer treat since she’s always got so much to do for school.

My MBA will be put on hold. I’ve been going after my MBA to further my career, so getting a job that does just that is definitely along the same road. I’ll see about gaining residency status in California for their universities and I’ll go from there as far as resuming my MBA. Perhaps my good GMAT score and UNLV grades will allow me to transfer more credits than is usual and to get a scholarship too! I’m not sure about the latter though, since I don’t think MBA programs typically have scholarships available anyway.

I hope that covers it all. Big changes coming soon!

As I’ve said before, I’m posting video-game related stuff over at my OMGN blog, Gamer of Darqness. And here’s a post I want to share — my account of the building of Beast!

So yeah, I know I haven’t been posting here much lately. I’ve been working hard on OMGN, what else do you expect? Haha. Well, this post is mostly just to let you know that I’ll be doing my video game blogging over at OMGN. This morning we launched user blogs over at OMGN, which allows any user on the site to blog. It’s pretty simplistic stuff when compared to WordPress, which runs my blog here. However it’ll suit my video game blogging needs, and I think it’ll help drive traffic to the site over there as time goes on.

I don’t blog much about video games here anyway so it won’t impact much of what I would or would not have posted here. But I just wanted to give all of you a heads-up on my other blog.

Yesterday marked a very historic moment for me personally. Yesterday at approximately 1:30pm Pacific time, OMGN was relaunched. The new launch is known as OMGN4.

This has been a long time coming. OMGN’s eventual relaunch is the reason that I haven’t been posting on my blog much or doing much else in my spare time, especially since school let out for the summer. But fear not! OMGN has relaunched! The announcement of the relaunch is on the site.

Really, I’m just posting to finally say something here on my blog about all of this. This is big for me. This is the first full-on redesign of OMGN since I launched it back in 2002. It’s been almost 8 years and now the site will finally be running a worthy code and database structure. The design is simpler and less crowded than it’s been for years, and I’ll be exerting more control over the content to ensure higher quality standards are met. OMGN has sucked up a lot of my time lately, and now it can take a little less. But I’m not going to just rest on my laurels, no. I’ll still be working on it and making it better than before.

As  a matter of fact, I’m going to run off and play some Final Fantasy 13 because I’m planning on reviewing it for OMGN. Interestingly enough, I’ve already achieved quite a lot of what I wanted to do over this summertime: relaunch OMGN, finish some books I’ve ordered, play some games, do some side work. Ahh, summer.

Ok, so I’m not an expert on Net Neutrality nor do I ascribe to know every little detail of the potential for the FCC to reclassify parts of the communication structure so they can begin regulating the Internet. But here’s the situation where it stands right now.

Where We Are Now

Right now, the Obama administration has suggested for the FCC to reclassify some communications so that it can begin regulating the Internet within the United States. Currently there is no regulating body for the Internet in the USA, so basically anybody can do anything on it, period. The Obama administration sees this as a potential threat to the openness of the Internet because without regulation, Internet service providers (ISPs) can do whatever they please with that access. Allowing the FCC to regulate the Internet allows it to tell ISPs what they can and cannot do, where right now ISPs have pretty much a free reign. Without regulation, ISPs cannot be forced to abide by Net Neutrality.

The status quo of ISPs is that nobody really does this kind of thing en-masse. There were a few instances recently where some ISPs tried blocking torrent access, which in some lights is understandable. Torrents are massively peer-based downloads that allow you to get parts of a file from all over. A lot of torrent activity is illegal, but at the same time there are plenty of legal uses for torrents, so blocking them outright also blocks legitimate use. While none are really using these tactics, some have suggested they might to increase their bottom lines.

Ok, What’s Net Neutrality?

I’m glad you asked. Net Neutrality is the idea that ISPs have to be neutral about the content flowing through their networks. Net Neutrality (NN from hereon out) means that an ISP cannot look into the content any of its subscribers is accessing for any reason other than legal issues. There are a lot of proponents of NN and from what I’ve seen and understand, not a whole lot of consumers that don’t want it.

Without NN, ISPs can basically do whatever they want in regards to the content flowing through their networks. There are plenty of worst-case scenarios out there when it comes to this subject, so we’ll stay away from those as they’re unlikely. After all, even if ISPs start going against NN and use content requests to make decisions, consumers won’t stick with an ISP when they have a choice for another if their current ISP starts getting too draconian.

One great example I found online mimics the tiered strategy that television service providers use to make tiers of different channels, like so:

From charlesgarwood.com

In this example, you would have to pay your ISP $10 more per month to be able to access music-related websites and services, such as iTunes. Yes, in this example, not only would you be paying anywhere from 69 to 129 cents per song, you’d also be paying $10 per month to your ISP for the right to access iTunes’ Internet services at all.

