As you may or may not know, I graduated from the University of Cincinnati and I am a member of the Alumni Society. Being a member is supposed to grant you benefits like having your Bearcat ID still active as well as other privileges.
Knowing this “fact,” I told Sara I would get a book for her from the biology library to aid her in completing her paper. I should have known that it was going to be a bad experience when I started out at the main library on campus instead of the biology one. After the nice young lady at the front desk conveniently pointed out that the book I was looking for was in the biology library as stated on my cheat sheet given to me by Sara, I went over to the biology to pickup the book; however, there was one small problem. The biology library doesn’t open until 13:00 even though their website says that it opens at 12:00. This tends to get in the way of progress at 12:30. So I wait and eventually get in only to find that I can get the book … but I can’t check it out.
According to the system, my ID is no longer registered. Strike one against the Alumni Association. Being the industrious person I am, I decided to copy the book using the remaining $5 on my ID. ERRRTT, Wrong! When you card is inactive, you can’t use the cash that is on it even though the system will tell you exactly how much money is left on the card. Strike two.
Fortunately, I had a smart person (Sara) tell me to take the sack-o-change with me to do the copies just in case it didn’t work. Needless to say, the rest is relatively inferable; however, I did have another fight with the gate in the parking garage. It seems that even though the system takes Bearcat ID, Visa, and MasterCard … only MasterCard seemed to be working that day. Man … I miss dealing with this malarkey day in and day out … NOT!
Mike says:
So the alumni association sucks. How are the classes? You see, (get it?) if all goes according to plan I’ll be applying soon and may actually complete a degree some time before I turn 40.
3 May 2006, 12:03 pmWyatt says:
Yeah, Kate said something about that. You need to have a nice lips to ass relationship with the ECECS department to see what you can do about part-time CS majoring. I will be contacting the YAA though to see what I’m really supposed to get out of this and what I can do to make this better for other alumnus (is that the right plural? must be as Google’s crappy spell check said it was acceptable) that might want the same thing. Who knows, maybe I’m the only crazy idiot out there that would like to be able to still use the libraries without going to the Cincinnati Public Library and getting another useless card.
4 May 2006, 8:47 amMarilynn says:
You should still be able to check out a book if you have a Cincinnati Hamilton County Library card. Also, Sara should have been able to check out the book through OhioLINK. Let me know if she ever needs something from UC again, I can get her around the system.
5 May 2006, 10:07 am