It's Not Just For Prostitutes!
Thursday, February 12th, 2004 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flwydWorking in bed, that is.
Yesterday I got out of hammock earlier than usual, so I elected to take the bus to work. Despite standing around for about twenty minutes at the bus station, it was a nice experience. I was able to read all the way down and didn't feel at all stresed, despite the growing snow. It took about 1.75 hours to go from my house to work, but that could be cut to 1.5 by taking a later 204 from my house. Unfortunately, the G only runs during "peak hours," which means the last run home from work is at 6:21. I thought it was 6:24, so I must have missed it by a few minutes. So after half an hour standing around in the snow, I caught the 16L to downtown denver and then caught the B to Boulder Station -- over two hours after I left work.
I then hung out at the ex-Kitt West RA party, learning that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
plaidjacket and maplesstrip both have journals. Welcome to my friends page! Attendance at the shin dig was disappointing, in part due to the weather, I think, but the gathering was fun nonetheless.
This morning, I got up after the last G left Boulder. I ate a quick breakfast and trudged to the driveway in six inches of snow. I turned the key, the car started, I turned on the defroster, grabbed the ice scraper, and then realized the car wasn't running. After several more attempts to start, I brushed off the snow and called it quits. Fortunately, I have my work laptop, so rather than bussing two hours to work in the snow, I'm working from my hammock. And unlike many days I spent trying to do homework, I've been fairly productive. Perhaps my weakness of will is subsiding. Or, to avoid the double negative, my will is strengthening. And on the plus side, I'll be home before 8 for the first time since I started working last Monday.
To be fair, not all of my late-night arrivals are caused by long work days. I've spent a couple evenings tooling around looking at neighborhoods. Everyone who knows me has said I'd prefer Golden to Lakewood. Golden, being smaller, more self-contained, and home to an engineering school has funk and soul. Golden is distinguished by more than just the logo on the street signs, unlike the distinction between Arvada, Wheat Ridge, and Golden. Plus, Golden is up close and personal with hiking and mountain bike trails. In my semi-aimless driving the other night I also discovered a forest of appartment buildings around Red Rocks CC. That spot is also fairly close to Green Mountain, is roughly the same (biking) distance from work, and is adjacent to a Carmel Community, which I believe is housing for the mentally handicapped. And it's hard to think of much in suburbia that's funkier than several acres of mentally handicapped individuals. When I get a chance, I need to gather some information on these places. This weekend's a bit shot, as I'll be playing in the Society in Shadow LARP at Genghis Con.
The RA party was hosted by Chris, who last semester was put on probation for what sounds like a pretty silly reason. She was then fired a few weeks ago for some even sillier reasons. Denise, the Kitt West hall director, seems to believe in assigning Probation to every violation of RA expectations, no matter how slight. I don't know how prevalent probation and termination are this year, but in my first year and a half of being an RA I didn't hear about any RA getting fired, and I know that quite a few didn't meet expectations. One reason I liked working with Kevin in the Quad was that if I did something wrong or didn't perform one of my duties, the first response was an open conversation. If the failure was due to reasonable circumstances -- academic pressures, unawareness of a rule, or serious mental slip-ups, no employment action would be taken. Most RAs genuinely want to do their jobs well, so punitive measures rarely help matters. But Dinese seems like a description of John Ashcroft I read in U.S. News -- she believes in enforcing all of the rules. Including this odd requirement that RAs remove all bulletin boards and other postings from their hallway before winter break. Now, my walls were COVERED with stuff. Much of which was generally informative, and went back up afterwords. But most annoyingly, my wals also held a U.S. map that Eugene had cut out, state by state with amazing precision, and taped up with about 400 pieces of masking tape. So I spent an hour last December pulling down states, sticking them on the back of my door, and then another hour in January putting them back up. Because of this annoyance, I decided to rotate the map 180 degrees on reposting to avoid insanity. However, the best illustration of Denise's non-consequentialist rule enforcement policy is Eugene and Drew's case. The two of them had a shot of liquor before RA training started in the fall as a "Summer's over, we're RAs now, time to be responsible" act. There would be no residents in the building for two full weeks, so their action had no chance of "sending the wrong message" to residents or anything. However, since they broke the letter of their employment contracts, they were fired. They received the exact same punishment as an RA who later in the year was caught with a lit joint in her room and beer in her fridge. I was on probation through December of last year, even though I was done in May, because I arrived for duty 20 minutes late. I was late because I ate at Sewell in a non-hurried state after watching Floating Weeds. I then went to the Engineering computer lab to print some schoolwork. Oh yeah. That was on top of being 10 minutes late to an earlier staff meeting because ending a dentist appointement an hour before the meeting turned out not to be enough time to bus back to campus. The only negative repercussion of being on probation was that I couldn't skip a staff meeting later that week to attend the CWA. But had I continued through the fall in Kitt West, I probably would've gotten fired (Probation + Probational Offense = Termination) inadvertantly. And moving in the middle of last semester wouldn't have helped anything.