Another example of what an ISP could do is dropping the transfer rate of traffic. So instead of blocking access entirely, an ISP could just put certain traffic at a lower priority in terms of speed. If this were the case, then you could have reduced service to iTunes unless you pay $10 more per month.

Now let’s apply a different tactic to blocking or slowing service. Instead of charging the consumer extra to access those websites, an ISP could instead charge the website operator some fee to keep their website on a normal service level. So unless Apple pays your ISP in some fee structure, the ISP could simply block or slow traffic to iTunes because Apple wouldn’t pay the ransom, err extortion, err fee.

These are just some examples of what ISPs could do if they were not bound to NN. I’m sure creative executives could come up with all sorts of ideas to extract more money from consumers and website operators alike.

So What’s The Government Planning?

The Obama administration wants the FCC to reclassify parts of communication so it can regulate the Internet. Without a regulator, ISPs can do whatever they like including making decisions based on the content running through their networks. However if the FCC were regulating Internet usage then ISPs would be bound to whatever decisions the FCC makes. The idea behind this, as far as the Obama administration goes, is that the FCC will enforce NN  thus ISPs won’t be able to use any tactics like I’ve described before.

But Regulation Is Bad!

A lot argue that government regulation is bad. Sometimes it is, sometimes the government can overreach and over-regulate things. However in this case, the lack of regulation means ISPs can gouge consumers and limit access in whatever ways they deem fit. This is an instance, in my opinion, where adding a regulatory body does more good than harm. Sure, we want the government in as little as possible, but regulations also make sure companies aren’t engaging in activity that is contrary to the public interest, such as limiting website access.

One could argue that this would be opening the door to a “government takeover” of the Internet. This is far from the truth. Regulation is not the same thing as a government takeover. We already have government regulation for automobiles because without it, there’d be no safety standards. This is much the same thing. The public’s interest in unfettered access to the Internet is at stake here. A government takeover means the government would run the Internet, and that’s not the case. The government would just start telling ISPs what they can and cannot do.

Sure, someday the government could abuse this regulatory oversight to start doing some things ISPs might have done. They might mandate some sort of limit on torrents or make sure all content gets filtered by the government. That’s what China does, pretty much, and I don’t ever see that happening because US citizens would riot if it did. Hell, I think some citizens might riot against an ISP if one truly broke against NN.

Companies Can Do Whatever They Want!! It’s Their Network!

Well right now, yes. But what I’m paying for is access to the Internet. Not for my ISP (which happens to be CenturyLink) to tell me “Hey Robert, you can’t access CNN.com until you pay us $5 more per month!” If consumers went into purchasing Internet access from an ISP with the intent to buy unfettered access, such is the case now, then that access should remain unfettered.

Sure, most companies can do whatever they want — within the limits of their regulations, of course. Saying that a company should be able to operate its business however it wants is a weak argument, in my opinion, because look at the BP disaster. Hell, they were regulated and it still happened. It’s obviously a case where the public interest is better served in actual regulation, rather than allowing BP to do whatever the hell it wanted, thus ending up in this massive oil leak. Companies should be able to operate as they see fit, but within acceptable boundaries.

They Don’t Need Regulation

Quite the contrary, I believe ISPs need regulation. Especially to keep them from breaking against NN. The whole idea of the Internet is this open massive platform allowing people to push out whatever they like for anybody to access. The Internet is like a massive Democracy in some respects. People “vote” for what they want by visiting those sites. But if ISPs start limiting access in some arbitrary manner, then that freedom is lost and those “votes” can’t be cast. Imagine if ISPs restricted access to Twitter in its early days. It probably wouldn’t have taken off. Say what you will about the time-sink that Twitter and Facebook are, but if your access to them was restricted or you were charged more to access them, those two would also be ones to suffer. So while you’re arguing an ISP should be able to conduct its affairs however it sees fit, realize that the consumer and Twitter/Facebook are also “harmed” in this instance.

Specific Arguments

No Regulation = Free Speech

Someone mentioned that keeping the government from regulating the Internet is the safest way to maintain free speech… I disagree. Without NN, ISPs can block or slow access to all sorts of content, which is against free speech, or at least free access to it. If ISPs are allowed to pick and choose the content they deliver, then they’re restricting free speech, which is unconstitutional. Thus, you might even say that the government has a responsibility to ensure unfettered access to the Internet.

Companies Already Charge For Faster Speeds

Well yes, they do. But they charge for faster speeds for the entire Internet, not just some sites selectively. What you’re paying for there is just a fatter pipe with more bandwidth to be able to download things faster. So let’s extend this argument out and say, “What if an ISP simply slows speeds to CNN.com, but doesn’t block it, and charges for faster access?” This is still an instance where the content is dictating the service and the ISP exercising authority over the stream of packs you’ve requested.

