Updates: Exams (3 of 5), Sofa Express, Sarah’s Car
Exams
So far, exams have gone well. First I had my ice skating exam. No joke ;). I got a 98% in the class. That’s not bad considering I sprained my ankle pretty badly a few weeks ago. Sarah and Shelley both, of course, got above 100%. :P
I took my CSE694 exam last Thursday and I think I did well. No big deal. The course is on data mining so it consists of about equal parts of hand waving and algorithms.
Then I had Math today. It was a piece of cake. The exam was comprehensive, covering topics from set theory, counting theory, relations, graph theory, recursion, etc. It was a pretty neat class, actually, but I’m glad it’s also my LAST math class.
My next two exams are Tuesday and Wednesday… ;s
Sofa Express
For graduation my parents gave us a bunch of money to buy furniture. I, to my great surprise, actually enjoyed the experience. I never thought I’d say it but there you go. We’re having some cool living room stuff delivered the day we move in. Of course I wouldn’t bring it up if the story stopped here…
We placed our order at just about closing time one night and were told that we were the second sale of the day. They had 3 people working. Wow. I bet our salesman was 2 for 2. He took everything down, gave us 10% off, and zapped our credit card for 20%. The rest would be paid off over 12 months of interest free payments. So we’re all set.
A few days later, my dad gives me a postcard from sofa express advertising a 20% sale! So I call the store and they say no big deal, you save an extra $xx. The problem is that before hand, I did up the calculations and arrived at a much larger number. So she ran the numbers again and got a different savings. Not the same as me. So she ran them again. And again. And each time (4) she got different amounts. Seriously, now, isn’t this something these people should be able to do reasonably well? So I walked her through the entire invoice making the adjustments and updating the calculations until we agreed. Basically we just redid the invoice as though I had saved 20% and took the difference of saving 20% and 10% as the refund–BUT NO! she reminds me that we only get 1/2 of the adjustments because we already saved 10%. Huh?! I again explained how the math works and she finally agreed.
I was pretty shocked that this was such a complicated thing for them. Like I said, they had two sales the entire day…isn’t this a pretty simple thing!? I can’t wait to get my updated invoice…
Sarah’s Car
Oh man, this is a good one. So i am driving though our little alley and I’m just about to pull into our parking lot when I see my neighbor backing towards me. I honk and attempt to get out of the way but all efforts are futile. He manages to not hear me, or avoid me. He backs right into the side of the rear driver’s side door/wheel. The damage is very small but deep enough that it will require some painting.
Since body shops calculate quotes with a magic formula that starts the bidding at $500, he wasn’t happy. He tells me he’s got this uncle of his who runs a body shop and can take care of it, no problem. At first this doesn’t seem TOO bad. I mean, I’m not really liking the idea, but I’m still listening. Here’s the problem: the guy keeps talking. I swear, the more he talks, the less I like the idea. It seems that his uncle works only during the summer. It also seems that the guy who hit me (my student neighbor who is currently flaming up his charcoal grill on his covered, wood porch) is the one who is actually going to do the work, he just wants his uncle to be there to be sure he does everything correctly. I’d really like to help this guy out but I’m not comfortable sending my car with him to a shop that’s 45 minutes away so he can hack away at it.
This all happened Friday and we decided to discuss it Monday (today). Well, we discussed it and now I have more material for this post ;). He messed up–he started talking again. His uncle can do it–it’s just that he can’t start right now because he’s a little flustered because his friend had a brain aneurysm and this guy’s wife found him in the driveway like unconscious so she took him to the hospital where he was in a coma but died today, Monday, he was in a coma but died this morning, so he can’t get to it right away, cool? OK, so I turned on “Neighbor speak” there for one “sentence.” So now I’m a little less comfortable with the idea and I say so.
But he keeps talking…he tells me that he wishes we were buds so we could take care of this another way. What way is that?! I ask him how that would change anything. He tells me that if we were buds then he wouldn’t have to come up with $500+ on the spot. I remind him that I don’t have $500 sitting around to be used for this either, even if we were buds he’s still have to pay for it right now. He says that he knows, he just wishes we were buds so that he wouldn’t have to pay $500 all the sudden. I am seriously confused at this point and don’t reply.
I tell him that I’ll get one more estimate tomorrow and then I’ll take it to whichever one is cheaper. It will be up to him to pay for it with cash or with insurance.
I wish I could work more comedy into that but alas, my apologies :).