Recently in School Category

Did any one else Mom or parents call rain or snow boots, galoshes?
I was just thinking about that when I was searching for some slip in
women's rain boots.

It is officially the rainy season here, it started on June 1st, (Sebastian's birthday) and goes through until November 30th.
All I have to wear are sandals, open-toed sandals, not exactly good shoes for rain, so I was doing some window/internet shopping to see if I can find some slip-on rain boots.
I need slip-ons because I cannot bend over to lace up or tie any shoes.
The only other pair of shoes that I own are a pair of fur indoor/outdoor slip-on slippers.
Those are not exactly good for rain either.
I wore my sandals all last year, all through the rainy season, and it really sucked.
Massive puddles everywhere, no matter where I needed to go, puddles everywhere and no semi-dry spots to walk on, so my feet got absolutely soaked in the nasty, muddy, and sometimes garbage and debris strewn puddles.
I do not want to go through any puddles this year, so if you find a pair of women's size 10 slip-on rain boots, (galoshes) let me know OK?
Thanks!

Mark was not in the mood today to talk anymore about school and getting his online degree, but I went and kept looking around anyway. I
 found that he could get an online IT degree, and a bachelors or master in IT security, if he wants to.
I also found that WGU, Western Governors University, is extremely affordable and offers financial aid as well.
Basic tuition for most of their programs is just $2,890 per six-month term.
They charge a flat every 6 months so that you're paying for the time, not the credit hours.
WGU is also a non-profit, and generally more affordable than other online universities, and  it's a fully accredited online university too.

It's another option for Mark, I just keep looking because there will be one that he wants to go to, he will make up his mind eventually.
He's accepted the way his life is, now he just needs to make up his mind how he wants to proceed and what he wants to do with the rest of his life.

I've been trying to help Mark with his plans for the future for months now, and it always feels like we get just a little bit further along in deciding what he'll go to school for, and then we take not just 3 steps back, but more like 10 steps back.
We've talked about maybe going for fire service training before, about getting a masters in public safety administration, or maybe he can go for an online Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership for fire service management.

I emailed him the link to Lewis University which is an online accredited school, sent him links to several of their classes to work toward getting an online Bachelor of Arts in fire service training.
A Bachelor of Arts in fire service training would give him the skills and information necessary to become a supervisor, train officers, train forest fire fighters, fire inspectors, and fire investigators.

Like I said, I get pretty far along, so so I think, I get him talking about it, excited about it, I get him reading up on it, and I encourage him like a mad woman, to give this some serious consideration.
But then just a few days later, he's no longer interested, and when I ask him what's up, he tells me that all of his life, he's had his heart set on being a police officer, a cop out on the streets, a beat cop.
He wants to wear the blues and badge, he wants to be out there walking down the street, talking to people, helping people, making himself a proud, welcomed, and trusted part of the community that he lives and works in.
He says that he knows that he can never be a beat cop, he knows this in his head, he knows this in his heart, he knows that he has to find something else to do, and he knows that there are so so many ways that he can be a proud, welcomed, and trusted part of the community in some other way by being a crime scene investigator, a forensic investigator, a fire investigator or inspector, something else, but still a huge an integral part of the serve and protect community in which he lives, but he also knows that it's not what he's always wanted to be and he's so very upset about it.
He's sad, hurt, angry, and terribly disappointed that his lifelong dream is over.

It breaks my heart so so much to know this, to know that he's not happy and unable to live his dream job.
I've always told the boys since they were very little that I didn't want them to live the kind of life that I did, working whatever job was out there that I could get hired at, just to pay the bills.
I didn't want them to just work "some job" to pay the bills and live paycheck to paycheck like I did.
I told them to find not a job, but to pick a career, to find something that they absolutely love to do, would be proud to do, and would be excited about doing every single day for the rest of their lives.
Mark had that, he had his dream career all picked out, all planned out, he's been excited about being a cop since he was little, and now he can't.
When I tell you that he had it all planned out, I really mean it, he had it all planned out.
he knew what kinds of classes would be best to take in high school, he knew exactly what kind of courses to take in college, he knew what time of year was the best time of year to apply at the police academy, he knew what teachers at the State College of Florida (formerly MCC, Manatee Community College) were the best teachers to have and talk to about the police academy, which teachers would write recommendations, and he already had 7 people who had agreed to write him glowing recommendations to help him get into the police academy.
He had police officers, former police officers, teachers, personal references, and even a judge who he met through his Big, George, who he spent over an hour talking to one night at a party at George's house for the holidays.

