Here be schedule!

I just finished putting in all my Help Desk hours, and now have a finalized schedule for this quarter:



Ignore the numbers at the top and such, I just took a screenshot of iCal, since the Print views don't look as snazzy as the Edit view. This schedule does ignore NYT deliveries in the morning, though I don't think I'll be doing those in the near future.

Oh yeah, NSCS events are green, and that Officer Meeting rotates between an Officer Meeting and a general Member Meeting each week.

A Miserable Monday Morning

Last night I was a bit nervous about having to deal with delivery of 500+ copies of the New York Times around campus with very few volunteers. That anxiety was completely justified in light of how my morning went. In fact, I probably should have been crying last night in anticipation of how badly things would go.

My first unpleasantness started with trying to catch the bus. The bus was supposed to come at 7:19, but I made sure to leave my place by 7:15 just to be sure. The first thing I heard after I locked the door to my apartment was a bus engine. I briskly walked up the driveway leading to Bill McDonald parkway, and spied my bus loading on the mass of people that gathered at its stop. Dejected, I made my walk towards it, knowing there was no way I'd catch it. However, a long line of cars was able to keep the bus pulling out for awhile. If I ran, I could make it. I took off, truly sprinting for the first time since I'd broken my femur. When I was just mere feet from the bus, and it was within my physical grasp, the bus rolled away. I was so shocked and angry that an early bus wouldn't wait for a passenger sprinting towards it that I jumped and punched the plexi-glass at the stop. I skinned my knuckles.

I looked at the schedule for the next bus that would come by, and made a quick decision that if I walked quickly enough, I'd be at the bookstore before the next bus could get me there. I walked, passing a few people along the way, listening to Death Cab the whole time. The speedy walking, the cold air, and the fury at WTA combined to make me a bit sweaty, a bit cold, and my lungs a bit sore.

When I finally arrived, I found that I had a big stack of papers and only two volunteers had shown up to help me deliver them. We did our best, and managed to clear the stack in front of the bookstore, but there was a whole other stack behind the Comm. Building that we didn't even touch.

I saw Robin when I dropped off the subscription papers at Miller Market -- that was refreshing. Robin is always refreshing for some reason. Maybe it's the red hair, or the synthetic green eyes, I'm not quite sure.

I made my way to my class in the Comm. Building on the other side of campus, and relaxed a bit, resigned to the fate of NSCS's relationship with the New York Times. There's no way we can keep this up. That's okay though, because I've got a couple of solid fundraising ideas that I've cooked up. One can be implemented this quarter, and the other can be realized Winter and Spring quarters.

I got to my 8:00 a.m. class, and told Stephanie my maddening morning story. She's incredibly nice from what I've seen so far, because she was very sympathetic. I gave her one of the bible-looking planners with the gilded edges that the NYT had sent to me, and that I had originally intended to give to the volunteers to show up.

The lecture began shortly after, and I took off my sweater, tuned in to Dr. Kamena, and just relaxed.

This plant is new

I got a new plant from Fred Meyer yesterday. It's a False Aralia, and it looks pretty healthy:



I really hope I don't kill this one. I must be more nurturing.

I've also obtained some new shoes from REI. They're the same brand as my sandals, and they fit like a glove, but a glove for feet. They do look kind of like bowling shoes, though:



I've been a bit worried about the New York Times. I have nowhere near the amount of volunteers I'll need to comfortably deliver 500+ papers around campus every morning. I've reached out to just about every club on campus that I can't imagine anyone within NSCS objecting to, as well as one that some might (the Western Dems). I still haven't gotten a single confirmed volunteer outside of the five within NSCS that have already pledged their time, though.

I've decided that if the volunteer situation doesn't improve by Wednesday, I'm going to put things in motion to end our committment to deliver the readership copies, while still retaining the subscription copies, if possible. If everything goes sour with the NYT, I've already got two other solid fundraising ideas in my head, so I'm not terribly worried. Still, I'd hate to let down Neda -- I just started to like her a few weeks ago.

HP means Hatred for People

Today I had an appointment to help a girl out because her monitor wasn't displaying anything when she turned her computer on. I arrived, plugged the monitor into my PowerBook, and found that the monitor worked just fine. I deduced that it must be the video card. I opened up the machine and reseated it, but the problem persisted. We walked over to the local computer shop and picked up the cheapest AGP card they had, a Radeon 7000 at the amazing price of $50.

We walked back, and I went to install it, and found that it didn't fit. Now, this makes me feel like a bit of a rube, but I had no idea what her video slot was. I've been purely Mac for about a year and a half now, though. I paged through the manuals that came with her computer, and found that it was described only as "AGP." No 5V, 2V, 8x, 16x, or any other adjectives, just "AGP." I tried to find an open wireless network nearby so that I could just get on HP's website, but no luck. It was time to call HP Support.

