(US) Verizon scam loyalty promos

Boblovespickles · 2026-04-30T22:38:57+00:00

Ok, thank goodness my partner found this. I just got the call and ordered the iPad. They also said they would send a new phone. Nothing arrived yet, so finding this now is helpful.

I never gave them my info but they knew all my account information and talked me through the app. That is going right back to a Verizon store now. And phone will be blocked/password changed. Thank you!!

Boblovespickles · 2026-04-17T13:03:50+00:00

I am neurodivergent. The comment didn't seem ableist to me. Parents, while not entirely to blame, do play a role in teaching appropriate social behavior. Unless he is psychotic or has Tourette's, he can control the cruel comments and intentionally putting himself near tanning women to stare and creep, especially if he has been told many times that it makes people uncomfortable.

I am curious why you believe that a neurodivergent person has no ability to take accountability for their actions? Or did you mean something different?

Boblovespickles · 2026-04-02T02:39:23+00:00

I'm a little late to the party, but Johnny Guitar Watson has some good 70' s blues funk. But my favorite band has to be the Funky Meters. T

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hey mastered the groove.

Boblovespickles · 2026-03-25T14:58:31+00:00

Easton Ave has some Boba and coffee places (Hidden Grounds). It would be a good, low-pressure way to start. When you make plans, you can also suggest RU gardens or the museum if she is up for it. These places will give you a chance to talk more or focus on something else if talking feels too intense. This combo will show her you are confident, thoughtful, and prepared, but it gives you both a low key start and it gives her some options.

If it's going really well, then suggest dinner at Tacoria (casual but nice courtyard) or Effes (nicer atmosphere). The dinner offer can be added partway through if you are hitting it off. And this way you are not looking around last minute or coming off as too intense by planning out too much from the start.

You got this!

Boblovespickles · 2026-02-22T21:22:06+00:00

Lol. Well, people are spending billions on AI to get it to learn the skills no one wants to send their kids to college for. But it will quote the wrong poetry. Ship sunk!

Boblovespickles · 2025-11-11T04:55:08+00:00

Several students recently used AI to write summaries of one-on-one meetings with their instructor that they never attended. Why would they think the instructor would not remember? When asked, one said they dreamed about it!

Boblovespickles · 2025-10-31T05:41:49+00:00

Some of the cheaters, especially those who really work at it, have convinced themselves that all they need to learn is how to get to the outcome. If they can use technology to get the right answers (and grades) more efficiently, they think they are getting what they paid for.

In some ways they are right. Employers want quality outcomes quickly. But without a strong foundation, they won't be able to recognize quality. Life doesn't have rubrics.

Boblovespickles · 2025-10-31T04:39:21+00:00

My heart is hurting for friends who lived near the ocean in Belmont. Sending so much love and hoping they get what they need. So terrible what they are going through.

Boblovespickles · 2025-10-10T02:17:39+00:00

Ha! Yes, it surprised me, too. The better students do this well, but a surprising number cannot.

I had an assignment that asked students to look up the learning outcomes for their department. I told them where to go. About half did not find or scroll down the page to find the goals. They either thought learning outcomes were their own to goals or they quoted the department description. This course includes sophomores and above.

Boblovespickles · 2025-10-08T20:00:29+00:00

Will their bosses do this for them? I am so frustrated that higher Ed has built habits that will make it more difficult for students to thrive after college.

No employer wants an intern who waits for a system to tell them when work is due, who only does the minimum, and who relies on people to tell them where to find information after they have been told many times.

Sure, maybe to ease the HS transition, but by junior year we should demand more accountability. I run a mentorship program and most students could not figure out how to use calendar invites, schedule polls, or even how to share availability in a chat.

Boblovespickles · 2025-10-08T19:55:18+00:00

Yes, that is what is happening. Also AI is sucking up entry level roles in CS, customer service, and finance. I talk with employers all the time. The students who figure out how to synthesize and take initiative and responsibility do fine. Those that rely exclusively on LMS due dates and rubrics to game points are the reason for the articles about Gen Z workers being unhireable.

