Category: Uncategorized

Ya know it’s sort of ironic that I absolutely will not be watching the debates tonight because I’ll be too busy studying material for a public policy class and preparing to write a paper about a highly relevant political matter. On the other hand, it’s not like the debates are really anything more than a beauty contest.

On a related note, there was a post on a mailing list I admin, and I was so tempted to flame the dork in traditional graffiti.* style. I wrote it up, then deleted it without sending. Still, I felt better.

roommate ad — take N

Get the last spot in a great 3BR Lower Duplex in Uptown, available October 1st (may be negotiable). The front bedroom is $400/month plus 1/3 of the electric. The unit is a lower duplex with hardwood floors and is already well furnished. It has offstreet parking, coin-op laundry and storage in the basement, a yard, 1 bath, plenty of space. We have broadband internet access, with wireless already installed.

The unit is nestled along a quiet street, easy walking distance from the heart of uptown. Nearby are several major bus lines, grocery stores, restaurants, theaters, and just about any store you will want or need.

We have one rabbit, kept largely in a bedroom. The upstairs neighbors have a cat and a dog. No smoking. We are reasonably tolerant of mess, but try to maintain some order in public space.

Current tenants are a 28yo professional student, athletic, vegan, and a 25yo university research assistant, geeky, easy going. We are fine with straight, gay, bi, male, female, whatever. We’re both gay guys (not a couple), and are only interested in roommates for whom that is not an issue.

A week in review

Here’s a shocker for just about anyone: Grad school is very time consuming.

In the past week and a half, I have read hundreds of pages of policy related information. I say this without exaggeration. I also read stormwarden, which is, for the most part, not actively bad scifi, but not very good either.

I’m also in 7 courses. I’m one credit hour below the the point where they start charging you on a per-credit-hour basis again (otherwise known as the “stupidity tax point”), 14/15. I’m contemplating a drop and add scheme which would take me up to 14.5, while shifting some of my academic burden later into the semester, and covering a potentially more interesting & relevant topic.

I managed to churn out the minutes for the Federation of Workplace Democracies — Minnesota (FWD-MN) meeting in late september, and take them yesterday. I’ve been making friends with lots of my classmates, I played soccer, briefly, on a humphrey team on sunday. I’ve been eating so many clif bars that my morning protein shake started feeling like variety in my diet. I simply have not made it to the gym, and won’t today either, because I have an ill-considered shift at the coop (which is being changed right pronto).

Of the roommates, I leave the house first, and return last. I do need to rearrange my time commitments, but really, I need to drop some as well.

Oh, and Mesharr has received basically no attention. But I don’t think I’ll drop ff11 just yet. =)

And you know what? I’m feeling pretty good. Heh.

When it rains it pours

… And the deluge begins

So, I’ve moved in. Public areas are largely unpacked, the fridge is restocked (despite the actions of those I was subletting from). An anger management topic there. Some storage furniture (shelves, etc) would be

I have my buspass, and my student loan (checks going out to and tonight, I swear.) Classes started on tuesday. I haven’t worked out in nearly a week. I signed up for a soccer team dealie with the humphrey. Going to the queer grad students initial meeting this evening. Tomorrow afternoon I talk to the YMCA about financial assistance (and thus miss the Compassionate Action for Animals meeting).

Still in the first week glow, in which all my classes are pretty cool. I expect a fair amount of tedious busywork intended to teach material I already know. Particularly in my economics and statistics classes. I intend to learn as much as I can and get straight A’s this semester.

There is no way I can keep up with my lj subscriptions as they stand, so I’m probably going to move a great deal out of my default view. Don’t take it personally if I’m not following yours anymore.

and for the prurient

Linkity linkity

A critique of a representative sample of bush’s evironmental record (stand back, it’s long)
A comparison of the American and European dreams
(I’m no longer certain which journal I pulled those out of)
http://www.livejournal.com/users/krypt_kycker/48493.html

introduced me to Machall with this comic which seems, perhaps slightly more relevant to WoW or Evercrack users, but amusing nonetheless. =)

biodiesel and fuel cells

So, biodiesel, it’s awesome, it sequesters CO2, it’s only triflingly less energy dense than petro diesel, it’s renewable, it’ll employ farmers and revitalize rural economies, it’ll even do the laundry.

PEM Fuel cells, they use hydro-carbon energy sources far more efficiently to produce electrical energy, and produce far less nastiness along the way than traditional internal combustion engines.

Is there some reason that these two great tastes can’t taste great together? I realize that both of these are far from polished technologies at present, but is this a tree worth barking up? I have seen/heard nothing thus far about this particular possibility.

Particularly targeted at chemists, like and . 😉