2A) Bug List

1. I live at Gainesville Place apartments and a couple of months ago all the little trash cans around the condo were removed, it really bothers me because now I have to walk longer distances to throw out my trash, but it is also a problem when I am walking, and I have something to toss away

a. It is easier and cheaper to maintain, plus is less work for the maintenance people

2. There is no direct bus from my community (GP/Enclave, which is big one) the shopping center where Walmart and some other supermarkets and stores are. It is difficult for a person with no car to go shopping and bring the bunch of full bags back to home.

a. It could be because where Walmart is (between Clark Butler Blvd and the I75) is an area that has been growing recently and people in charge of public transportation haven’t catch up with the expansion, or because they think that it is not worth it to create a new route.



3. There are no street names within my apartment complex (GP) and it makes it really annoying to give a specific address to a person or website, because not even putting the apartment number in the map sends you straight to my apartment. The person coming has to ask in the Clubhouse for instructions or a map. This is a problem when the Clubhouse is closed. The only way is to send a dropped pin on Google maps, but sometimes it is not possible.

a. I cannot find a good reason for it, it might be because no one has thought about it, or because the legal paperwork.



4. During winter, when it is really cold outside people dress to get warm, and then when you get in the bus, it is hot inside and you start sweating unless you remove your scarf, or your coat, and then you have to put it back to get out, and most of the time it is annoying because winter clothing is bulky. During the summer or warmer times is the opposite, is hot outside and freezing in the bus.

a. It happens because the bus driver sets the time to an extreme opposed to the outside temperature



5. Traffic in Miami during rush hours is so bad, there is traffic jam everywhere and heavy traffic on the streets that it takes forever to get to a place that normally would be 15 minutes.

a. The reason for it is that people don’t live in the same area or close by where they work or study, so a mass of people have to commute every day during similar hours. The other reason for it is that public transportation barely exists, is inefficient and expensive, and people need to travel long distances. Public projects look to expand and “improve” streets and highways, but it hasn’t been working at least during the las couple of decades. There was one time when I got surprise, because I was stock on traffic in Hialeah, a city from Miami, and still there were one or two cars parked in every single house (plus all the cars on the streets).



6. Here in Gainesville public transportation is good, there are many different routes (can be improved a little bit more) and is not that expensive (free for students), but it is easy to miss bus stops because they don’t have a common name (they have a code that is different in some sources and traffic apps give them a different identification)

a. Bus stops don’t have an identification with the address where they are located or a name that identifies them and help people where they are by putting a signal in the bus with the name of the next stop. It requires coordination, but still I think that is because someone in charge is being lazy.



7. For Federal Financial Aid procedures, the adult age is 24, it makes that me and a lot of people who doesn’t get economic support from their parents don’t get full financial aid.

a. It is a measure to reduce the cost from giving grants and loans to more students.



8. Recycling is little or not encouraged in Miami (here in Gainesville a little bit more but is still far away from where it should be) and government and companies don’t make it easy at all. For example, here in my community there is only one spot for recycling and is always full and like a mess.

a. Most of the time recycling requires to change how the place or the company works, and it is more expensive. It also happens because people are not fully aware of environmental problems and the benefits of recycling and, therefore, they don’t request a better service for it.



9. Access to online books and assignments from editors like Pearson and McGraw-Hill Connect are very expensive, and still the service is for 6 months, and have to renew it for every class. For example, I had to take 2 accounting classes that used the same book but different parts of it, and I had to pay $250 ($125 each) to be able to do my homework and have access to the book.

a. Profits, it is all based on profits and copyrights. They try to squeeze every penny out of students.



10. Prices in the United States of America are never the sticker price, it could because it includes taxes, or “convenience” fees, anything similar, but a buyer will never pay the “sticker” price.

a. I think it is a marketing strategy, because in other counties like in Europe taxes are included in the price. It makes it look cheaper.



11. I haven’t been able to have a Wi-Fi router in my apartment because each time I connect it, it will have Wi-Fi signal, but the network won’t have access to the internet. I have tried multiple things, and changing the router, but nothing works, and I have access to the internet plugging the Ethernet cable into an adapter (which I had to buy) that goes into one of my USB ports.

a. It could be because a configuration that I am missing, or some specifications that the Wi-Fi router needs to have that I don’t know.



