This is why college costs so much

I joined the Alumni Association today when I went to pick up my graduation tickets at the Alumni Center. It was quite the event and once I joined the Alumni Association I got to enjoy all of the benefits that comes with being a member, like the live DJ and all the Werthers originals I could suck on. So now I imagine they will call me and ask if I would like to donate money. I'm probably going to say no. And here is why.

ITCS decided to take a semester and renovate part of Pierpont into a computer lab. This ITCS is a lab that anyone can use not just engineers. So they spent an entire semester to make a computer lab that is 350 feet from the largest computing site on campus. That didn't really bother me though, because it is a nice little lab. It only has 11 computers. For those 11 computers they put in 2 high speed laser-jet printers. And for those 2 printers they installed these.

Can you see the face? Can you see the boobs shooting out pink silly string?

They put in 2 huge flatscreens to show the printing queue for each of the 2 printers. The pink circles show surround the actual queue on the screen. The rest of the space is either blank or ITCS tips and news. Who approved this? I can only imagine someone's thought process at ITCS.

ITCS: We should add 11 computers in Pierpont. And we should put in 2 expensive black and white printers so that people wont have to wait for someone else who is printing. And for each of those printers we should buy 60 inch flatscreens to display the 13 inch queue. Putting them both on the same flatscreen like they do at the Fishbowl would never work.

This is the sort of thinking that my tuition supports and it sickens me.

U of M to become smoke free

Tonight Mary Sue Coleman sent out an email unveiling plans to make the campus smoke free starting in July of 2011. I was a little surprised. I don't smoke, and I prefer that people around me don't smoke but I never saw a problem with people smoking outside.

The reason given bf MSC was that "This will help reduce the risks of second-hand smoke and ensure a healthier environment for faculty, staff, students and visitors."

Well...

I want to know what the health care costs associated with outdoor secondhand smoke are. How much is being spent to treat people who inhale secondhand smoke while walking across the diag? How much secondhand smoke does MSC think there is on campus? I've never come out of the Dennison Arch smelling like a bowling alley. Maybe in my 4 years here I've inhaled as much second hand smoke on campus as I have in 1 night at the Brown Jug. Now I'll just inhale it walking to class on the non campus side of the street.

The Health System did the same thing a few years back. So instead of smoking outside on benches and by trees all of the smokers in the hospital have to walk across the street and smoke by the bus stops. I find it very ironic that in order to reduce the amount of secondhand smoke the administration forced the smokers to smoke right next to where people congregate to wait for the buses.

So the same thing will probably happen with the U goes smoke free. Instead of smoking on benches and areas around campus the sidewalks across the street from campus will now just have concentrated levels of second hand smoke.

It seems like an unreasonable rule especially when you consider how many little trucks Michigan has scooting around the grounds collecting leaves and polluting the air.

I can't wait until they read this one.

Perhaps I spend too much time on my teaching evals or perhaps I am too harsh. In the mid-term evaluations I called them out for giving out a quiz to make sure that seniors in engineering could compute standard deviations.

This is from my final eval. The question is "What was the least valuable part of this course?" I sorta let it all out.

The lectures, all of the busy work. Honestly having a interim report due weeks after giving our project proposals was idiotic, especially when one of those weeks was spring break.

The emails that were sent out by the professor were unprofessional, and the emails sent out by the GSI were long winded and tiresome to read. Also, I would have appreciated it if the GSI paid attention in class instead of writing emails.

This course is supposed to integrate four years of courses and studies into one big project but often it felt like this was just a technical communication course with some engineering topics sprinkled in.

Instead of having our proposals and presentation given before the entire class where no one paid attention, I would have been much better served by sitting down with the professor and GSI and going over our project and offering advice. That way they could have given us some feedback and discussed our problems instead of just asking a few questions and moving on to the next group.

This class had the potential to be an invaluable learning experience, but instead was marred by unrealistically expectations and bothersome work by the faculty. More focus should be on the actual projects and less on the busy work and unrelated materials.

There is still much room for improvement.

More like the Worst of Ann Arbor.

The Daily's Best of Ann Arbor came out yesterday.

Apparently the Ark is the best club, Ashley's is the best bar and Village Corner is the best liquor store.