I was promptly connected to an Indian dude. I've never had to deal with a foreign call center before. I had to spell out my last name for the guy. My last name is Adams.

After getting all my serial numbers and such, the guy puts me on hold. After a few minutes, he comes back and tells me that my serial number and product number do not match. I look at the piece of paper full of numbers that the girl had given me and realize that the product number is not the "M1720N" in "HP Pavillion M1720N," but rather is a number beginning with "PP" printed elsewhere on the page. I give this to him, and he puts me on hold.

A few minutes later he comes back and asks for my email address. I ask him why he wants it, and he says so that HP can contact me about updates or something. I just give him a fake address, and he puts me on hold.

A few minutes later he comes back and tells me that the warranty is expired. The girl has only had the machine a month. I tell him I don't care, cause I'm not trying to send it in for service, I just need some information. I tell him what I need, and he puts me on hold.

A few minutes later he comes back and asks me if it's a Media Center PC. I confirm that it is. He then asks me if I'd like to be contacted by phone, email or, postal mail. I make a sound of confusion, then tell him to contact me via phone, and he puts me on hold. I'd like to note that every time he puts me on hold he says, "Let me see what comes up." I think he might be accessing HP's intranet through dial-up or something.

He comes back and tells me that it's a Radeon X300 PCI Express. It took me about twenty minutes to get this information. It made me want to cry. We dash over to the store and pick up another X300, the cheapest PCI-E card in stock, come back, install it, and all is well.

I'm very very glad that I don't have an HP.

Parade of Parents

I went to campus today to do some NYT work, and I saw countless cars with a middle-aged person in the driver's seat and a person in their late teens in the passenger's seat. The driver was invariably driving very slowly and looking at everything around him with a pained expression on his face. It was glorious.

The parents of my generation just can't let go. I've fielded an incredible number of calls from parents at the Help Desk over the summer. Usually, their child is in the room, as whenever I ask for an ID number, I can hear the parent asking the child for it. I once got a three-way call.

If your kid can't speak for himself when he's 18 and in college, will he ever be able to?

I Registered, and it Was Good

I registered this morning at 8:15 a.m., and I got all the classes I'd wanted! Behold my schedule of awesome:



I then went to both the AS Bookstore and the College Store in Sehome Village and spent $289.09 on five textbooks, four spiral notebooks, and three pens.

I am not a horticulturist

I let my houseplant have some fun in the sun on Wednesday. The care tag that come with it said that it does best in medium shade with water every few days, but I thought it was looking rather sickly and that a little bit of sunshine might do it good.

On Thursday, the leaves were no longer green with white spopts, but a green-tinted white with white spots.

Today, my plant looks like this:


That's the third plant that's died on me in as many months.

I must mention Katrina

I nearly forgot to post my impressions of the situation in New Orleans and on the Gulf Coast.

Quite simply, this is an incompetetent response to one of the greatest natural disasters the United States has ever faced. Discovery and History channel documentaries have let me know that a hurricane hitting New Orleans would be catastrophic. I knew these things just from watching television, and I hadn't been tasked with the job of responding to the eventuality of a flooded and devastated Big Easy.

One of the images that drives the incompetence home most for me is a picture from inside the Superdome. It shows a crowd filling the seats bordering the playing field. From watching the cable news networks, I knew that the water was expected to rise to a point that would put it above the playing field of the Superdome. I knew this, but the leadership at the Superdome did not. As expected, reports came out of a stampede up the seats in the Superdome when the flood waters started to flow in over the field. Elderly and disabled were left behind and had to wait for the good Samaritans in the house to rescue them.

Why the incompetence? It's the leadership. The President appointed one of his friends, who had no experience with disasters, as the director of FEMA. The mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana never took the threat of a hurricane strike seriously enough to push for storm surge barriers such as those that exist in the Netherlands.

Though I don't know anyone in New Orleans, even I've been hit personally by the storm. Something Awful went a couple days after the storm struck.

Caught in the Rye

Last night I finished reading The Catcher In The Rye.

I looked the book up on Amazon, curious to see what the reader reviews might contain. While they were overwhelmingly positive, there were a heap of one star ratings that derided the book for its language, lack of climax, immaturity, and other things.

I wondered why these people didn't enjoy the book as much as I did, and it struck me -- they didn't identify with Holden. And, a corollary to that, those that did enjoy the book must have identified with Holden. For if it weren't for his outlook on the world, the book truly would have been just a bunch of stuff that happened.

That makes me feel good. I'm cynical, and I've got company.