![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Friday, October 11th, 2002 01:18 amAnmeter, Indicator, Wye Level Wye
Slide Rule, Dynamo, Tau Beta Pi!
So last Wednesday evening (10/2), after a somewhat shitty day involving getting 0/25 on a test question, I wrote the text of Colorado Beta's convention bid presentation. Following that, I packed my bags for the trip and hit the hay around 2am. Rising at 5 I exited my building's elevator to find a couple carts worth of shopping bags at the foot of the elevator with nobody present. At 5:20 in the morning. As I left I saw some girls coming, but who the hell lives in a residence hall (save Reed) and does serious grocery shopping at 4am? Check-in at the airport was a breeze. The new TSA workers look kind of dorky. It was cloudy before dawn, but things were clearing near DIA. There was one cloud between Denver and Detroit. One 1500-mile-long cloud.
The Tau Beta Pi convention was held in the Detroit Marriott Renaissance, the central tower in the imposing tower monstrosity that is the Detroit Renaissance Center, world headquarters of GM. I was on floor 43 of 72, and my ears popped each time I rode the elevator. The hotel desk is on the third floor (?!?), several confusing escalators from the main foyer. The first five floors are circular and fairly open, so from the fifth floor you can see the cars on display at GM world on the first floor. There's a glowing green glass circular walkway that takes folks to the various other towers and to the People Mover monorail, among other things. There's a food court on the first floor. Enough room to hold a couple conventions concurrently. And RIGHT next to the Detroit river. I have no idea what their flood plan is.
So on Thursday evening I got dressed up in my top hat and new suit and other products from Men's Warehouse, as detailed previously. Pictures will be forthcoming. Having read through the presentation about 3 times, I slipped into "I'm in front of people, so I'm completely at ease and on top of things" mode. Forgot a couple small things I was going to say, but I got a lot of "nice presentation" comments afterwords. I included several sprinklings of humor, including a point by point comparison of pointless differences between Colorado and Utah. I did the Utah chapters a big favor by providing them a much lower cost estimate, based on info in the bids and some pedantic data collecting. In the end, our price tag came out about $5 more expensive per delegate than Utah. Compared to a $50,000 price differential from HQ's estimates. The spreadsheet I created should go out to future bidding chapters, so my work will live on :-) After some tough debate, the committee selected Utah's bid over ours in a 10-9 vote. (Someone who was going to vote for Colorado wasn't there for the vote... I wonder what they would have done in a tie.) So we didn't win, but we had fun, learned a lot, and a significant portion of the bid can be reused, should someone wish to step into my shoes.
In other convention business, I think I'll be the delegate most referenced in the minutes; I think I debated or made a motion on over half of the proposals in the business meetings. Everything from point of information to moving to ammend to moving to reconsider. Robert's Rules are so much fun. For Saturday's business meeting I made sure to sit next to a mic.
Free time, what little of it there was. On Thursday night I met up with a couple guys from UT G and MT B and threw paper airplanes (and hellicopters) from the 4th story down to GM world below. Paper hellicopters are hella b.tangz when they work right. Without trying I mastered a graceful technique where the plane flips over several times in flight. We got a couple planes wedged in some pretty neat places, and ended the evening by being yelled at for opening a door which had, on the other side, a warning "Emergency Exit Only - Alarm Will Sound." On Friday night I went to Windsor, Ontario with three folks from Wyoming. Mostly it was about having fun making cracks about going to Canada. We spent some time in the Windsor Casino. I lost $10 Canadian of Josh's money, but he managed to have some pretty good luck with the slots. Given the timing of the bus, he wasn't able to cash out, though. The tunnel bus driver was cool, though, and stopped for us in the middle of the tunnel so they could take a picture of the flags at the border. A bus. Stopping in a tunnel. Under a river. Straddling an international border.
On Saturday after the model initiation, I visited the Detroit Institute of Art. Most of it was fairly standard art museum fare, but a couple pieces stood out. One was an African drum shaped and painted like a forest buffalo. It was a little bigger than a St. Bernard and had a couple-inch crack down its spine. It looked like you could get three or four drummers with sticks on each side, and it would make some serious noise. There was also a neat armor collection. But the coolest piece was a room with murals on all four sides by Diego Rivera. Near the ceiling were pictures of nude women from several cultures in somewhat native city/farmland scenes. The next level down had several panels which showed balance between or transition from nature and industry. Then the two main panels featured stylized auto factories with a wealth of characters and expressions. There was pain, happiness, anguish, resolve, exhaustion, greed, overalls, molten metal, smoke, steel... If one were to select one image for Detroit's history, that mural should be it.
