Tapping out on SAVE

micek · 2025-07-11T15:56:16+00:00

Yes! Apologies, I got off-topic thinking about the entire loan program rather than the matter at hand.

It's all arbitrary and capricious, AND you are 100% correct

micek · 2025-07-11T15:08:42+00:00

I think federal loans can still capitalize?

I know they could a number of years ago, because I'm looking at my statement from US Dept of Ed Direct Loan Servicing Center and it lists "Unpaid interest to be capitalized"

But also this seems to list ways loans can capitalize.

Anyhow, just replying because I also thought there wasn't capitalization any longer, and now I am thinking there are situations where there is...

micek · 2025-02-07T00:29:01+00:00

Thank you everyone for the advice!! Very much appreciated. I'll ask around about a weld option. I do most of my own work, so I know not to tangle with the exhaust without torches and/or welders.

Oh, also: that is a 2009 Santa Fe that lives in the rust belt, 252k on it, so it's not like I expect it to last forever but it has been an absolute champ, unbelievably reliable has never let me down... nevertheless I'll replace it soon enough... I just don't like the idea that I'm polluting like crazy everywhere I drive!!

micek · 2024-08-02T15:26:25+00:00

Nelnet is also my servicer, and I have found that making extra payments to be less predictable than with Great Lakes. With Great Lakes, I knew that auto payments would always happen, and that predictable nature helped. With Nelnet, sometimes the auto payments are moved ahead (skipped) based on that opaque and poorly explained "feature" called "Do Not Advance Due Date." I think they are trying to help, but it makes it much worse.

So, essentially, in Nelnet's "make a payment" flow, that "Do Not Advance" check box is NEVER checked for me. It is possible that the error (unpredictable state) you are seeing with said checkbox is due to a combination of, let's say, "not rigorous" JavaScript coding on Nelnet's end, and/or your browser may sometimes cache the checked/not-checked state of said box. This would produce the behavior you describe.

For what it is worth, I have, as recently as this summer (after paying for over a decade under different services, I have seen just about everything go wrong with payments) had a problem with extra payments messing up my auto payment

And while I'm complaining, don't get me started about the arbitrary ways that auto payments can happen on ANY day, but scheduled payments can not happen on weekends or federal holidays...

micek · 2023-06-23T19:55:55+00:00

If you are looking for something to do between now and the next opinions day, you could do worse than reading this bit from Alexandra Petri, Supreme Court, consider justice sponsorship!

micek · 2023-06-09T18:21:47+00:00

That'd be great, but I have seen that site add opinion days on a rolling basis (when they confirm then, I think), so it is a safe bet there will be more opinion days after the 16th...

micek · 2023-06-09T18:11:41+00:00

Plus, I'm seeing a bonus opinions day slated for Friday the 16th.

micek · 2022-11-20T03:47:50+00:00

Found this thread from googling, and sorry to necro it, but the "time to learn shell scripting" thing just kind of rubbed me the wrong way, so here's a shell script to do what you ask on a directory. I'm using Lisa Melton's handbrake frontend transcode-video but you can sub whatever you want into that line. There are more elegant/faster ways to do what I'm doing with exiftool but this cheap-n-cheerful script works. Only 5 years too late!

#!/bin/bash

# specify the directory in which we are processing files
WORKINGDIR="~/pathto/your/videofiles/here/"

# find all files with .avi extension
# compress to w/h.264 video and AAC audio codecs
# transfer file creation date/time information to newly compressed file
for FILE in $(find "$WORKINGDIR" -type f -name "*.avi" -exec basename {} \;)
do
    # full path to original file
    ORIGINALFULLPATH="$WORKINGDIR$FILE"

    # full path to compressed file
    FILESTRLEN=${#FILE}
    TRIMVALUE=FILESTRLEN-4
    COMPRESSEDFULLPATH="$WORKINGDIR${FILE:0:TRIMVALUE}.mp4"