12. Most gyms use a locker system where you set the pin/passcode and when you open it again, it will reset so the next person can use it by creating their personal pin. It turns out that most of these lockers are always stuck and cannot be used because it won’t let you set a pin. I have seen this happening in my condo’s gym, the school’s gym, etc.

a. It could be because people don’t know how to use them properly, or because lockers need some maintenance, or because no staff member checks to see lockers are working properly



13. It bothers me that I cannot use my graphing calculator (TI-84 Plus C) for classes like Marketing (which uses simple calculations) and Business Statistics, and now I had bought 3 calculators for my last semester and the first week of this one (and they are not cheap) because now my Finance class requires a specific financial calculator.

a. I have heard that some calculators can be upgraded with some programs, but I don’t know how they work or how to do it, so that wouldn’t apply to me, but it is a rule to make it even, since they cannot check calculator by calculator.



14. When I have a doctor’s appointment and I arrive on time or a few minutes early, I have to wait for a long time to be assisted (and nothing else happens), but then if I arrive 15 minutes late, I have to reschedule the appointment and pay a fee.

a. This is a way to protect themselves and increase revenues from fees.



15. I used to work at my previous school and I was able to see a part of how Admissions, Financial Aid, and Advisement departments work, and they are usually a mess, they give the wrong information sometimes, you talk to two different persons in the same department and they tell you different things, there are misunderstandings among all the departments

a. The reason is miscommunication and lack of organization. Bad management



16. When I am watching an online class, I have no way to communicate with neither the professor nor a TA to ask a question or make a comment.

a. It might happen because it will take a lot of resources to make it happen, plus it probably makes the class go slower because the professor has to stop to read the questions and comments. That is why I suggest putting a TA for this task.



17. I have my own phone account (carrier), where the autopayment is linked to my credit card. A couple of months ago one of the persons included left the account and his phone was broken so he took it with him to hand it in in the other carrier, but he had to fix it first and it has taken a long time. The problem here is that the amount due ($700) was charged to my account, and I had no way to redirect it to his account to make him pay for his phone

a. It is a way of the company to protect themselves from scam and fraud, and to make sure that the payment is done.



18. One of my roommates have a cat, which is illegal in my condo, and the problem is that he barely takes care of the cat, and it stinks, the hair left is a mess, and sometimes scratches the furniture, etc. Also, sometimes he buys the cat some cheap food that makes her puke (in the living room)

a. It happens because he doesn’t have time to take care of the cat, and he doesn’t have money sometimes to buy the right food.



19. Education system is about rushing through content and memorizing it, not about learning and understanding the concepts and the reason why things are like that. A lot of content is included for a short period of time, to make it look like they are giving you tons of information, then you get tested to see how good your photographic memory is (in an exam where selecting random answers gives you more probability of getting the right answer than actually trying to remember), then that is translated into a ranked score that will define how “smart” you are and will be what employers will use to judge whether you are a good employee or not. For example, my Business Statistics class was all about the name of the rules and how to calculate a statistical concept, but I was never taught what to do when we get the final answer or what did that number mean.

a. I think it is an easy way for schools to justify what your paying and to try to make you do the work.



20. I hate how 99.99% of ads are made, specially on TV. They make people look dumb, and what appears in the video are all lies that come with a tiny sentence in one corner with an almost invisible color explaining that what your seeing is not real and that you shouldn’t try to do the same, or that it won’t be like that in real life.

a. This is the way of companies to increase sales, and wake people’s emotions towards the product and the company.

Reflection:

To do the list was not hard, even though I have never done anything similar to it, but it took me time to find so many bugs, and to find an explanation for them. I would say that the biggest challenge was to find a logical explanation for every single bug. At the same time, I think that it was a useful assignment because I never thought about all this issues that affect me and how easy would be to solve most of them. 

 As an extra bug I would like to add that I just realized that it is impossible to edit a text here in blogger, because if I add a character or a blank, it will delete the next space, which basically means that if I need to correct one word, I will need to rewrite the entire text.