On Saturday night I went out walking with a bunch of folks from District 12. Folks made sure to tell people not to walk alone or in small groups at night. We went several blocks without even going outside, due to the linked nature of downtown Detroit. We just wandered around a bit, discovering a sign which read "Kill/Injure A Worker - $7500 Fine and 15 Years Prison." It was lying down next to a construction site. The following conversation also transpired between me in my top hat and four drunk women in a car:
Hey, nice hat!
What?
We like your hat. Where did you get it?
At the Ritz in Boulder, Colorado.
You're from Colorado? Will you take us home?
I'm flying, but if you can get on the plane, I suppose so.
We want to ride with you. We want to ride you.
How does one respond to that? Anyway, Detroit was a little neater than I thought. It was actually sunny all day Saturday. The city has amazing amounts of concrete and downtown has, like, seven parking garages per square block. But it had an interesting look, and several of the (probably homeless) black guys I met on the street were pretty neat.
Since I'd been going to bed at my usual MST bedtime of 2am and getting up at 7am EST, I was pretty drained by the time we left. I slept for an hour on the concourse floor waiting for our plane. I also slept for an hour or so on the plane. Wheeee.
In local news, I finally moved out of Reed on Tuesday night, a week and a half after accepting the job in Kitt West. I spent most of Wednesday putting stuff away, which I finished up today (Thursday). Somehow I managed to fit (almost) everything from my Reed room into a room about a third the size and still have ample room to move around. I think I've even got room for my bike. I'm now, in a sense, fully ready to be an RA again. Spent some time with residents shoe duelling. Fun stuff.
If I have more to say, it shall have to wait until another time. My appologies for not making this entry have better wording. To make it up to you, here's a cause you should support. One of those rare memes I'll deign to spread.
Yes folks, Masturbate for Peace. 'cause even if you fail, you'll still have fun.
Slide Rule, Dynamo, Tau Beta Pi!
So last Wednesday evening (10/2), after a somewhat shitty day involving getting 0/25 on a test question, I wrote the text of Colorado Beta's convention bid presentation. Following that, I packed my bags for the trip and hit the hay around 2am. Rising at 5 I exited my building's elevator to find a couple carts worth of shopping bags at the foot of the elevator with nobody present. At 5:20 in the morning. As I left I saw some girls coming, but who the hell lives in a residence hall (save Reed) and does serious grocery shopping at 4am? Check-in at the airport was a breeze. The new TSA workers look kind of dorky. It was cloudy before dawn, but things were clearing near DIA. There was one cloud between Denver and Detroit. One 1500-mile-long cloud.
The Tau Beta Pi convention was held in the Detroit Marriott Renaissance, the central tower in the imposing tower monstrosity that is the Detroit Renaissance Center, world headquarters of GM. I was on floor 43 of 72, and my ears popped each time I rode the elevator. The hotel desk is on the third floor (?!?), several confusing escalators from the main foyer. The first five floors are circular and fairly open, so from the fifth floor you can see the cars on display at GM world on the first floor. There's a glowing green glass circular walkway that takes folks to the various other towers and to the People Mover monorail, among other things. There's a food court on the first floor. Enough room to hold a couple conventions concurrently. And RIGHT next to the Detroit river. I have no idea what their flood plan is.
So on Thursday evening I got dressed up in my top hat and new suit and other products from Men's Warehouse, as detailed previously. Pictures will be forthcoming. Having read through the presentation about 3 times, I slipped into "I'm in front of people, so I'm completely at ease and on top of things" mode. Forgot a couple small things I was going to say, but I got a lot of "nice presentation" comments afterwords. I included several sprinklings of humor, including a point by point comparison of pointless differences between Colorado and Utah. I did the Utah chapters a big favor by providing them a much lower cost estimate, based on info in the bids and some pedantic data collecting. In the end, our price tag came out about $5 more expensive per delegate than Utah. Compared to a $50,000 price differential from HQ's estimates. The spreadsheet I created should go out to future bidding chapters, so my work will live on :-) After some tough debate, the committee selected Utah's bid over ours in a 10-9 vote. (Someone who was going to vote for Colorado wasn't there for the vote... I wonder what they would have done in a tie.) So we didn't win, but we had fun, learned a lot, and a significant portion of the bid can be reused, should someone wish to step into my shoes.