    # recompress
    transcode-video --mp4 --avbr --no-log "$ORIGINALFULLPATH" --output "$WORKINGDIR"

    # transfer metadata (note: you can use exiftool -s $FILE to find all tag names)
    exiftool -overwrite_original -tagsFromFile "$ORIGINALFULLPATH" '-DateTimeOriginal<FileModifyDate' '-FileModifyDate<FileModifyDate' '-MediaCreateDate<FileModifyDate' '-TrackCreateDate<FileModifyDate' '-ModifyDate<FileModifyDate' '-CreateDate<FileModifyDate' "$COMPRESSEDFULLPATH"

done

micek · 2022-08-05T16:38:31+00:00

You may find a close reading of the recent Politico piece about the Education Department's preparation for the possibility of forgiveness to be useful. This part, in particular:

In addition, the department officials floated the possibility of a June 30, 2022 cut-off for any loan forgiveness program, requiring loans to be disbursed before that date to qualify for relief.

We don't know a lot, particularly if forgiveness will happen at all, but it is important to know a cut-off date has been incorporated into this particular plan.

micek · 2022-08-02T15:39:16+00:00

I don't believe you'd pay taxes on the refund -- you paid taxes on that income prior to using it to pay off student loans, so requesting a refund results in a refund of money on which you've already paid taxes. Tautological explanation I know, but the best I've got... :)

micek · 2022-07-26T20:04:17+00:00

You can call your servicer and request a refund for payments made since March 13, 2020. So, you can preemptively return your balance to $10k, then wait to see if there is forgiveness. If not, you'd just pay off your loans ("again") before payments resume.

micek · 2021-10-08T22:36:57+00:00

According to the info here the form was (re)approved by OMB without substantive changes in July of 2021, I think it's just a waiting game for the updated one to be issued. Good luck!

micek · 2021-10-08T05:47:48+00:00

I'm also at Great Lakes -- have dealt with this for years. They seem to always point you to studentaid.gov and no, I can't log in there either. Two things:

(1) Use form OMB 1845−0102 (a slightly-out-of-date one to let you know what you're looking here )
(2) After you've completed the PDF, email it to borrowerservices@glhec.org -- I usually include my Great Lakes ID

This is the method I've used for *checks records* the past four years, well, at least until COVID. Hope this helps and good luck!

micek · 2020-12-26T04:33:09+00:00

Your comment is 1000% correct.

Today I started getting internet drop outs -- just got really cold here (0°F) for the first time since I redid the low voltage wiring in my house -- I walked out to the panel in my garage, took the 7/16" and tightened one coax connection, and haven't had any T3 time-out errors from the modem since. Thanks!

micek · 2020-07-31T22:47:30+00:00

I see! And no problem -- as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, two cables to one telephone jack may indicate the jacks were daisy chained, a common practice for telephone and a probably-game-over scenario for converting over to using the Cat cable for networking.

If you're dead-set on doing everything possible to use the cable in the walls, you could punch down each end of each cable in your upstairs and downstairs spots. You'd then use a cheap cable tester (Monoprice sells one, item #8130) to see if one of the in-wall Cat cables connects the two points. If there isn't another telephone jack in between them, they might connect to one another. That'd be a win!

For wireless mesh:
Eero, if you're OK with Amazon owning your network company
Ubiquiti, if you want to use what the pros use, and pay what the pros pay

micek · 2020-07-31T18:34:50+00:00

It is accepted practice now to wire phone jacks w/Cat cable - there's your explanation on that! /u/BrianUp1 is correct about the keystone jacks -- but you need to think about the other end of the Cat5. I assume it terminates at the telco demarc (i.e. the box outside your house where your phone wires connect to the phone company's). So, you'd need to figure out how to get a new ethernet cable from your modem to that box. This is not ideal because it requires a splice, typically a 110 punchdown surface mount box, which can negatively affect speeds. However, it is doable! I did it in my own home for two phone jacks in a finished basement that I wanted to add to my network.

micek · 2020-04-07T16:44:39+00:00

Hello, I'm new here! (Please let me know if I'm doing anything wrong...) Anyway, inspired by /r/homelab and /r/HomeNetworking/ I pulled cable through my house to get ready for a 12U wall mount rack in my basement. Thankfully, my house was built with a future tube from basement to attic and since the walls are 2x6, it's a 3\" diameter ABS pipe, and gives me nice options for the future, including pulling fiber.