Whatever.

But when they say the U Towers are the best apartments I must insist they are joking. U Towers are the most run down, dingy apartments. There is a reason why you get a free hot dog just for touring their apartments. They are completely terrible.

The worst one though was that they named Wilson White the best realtor. That is terrible. They demand the rent must be paid by one check. They don't do even the most basic maintenance and they charge us a $217.50 late fee every month. They are a evil organization with absolutely no ethics.

Surprisingly though the places that won, were also the very same places that bought advertising in the "Best of Ann Arbor" section.

Maybe it's just me

So there is a movie coming out called 17 Again. The basic plot is that Matthew Perry magically gets turned into his 17 year old self in order to relive his high school days. The younger version of Matthew Perry is played by the hunky Zac Efron. I want to know why Matthew Perry is the older Zac Efron and why in the world they wouldn't have casted Rob Lowe. Rob Lowe and Zac Efron are practically identical except that Zac looks about 20 years younger.

Brian gets spammed hardcore

So this dumb bitch decides that she wants people to take her psych survey (whose link doesn't work) so she decides to spam her dorm hall and the entire psych group that totals about 500 people. So someone emails back that it doesn't work, then a few more people also email that the project was due a week ago. Then one idiot decided that they didn't want to be part of the group so they email the entire group to be removed. This starts a firestorm or emails.

4:25 - First email sent

6:04 - First "Don't reply to all" email

6:09 - First "Please take me off the list" email

6:41 - First new subject (thread) to get sent out about being taken off the list.

6:42 - Original emailer sends out an apology and begs everyone to stop ending emails. Her pleads are unheard over the sounds of people clicking "reply to all".

6:43 - I send out my first email to everyone:

I swear that if any one else replies to all I will hunt you down on the umich directory and disable every electronic device that you own. I will then convert your keyboard layout to Swahili.

The person who sent out the original email spammed a group that she does not control. SHE CANT TAKE YOU OFF THE MAILING LIST. You have to email the owner Bwallace@umich.edu to be removed. DON'T EMAIL THE ENTIRE GROUP TO BE REMOVED.

Seriously learn some email etiquette.

6:55 - I start individually emailing people who "Reply to All" with this message:

Can you read? You replied to all. You don't deserve to use a computer. What do you have to say for yourself? You better start learning Swahili.

7:13 - Someone sends out an email with the subject "The spam solution!!! Read Brian Russell's email!!!!!!!!!!!" With my email attached.

7:31 - 100th email about this.

The 100 emails came in over 20 threads with the biggest at 51 emails. About half of the emails were "take me off the list" and the other half was "Don't reply to all!". 63 of the Email's were sent between 6:40 and 7pm.

I think the owner or ITCS finally got smart and shut the group down because it's no longer coming up on the directory which is a relieving end to this Wednesday night saga. No one responded to my demands that they explain their rash emailing actions. I think that means they realized that they are idiots.

Big Days

Dear Diary,

About once a semester all of my high school friends meet up for the weekend. We generally hang out, drink, go to the bars and talk about who is getting married or fat. So on Friday after work I drove up to MSU for the night. Just a good time with old friends. The friend who we stayed with has cats, cats that I am severely allergic to. So despite having 2 cushions of the couch I didn't really sleep at all. In the morning I had to drive back to Ann Arbor because my parents and aunt and uncle were coming up to take me and my sister to lunch. While we were at ABC my dad said that he had an extra ticket to the final four in Detroit if I wanted to go.

I had a group meeting at 1, but I wasn't much of a help because I didn't get much sleep. I went home at 3 with the intentions to take a nap. Instead I showered and listened to a Whitesnake CD. Then I left for Detriot. I got there and parked and then met up with Justin and Craig who were tailgating for the game. It was crazy in Detroit and of the 72,000 fans at Ford Field all except about 12,000 of them were State fans.


After the MSU game, I stayed for about half of the UNC - Nova game. I then had to walk back to my car which was parked like a mile away by myself. I didn't get raped which was nice and then I drove back to Ann Arbor because there was a party at the White house. Even though I hadn't slept much in the past couple days I was able to have a rockin' good time.