March 2004

Daniel Adams finally hit the nail square on the head in todays Michigan Daily:

When I heard that there was a new student group on campus, Student Voices in Action, I was excited. In response to the proposed cuts to several key student services, SVA coordinated large student protests on the Diag and outside the Fleming Administration Building. Shockingly, they had a coherent message. They oppose the changes to the Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center. They oppose funding cuts to the Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Affairs. They want Trotter House to finally get the funding to renovate. They demand increased student representation at the administrative level. Check, check and check. To top it off, they have a great slogan: “Royster cut student services and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.” I was so excited, my little liberal heart started going pitter-patter. Then they broke it in two. After meeting with several of their organizers, I realized that some of their other assertions range from the highly debatable to the completely outrageous. They claim the University isn’t committed to diversity, despite a multi-year, multi-million dollar defense of its race-conscious admission policies. They want the University to give students more than a say in the administrative process, with veto power, yes, veto power, over decisions regarding student affairs.

The SVA basically spat in the face of the administration on Monday. They exist for the same reason as 70% of the other “student groups” on this campus: to make unreasonable demands for the single purpose of getting rejected and gaining more ammo to generate more press for their radical messages. Drives me nuts.

Goodspeed Update has Mary Sue Coleman’s response.

Apparently Air America Radio launched today. Somehow the idea of listening to Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo all day long doesn’t really turn me on.

Somehow his days on Comedy Central don’t really let me see him as a powerful political figure. If you’ve got to make Liberalism funny to get people to listen to it, you’ve got more things to worry about.

Hmm…

Q: What is a GMTB? A: The short answer is “Gay Movable Type Blogger.” This does not quite paint the full picture, however. A GMTB uses a Mac. A GMTB is excited about “wireless hot spots” and “cafes.” The prototypical GMTB can be found at a Starbucks with a 15″ PowerBook. He will be wearing a black turtleneck and will go on at length about the wonder years where web designers were paid like programmers. The GMTB will blog about you. Do not be alarmed. In order to make sense of their fast moving and confusing world, GMTBers need to write at length about even the most trivial encounter. They will likely Google you and turn even the most minor conversation into an exploratory experience. Every experience is like that of the newborn boy who finds touching himself over and over to be a pleasurable experience. Do not make the GMTB angry. The GMTB has natural defenses known as “Google juice.” With the application of this “Google juice,” the GMTB will sour any future searches on your name. While there is no physical harm to be done, they can make any attempt at finding relevant and useful information about you a linkfest of armchair philosophy, ill-formed opinions, and broad and insanely overblown reactions to everyday occurrences. Should you find yourself confronted by a GMTB and wish to escape, one need only mention that their “CSS” is broken. The GMTB invariably considers the CSS “correctness” and “portability” to be a craft, and the output thereof to be an “art.” By pointing out that the page renders poorly on the most esoteric browser you can imagine, you will be assured a quick and uneventful escape.

Well, I don’t wear turtlenecks, use MovableType, or have a Mac. But I do like wireless hotspots and my CSS does render correctly on everything except for crappy old 4.0 browsers. And I’m blogging this. Wait a second… Damnit!

From the “Liquor Laws” section of the Guide to Living in Pittsburgh sent to me by the CMU Computer Science department:

Beer Beer is another story. Individual six-packs of beer must be bought from bars, and there is a limit of no more than 192 ounces of beer sold to one customer at one time. However, both bartenders and computer scientists understand the notion of iteration, and you may buy as much beer as you want as long as you carry it out in 192-ounce lots and come back empty handed each time.

So its been a pretty good day. Beautiful weather, nice breeze, got out on the water for the first sailing team practice of the year.

And I got into Carnegie Mellon. Not the exact program I applied to, but pretty close. I got into CMU’s Masters of Science in Information Technology - Software Engineering (MSIT-SE) program. Looks pretty damn cool.

I think it costs twice as much as UofM’s grad program because the acronym has twice as many letters.