Well, that was a ramble without much of a point. So I suppose the moral is that Housing is a place where great things happen despite the misdirected good intentions of the beaurocracy.
Salon.com is offering a "Renew and give a free gift subscription" offer through this weekend. Would anyone like a free subscription? Subscribers don't have to view the ads. Salon's got lots of interesting articles on a wide range of topics. Their election reporting this year has been quite good; they critically examine canidates, behind-the-scenes folks, and movements, without the major media bias towards the candidates who can cough up lots of dough. Their media bias is left-wing, but they're open about that and they let it guide their editorial policy, not the factual claims that they make. This, I think, is proper journalism -- don't try to avoid bias, but leave that bias at the editorial level. Distinguish between reporting and opinion.
Yet again I'll pimp my favorite Valentine's Day link: how to say "I Love You" in scores of languages.
If you're not in a relationship and would like to spend Saturday crawling through Orkut, Google's "friendster done right" service. It's got more features, seems faster, and is geekier and slightly more elitist. I do find it ironic that the Terms of Service forbid spidering Orkut. I mean, you'd think it wasn't run by a search company. Anyway, if you want an invite, let me know. If you're already on, you can add me as a friend: orkut (a) trevorstone.org
Yesterday I got out of hammock earlier than usual, so I elected to take the bus to work. Despite standing around for about twenty minutes at the bus station, it was a nice experience. I was able to read all the way down and didn't feel at all stresed, despite the growing snow. It took about 1.75 hours to go from my house to work, but that could be cut to 1.5 by taking a later 204 from my house. Unfortunately, the G only runs during "peak hours," which means the last run home from work is at 6:21. I thought it was 6:24, so I must have missed it by a few minutes. So after half an hour standing around in the snow, I caught the 16L to downtown denver and then caught the B to Boulder Station -- over two hours after I left work.
I then hung out at the ex-Kitt West RA party, learning that
plaidjacket and maplesstrip both have journals. Welcome to my friends page! Attendance at the shin dig was disappointing, in part due to the weather, I think, but the gathering was fun nonetheless.This morning, I got up after the last G left Boulder. I ate a quick breakfast and trudged to the driveway in six inches of snow. I turned the key, the car started, I turned on the defroster, grabbed the ice scraper, and then realized the car wasn't running. After several more attempts to start, I brushed off the snow and called it quits. Fortunately, I have my work laptop, so rather than bussing two hours to work in the snow, I'm working from my hammock. And unlike many days I spent trying to do homework, I've been fairly productive. Perhaps my weakness of will is subsiding. Or, to avoid the double negative, my will is strengthening. And on the plus side, I'll be home before 8 for the first time since I started working last Monday.
To be fair, not all of my late-night arrivals are caused by long work days. I've spent a couple evenings tooling around looking at neighborhoods. Everyone who knows me has said I'd prefer Golden to Lakewood. Golden, being smaller, more self-contained, and home to an engineering school has funk and soul. Golden is distinguished by more than just the logo on the street signs, unlike the distinction between Arvada, Wheat Ridge, and Golden. Plus, Golden is up close and personal with hiking and mountain bike trails. In my semi-aimless driving the other night I also discovered a forest of appartment buildings around Red Rocks CC. That spot is also fairly close to Green Mountain, is roughly the same (biking) distance from work, and is adjacent to a Carmel Community, which I believe is housing for the mentally handicapped. And it's hard to think of much in suburbia that's funkier than several acres of mentally handicapped individuals. When I get a chance, I need to gather some information on these places. This weekend's a bit shot, as I'll be playing in the Society in Shadow LARP at Genghis Con.
