What a week

Last weekend was consumed by last minute work on my two first-half-of-the-semester courses. I finished the first part of the paper for stakeholder analysis at like 3am on thusday. I don’t know what’s been done with it since, but then again, I don’t really care. I trust the competence of my team mates.

Friday evening, I joined in the first step of the Humphrey pub crawl. I even had a beer. Pale ale. I was shocked, it was nowhere near as foul as almost all beer I’ve experienced to date.

In policy analysis, I was behind. Whether this is because I overloaded myself, and let alot of things drop, or because I slacked, I don’t really know. My first revision of the paper was an evening long endeavor. I assembled bits from other people’s papers, modeled it off the “ideal” example we were given, and for the analysis, I put my own way of thinking about it down, regardless of the original outline. I said as much to the individual I passed it off to, and that I’d be happy to assist in refitting it to the outline, but that I felt I’d gotten everything else in there pretty well, and properly arranged. In the morning, I ran with front runners. I think she freaked at the same time. She certainly wasn’t pleased. She called me up on my cell, and said she’d take care of it, and let me know if I was needed. I came in anyway, explained my rationale, wrote up a sub-section of the un-restructured analysis, and offered a central point or two for later analysis (specifically the application of pareto efficiency to the problem). I can’t shake the notion that she’s pissed at me, despite the fact that she’s being nothing but nice. Sunday evening gaming with Seth, Joe, & James, yay =)

Monday started off with an informational presentation by the GAO. Afterwards, I asked our career services lady if I could sign up for an informational interview slot. She said that she was trying to arrange more slots, and she’d let me know (I did eventually get it). Final class of policy analysis, yay! The paper held to my basic format, it including some elements I pointed out in the model paper, and the aforementioned conceptual additions, but was otherwise a near complete re-write, in which my contribution was lost. I’m simultaneously miffed and embarrassed, but it’s a much better/more coherent paper than what I had originally turned out. Afterwards, we went out for our weekly post-policy-analysis dinner. I had two glasses of Tej.

Tuesday was a bit odd. In my first class, Public Management & Leadership, we were talking about the potential of the interweb to revitalize democracy. I came down heavily on the skeptical side (the article was written by utopians who probably wouldn’t know an ethernet card from a website.) Stats was basic probability. With funny words added. I was not impressed. After class, I did a total revamp of my resume. (here’s a rough approximation of the current content, ignore the css fuckup-ed-ness, unless you have advice on fixing it. For interview purposes, I turned it into a Word doc. The humphrey is also slowly bending my anti-microsoft rigidity). I went out suit shopping for my interview the following morning. Men’s Wearhouse took me in, and put a jacket on me. It did fit well, and then I checked the price tag. I think it was $499 for the jacket alone. I discussed price with the saleswoman, and she basically laughed at the figure I was seeking ($150 for a suit). She also informed me that they were the only place that could get me something tailored by the next morning. I thanked her, left, and went to Marshall Fields. The guys helping me find a suit were Mr Metrosexual USA (he talked about his girlfriend & was real pretty) & this big, black, flamer dude. MMU sized me correctly without a measuring tape. The problem was that they had little in my size. While BBFD and I were checking out ties, and he proposed a pink tie, my sexuality came up. My vegetarianism had already come up through the subject of shoes. He immediately started talking about this tall, blonde, vegetarian friend of his named Carl, who he’d absolutely have to introduce me to. Eventually he mentioned “well educated” and “really political” (Both MMU and BBFD were unsurprisingly pro-Kerry. They were circumspect about it at first, but warmed up to the topic). Even if it was a line to get me to buy more, well, nothing to lose by giving him my number, so I did.I saved 15% by opening a marshall field’s account, so I figured I’d get some more casual pants, and a few other things. The suit pants and jacket, pre-discount, were $300. The post discount total was $526. Yikes! No more clothes shopping for me for three years.

Back to campus for the final stakeholder analysis class. We saw “Battleground Minnesota” starring Shakademic. Second time for me in two or three weeks. Time has been blurring together lately. I was appointed the presenter on our paper. Did I mention I’ve barely skimmed it since I wrote my section. I started off by saying “We wrote about the Puget Sound Water Quality Authority. Which was an agency established to protect the water quality of puget sound.” I felt so Bush-esque (think “native american sovereignty”). But it got better. I even got to use my “rounding up the townfolk environmentalists in a posse to take out the outlaw polluters” metaphor. That got a chuckle or two. My tuesday evenings and monday evenings will be free until january at the earliest. Sweet!

Wednesday started off with the GAO interview. You may be wondering why I, of all people, would work for The Man. If so you’ve forgotten a) that I was working for The Man this time last year and b) that the Government Accountability Office is the part of The Man which rats out on the other parts of The Man. Really, my main reason for being interested in it is that it would be a great way to be exposed to a variety of government functions, to examine what does and doesn’t work, and why. It was supposedly an informational interview, but I’d heard otherwise from my classmates. I spent the first 15-20 minutes of the interview barraging them with questions. Mostly about the organizational culture. The eventually had to stop me and say that they had some questions for me. Then began the standard interview. I didn’t do as well as I might have liked on that part. Must remember to have supporting evidence for _all_ sections of my resume. Post class on wednesday is a bit of a blur to me. I got my materials for the class that started the next day, I did get trained in FileNET, a web update system on the web. It’s cute, it’s slow, it don’t impress me much. It makes me a little sad. There was so much promise that it didn’t fulfill, but it is much better than the “edit the html on the network drive, then tell compstaff to update it” system. I helped my econ ta help my fellow students while working on the homework due friday. I went home, slacked out online, and eventually cuddled with a stranger at his place in loring park. Somewhat ambivalent about that.

Thursday morning, more public management & leadership. We were doing the case of washington state department of licensing and the various political barriers they suffered in implementing online services for their department. I only stuck around for stats because we had a quiz at the end. Got a tetanus/diptheria immunization shot. Had my first day of “designing participation processes”. The instructor participated in the brt/hot roundtable where I was taking minutes, during which one of the researchers that I work with frequently yelled at her for a comment which he thought was inappropriate. I have to find a meeting with public participation, attend it, and write something up on it, in the next couple weeks. She gave a frank appraisal that engineers would have difficulty with this course. Among engineers, I don’t feel like much of an engineer. Among policists, I definitely do. =) I’m iffy on the course, but we’ll see how it goes. Went out to Hump Night afterwards with my fellow Humphrey-ites & had a Summit. It sucked more than the pale ale, but less than I’m used to beer sucking. I’m on the road to alcoholism.

Friday, another stats quiz (do in your groups what you did individually on thursday. Ie, let my group mate comment while I retake the quiz). Catching up on lj. Showing up to work. Maybe even doing a useful thing or two. Stickin around a little late. Declaring my upcoming weekend of slack. Then, late at night, my laptop’s ac adapter gives up the ghost. To replace the adapter, or replace the laptop. If the laptop, to do so on the cheap, and transplant hard drives, or get something that actually doesn’t suck. Possibly even a mac. Decisions, decisions. Oh, and mesharr was 27 by the end of that night. She’s 29 now. Soon she will have warp, and great will be my farming.