The Internet Is A Priveledge

Again, I disagree, to some extent. If you can afford to pay for the Internet you should get it all. More and more of our daily lives are online and more and more depends on the Internet. Imagine the world without the Internet today. No online bill pay, no Netflix streaming… No eCommerce. Sometimes you actually need access to the Internet to get some things done. The US would grind to a crawl without the Internet in this day and age.

Status Quo Is Just Fine

Given that ISPs are currently not engaging in anti-NN behavior, for the most part, then the status quo is fine. But the status quo assumes they won’t reverse and start going against NN. And the status quo means they still can should they choose to. We should definitely not allow them that opportunity to limit users’ free choice of what they want to access online.

The Free Market Works

Did the Wall Street and mortgage meltdowns not convince you? A lack of regulation there is definitely a big contributor to why that happened. The free market does not always work, regulation is still required to ensure the proper operation of a market. This is more of an idealogical issue anyway, so I know I won’t really convince anybody on this one.

Also, one note on free markets. If a market was 100% free then monopolies and collusions could exist, which means if the ISP market was a 100% free market, they could all collude to block FoxNews.com unless you paid $50 per month to gain access. And legally you could do nothing about it. Personally, I don’t like Fox News, but it’s still wrong dammit.

A Christian ISP Would Want To Block Porn!

This was an interesting one and caused me to ponder for awhile. Currently there exists no Christian ISPs in the US. The function of an ISP is to offer access to the Internet. A Christian ISP would want to block anything they deem non-Christian… But I’m going to point to what the Internet currently is and should be. A massively open and 100% accessible platform of websites and services. And I’m obviously of the opinion that access to it should always be fully open. Thus, if there were a Christian ISP, then I would disagree that it should be blocking content because I fully believe in NN.

On another note, I’m a practicing Catholic and if I were subscribing to a Christian ISP, I would not want them blocking any content. Client programs can be installed on the user’s end to block access. So if a user doesn’t want to allow access to things inside their home they can, but the ISP doesn’t get to do that across the board for people that don’t want it done.

I mean, think about it. Every Christian is different. Let’s imagine MyChristianISP.com (trademark pending, haha) is my provider. I want to look at Site A (not a porn site), but Site A offends about 55% of all MyChristianISP.com subscribers, so it gets blocked. Do you see the problem here? 45% of my fellow peers that are fine with accessing that site can’t. That kind of control belongs with the users.

Government Shouldn’t Run Companies For Themselves

Fully no. A government should not be 100% in full telling a company how it can run itself. But we already have government regulations in place to prevent illegal monopolies or from firms using their market power to gouge consumers. There are limits to what is acceptable for a company to do.

Companies are like people. They are entities in the eyes of the government. If you were to say that the government shouldn’t run people’s lives, then you’re basically saying the government need not exist and anarchy can rule the land. It’s preposterous. Companies, just like people, should not be allowed to do whatever the hell they want, because it may not always be in the public’s best interest. This argument allows a company to price discriminate based on age or religion. It allows a company free reign over whatever it wants to do.

Obviously there needs to be a line drawn somewhere, and I’m all for a line being drawn that includes NN as the rule of the land.

Personal Notes

Personally, I believe the Internet to be this big open playground where people can put up and access whatever they like. Any content restrictions should be on a user-by-user basis, thus limitations should exist in home networks and home machines, not at the ISP level. It is not CenturyLink’s place to tell me what I can or cannot access. I am paying them for access to the entire Internet and that is how it should remain. Just because television and radio have different access levels doesn’t mean they should be extended to the Internet.

If you’re reading this post and you don’t know me very well, you may not have picked up on the fact that I run websites. Now you understand another reason I am so adamantly in favor of NN. Without NN, there is the possibility that I could face fees with any number of ISPs to keep OMGN from being added to a “slow websites” list. And if there are 100 ISPs in the country all asking for a $5 fee per month so they won’t slow access to my website, suddenly I have to pay $500 per month to keep it online.

Fuck that. America is all about people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and making it for themselves. I cannot do that with my websites if I’m subject to countless fees because there is no NN. It’s completely against the American dream, folks, to start allowing ISPs to restrict access to the Internet in whatever ways they see fit.

I understand the potential for a slippery slope in regards to allowing the US Government to regulate Internet access. At some point in the future it could suddenly reverse course and start censoring things. But the US Government has a pretty damn short history of censorship. There’s a much lower likelihood of that happening than for ISPs to start restricting access to content, because they’ve talked about it. In this case, I’ll take the evil of the US Government over the evil that is John Doe ISP Corporation. ISPs have an incentive to censor Internet access, the US Government – not quite as much.

