Final Grades...

The grade for my last class was posted today.

And my "unofficial" GPA as well.


I have completed all my requirements for my bachelor of science degree in management.


GPA: 3.948


Returning to school was my approach to physical therapy for my brain.


You may remember that I had a rather large tumor removed (although they weren't able to get all of it) on November 6, 2003.

It was a very, very long surgery.


When I awoke I wasn't the same.


I couldn't see well or focus. I had memory problems and other difficulties.


Plus, the left side of my face was paralyzed.

I am also totally deaf in my left ear, but I knew that was going to happen before the surgery.


A friend of mine who had suffered from hypoxia several years prior had told me that she worked word puzzles on the internet and that it seemed to help her quite a bit.


I started playing the online games on Yahoo. Games like Literati and Spades.

Stuff where you had to use words and your memory.


I found that it helped me out quite a bit.


The physical therapy prescribed by the surgeons didn't really help me out that much.


Sure... it was supposed to improve my balance and all that, especially since they had removed everything that was associated with my left ear, including my cochlea.


But my balance issues weren't that big of a concern to me.

Neither is walking in the dark, which is something that I still can't do.

And probably will never be able to do either.


My concerns were about who I was internally.

It was about my mind.


Encouraged by the improvement I experienced with the games, I started looking at returning to school.

You know...

Make those synapses work really hard.

Put some stress on them...

Like a dumb bell does your biceps.


While I still am not 100%, I have found that I am a whole lot better off mentally.


In fact, I even surprised myself today by remembering a number that I had seen only once earlier this morning.

For most of you this may not be a big accomplishment...

But for someone who can't find their car in the grocery store parking lot after 20 minutes of shopping...

This is a big deal.


So...

I am proud to say that I have completed 2 1/2 years of college that, when added to credits from my previously earned associate's degree...

Gives me a BS...


*WOO HOO*


I was able to set a goal and accomplish it...


A challenge that I wasn't sure that I would be able to meet.


And actually, that is my biggest achievement...




later...

The Latest News...

Linda in Norman e-mailed me the other day to tell me that it has been quite some time since I have posted anything on my blog.

When I looked at the date of my last post, I found it hard to believe that it has been 13 days!

Two weeks without a post?

How unlike me.


*sigh*


Needless to say, I have been inundated with an enormous amount of school work. If I told you guys how many hours I have spent in research and writing for my class assignments alone...

Well, let's just say that I am certain that you would understand why I haven't posted.


For example, in one class alone I have typed 18,772 words. Of course, this is a word count for the finished product as recorded by my Word documents.

Another neat thing about the statistics that Word records on your documents is the amount of time that is spent on editing the document. I think that the amount of time that is spent on projects tells a much clearer story.

In this same class I spent 5478 minutes editing those 18,772 words. This calculates into 91.3 hours of my life that was used to to type these papers up. Of course, this does not include how much time was spent on reading and researching the topics that I was writing about. However, I did not keep a manual record of these efforts.


Albeit, I spent an enormous amount of time on these assignments, I am happy to announce that I did earn an "A" for the class. My professor e-mailed me this afternoon to let me know what my grade was before she was required to post it officially.

She also gave me quite a compliment.

So... In the end, it was all worth it because I achieved my goal!


In other news...

I know that I had a lot of people worrying about me and my ONG bill and the overcharge from my account via the automatic payment plan.

I have been so busy that I haven't been monitoring my bills like I should. I was yanked into reality when they *dinged* my account for an EXTRA $75. Of course, this caused me to pull all my old bills out, go out and read my meter myself, and make a phone call that put me in that endless on hold loop for over 30 minutes.

I won't go into all of the *gory* details of my telephone conversation with the customer service rep when I called about my bill.

Let's just say that I became very frustrated with her because she WOULD NOT SHUT UP and listen to my reasoning and logic. While I didn't have all the facts in front of me "like she did", I had a pretty good idea of what had happened to my account. She kept telling me that I OWED Oklahoma Natural Gas money!! She refused to listen to me. I know that she thought I was crazy...

And stupid as well.

BTW... if you really want to make me mad, just ~act~ like you think I'm stupid.

I tried my best to get to a supervisor, but you know how that first line of defense works. They won't let you get past them.

The next day I finally got through to a supervisor. While she didn't quite understand my logic or reasoning, she could tell that something "just wasn't right" with my account. She promised that she would send it over to the "Accounting Department".

Long story short...

ONG ended up crediting my account $318.23.


Oh yeah... uh huh...


That customer service rep was wrong, and I was right.


You know that I really didn't have the time to deal with those people, but for $300 I figure that it's worth it.


HOWEVER... I think I still need to write a letter to ONG because they don't REFUND you the money. They only credit your account.

Which, in my opinion, is wrong, wrong, wrong.


There's a lot of things that I need to share with you guys, but I'll only share a few more things.


One is a new phishing scam. The last couple of weeks I have been getting hit with spam that presents itself as an e-card. It says things like, "Your family member has sent you an e-card!" or "Your friend has sent you a card!". There's one that uses Hallmark's name on it too.

You get the idea.

They're FAKE e-mail greeting cards.

I knew that these cards were probably worse than the annoying spam that we all usually get. But I never took the time to research it. This evening I took a few minutes and I was able to confirm my suspicions.

Anyway, in the body of the e-mail is a link that you click on and it takes you to a website. This website downloads malicious spyware, etc., on your computer when you land on it. With this "mal-ware" the people on the other end can gather your credit card numbers, passwords, or anything else that you type on your computer or online.

So I thought that this was something important for you guys to know. You can read this short article about it.


Let's see...

What else.


Oh yeah...


Do you guys remember me mentioning that I had been summoned as a petit juror to the Federal Court?

Well, I had to show up yesterday morning at 7:30 am. We had orientation, swearing in, and all that stuff. They told us that we had to be available through August 10th. They also said that most trials usually only last about two to three days.


I ended up being selected as a juror for a criminal trial...

And the judge told us that it was certain to last for FIVE days at the very least. Maybe into the following week?


Can you believe this?


So...


What have you guys been up to?


Hopefully, I be back here sooner than...


later...