Category: Uncategorized

We have a new roomie. Making us a completely journal-riffic household, like when I was living with , but subtly different.

So, I have a memo to write for tomorrow, no biggie. I have a stakeholder thing too. And a NCOD, QGPA thingie. My real question for the evening is, do I watch the debate at school, or level mesharr up to 25? Yeah it’s politically “responsible” to watch the debate, whatever. I’ll have seen what the school will be talking about for the next couple days, and it will contain applied political science lessons. On the other hand, in terms of its intended purpose, I suspect I’d get basically nil out of the debates. And working on mesharr, at least I have something identifiable to point to that I got out of it, regardless of the value I recieve. =) I’ll probably go to the debate.

Additionally, I had an econ test today. I totally wasn’t paying attention to this. And I pulled out the same behavioral scripts I used in elementary school about tests. I talked about how I hadn’t paid attention to the imminence of the test, as I anticipated no difficulty, and I corrected the teacher’s mistaken derivative (with a whispered question at the front of the classroom, I wasn’t a dick about it). I feel like I was a prick. But it’s frustrating to be in this class for me, even if it is an easy A, and even if it does give me the units I need. Bleh. My classmates definitely noticed my attitude, and, of course, found it less than ingratiating. *sigh* Old habits definitely die hard.

most of these are kind of vague, but…

a trip to ohio for becky, which should be thanksgiving related.
a trip to montreal the weekend after thanksgiving for a moderate sized gay swim meet since I missed the big one.
a trip to austin, possibly at some point, for a lounge rats convention. Speakers on the topics of board and card games, drinking, rpgs, and recent events in various people’s lives will be assembled.
a trip to berkeley probably around finals time, but certainly before january (ubercheap airlines stop running their msp<->sfo flights after december).
I also told mom I’d be around for christmas.

That should be plenty of travel for this semester, and none of that will be until the end of october. Whee.

Prior to this week, I was taking an express bus to campus. The bus ride itself is about 15 minutes, better than half on highways. But, in terms of walking to the bus stop, and making sure I get there early enough to catch the bus, it ends up being about half an hour. Biking the four miles takes me marginally less than half an hour, door to door, with less than half of it on bike trails. A little more hair-raising, it takes away a time I’d been using for reading, but it’s exercise. And I can do it when I bloody well want to, as opposed to on the bus’s schedule. The freedom to construct my own schedule is huge, and that alone makes the choice of many people to drive totally comprehensible to me. Let alone the hauling capacity and speed.

However, much like I recognize the nutritional superiority of eating some eggs and meat, and the frequent taste superiority of dairy, but remain vegan, I recognize that cars really rock on several levels, but I will not own my own car, and will only rarely drive.

I ended up having professionals fix my broken chain tensioner. Then I biked into class today. Must have panniers. Lower back no like. I’ve accepted that I’m a busy grad student & started buying more heat & eat crap. This will sadly result in an increase in the diversity in my diet. I stayed really late on campus for the first time, so I could finish a group project and an assignment due tomorrow morning. Now I’m procrastinating the bike ride home.

Started having some serious doubts about the way I’m spending my time. I’ve been here what, a month or two? I’m feeling alot of things rubbing me the wrong way. My research assistantship blows, and must go. I’ll get a TA appointment. I’m more seriously considering the whole canada thing. Actually looked at it today. I think I would be happier living in Canada, though I’m not sure I’d travel as much as I would were I to live here. The question becomes,

Had a painful moment in my later class today. The professor screwed up some equations. He seems to have a Bush-esque difficulty acknowledging total fuckups, as he never admitted to the mistake, but muddled through as if he’d done something sensible, or done what he meant to do. The TAs were there and didn’t correct him. I felt sorry for him, and sorry for the class as a whole. And it got me thinking about whether this whole grad school thing is a valuable use of my time and money. Then we got the group assignment we’d done back, and it had valuable feedback. (turns out we got as low a grade as anyone got, which was an a-/b+).

Our TA from that class joined us at the weekly dinner thing. We talked about goals and experiences, and the class. It was good overall. Yay ethiopian food. =)

I think I’d like to do exactly the sort of stuff he was doing before he got in to the humphrey. He was working for a consulting firm which specialized in non-profits. It allowed him a chance to check out many different sorts of work in the field. That’d be a good thing for me. I can theorize all I like (and frequently do more than I like), but it’s where the rubber meets the road that we all live. And theories are there to be tested.

One of the things that has always driven me crazy about economics, particularly on the subject of labor economics, is the notion that hours spent working is always a negative utility. Given a 40 hour work week, for some people, this may be true. would doubtless protest this notion being applied universally. As, I suspect, would . I would certainly object to it being applied at 0 hours of work per week, having been there a time or two. Money aside, the value of the routine and the esteem effects from being productive have a definite value.

What really got to me is this quote from my econ prof, issued moments ago: “We work so that we can consume.” And to this I have only the following to say: Ewww.

Yeah, it’s a math model, yeah I care about money. But that particular statement seemed to reflect some terribly self-destructive tendencies that are overwhelming our society. Our esteem ought to come from what we make, not what we take.

Back to doing my homework in class. 😉

Turned in my six page stakeholder analysis paper. It was supposed to be an analysis on coolition building, but I don’t think I got in the right frame of mind. Instead I made pretty digital artwork for the charts, and talked about economics and ethics. Oh well.

I’m not going to make it to the big gay swim meet. Sad, but true. I was basically leaning towards accepting that while holding out hope for the long shot, then I got a phone call from dad. It seems that Becky’s husband Bob (friends of the family for well over a decade) had a stroke. He’s being kept alive by machines at this point. The funeral will probably be friday or saturday, and I’ll be attending that. Plus it’ll be the last weekend before dad leaves to start preparing for his time in Iraq.

So, this seems like a weekend to go back to Zanesville. Oof.

It occured to me that “bureaucracy” and “politics” are terms that used most often as their value laden connotations of inefficiency or stagnation, and corruption or divisiveness. But they do have value neutral meanings.

What else do you call the means of negotiating decisions as a group? Or the sets of rules and people established to accomplish particular goals?

Sometime last week, I had a rather notable dream. It was probably some combination of discussing abortion with one of my relatively scarce conservative classmates, playing too much final fantasy xi, and reading too much Janny Wurts, but… You’ll probably find it rather disgusting/disturbing, you have been warned