So, I opened a letter from SallieMae yesterday and I take a peek and realize it’s a student loan collection notice for a friend of my wife’s…. I guess my wife was put down as a reference for this friend who took out a student loan with them, and apparently she’s not paying her loan payments. And, I also realize I accidently opened a letter for my wife — d’oh!

Coincidentally, there’s an article in the L.A. Times regarding student loans titled “Student loans turn into crushing burden for unwary borrowers“. The beginning of the article recants a tale similar to the friend of my wife’s — also from the same lender, SallieMae. Interestingly enough, it sounds like college entering kids are getting suckered into student loans which they _thought_ were low interest, federally backed loans only to find out that larger portions of the loan are high interest, normal rape-my-pocketbook loans. By the time they find out they’re in the hole $100K+ with an 18% interest rate and a useless degree in Ancient Chinese Philanthropy. (Sorry, couldn’t resist the liberal arts degree joke.) 

I could go on and on about the growing uselessness of America’s Colleges in general, but I won’t. Instead, all I’ll say is that tricking young college-bound students into high-interest loans for education is just a pathetic way to make money. 

(Semi-related: Ed in NY Times entitled “Should the Obama Generation Drop Out?“)

Surround yourself with happy people, it really does rub off on you. Likewise, stay away from depressing and mopy people.

Okay, so this isn’t earth shattering news. But I did login this morning to one of my sites’ statistics and noticed that it went from receiving about 75 hits per day to 2,500. Doing some tracking, it seems this was solely due to linkage from another popular site in its genre.

I have to admit — I’m pretty thrilled about this. And I surely hope it’s a sign of things to come.