More Snow: We got more snow on Thursday night. This storm wasn't as bad as the last two blizzards, but it was bad enough to close our office for the day. Having this extra day off was nice. It is sad when you take a ten day vacation, come back to work on a four-day work week, but still jump for joy when you get a snow day at the end. I worked only three days last week, but I was so thankful to have Friday off. The sad thing about vacations is that just because you take time off, that doesn't mean that any problems went away while you were gone. Instead you often come back to the same mess but have less time to clean it up. Such is life. Or such is my life at work.
Resolutions: Fortunately I was able to go grocery shopping before the storm hit, so I was able to stock up just in case it turned out to be worse than they predicted. In my continual quest to save money, I actually took some time to plan my trip to the grocery store. In the past I had the bad habit of wandering aimlessly through the store and grabbing anything that looked appealing to me at the time. Of course, this results in a lot of impulse buys of things that I really don't need. This time I looked at the little grocery store newspapers I get in the mail, I looked for all of the deals and sales, I wrote up a list, and I gathered together my coupons. I went to the store armed and ready. I stuck to my list with the exception of a few extraneous purchases, but considering these purchases were fruits, veggies, and nuts, I don't consider them to be bad extras. At the end of the shopping trip, with in-store deals and coupons, I managed to save about $17.50 or 33% of the grand total! Yay for me! And I also managed to get a lot of healthy food. Double yay for me!!
My Identity: Today I received a letter in the mail from the College of Arts and Sciences at CU Boulder. At first I thought they would be asking me to donate money or something like that. I was even more annoyed to read "I am writing to inform you that security of a server containing student records within the Academic Advising Center on the CU Boulder campus was compromised by a hacker." Great! Earlier this year I received a letter from the state of Colorado telling me that someone stole a computer from a government office that might contain private information from anyone who started a new job in certain months of 2006. Of course, I started a new job in May 2006. So here are two opportunities for people to steal my identity. I honestly don't know how this happens. For one, how can someone walk into a government office and walk out with a computer without someone else asking a few questions? And how can someone still hack into a computer system in spite of all of the "security features" in place? Multi-billion dollar software companies make buckets of money selling software that is supposed to be secure and supposed to protect privacy. Software engineers and computer geeks are paid huge salaries (much, much more than the salary I make) to write and code this software, yet this software can still be breached. These cases only force us (the royal "us," the often poorer us) to spend another hundred or thousands of dollars to "upgrade" security systems. Sometimes technology just sucks. Too many things are "compromised." Why do they even use the word "compromised?" Is that supposed to make us feel better or less threatened? Idiots!
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