He had it all planned and worked out, he was excited about his future, and it was all taken away from him in one fell swoop of bad genes.
It's so heartbreaking trying to help him plan his future all over again, try to get him excited about a new career path for his life.
I try to get him talking about it as often as I can so that he doesn't just give up on it, give up on having a career that he can do and love just as much as he wanted and loved the idea of being a cop.
I will NOT give up on it, I will NOT give up on him, but at times it's devastatingly heartbreaking to hear him talk about what he wanted to be and do with his life, and hear the passion in his tone of voice.
He still has the passion, it's still there, I just need to help him place that passion into something new, and it's incredibly difficult for me because when I hear that passion, that want, that desire to be a beat cop and hear his voice crumble when he talks about how he can never be a beat cop, I just want to burst into tears.

It may not be an industrial computer, but I finally (been thinking about buying 1 since school started up back in August) ordered the netbook that I've been wanting to get for Sebastian, and I have been talking about it on my other blog, and debating with myself for months and months and months.
YAY!!!
I Twittered about getting the really awesome deal that I got thanks to Verizon, I mean, really, it's a totally sweet deal, how could I not publicly thank them?

The netbook is actually a really great one for the price.
HP Mini 110 series

• • Black Swirl
• • Genuine Windows XP Home with Service Pack 3
• • Intel(R) Atom(TM) Processor N270 (1.60GHz, 512KB L2, 533Mhz FSB)
• • 1GB DDR2 System Memory (1 Dimm)
• • 160GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
• • Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with a 5-in-1 Digital Media slot
• • 10.1" diagonal WSVGA LED Anti-glare Widescreen Display (1024 x 600)
• • HP Mini Webcam with HP Imprint Finish (Swirl)
• • Wireless-G Card
• • HP Color Matching Keyboard
• • 3 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
• • Microsoft(R) Works 9.0

When I got Fios installed back in July, Verizon told me that in 3 months, if I paid the bill on time and in full for those first 3 months, I would receive a gift certificate for $299.00 to buy anything that I wanted from a certain website, so my gift certificate came about a month ago, and I finally used it tonight.
The netbook's price was exactly $299.00, and then I bought a mouse and a carrying case for it.
The mouse was $12.79, the case was, $11.99, they had 20% off of them individually, not 20% off if I bought both together, but 20% off of them by themselves, and then I had to pay for shipping for all 3 items.
The subtotal was $324.77, shipping was $19.00, Florida tax was 24.07, making the grand total $367.84.
The $299.00 gift certificate was applied and so I only had to pay $67.85 in total.
I LOVE an awesome bargain like this!
W00t!! W00t!!


Today like around 9am or so, I am going to go to the pharmacy and pick up the scripts that are waiting for me, then go do the grocery shopping, and then tomorrow, I get to go see my other doctor and tell him about the issues that I am having with my feet and hope that it isn't diabetic neuropathy, because if it is, I know that he's going to put me on insulin and I don't want to be on insulin.
I don't have a problem with needles, no problem with needles at all.
It's that having to take insulin will further restrict me and what little freedom I have left.
Because of all of the health issues that I have right now, I am truly a prisoner in my own home because of my own freaking messed-up body.
Having to take insulin will just make me even more of a prisoner.
I know that calling myself a prisoner isn't good, but it's how I feel, my life is so restricted, I can hardly do anything because of the constant pain that I am in, being forced to watch myself, test my blood sugars constantly, will just make that feeling even stronger.
It sucks.

My friend Christine sent me a Tweet last night about identity theft of students, it was an article on her local Boston news website that was all about the theft of students ID, their social security numbers and other information.

