I moved out of Marlatt 204, my longtime college home, for the last time tonight.  I think it will also be the last time I will ever move out of stately Marlatt Hall.  Though I will return to Marlatt next year, it will only be for convenience and to see how my home fairs under the new conditions forced upon it.

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Some background: Marlatt was the only all-male residence hall at Kansas State University for the past few years (ever since Haymaker went coed).  This academic year, it was decided that Marlatt would be converted to a coed residence hall so that it could house the honors program cluster floor.  This change (along with a few others) were kept secret until the last possible moment.

Because K-State Housing & Dining Services refused to even allow residents and staff to comment on the change, several hall leaders have elected to not return to Marlatt Hall for another year.  I myself must return as I intend to graduate in December, and finding a place to live that doesn't charge you extra for staying only 5 months is difficult.  I also don't want to have to search for a new job for only a few months.

There are two things that really concern me about this change (aside from the fact that it was, in my opinion, ill-advised):

1. Aside from salaried staff (the resident assistants), all females in the hall will either be freshman or transfers from another university - there were no females currently attending K-State to choose to live in Marlatt next academic year.
2. The management (they) elected to not hire new desk staff (CAs & DAs) until next year.  The reason given for this was because they wanted to give the new Residence Life Coordinator (RLC) ownership of the CA/DA staff.  I say "BS!"  There will be 7 to 9 returning desk staff.  At least 2 of them are graduating in December and won't be able to work much because aside from enduring our most brutal semester in the College of Engineering, we will also have to find a job for when we leave school.  At least 1 of them (me) will be very busy with his summer job for the first couple of weeks of school, and I don't work very much anyways during the school year.  So there will be basically between 5-7 people to work 168 CA hours and 42 DA hours that first week.  That right there is a huge red flag in and of itself.
   Also, the RLC doesn't really need ownership of the desk staff - unless a problem comes up, he only really needs to be there for performance reviews, training, and the 2 scheduling periods (and maybe not even that much).  Most of the desk staff's job is to either sit and wait for someone to need assistance or to perform simple tasks.  The really complex student job is the RA position.  The RLC has weekly meetings with the RAs sometimes, and also gets reports from them about what is happening on the floor.  The new RLC for Marlatt will not have ownership of the RAs (his most critical student employees) for next year, because they had to be selected before he was even interviewed for his position.
   What we think the real reason for waiting until next semester to hire desk staff is: they want to hire some female desk staff.  Our problem with this reason, and why they won't admit to it: why hire a freshman girl who has never lived in the halls before and is just starting to take classes at K-State instead of a man who has lived in the halls for a year or more and is familiar with K-State Housing policies and K-State policies in general?  For example which is more likely to know where the post office is, or what a good resturant for a date is, how to give directions to the computer help place which is all the way across campus, or any other number of questions that sometimes don't even have anything to do with Housing & Dining.

In short, I think it is foolish for K-State Housing & Dining to pursue these changes without even consulting us for our opinion (we do live here 24/7, for example) or provinding explanations for their desicions.  In many meetings, the attitude we got was "We're doing this, and there's nothing you little peons can do to stop us."  We know that they're above us on the food chain.  And we don't need them forcing changes upon us to remind us of that.

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My dad and I both have John Deere Model "B" tractors.  Mine is more or less the way it came out of the factory in 1949, sans a few repairs to keep it running.  We don't know as much about dad's because it came from an auction instead of being inherited from a family member.  His "B" has been modded to a 12-volt electrical system.  Also, his "B" won't start.  Granted, it did the day before he bought it, just not the day of.  Or ever since.

We've taken the starter out to get it checked, and the tests came back that it was fine.  Today I took my multi-meter to both tractors.  I disconnected the negative terminal of each battery and measured the resistance across the battery cables while pressing the starter button down.  My "B" (the one that runs) has a resistance of about 0.2 Ω.  My dad's tractor has a resistance of about 25 kΩ.  So (assuming these stay the same when actually trying to start) I can pull about 30 A when starting and dad can pull about 0.00048 amps when starting.

My next step is to find some long bits of wire to see if I can find out where the bulk of that 25 kΩ resistance is.  My guess is that the starter is actually bad, or perhaps one of the wires running to the battery is disconnected partly or corroded.  If anyone has any ideas or experience with a problem like this, please let me know your thoughts.

I read fmylife.com.  Yes, 'tis sad but true.  Except for the sad part.  Still, this FML got my attention.  A girl raises her hand when the teacher asked the class if anyone had implants, then called him a pervert when he asked to see them.  This was about the time when she discovered that he was talking about dental implants, not breast implants.

