Saturday, September 09, 2006
Finish Line in Sight
The company picnic came and went today, a slightly depressing affair by virtue of its meager turnout and lack of revelry. Still the barbecued ribs were pretty good. Deb, who organized the affair, insisted on sending me home with a container of ribs and chicken wings which, had the event been better attended, probably would not have been left over.
I had planned on practicing with the GRE word processing software today. My Barron's CD tutorial didn't actually contain a copy of this software, which it informs me should have been mailed to me by ETS, the company that administers the GRE, but which most certainly WASN'T. Fortunately the software is available for download off the GRE site. Unfortunately once downloaded our company computer would not allow me to install it. A sensible, if annoying, precaution to keep people from installing viruses or unapproved software on company machines. It never even occurred to me that this would be a problem. Alan the sysadmin will probably allow me to install the software Monday with a password key.
I had hoped to practice over the weekend with the software. Once home I tried to download the software to my home machine, but the ETS-GRE site is experiencing networks problems. After filling out the damn questionnaire over four times to get to the download screen, still no PowerPrep software downloaded. Arrrrrggggh!
This is the same site that botched charging my credit card the first time for the General Test. Since the credit didn't register they sent the bill by mail along with an extra $20 charge for the failed credit card charge attempt, which I don't believe is my doing. I sent the payment back over a month ago, but still no CD with PowerPrep software. Now tonight I can't get the software to download off the website. I'm really starting to hate this company. I am going to call on Monday to make sure I really am registered for the day I signed up for and to complain about the additional $20 charge and the CD that wasn't mailed and the download portion of their website going down and since this is FREE software how about listing a mirror site to obtain it and how you have to fill out forms over and over again if you just want to repeat an action like a download.
I may be able to copy the software at work (from the earlier download that didn't install) bring it home and install it. At least I plan on giving it a try.
One way or another at least, comes Wednesday night; I'll have the General GRE Test behind me. Today's practice tests (vocabulary and quantitative) went better and worse than I expected -- 780 and 650 (800, 800 would be perfect). I really feel I need to do at least 700 on the quantitative to get into a good graduate program in my field.