It's back to school time, but there's more to be nervous about than missing the bus. Children can have their identities stolen years before they could legally sign up for a credit card or take out a loan.

I then sent her a link to the ID theft of my kids, as well as thousands of other Sarasota children, not just high schoolers according to my friend Mindy, but ALL of Sarasota school district students.
Trying to protect our kid's ID is getting harder and harder, made even harder by a school district that willingly sent all of their personal information to a website that posted that information publicly for who knows how long.
One of the possible settlement agreements will be to provide identity theft protection monitoring for any students whose ID was stolen and compromised by the school and the website that posted the information, for up to 2 years after the theft was done, and to clear the student's credit reports of all the bad information.

I am still in shock that it happened at all, and I totally blame the school district for it.
There's a major class action lawsuit going on right now because of this, thousands of students information was posted publicly, anyone could have gotten access to it, and trying to clear up any bad credit by ourselves would be impossible to do.
I am really hoping that our side wins the suit and the school district and that website, have to fix every single one of the thousands of students bad credit reports for the next few years.

I have always made sure to keep the teens social security cards private, I don't give that info out to just anybody, and when someone asks for it, I always ask why they need it.
If they don't have a good reason, they don't get it, and so to have that information posted publicly and know that anyone could have taken it, makes me mad as hell.
I am so glad that someone caught it and the suit is being pursued, our kids futures is at stake here, their ability to buy a home or even get a job, is at risk because someone allowed all of that personal information to be posted.
I am absolutely furious that it happened.  

I posted about the class action suit against the school district and the Princeton Review on my other blog, and I'm still fuming about it.
I will be so freaking mad if the teen's credit is ruined because of them forcing the students to put all of their info on that site, and it wasn't just the high school students either.
According to Mindy, ALL of the kids in the district had this done because her little girl Katie's info was posted there too.
They got letters for both Katie and Jeff as well.
One of the settlements if it settles, will be 2-3 years of identity theft protection for any student whose credit got destroyed or their identities stolen and used.
I personally don't think that's enough.
I really believe that if anyone got their identities stolen and their credit destroyed, that they should get some type of monetary compensation as well.
It takes years and years to clean up your credit once someone steals it, credit monitoring isn't enough in my opinion.

I was up all night long again, I still haven't been to sleep, so when things got a bit slow on Twitter and I couldn't find anything on tv to watch, I decided to go looking some stuff up that I've always been curious about or interested in.
One of the jobs that I've always been curious about, is the IT field.
I think it's fascinating to know all of the ins and outs of computers, the internet, how to fix them, how to stop hackers, how to prevent hackers, all that kind of stuff, and while I do know a little bit, being in IT is not for me, there's just so much information, and that information is always changing, so you always have to be up to speed on all of it.
So I went and looked up what all it would take to get a Masters of Science in Information Security, basically, to be an IT specialist.

There's a lot to it whether you want to be doing the technical concentration, the actual IT work, implementing the security fixes, stopping hackers, keeping the information secure, or the managerial concentration, be the one who keeps an eye on the technical security of individual lives, people's personal privacy, and the ever growing information security risks facing the safety of people's personal information, and the risks for businesses and government.
The more technologically advanced we get, the more at risk all of the information is, and it's up to the IT managers to find ways to keep all of that information secure while having to deal with the laws, public policies, and people's rights to privacy, and how we keep all of that information secure without trampling on people's rights, but stopping the bad guys from accessing all of that information.

It's a pretty complicated job, and getting a masters in it would be some serious hard work, but for the right person, someone who has the patience for it, gets excited by the risks and works just as fast at stopping security attacks as the baddies are at trying to access the information, it can be quite a fulfilling and rewarding job.
I know that I don't have the patience for it, I get very upset when my internet goes out and I can't fix it within 30 minutes, so I know this isn't the right path for me to take, but someone else may be just the right person to do this and help keep all of our government's information safe and secure, as well as regular everyday people's information.
The more technologically advanced we get, the more IT people are going to be needed to keep everything safe, it could really be a great career for the right person.