Sunday, July 15, 2018

ERAC, CHASE & 3.0 GPA-- by JC Langelle--(C) 2018 EYELESS ON CAMPUS

ATTN CD//TACNET   VIA COMMO//JC   SUBJ//AMBUSH PATROL

(KB HQ)-- If the new page Duong Son (2) isn't impressive enough, it was formerly scotlandyard.blogspot.com but all of that changed today, or rather sometime last week.
     The first event was the employment offer from Hertz as a driver at the Reno airport. I jumped through all the hoops and finally got on board the previous Tuesday. By the time Wednesday rolled around I texted and backed out of the position, citing

"Regrettably, I will be unable to take the job at the Reno airport as planned, due to an excess of other responsibilities..." 

There was plenty of reason to back out although the "excess of other responsibilities" still aren't exactly clear. About the same time I applied for the Hertz driver job, I asked for a transfer from my Enterprise service agent job from the Truckee airport into Reno. The objective here was to make the upcoming Fall schedule at the University of Nevada a bit more in line with employment. As it turned out, all of the chess moves made turned out to be right.
     FoIlowing some back and forth between HR at Roseville, for the Truckee branch, and Las Vegas, for the Reno branch, the transfer was rejected. HR in Roseville; Coreen McGregor and  HR in Las Vegas, Francine Mazza; the latter I had prior dealings with, most of them with negative results. I nixed the Hertz position and instead went back to work on five-hour shifts at the Truckee for two weekends. With finances getting tight, I expected at least a reasonable enough paycheck to make the car payment to Chase. I checked the payroll page on Wednesday and found having worked twenty hours on four separate weekend days, one was bumped to the next pay period, $200 was taken and applied to some medical benefit deduction and the payroll showed $37. I texted Enterprise submitting an immediate resignation. It was Air Show weekend at the Truckee airport, one of the biggest rental weekends of the year. Payroll must have had a blinking light on the dashboard of its rental to hand me a check for $37, quick, take Shannon over there to Auto Doctor. It suddenly dawned on me just how treacherous working for a corporation can be and realized how different it might have been if I was in a union.
     So the Hertz thing was out, the ERAC job vaporized in one fast direct deposit of a check that wasn't there, and I get a call from Chase today telling me my car payment was two weeks behind, something I was already painfully aware of. I had bought the car under some troublesome circumstances and only recently I thought about how nice it would be to lose the car, the insurance and Chase. AAA went up $30 a month to $117 citing some local statistics for the necessity, not my perfect driving record for 20 years, it should have dropped. I struggled to make the last two payments and have been living on $10 a day as the result. I called Chase and explained in no uncertain terms that I could not make a payment and it just didn't sink in. I called back and they suggested some alternative payment plan which after a long repeated explanation of all of the above plus the expectation of having enough to pay the car by the third week in August, they rejected the alternative plan. I told them to come and get the car.
    As for the 3.0 GPA, UNR texted and said financial aid requirements for the Fall 2018 session is 15, not 12, credits, which is just short of impossible. That takes another $700 out of the FAFSA refund needed to cover various expenses from the start of the semester to Christmas.  But the future is now wide open, I stood my ground against the corrupt, greedy, soulless corporations that I had promoted with such confidence and find myself as a result, broke and no car. It would have been simpler to take the $37 loss, go back to the Air Show, call Chase and set a payment and live on $5 a day instead of $10. What have I discovered because of all of this? Time.
     Time to write, to record, to get blogs inventoried, look over discs full of recordings, web pages needing edited, stories to upload, others to delete. Time to open a new site like Duong Son (2), to add more songs to Spreaker, to park the car and walk, go next door and order pizza. Time to drop the CH212 class where the prof gave me a 40 on a very organized paper I submitted, time to drop the CH201 Core Humanities class for the summer, pulling back on the Pell Grant before that led to problems on the Fall financial aid.
     There is a basic law of nature,
" for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction."
I have noticed lately that this doesn't just apply to gravity or acceleration.





ATTN MERTZ SCULLERY//GI CAN DETAIL.....
You're pushin' too hard...."



     


   

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RED FLAG
Checkpoint Charlie: NATO, Article 5 and the Berlin Wall

There was no North American Treaty Organization, NATO, immediately following the close of World War Two. By the close of the decade, due to pressure from the Soviet Union, particularly in Germany, the alliance was formed with 12 initial members. The concept of “collective security” had been around for over 30 years, at least on the Continent, with respect to the World War One League of Nations; neither the United States nor the Soviet Union were members. (09 March 2025)
Red Flag: The U.S.-Japan Security Pact of 1960
The recent statement by the White House concerning a “bilateral” treaty between the United States and Japan from 1960 raised the issue of the former’s lack of a security-military commitment, with the latter doing the heavy lifting. It comes as no surprise in light of other treaties such as NATO in Europe with the U.S. again carrying The Weight.
Part and parcel to how it all unfolded had to do with certain ambiguous positions by the two nations coupled with the American public not totally informed of the agreement. The situation was quite different in Japan. (09 March 2025)

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BORDERLANDS
Ukraine: The Art of the (Peace) Deal
Nations are big on treaties, enforcing them is another matter. This paper traces some of the more recent, failed and otherwise, then takes a close look at one of the most controversial in history, The Versailles Treaty at the end of World War One. (09 March 2025)

Ukraine and The Rubio Doctrine The purpose of this report is to test the secretary’s three core principles against the Ukraine conflict to see if they are viable and would have been if he became president in the 2015 election. (09 March 2025)

Ukraine Betrayed: American Robber Barons to Steal Rare Minerals
Ukraine possesses significant reserves of rare earth minerals and other critical raw materials that are essential for modern technology and industry. According to reports, Ukraine has deposits of 22 out of 34 minerals identified as critical by the European Union. (09 March 2025)

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MOONDUNES
Space Station Freedom 1993: The “Fiscal Black Hole"

Space Station Freedom was a NASA-led initiative proposed in the 1980s aimed at creating a permanently crewed space station in low Earth orbit. The project was initially announced by President Ronald Reagan in his 1984 State of the Union Address, highlighting its potential as a platform for scientific research and international collaboration in space exploration. (09 March 2025)