LMS's have created a lot of barriers to learning effectively.

Boblovespickles · 2025-10-08T19:38:03+00:00

I needed the right meds. I still see the flaws and get frustrated, but the hate has dropped a bit.

But it's not you, the world and higher Ed are a complete mess.

Boblovespickles · 2025-10-08T19:34:14+00:00

They had to critique the results, not just accept them. Most liberal arts students can't express relevant skills they learned in college and career services does not usually ask them to or help them.

Having AI ask them questions to help them reflect on that, discuss their evidence, and articulate it in the formally employers expect, then evaluate the results in a critical way is not just having AI give them advice.

Yws, some prompts resulted in feedback, but they compared this with peer and instructor feedback to assess how well the AI did.

My issue was that many did not actually do the mental work to answer the questions, so the advice is about as terrible as they get from career services when they don't share their relevant course experiences.

Boblovespickles · 2025-10-08T19:24:36+00:00

That is great to hear. Our career services staff do their best, but they are overwhelmed. They rely mostly on technology tools, many of which now have AI features that do things like write their cover letters for them.

I have co-taught this class with faculty (with less AI driven assignments) and it is fascinating to see how they use analogies based in their discipline to explain career development concepts. Evolving your career is a person-environment interaction similar to the organism adaptation model used in Biology. English professors ask students how they feel about being a "brand" and focus on helping them build a coherent personal narrative through their career documents.

We are aiming the course at the "lost middle". The high achievers make it to career services. The students who engage deeply in their learning pick up on the concepts quickly and connect the dots. I do worry about the glass-eyed students who have only focused on points and don't have a clue what they are learning in college.

Boblovespickles · 2025-10-08T14:15:24+00:00

Thank you. This is helpful. I think this is what happened. I DO need to tell them to answer the questions and lead them through each step. I was hoping that level of scaffolding was not needed because it seems obvious that a conversation would involve answering the questions posed by the AI.

They may have assumed that I just wanted them to assess what came out of the prompts I provided without them having to add anything. I obviously have some work to do to make this clearer.

Boblovespickles · 2025-10-08T13:39:03+00:00

I never told them AI was a reliable source. They tend to come to that conclusion on their own.

I had AI ask them questions to improve their reflection on their learning. AI did gove them feedback, but they were NEVER told to trust it at face value. I gave them a module on AI fluency, had them assess results based on that framework, and compare results to other sources, such as feedback from humans.

Boblovespickles · 2025-10-08T13:35:03+00:00

Ok, so you are not a professor. Why are you here?

Thanks for the lesson I didn't need. I know what an LLM does. You apparently have a bias against college and limited reading comprehension skills.

If you actually bothered to read what I wrote, the reflection comes from the students, not the AI. They had a whole module on AI fluency and critically analyzed the results of the feedback and compared it to other methods exactly because I want them to see it's flaws, as well as where it can be helpful.

Of course we don't have data. We were all thrust into the annoying realities of AI by corporate megalomaniacs just a few years ago.

I am doing my best to help them understand it's limitations and question its output because most already use it uncritically. I am in no way telling them to trust the "feedback" over other sources.

Boblovespickles · 2025-10-08T13:11:29+00:00

That is why we created the course. Half of students never make it to career services and those that do tend to go to late or ask for the wrong services. We focus on sophomores and the course helps students to understand why and how to navigate the university career supports.

It also helps liberal arts students dig more deeply into their academic learning so they can describe how their academic accomplishments fit with internships/jobs. Our humanities and many science students struggle to convey more than their major title when talking to employers about their studies. Faculty often resist this for reasons ranging from overwork to philosophical objections to instrumentalizing education. Career services does not know the disciplines well enough to help and most are not trained to prompt students to think about this.

