back at the office

6:30pm -ish
it's like having a set time to organize my thoughts. and i've a few thoughts to explore tonight, and most of my school work won't be coming due until... tuesday. tonight seems just as good as any other to spend in such a manner.

first thing out of the gates is this article from yahoo news about modeling the spread of disease, by examining the spread of cash. now there's a neat bit of reasoning. I doubt the creators of www.wheresgeorge.com could have anticipated it.

8:00pm -ish
february will bring about the start of my fourth year of blogging. first posts can be found at the bottom of this page. i've got no big summation of my experience. but i will note that i'm probably more sane and have kept in contact with friends better because of it. hooray for community.

10:00pm -ish
one girls team attempted 30 three point shots in their game. with 8 minute quarters, that's nearly one per minute. They only connected on 4 of them, and lost 36 - 50.
This is the interesting thing about this job, there is always some weird statistical insight to a few of the games. Bursts and draughts in the scoring are apparent in the box score... so are statistical anomolies. like a player who has 8 three pointers or only makes two from the field but sinks all 18 of his free throws. the numbers, when well reported, don't lie. bored clerks and writers can find something interesting in nearly nothing.

catchy title here

i'm the last 20 minutes of my shift at the paper.

i come in to a local paper 4 nights a week and answer the phone for the sports desk. it's not terribly exciting, tonight alone i've answered all of Zero phone calls. thursday night i'll answer 2 to 3, friday will be a few more and saturday will be about the same as thursday.

it's essentially subsidized study time. 4 hours of somewhere quiet with an internet connection. kind of like a library where you can eat and talk with out having to look over your shoulder for uptight librarians. plus, the writers are good guys when they're not on a deadline.

tonight the suburban beat reporter for WBBM came into the office and recorded a few sound bites for radio broadcast. interesting in it's rarity and for the amount of work that goes into 4 or 5 soundbites.

our big interest is local high school sports. most scores come through the fax line, and that's fine because most of it can be handed directly to the typist. basketball box scores need to be written into a form for his ease of digestion. when the phone does ring, it's merely a matter of writing the names and numbers down correctly and putting them in appropriate lines on said forms. then back to whatever activity i'm using to keep myself amused.

crosswords are popular, so is soduko. there's plenty of previous editions of the paper to raid should you complete the current challenge. plus there's a whiffle ball us clerks and the typist like to throw around. but only when the adults are gone. reading is popular due to the availability of material. but many also bring movies.

every time i talk about my job, my dad gets so excited about the fact that they don't give us computers and have us type in the scores over the phone. i tell him to stop trying to put me out of an easy job, but the question is valid.

mentally i figure it's a question of cost and complexity. they'd have to buy computers to put at our stations, train us on the software, test our typing ability, manage multiple file versions and data merges... or have us write it down, and hand it to one guy who's responsible for all the entry?

which sounds more corporate in an aging empire struggling to stay profitable and relevant way?

The best form of birth control...

is spending the day with somebody else's children...

I love my nephews, but they definitely make me glad I'm not a parent.

amused or busy

a supposed intelligence test.
you take a phrase like "24 H in a D" and puzzle out that it means "24 hours in a day" - i stopped after getting 21 of them. it took a while and it's culturally biased towards the brits.

don't push the button - i did. i'm ashamed to say i got it to repeat itself.

amusement when bored comes easily.

thinking out loud

does blogger do any kind of social network measurement/tracking?..

i've gotta believe that all those comments and links are pretty trackable for the company which hosts and facilitates all of it. but it would require some ugly number crunching and algorythms.

i'm sure if it was released as an api some very interesting apps would come out of it. considering the connection of blogger to google, i'd be suprised if there wasn't something going on.

Second Verse

Just like the first
A little bit louder, a little bit worse

Tuesday started a new semester here at COD, my friendly neighborhood community college. And as with all things cyclical, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Here are my observations of the first two days.

People Watching

One of the best things about the new semester is the people watching. It's a busy time and there's a lot of room for human comedy. Further, nearly everybody in your classes is new to you. Time to start the observations, mental story telling and stereotyping.

Ever since high school all my girlfriend's have made fun of girls who wear a skirt over pants. I saw it twice yesterady. Admittedly had each girl only been wearing their skirt, they might have died of exposure given the average walk from parking spot to building. I am no fashionista and my comments stop after this final thought. It stands out enough to comment because it's rare, and it looks odd to me.

My professors all seem very qualified so far.

My philosophy teacher I've had before and is absolutely amazing. He did his standard trick of having everybody's name learned before the class was 20 minutes old. Next meeting he will still have them, and be able to produce random factoids about each of us on demand.

