Monday, February 16, 2004

it's nice to be wrong

It turns out that I maligned the government unfairly, or at least mostly unfairly.

Several hours after I posted, during which I pulled apart all of my tax and financial documents in an effort to find the mysterious PIN, my mailbox dinged. The FAFSA website, in its munificence, had declined to wait a full three business days before sending me my PIN. There it was, in my mailbox. Furthermore, it was clearly not a number that I had picked. I would never pick such a malformed number for my PIN. My memory and complex PIN-picking algorithms had not failed me.

A figure here, a figure there, and woosh! All my personal financial data was sent over a presumably secure connection to the great FAFSA database.

I was so grateful that I willingly participated in FAFSA's consumer survey. I did mention that three business days seemed rather excessive, and might lead worried applicants to commit rash acts such as dumping all of that applicant's recent financial documents into a pile on the bedroom floor in an effort to find their PIN. Not that I did that, of course.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm glad you *didn't* dump your folder on the floor. I would feel very guilty if you had.

Anonymous said...

I'm glad for you! I've been back a couple times since you wrote the previous entry to see if there was any news. I'm relieved it worked out!

Anonymous said...

Thanks :) I was *so* relieved!

And, BT, since I didn't dump everything on the floor, no need to feel guilty. :)