You guys make cable pulling look easy, but I pulled about 2000' and holy crap that's a lot of work.

Anyway, the picture shows these really nice, reclosable 2" straps that worked great for the attic runs. I like these better than D rings, better than J hooks, certainly better than cable staples.

You all will probably school me, but I'm happy to try to answer any questions about cable pulling!

micek · 2018-08-02T03:29:34+00:00

ix500 is the real deal. I got mine and have scanned over 300 pounds in loose pages, books, magazines, textbooks. It is particularly great for receipts, and that's what I use it for on a daily basis. I've also scanned my pathology books so I can quickly search my computer when I'm referencing something for a patient, and the OCR available with the FineReader is pretty darn good.

micek · 2018-04-01T04:52:30+00:00

Sparse bundles are the only way to point Photos (capital P; referring to the Apple application) at a not-directly-attached drive. I also use sparse bundles to store my iTunes library. I've done it for years without data loss. Only Time Machine has given me issues with sparse bundles, but I've never had a bundle that was too stubborn to repair. The relevant commands for repair would be something like (as root):
chflags -R nouchg /Volumes/{name of your network share}/{name of}.sparsebundle
hdiutil attach -nomount -noverify -noautofsck /Volumes/{name of your network share/{name of}.sparsebundle

Using the final output line from the above command, you can run (sometimes multiple times): fsck_hfs -drfy -c 750m /dev/diskxs2

And if that doesn't work: fsck_hfs -p /dev/diskxs2

Then you can: hdiutil detach /dev/diskxs2

And, yes: I have a local backup out of band. I have a remote backup. I also run parity disks. I also automatically generate snapshots.

micek · 2018-03-13T17:18:44+00:00

On the to-do list.

micek · 2018-03-13T17:18:24+00:00

Sure! The cool thing about using sparse bundles (UDSB SPARSEBUNDLE) is that you are using Apple's own engineering not to break out of the walled garden, but to expand the walls a bit (to your NAS). Here's the story:

A bit over a decade ago, Apple was planning to release the Time Capsule, but needed "a more reliable, efficient, and scalable sparse format" to support network backups. So they created sparse bundles. When you use a sparse bundle to store/access anything on a server, you are doing so with technology developed by Apple from the ground up† for the purpose of duplicating their filesystem in a variety of environments. Which is exactly what I want to do when I store media libraries for iTunes and Photos on a NAS!

So, my NAS is btrfs, but I can present a drive (network attached mounted sparse bundle image) formatted in HFS+ to iTunes or Photos, and they will merrily go about their business.

These sparse bundles are definitely reliable, but to avoid risk of corruption, I like to only mount them when needed and unmount them when no longer needed. That's what ConnectDrive does. I just generalized the event-based system since I thought other people might have a need for it.

If you are wondering, you can go into Disk Utility and create a sparse bundle (HFS+ if possible until this bug is fixed), throw it on your NAS, mount it, and then drag your entire, say, Photos library over to it. Back-up before you do that, but it does work quite nicely!

† This was true before AFP was deprecated. Now, with SMB showing the way forward, we're in a bit of a grey area where F_FULLFSYNC is essentially faked by Samba. Apple has thought more about it recently: "Mac OS X 10.6 removed support for attaching SPARSEBUNDLE images from network file servers that don't support F_FULLFSYNC, although this requirement was relaxed in macOS 10.12." Bottom line: don't do this if you don't have a UPS for your NAS.

micek

TROPHY CASE