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Why I won’t be feeding the Elders again

Jacob — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:19:05 +0000

A few weeks ago, I signed up to feed the full time missionary Elders serving in my ward. I forgot about it until I received a phone message from them yesterday morning when they called to say:

We’re just giving you a call we saw that you signed up for feeding us today and so we’re just wondering what time would work for you so give us a call back and let us know and we’ll talk to you soon thanks bye.

So I look at my schedule and came up with a plan to make some home made pizza out of some leftovers in my fridge. I was about to give them a call back and let them know that they should come over at 6, when they called me.

In their phone call, they explained that they had a very packed schedule and asked if I could bring some food over to the institute building for them. Pretty much they said, “Can you deliver our dinner to us”? I figured that I had signed up to feed them and if they were really busy, then I could probably help them out.

I left work early, stopping by Warmart to buy a take-and-bake pizza. I then drove like 15 minutes to the institute building on the other side of Fort Collins, and threw the pizza in the oven.

I started looking around the institute building for the Elders, but I couldn’t find them. Eventually, I found their shoes on a shelf, and inside their shoes, their schedule. So I looked through their schedule to discover that they were away playing frisby.

So pretty much, I spent extra money and about 45 minutes of time to buy and take them a pizza because their schedule was too busy playing ultimate frisby.

I won’t be volunteering to feed them again.

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Pilcrows and paragraphs

Jacob — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 23:56:29 +0000

Ready for my next micro-rant?

Some people think run-on sentences are bad. I agree. But I think that a increasingly worse problem is the run-on paragraph. Frequently seen in blog posts, emails, and love notes to those special someones, the paragraph is an endangered species in many literary forms.

Answers.com’s definition of a paragraph is:

A distinct division of written or printed matter that begins on a new, usually indented line, consists of one or more sentences, and typically deals with a single thought or topic or quotes one speaker’s continuous words.

Too often we find people who write pages about their life, the universe, and everything else, as a single, run-on paragraph. Paragraphs are meant to help separate different thoughts or topics into chunks small enough for the reader’s comprehension.

Unwieldy paragraphs are a great danger to the modern human race. One of humanities major advantages over other earth-animal species is its ability to communicate effectively. As run-on paragraphs limit this ability to communicate, we are all in danger of reverting back to caveman methods of communicating which included the popular hit-someone-with-a-club-to-steal-a-wife. Downfalls of economies, government, and television series such as The Office could all be products of the increasing use of run-on paragraphs.

Save the human race! Save our dignity and the nobility that makes us better than the weeds of planet earth. Keep your paragraphs short! Write them more distinctly. Communicate more effectively. Share your ideas so that they can be understood. From the bottom of my heart, and in memory of my dead VCR, I thank you for your efforts.

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Blogging complaints

Jacob — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:41:58 +0000

I see blogging as the action of writing about and reviewing this thing called life. Sometimes that involves writing about what makes us happy, or what we are interested in. Sometimes it involves voicing an opinion. Other times, it may involve writing a negative review of some aspect of life.

Sometimes, others disagree with what is written.

So, here is my question to other bloggers out there: What sort of negative reactions have you see to your blog posts?

Have you been told to take an anger management class, to quit whining, or to get a life? Do you think these responses are justified?

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Wells Fargo, stop calling me

Jacob — Wed, 28 May 2008 02:54:50 +0000

Dear Wells Fargo,

I really want a bank that just keeps my money safe and accessible. I don’t want you calling me many times selling some soft of subscription package to your many programs. I signed up for the national do-not-call list, which means that I really don’t like being bothered my various offers made by calling me. Just because I bank with you, doesn’t mean that I really want to be bothered by you.

Tonight you called me, hiding the caller identification of the source call. Thats just plain sneaky, and something I wouldn’t expect from a bank that I would like to trust.

If you call me, I will refuse any offer you present. Please stop calling me. I told that last caller not to call me again. If I receive any more phone calls from you that do not directly concern my financial accounts, I will strongly consider moving my funds to a different institution.

July 17, 2008 update:
BOB, in comment 10180, was very nice to describe to me Wells Fargo’s privacy policy. According to his suggestion, I went to their website and found my privacy settings already set to the following:

My Wells Fargo Privacy Settings

So my question now is the following? Were my privacy settings always prohibiting contact? Or were they changed by the Wells Fargo representative who called me last with whom I requested that they no longer call me?

The good news is that I haven’t been called in quite a while. Also, now I know that any calls I may receive in the future are in contradiction to my privacy settings and against Wells Fargo’s privacy policy.

Does anyone know where I can find similar privacy settings on the Discover Card website?

Update July 24 Today I received another phone call which introduced itself as being associated with Wells Fargo. When I asked the guy if he was aware that I had specified in my Wells Fargo privacy settings that I wish not to be contacted, he asked me what privacy settings I was talking about, and then he suggested that my system was incorrect.

