fun fact: I had about 100k$ of student loans, which I still haven't paid off 17 years after I graduated, and it's all because of VMS.
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Foone🏳️⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jul-2024 05:57:10 JST Foone🏳️⚧️ -
Foone🏳️⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jul-2024 05:58:35 JST Foone🏳️⚧️ my family was poor and I tested well: I got enough grants and scholarships that I was going to have a complete free ride to my university. I would pay nothing, in fact, they would pay ME
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Foone🏳️⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jul-2024 06:00:09 JST Foone🏳️⚧️ but I ended up with 100k$ of student loans.
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Foone🏳️⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jul-2024 06:01:48 JST Foone🏳️⚧️ why? poor VMS incompatibility.
The main student email system was run on a solaris system, and most things were connected to it. So your teacher could just put in your name and it'd link up to your official student account.
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Foone🏳️⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jul-2024 06:05:43 JST Foone🏳️⚧️ however, this system was not connected to one specific system:
financial aid.for historical reasons, their system was a VMS system, which used a completely different email database.
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Foone🏳️⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jul-2024 06:09:34 JST Foone🏳️⚧️ so instead of just being able to send it to foone.turing@school.edu, they used their own list of emails.
That list of emails came from the financial applications you made before becoming a full time student, which were done on paper.
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Foone🏳️⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jul-2024 06:11:20 JST Foone🏳️⚧️ since they were done on paper and the VMS system wasn't connected to the main email database, they "solved" the email problem by having students sit at a VMS terminal and type in all the email addresses
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Foone🏳️⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jul-2024 06:13:18 JST Foone🏳️⚧️ and the student who typed mine in made a typo. I was on the now-defunct ISP Mediacom High Speed Internet, MCHSI.
so I was "foone@mchsi.egg"but the student saw that and typed "foone@mchs1.egg"
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Foone🏳️⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jul-2024 06:15:08 JST Foone🏳️⚧️ so on my second year at the university, they randomly selected me for an audit. I just needed to send in some extra documentation, mainly my parents' tax returns to prove they weren't Secretly Rich
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Foone🏳️⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jul-2024 06:17:40 JST Foone🏳️⚧️ the email saying that went to an email that didn't exist.
and I didn't find out about this state until I tried to go sign up for classes the next semester, and there was a hold on my account, because I was being audited -
Foone🏳️⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jul-2024 06:21:36 JST Foone🏳️⚧️ I go get the documents, send them in, and the audit is fine. I'm eligible to sign up for classes again!
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Foone🏳️⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jul-2024 06:25:00 JST Foone🏳️⚧️ but the way they distribute grant money is that they start at the beginning of the year and apply it to as many students as they have money for, starting with the students in the worst financial situations (like me).
then they eventually run out of money
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Foone🏳️⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jul-2024 06:27:38 JST Foone🏳️⚧️ and they did this while my account was under an audit lock. So none of that money went to me. And by the time I fixed the audit problem... it was all gone for the year.
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Foone🏳️⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jul-2024 06:31:55 JST Foone🏳️⚧️ so I ended up having to take loans for that year.
and I'm still paying them off, 17 years later
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Foone🏳️⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jul-2024 06:34:03 JST Foone🏳️⚧️ all because my university was running their financial aid system on an outdated OS that couldn't talk to their main email system, and a student doing data entry made a typo
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Foone🏳️⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jul-2024 06:35:52 JST Foone🏳️⚧️ in retrospect I probably could have just taken the year off. Like, pause my education, pass up on my dorm room, go back to my PC repair job, and then come back once they could pay for it again
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Foone🏳️⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jul-2024 06:37:19 JST Foone🏳️⚧️ instead I just decided to take the loans, and pay student loans for ~15 years. Which I'm still doing.
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Foone🏳️⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jul-2024 07:02:41 JST Foone🏳️⚧️ @dolmen I once got a doctor's bill for 3,000$ because they typo'd my name, and there was no insurance for the typo'd name. (they swapped an O for an A)
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Olivier Mengué (dolmen@mamot.fr)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jul-2024 07:02:42 JST Olivier Mengué @foone Now I will stop complaining about the accute missing on my name (Mengué) in computer sustems: AFAIK that typo never costed me 1€.
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Foone🏳️⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jul-2024 15:07:38 JST Foone🏳️⚧️ @lispi314 no, and especially not now, so many years later.
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LisPi (lispi314@udongein.xyz)'s status on Thursday, 18-Jul-2024 15:07:39 JST LisPi @foone I don't suppose there'd be a recourse available? Because that's kind of a ridiculous outcome.
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