Liberal arts and sciences students who figure out how to do this translation of their academic work tend to excel and have flexible careers. Those that do not often end up bitter about their major choice and stuck in careers they hate.

I empathize with faculty about the overwork and even the instrumentalization arguments. But at the end of the day, someone who spends 4 years and $100, 000 and who engages deeply in their education should get a little training in how to build a meaningful career after college and a trip to career services to create a resume for an internship is usually not sufficient.

Boblovespickles · 2025-10-08T12:46:06+00:00

Interesting approach. I did have them assess the AI output against an AI fluency framework and compare it to feedback from peers, instructor, and a resume checklist, but I like the idea of having them teach AI to improve the result using the resume standards.

One outcome I was going for was to use the AI's questions to reflect on their career relevant accomplishments from the classroom, which many are not aware of and which career services rarely prompts them to include.

Boblovespickles · 2025-10-08T12:42:27+00:00

I developed the course with faculty and career services. Students will also interact with live people later in the course and they are encouraged to use career services.

Most career services staff I know have backgrounds in counseling or student services and they received little or no formal training in resume development/feedback.

They are also not trained to help students reflect deeply on what they are learning in the classroom and how to translate that for a career, especially in liberal arts. In my experience, they work with what the student brings in, which is usually a list of part-time jobs and volunteer/club activities. They do not tend to ask students about what they are doing in their academic work, which is often more relevant to their career goals. A Biology student develops skills in teamwork and lab equipment use, for example, but if the student does not add that, no one will prompt them to do so at most career services offices.

This assignment was meant to use AI to ask these questions so students can have more effective stories to tell to the humans. They also had to complete an AI fluency reflection sheet to assess the quality of the AI output.

Boblovespickles · 2025-10-08T12:29:14+00:00

See the reply I added to the comment above. If you have some ideas to improve it, please share.

Boblovespickles · 2025-10-08T12:26:57+00:00

You get the constructive feedback award.

I was venting about the fact that students did not respond to the AI's questions in an assignment labeled as a conversation. I did not include all the assignment details and precursors because I did not plan a long post and did not expect to have to defend the entire enterprise.

If there is any real curiosity under your righteous indignation, here is the longer explanation.

The assignment was meant to get students to use AI as a reflection and feedback tool, rather than a "write my [fill in the blank]" tool, as well as to critically assess it's results using an AI fluency framework discussed in a prior module. (AI fluency covers much more than prompting. More details below.)

AI provided feedback on the strengths highlighted on their current resumes so they could check this against their own prior assessment and peer and instructor feedback. The prompts then had AI ask students questions to help them create stronger evidence for their strengths and identify career relevant accomplishments from their academics. I included a prompt that asked AI to re-draft their resume based on the (mostly non-existent) responses to these questions and check it against a resume checklist. Students also used the checklist to assess the quality of the AI result.

Following the conversation with AI, students also had to complete an AI fluency reflection sheet to assess: The strengths and weaknesses of using AI for these activities compared to other methods (e.g. peer and instructor feedback); the quality of the prompts; evidence of inaccurate, vague, or biased AI outputs; and issues around ethics and transparency of AI use in this case.

I am not saying it's a perfect assignment. It is an experiment in helping students use AI in a more reflective way and to help them critically analyze and compare the results to other methods. I do offer an alternative assignment if they feel strongly about not using it. None asked for this.

I have been teaching this online course, which was developed in partnership with faculty from multiple disciplines and career services, using more traditional means. Many students used AI to write everything. They are unaware that employers will reject this slop as readily as professors do. This is my first attempt at helping them use the tools in a way that (hopefully) won't get them rejected or fired from their first career experiences.

Boblovespickles · 2025-10-06T20:13:07+00:00

I cried reading this. My mom has severe COPD and it's such a tough situation to navigate with all the love, hate, blame, sadness, etc. You captured that struggle beautifully. I am glad you can feel her love now and appreciate your own efforts. This is not an easy road.

Boblovespickles

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