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BYU basketball leaves student fans out in the cold

Jacob — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 02:54:39 +0000

While BYU athletic administrators are out celebrating a men’s basketball win over Air Force in front of a sold-out crowd, hundreds of students are wishing they could have been a part of it all. BYU athletic’s postgame notes record that the game had the 23rd largest sell-out crowd in basketball history. But what did BYU do to sell the Marriott Center out? They spent the week selling tickets at a dollar a piece to anyone who wanted them. Then, when large student crowds showed up to view the game, they had to turn hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of them away because there were no seats left.

Anyone who has been around BYU men’s basketball knows the dedication of the student section. Long before the game begins, it is common to see the student section packed with fans eager to be the loudest in the house. Many student fans spend $40 or more on student-access-cards which allow them access to BYU sporting events. At today’s game, these card holders showed up expecting to be granted access as usual to the game, but many were disappointed when they were turned away at the doors. Those turned away were angry that they were not able to attend an event that they had already purchased access to. Access and seat availability is controlled by ticketing policy which determines how many tickets should be sold at various prices. The ticketing policy for today’s basketball event failed because it did not give access to those students who had purchased it.

I strongly recommend that the ticketing policy for future events be examined carefully to be fair to students and other fans. Some policy changes that could be considered are:

Increase the size of the student section,
Improve communications about seat availability,
Limit the number of tickets sold at promotional discounts.

Additionally, I recommend that the athletic administrators issue an apology for today’s ticketing failures and make efforts to improve future accommodations to dedicated student fans.

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Quiet in the library

Jacob — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 06:57:17 +0000

I was looking at the BYU homepage today, and I saw a feature with this title: A quiet place to study. Nothing wrong with that, until you look at the picture.

[The picture has since been removed]

Clearly the image shows a couple of students conversing about information on the shown laptop. I’m doubtfull that they are simply just quietly sharing the laptop. They are obviously talking about it, which isn’t quiet at all. You can see in the background the backs of other students who are probably trying very hard to concentrate on their studies, but they are annoyed by the two guys around the laptop who don’t quite realize what quiet means. Even whispers in the library can be heard by others at nearby tables. I know; I’ve heard them.

Of course, I understand the need sometimes to talk briefly to someone, and in that case a soft voice is appropriate. But conversations are not brief. So let me please ask everyone, if you are going to converse with others in the library, take it to a study room, the stairs, or one of the “No Shhh Zones.” By keeping the noise level down in studying locations in the library, you will help your fellow students to study.

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Same old tune, it’s not just me!

Jacob — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 06:37:56 +0000

I met someone new who just moved into University Villa at church today. He was relating their experiences with moving into the villa. They said how they checked the University Villa website which said that they were open on Saturdays, so he tried to move in on Saturday, but when he arrived here, the office was closed. So then I guess he left a message and went off to watch the BYU game because there was nothing else to do. Halfway through the game I guess he got a call saying that there was someone in the office and that he had to come immediately. When he arrived back at University Villa, they told him that while he applied online, they didn’t have any open apartments for him to move into. But they were finally able to find someone selling their contract and get him moved in.

Kids, I’m not making this stuff up! Even someone completely new around here figures out quite quickly that University Villa doesn’t quite have their act together. I mean, this place is a fairly large complex, so you would think that they would be pretty practiced about how to run things around here, but they don’t.

So long to promises that things would get better around here.

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Fall Fest

Jacob — Sat, 11 Sep 2004 05:38:30 +0000

I know weeks of planning go into a big campus party, but it seemed like BYUSA lacked some prior experience when planning things. They messed up in a couple of areas.

First, the whole wristband thing was totally stupid. You had to first get a ticket, then you had to exchange the ticket for a wristband. What a waste of time. Even though they had 4 or more people doing this at at least three entry points, the time it took to do all this was absolutely rediculous. I waited in line for about an hour, just to get a wristband so they would let me into the dance, where I spent 45 minutes before they closed it down.

Yeah, they closed down the dance early, because there were 2000 people too many in the ball room. they didn’t even have the overflow open either. So after waiting in line for an hour, wandering around for a half an hour trying to find my friends, I only got to dance for 15 minutes before they closed it down.

It seemed like a mistake to confine things to the wilkensen student center. With all the people, there simply was not enough space for everyone. They needed to have another dance or two in other locations. For example, if they had a dance in the HFAC or CB lounge, not only would they have more space for people, but by having another location out side of the wilk would have spread people more around campus making things less crowded. They could have had movies playing in the HFAC, commedy in the JSB. Lots of things could have been done.

But they didn’t have a large enough vision for fall fest, and I could tell. Of all 4 fall fests I’ve been to, this has been the worst.

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