Tuesday morning stuff

* I can (and will) try e-mailing the student. I think I have his "official" campus e-mail, but we've found a certain percentage of the students never check their campus e-mails, preferring to use their personal .gmail or whatever - which we don't get access to unless they give it to us.

I will frame it as, "I don't want to unnecessarily count you absent, is there some reason you had to leave? If you don't have an excuse, through, I will have to count you absent" That's not accusatory but at the same time gets the point across.

Some campuses make it a requirement (to get grades, financial aid, whatever) that students check their campus e-mail periodically, but mine does not. It can be frustrating to have a student go "but you never TOLD me" on something and your response being, "But I sent a note to your campus e-mail three times" and to hear back, "Psssht, oh, I never use that one."

* Pulled something (I think) in my right shoulder. I woke up middle of the night with it hurting and could not find a comfortable position. I finally got up and tried kneading the shoulder a bit with my opposite hand and that helped, some. I don't know if it was doing the workout yesterday or moving all the heavy stuff around I had to for lab yesterday. At least today is a slightly easier day.

* Still no word on the measles titer. If it goes more than 10 days without my hearing, I think I'll call. I'd think if they called when I wasn't home and couldn't leave a message (because of HIPAA, but I think they know I live alone) that they'd at least ask me to call them.

* One of my classes is going to be filmed in the coming weeks (while we are doing a lab). I have to ask the students to be sure they're all okay with it. (I can think of situations where someone might not be). I'm not tremendously comfortable with being filmed myself, but the videographer has assured me more of the video will be of the students doing the various lab activities than it will be of me. We're trying to increase the "visibility" and "marketing" of our program and apparently one of the best ways to do that is to have videos online. (If they put them on YouTube - which I doubt they will - I hope they disable commenting. Just because.)

* Just lots of bad local news going on right now. (Those who are more local to me probably know what I'm alluding to). "Steps will be taken" has been said. It makes me wonder what kind of steps.

* Another local crime story: some guy allegedly duped a bunch of investors into ponying up money for a Disney theme park that was allegedly going to be built close to Dallas. He's crying scapegoat, of course, that he's to be more pitied than censured, because he believed this OTHER guy (who is conveniently dead).

I dunno. If he did what he's accused of, throw the book at him and try to get people's money back. But I admit I'm intrigued by the alternate-universe idea of a Disney theme park being within reasonable driving distance of me. (And they were going to have a high-end "The Shoppes at Disney" with luxury retailers).

Though I admit, these days? I'd just be happy if my own town could get a Kroger's or a Food Lion or whatever chains of real groceries exist in this part of the nation. (or a Panera bread).

But a close-by Disney park - what an idea. I can see why people wanted to believe it. (Then again: having would near might mean I get relatives showing up on my doorstep, hoping they can crash at my place so they can go to DISNEY while I go to work the next day....)
 

* Also, because I have BC/BS health insurance....well, I wasted a good part of Friday morning on the phone with the credit bureaus getting holds/fraud alerts placed on my accounts, because apparently our information was among that in the Anthem breach. Now someone is telling me I need to contact the IRS and tell them not to process any address changes put through in my name in the next x period of time.....and I just can't. I can't call that awful phone-tree and try to figure out whom I need to talk to and get kicked out three separate times and have to go through it again like I did the last time I had a problem. I'd hope that Anthem would do something towards taking care of that for us, or if they won't, I guess I just file as early as I can and hope no one is going to try to use my SSN for nefarious purposes.

Gah. This makes me so sad and angry....I try to be responsible and still I wind up having to deal with these kinds of consequences. I really don't have the energy to deal with what dealing with identity theft would take right now. I hope my general insignificance in the grand scheme of things (I'm not rich, I'm not important) helps protect me now.

I don't even know the best way to get in touch with the IRS over the "don't process address changes for me" thing. Registered letter? Phone tree? I don't think they really use e-mail.....at least every e-mail I've received alleging to be from the IRS has clearly been a phishing attempt.

We've also been warned to watch out for e-mail scams offering us credit monitoring, supposedly in the name of Anthem. It's like, "You ALREADY have my personal information, this just adds insult to injury."

I know who I'd like to put on the spaceship headed to the sun right now.....(Why isn't scamming/hacking treated as a bigger crime? I know a lot of the people doing it are in other countries and are therefore deemed untouchable, but still....it seems like it's not taken as seriously as it could be.)