The RA party was hosted by Chris, who last semester was put on probation for what sounds like a pretty silly reason. She was then fired a few weeks ago for some even sillier reasons. Denise, the Kitt West hall director, seems to believe in assigning Probation to every violation of RA expectations, no matter how slight. I don't know how prevalent probation and termination are this year, but in my first year and a half of being an RA I didn't hear about any RA getting fired, and I know that quite a few didn't meet expectations. One reason I liked working with Kevin in the Quad was that if I did something wrong or didn't perform one of my duties, the first response was an open conversation. If the failure was due to reasonable circumstances -- academic pressures, unawareness of a rule, or serious mental slip-ups, no employment action would be taken. Most RAs genuinely want to do their jobs well, so punitive measures rarely help matters. But Dinese seems like a description of John Ashcroft I read in U.S. News -- she believes in enforcing all of the rules. Including this odd requirement that RAs remove all bulletin boards and other postings from their hallway before winter break. Now, my walls were COVERED with stuff. Much of which was generally informative, and went back up afterwords. But most annoyingly, my wals also held a U.S. map that Eugene had cut out, state by state with amazing precision, and taped up with about 400 pieces of masking tape. So I spent an hour last December pulling down states, sticking them on the back of my door, and then another hour in January putting them back up. Because of this annoyance, I decided to rotate the map 180 degrees on reposting to avoid insanity. However, the best illustration of Denise's non-consequentialist rule enforcement policy is Eugene and Drew's case. The two of them had a shot of liquor before RA training started in the fall as a "Summer's over, we're RAs now, time to be responsible" act. There would be no residents in the building for two full weeks, so their action had no chance of "sending the wrong message" to residents or anything. However, since they broke the letter of their employment contracts, they were fired. They received the exact same punishment as an RA who later in the year was caught with a lit joint in her room and beer in her fridge. I was on probation through December of last year, even though I was done in May, because I arrived for duty 20 minutes late. I was late because I ate at Sewell in a non-hurried state after watching Floating Weeds. I then went to the Engineering computer lab to print some schoolwork. Oh yeah. That was on top of being 10 minutes late to an earlier staff meeting because ending a dentist appointement an hour before the meeting turned out not to be enough time to bus back to campus. The only negative repercussion of being on probation was that I couldn't skip a staff meeting later that week to attend the CWA. But had I continued through the fall in Kitt West, I probably would've gotten fired (Probation + Probational Offense = Termination) inadvertantly. And moving in the middle of last semester wouldn't have helped anything.
Well, that was a ramble without much of a point. So I suppose the moral is that Housing is a place where great things happen despite the misdirected good intentions of the beaurocracy.
Valentines Notes
Salon.com is offering a "Renew and give a free gift subscription" offer through this weekend. Would anyone like a free subscription? Subscribers don't have to view the ads. Salon's got lots of interesting articles on a wide range of topics. Their election reporting this year has been quite good; they critically examine canidates, behind-the-scenes folks, and movements, without the major media bias towards the candidates who can cough up lots of dough. Their media bias is left-wing, but they're open about that and they let it guide their editorial policy, not the factual claims that they make. This, I think, is proper journalism -- don't try to avoid bias, but leave that bias at the editorial level. Distinguish between reporting and opinion.
Yet again I'll pimp my favorite Valentine's Day link: how to say "I Love You" in scores of languages.
If you're not in a relationship and would like to spend Saturday crawling through Orkut, Google's "friendster done right" service. It's got more features, seems faster, and is geekier and slightly more elitist. I do find it ironic that the Terms of Service forbid spidering Orkut. I mean, you'd think it wasn't run by a search company. Anyway, if you want an invite, let me know. If you're already on, you can add me as a friend: orkut (a) trevorstone.org
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-02-13 07:15 am (UTC)p.s. thanks, again, for movie night.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-13 08:09 pm (UTC)