The whole thing here is that Internet access via an ISP should be 100% free and clear. That’s what consumers are paying for and that’s what they should get. It’s not a case where the ISP should be able to determine what their networks deliver. They’re in the wrong business if that’s the case. An ISP is supposed to allow access and not dictate what people can get, because if an ISP is the only Internet provider in town, then you may get no other choice but to use them and only them. The ISP should not care what you’re accessing, only that you’re paying for that access.

Final Note

I feel very strongly about this issue because I am an IT professional, a user of the Internet and a website operator. Thus I hope you understand why I feel the way I do, even if many of you are afraid of what more US Government regulation may do here. I’m more afraid of what ISPs may do, thus my stance on the subject. I’m sure the fact that this post clocks in at over 2,800 words also illustrates how passionate I am about the subject.

[Update]

Read Marek’s comment on this post, he makes a very valid comment. He cites that if an ISP started restricting access to a particular website and required users to pay for that website, then the ISP would reap all of the profits of that pricing structure whereas the website owner would not only get none of the profits, but would also suffer degraded traffic to their website because not everybody would pay for the access. This is in stark contrast to how television service providers work, where they pay subscriber-based royalties back to the operators of the channels that are in said tiers, such as premier sports channels you have to pay extra for. That was a point I was originally starting to think about when I started writing this post but promptly forgot about and never expanded upon, but Marek poses a very, very good point.

Many people are aware that my approach to the MBA program at UNLV has three tiers to it, in terms of my performance.

1. Get a 4.0 grade-point average
2. Get better than a 3.56 GPA
3. Get the degree

Obviously, the top tier is a 4.0 and the best I can possibly do. Better than a 3.56 is my next target should I fail in getting a 4.0, because 3.56 is what I had in undergraduate studies. I had a 3.4ish in high school, so if I get better than a 3.56 then I’ve improved my GPA at each successive degree level. Finally… Obviously my lowest desire is to get the damn degree.

I’m mentioning all of this to illustrate that I’m trying to challenge myself to do as good as I can possibly do. I’m not posting this so people think I’m trying to show off or think I’m better than anybody else. It’s all about achievement here. I know my GPA may not make any difference in my career at all, but I’m still trying to challenge myself to do as good as I possibly can and to really, really learn the material.

Anyway, I’m fairly certain I can kiss a 4.0 goodbye. I took my economics final on Tuesday. I knew going into it I’d have to virtually ace it in order to get an A for the course. I was mistaken on the grading scale for the course and the threshold for an A was higher than I thought. Combine that with my A- average scores on my two prior exams and I had an uphill battle… So I went into the final thinking I had a good chance. Multiple review materials were distributed to the class and we had a review session on the last day of instruction. I felt I had near-mastery of everything in the review materials and session. It was all mostly computation, but there was a little bit of theory and graphing in there. But I felt really good about all of it.

Final exam comes. And the reviewed material accounted for maybe 35-40% of the actual final. The rest was either barely a blip in the review materials or it was very theory and graphing heavy. So I felt woefully under-prepared for what actually was on the final.

I pretty much hold myself and only me accountable for my grades, but this is an instance where I feel a little wronged. The entire class and I were basically led to believe we needed to focus on the review materials and review discussions, which I’m sure most of the class did. But I felt totally blindsided by what was on the final. I know I’m not the only one, as one of my classmates commented on a Facebook status update of mine saying about the same thing (Amy Walker).

There was a little bit of this kind of thing on the second exam in the course too, but not near to the extent it was on the final. One of my classmates had taken this instructor before and he mentioned this kind of thing very early this semester. I didn’t dismiss what he said, but I certainly wasn’t expecting it to be just as bad as he made it out to be.

It’s not like I want my grade unilaterally adjusted. Actually, I don’t even know what my grade is yet, it hasn’t been posted. But likely, because of how I felt I did on the exam, I think I have a B+, which will really tick me off. I don’t even necessarily want to take a different final. I just want the situation addressed and for the instructor to take a second look at how he’s handled the way he designs his reviews and finals so that it’s more fair to the students.

Gah.

A local church here in Las Vegas, Christ the King, is hosting a Second Chance Prom that pretty much anybody can attend. I was unable to go to prom in high school with Laura because, well, I was dating somebody else at the time. She didn’t have the kind of prom she’d really want to have. I’m disappointed that I couldn’t go with her.

Well, thanks to CTK we get a mulligan! But I haven’t asked her to prom yet. I want to get one million group members on Facebook to show her that she should go with me! So if you’re not already a group member, join the group and help me out. I may end up recording when I ask her and post that on YouTube. We’ll see. The more people join the group, the better chance of that happening!