The professors for my hotel classes and my tourism class fit in well with my archetypes of ladies in the event world. The tourism professor is a match for about half of the sales managers i've ever dealt at a hotel. Big hair that frames her whole head, she's all about networking and getting to know people. Most of her background was as a sales/office manager for travel agencies. The other is a match for almost all of the female catering managers I've ever dealth with. Enthusiastic and organized with a little bit of schmooze mixed in for good measure. Her background... banquet manager at different hotels.

I've also got a hotel/restaurant law class too. The professor there seems to be an urban/female counterpart to the rural/male professor I had for business law at purdue. Same semi-dry wit and sense of purpose. The same disregard for essays and love of scantron.

I've got some observations about the other students, but I'll hold back judgement for another week on them.

Parking and Traffic

Parking the first week is always tougher than the weeks that follow. It seems that every yahoo is on campus. I guess you need to spend extra time on campus to finish registration, make payments buy books and what have you. The normal turnover of spots as classes end is interrupted and finding a spot just takes extra time. Smart normal people plan for it.

Politicians do what politicians normally do. They make things worse. Barak Obama blessed our campus yesterday with his presence. But the timing was evil. His speach at 10:30 coincided with the heaviest parking and traffic crunch of a normal day... on the first day of the semester. Talk about a cluster****. Luckily I was part of the first wave of classes yesterday and only ended up in the far section of overflow.

Today, my schedule wasn't as convenient. Right in crunch time, and with no turnover, even the overflow lots were full. After 40 minutes, and 6 separate parking lots, i was fortunate enough to catch somebody as they walked down a row to their car. I hate following people to their car, but survival mode trumped personal distaste.

Apparently, the traffic and parking situation wass enough to flare tempers. The usual road rage temper tantrums were present as well as the requisite creative vehicular maneuvers. My personal favorite happened at a "T" intersection. One poor unfortunate soul had stalled her car in the exact center of the intersection blocking those who wanted to turn left into campus. I was in the 'turn left only' lane. Traveling in the same direction as me, in the 'turn right only' lane was another young lady attempting to push her horn through the steering column. Suddenly, against the red light for our direction, turned LEFT into oncoming traffic going around the stalled car, in front of me and forcing oncoming traffic to skid to a halt.

I count my blessings that I haven't been late to class, hit by another car or attacked by another driver. There are, however, two more days in the first week of classes.

Windows Media Center Community

I've been running a Windows Media Center Edition 2005 machine for about 4 or 5 months now, and I've got to admit that not only do I really enjoy it, but I'm incredibly impressed by the MCE community. There's a few great community websites out there (I'm looking at you GreenButton) that provide forums with great tips and user developed applications. (BabygVant you and your DVRMS Toolbox are my saviour.) But there microsoft development teams really add to that community as well. Several of them run rather informative blogs adding transparency and informed discussion. What a wonderful group to turn to when you have problems eh?

And there will be problems. It's not so locked down like a tivo or directv box. so it's more customizable, and rather easy to screw up. But hey, that's what the community is for. Trading war stories and getting help. but also, once i got MCE set up the way i wanted... it's been pretty hand's free.

Motivator - or Demotivator

there's a website out there which lets you make your own motivation posters, or demotivation posters. They've got a tie in to flickr and you can post them directly to your account if you want.

So I took a shot at my favoritest buddy evar... Mikey.




to make your own, go to http://flagrantdisregard.com/flickr/motivator.php

Memories & Alumni

Always when i least expect it, i run into an @ alum from my first tour of duty with @... Recomme of to the past.

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Mobile Email from a Cingular Wireless Customer http://www.cingular.com

How not to be an ass when ordering wine

I see nothing here to dissagree with. Nice to know i've not been an asshole.

do the rules change when you order a 5L bottle?

Movie Theaters

If you ever wondered how the movie theater's make their money... slate has a nice little run down on their three main revenue sources and the tricks they pull to maximize them.

link

i'm the movie theater's worst type of customer... i don't mind the concessions stuff, because i don't buy them. mostly because i couldn't make it all the way through a movie with an abyss-boy coke (see animaniacs... when they're going to the theater and yakko has to use the world's most disgusting toilet.) but also because... it is outrageously over priced. i use student id discount on the ticket prices when possible. The in theater advertising they get their money whether i participate or not, so that's a wash. Though i'll say this... when i'm early enough to see those in theater ads... i'm there with company and not paying attention.

New Year!

Sushi & hibachi
improv at second city
fireworks & champagne on Navy Pier
what a great way to usher in the new year...

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Mobile Email from a Cingular Wireless Customer http://www.cingular.com