In other convention business, I think I'll be the delegate most referenced in the minutes; I think I debated or made a motion on over half of the proposals in the business meetings. Everything from point of information to moving to ammend to moving to reconsider. Robert's Rules are so much fun. For Saturday's business meeting I made sure to sit next to a mic.
Free time, what little of it there was. On Thursday night I met up with a couple guys from UT G and MT B and threw paper airplanes (and hellicopters) from the 4th story down to GM world below. Paper hellicopters are hella b.tangz when they work right. Without trying I mastered a graceful technique where the plane flips over several times in flight. We got a couple planes wedged in some pretty neat places, and ended the evening by being yelled at for opening a door which had, on the other side, a warning "Emergency Exit Only - Alarm Will Sound." On Friday night I went to Windsor, Ontario with three folks from Wyoming. Mostly it was about having fun making cracks about going to Canada. We spent some time in the Windsor Casino. I lost $10 Canadian of Josh's money, but he managed to have some pretty good luck with the slots. Given the timing of the bus, he wasn't able to cash out, though. The tunnel bus driver was cool, though, and stopped for us in the middle of the tunnel so they could take a picture of the flags at the border. A bus. Stopping in a tunnel. Under a river. Straddling an international border.
On Saturday after the model initiation, I visited the Detroit Institute of Art. Most of it was fairly standard art museum fare, but a couple pieces stood out. One was an African drum shaped and painted like a forest buffalo. It was a little bigger than a St. Bernard and had a couple-inch crack down its spine. It looked like you could get three or four drummers with sticks on each side, and it would make some serious noise. There was also a neat armor collection. But the coolest piece was a room with murals on all four sides by Diego Rivera. Near the ceiling were pictures of nude women from several cultures in somewhat native city/farmland scenes. The next level down had several panels which showed balance between or transition from nature and industry. Then the two main panels featured stylized auto factories with a wealth of characters and expressions. There was pain, happiness, anguish, resolve, exhaustion, greed, overalls, molten metal, smoke, steel... If one were to select one image for Detroit's history, that mural should be it.
On Saturday night I went out walking with a bunch of folks from District 12. Folks made sure to tell people not to walk alone or in small groups at night. We went several blocks without even going outside, due to the linked nature of downtown Detroit. We just wandered around a bit, discovering a sign which read "Kill/Injure A Worker - $7500 Fine and 15 Years Prison." It was lying down next to a construction site. The following conversation also transpired between me in my top hat and four drunk women in a car:
Hey, nice hat!
What?
We like your hat. Where did you get it?
At the Ritz in Boulder, Colorado.
You're from Colorado? Will you take us home?
I'm flying, but if you can get on the plane, I suppose so.
We want to ride with you. We want to ride you.
How does one respond to that? Anyway, Detroit was a little neater than I thought. It was actually sunny all day Saturday. The city has amazing amounts of concrete and downtown has, like, seven parking garages per square block. But it had an interesting look, and several of the (probably homeless) black guys I met on the street were pretty neat.
Since I'd been going to bed at my usual MST bedtime of 2am and getting up at 7am EST, I was pretty drained by the time we left. I slept for an hour on the concourse floor waiting for our plane. I also slept for an hour or so on the plane. Wheeee.
In local news, I finally moved out of Reed on Tuesday night, a week and a half after accepting the job in Kitt West. I spent most of Wednesday putting stuff away, which I finished up today (Thursday). Somehow I managed to fit (almost) everything from my Reed room into a room about a third the size and still have ample room to move around. I think I've even got room for my bike. I'm now, in a sense, fully ready to be an RA again. Spent some time with residents shoe duelling. Fun stuff.
If I have more to say, it shall have to wait until another time. My appologies for not making this entry have better wording. To make it up to you, here's a cause you should support. One of those rare memes I'll deign to spread.
Yes folks, Masturbate for Peace. 'cause even if you fail, you'll still have fun.
