Sunshine

Summer in Kansas is usually bright, hot and dry but the weather gods have lately been bringing us lots of humid weather from the Gulf of Mexico. The farmers have bee appreciative since it looks like we have a very good crop season because of the humidity and the high water table from the winter snow pack.

The annual flooding that follows winter is exceptionally bad this year and the towns and farmers in the river flood plains are getting hammered. I’ve been on deployment with FEMA after flood events in both the northern and southern parts of the Mississippi River basin My experience is that, generally speaking the people in the upper Midwest are resilient and every time a levee is breached the dry out and keep looking on the bright side.  There are few complaints about FEMA or the Corp of Engineers and lots of planning already in place to improve the existing flood control plans.

Because of the humid weather I have limited my outdoor time to early morn or late evening but the last three days have been spectacularly dry because of a high pressure area bring dry mountain air to the region. With the lower air humidity even temperatures in the 80’s and 90’s are pleasant and taking a morning walk is just fun.

Is this an educational idea?

I know that educational loans are usually large and often difficult to repay and that many times the borrower is seriously delinquent in making payment, but when a loan is delinquent there are many ways for the lending agency to recoup the money. But the U.S. Department of Education has really stretched logic with its collection tactics.

A fellow in California came downstairs in his shorts when a heavily armed SWAT type team staged an early morning rain. The guy was allegedly grabbed by the neck and led outside on his front lawn where he was handcuffed and detained. The raiders also woke his three young children, aged 11, 7 and three and held them in a local police car for about six hours while they searched the house.

The reason they were there was the raid was staged by a Dept. of Education Team and was based on a search warrant that was allegedly issued by the Department. They were looking for evidence concerning the ex wife who is delinquent on her education loans.

With all the civil and legal procedures available for collecting a debt I find it hard to believe that an educational loan requires a dynamic entry, particularly when the subject of the search is not a resident. The law describes a wide range of remedy but to my knowledge armed raiders are not included in the list.

Programming Logic (?)

I made a living for a good many years working as an analyst in several data centers. As an analyst it was my job to translate the needs of the customer into simple words and phrases that the programmers translated into computer code so the customer could get the information he wanted in the format he needed. While it was often a chore getting the customer to understand that some of their dreams were not achievable I generally had a much harder time getting the programmer to understand just what needed to be done. As a rule programmers are bright, articulate, eager and without a shred of common sense. Without exception they always thought that the code they produced was sufficient to answer all needs and that others (such as myself) had no business questioning their logic.

Over the years I developed a pretty good skill set in adapting the programmer’s zeal to real world situations and giving the customer a product that answered their need and didn’t obscure the reason for getting there. Now retired from the data world I recently ran across a brilliant illustration of an analysts failure to communicate and control and a programmers need to write “brilliant code”.

One of my email accounts, run by a national company, was hijacked by a spammer who proceeded to make my life “interesting” for several weeks. After attempting lots of hopeful solutions I went through my email provider and asked them to block my account until the issue was resolved. Notice that I had to go through my email account because the provider does not offer any phone numbers to call.

Now that my account is blocked when I try to access the email account I’m directed to a screen that explains the account is blocked and that they will send an access number to an alternate email account. The issue is that the alternate account is one that I had over 10 years ago and dropped about two moves ago and there is no way to change the alternate address, I also have no idea how they got it but that’s a side issue. As of right now it’s a perfect closed loop situation, create a screen that could contain incorrect information and fail to provide an escape route when the screen proves to be a dead end for the customer!

Next week I’ll block out a full day to call corporate and talk my way down the hierarchy until I find someone who can break me free. All because some programmer thought of an elegant way to help the customer and an analyst failed to spot a dead end in the making. Wish me well…it might be some time before I resurface.