In the comments section, several people lambasted her for choosing to get breast implants.  While I won't advise or suggest that course of action, if she is comfortable enough to admit to it in a public setting, then I think it probably would be the right choice for her.  I would say that the actual act of stupidity was participating in the class discussion without paying enough attention to have a context for why he would be asking the question.

Ever since Facebook.com rolled out their chat feature, I've wondered why it tells me to install the most updated version of Firefox, even though I always have the most updated version.  Tonight I finally decided to hunt down the cause, and I found that in the about:config of both of my Firefoxes, an addon had set random words to the general.useragent.extra.firefox property.  Now even though this addon had fallen out of updating after the upgrade to Firefox 3, the property remained set.  Turns out that a lot of websites keep track of what web browser you're using, and if they don't properly support it, they won't let you access certain content.  Even though I knew I was using Firefox 3, my computer kept saying it was using Sealobster 2.0.0.14.  And since that's what my computer said it was, the websites decided that they didn't support Sealobster and complained.  Very effectively.

Now that I have corrected the problem, I'm watching Dollhouse online (one of many other items I cound't do without declaring myself to be using Firefox)!

For my sister's birthday, my mother got me several pairs of socks.  She told me that now I had to get rid of all of the threadbare pairs of socks that I was wearing, because me wearing ratty socks like that reflects poorly on her.  Plus then I can stretch laundry out a bit more for my whites, at least.  I found this amusing on a couple of levels.  First, I'm a senior in college - why do my clothes reflect on her?  Second, it's my sister's birthday, and I'm the one getting presents.

To be completely honest, though, I'm pretty sure that her list of reasons was just to convince me to wear better socks because she knows that I will stick with my current clotheset until I can easily fit my fist through the holes.  The real reason for the socks was because she noticed that they were getting worn out and wanted me to have nice stuff.

And to save a bit of face, I'm only opening one new package of socks each week.

Some days I wish I had God access to people's accounts.  Reading things like "their cute", assorted sentence fragments, and other grammatical errors just make me want to take a red pen to my computer screen.  I would also rotate all those pictures on Facebook so that they would display right side up.  And make the text line up with the backgrounds.

I could be given a job title: The Fixer.

I saw a story on the news tonight about the newest fix for the mortgage crisis - you know, the one where judges can re-write the terms of a mortgage to keep people from getting foreclosed on.  They interviewed a guy who noted that it would be a bad deal because banks wouldn't be as willing to give out new loans.

I thought to myself "Hello!  Are you listening to yourself?  The reason we're in this mess (part of it) is because banks gave out too many loans.  So you're saying that cutting back on loans would be a bad thing?  If we had done just that a few years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are now!"

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True, we wouldn't have risen quite as high, but we also wouldn't have fallen this far - whether or not we would be at, above, or below where we are won't ever be known, but continuing to hand out lots of loans would be like shooting yourself in the foot because it still hurts from the last time you shot yourself in the foot.  Also, I have no clue if this proposal will even work the way it is intended.  More than likely, it will have some disastrous consequence that everyone knew was going to happen.  The point is, less loans isn't necessarily a thing to complain about outright.

I played Rock Band last night for the first time - for about 5 hours.  The game itself went on for just over 12 hours, but we had lots of people switching out parts.  Normally I only do vocals, but I tried drums and both guitar parts, and was able to keep up with the settings at Easy.

It was nifty to spend this holiday away from my family.  It was even more surprising that they didn't throw a fit over it - after all, it's supposed to be about family time.  Then again, family time (which dad is a strong proponent of) usually consists of dad watching sports in the basement, me reading in my room, and someone watching TV or movies - not exactly what he had in mind when he used to tell us we couldn't go hang out with friends, I think, but since we were all under the roof, I think he accepted it.

On Friday, November 14, my credit card information was stolen.  I found out because Visa called me about a charge for $0.01 on an odd website.  They canceled my account and sent me a new credit card.  When I opened my mail the next Monday and saw a new credit card, I thought "Wow!  That was fast."

I was most displeased to find that even after being activated, this new credit card wouldn't put any gas in my car or feed my pizza addiction.  Upon calling Visa to confirm that the card was really on, I was told that the card was fully activated.  Again, I was disappointed when it failed to function appropriately.  Finally, I talked to someone at Visa who realized that the card I had received in the mail was the same number as the stolen one and was supposed to replace the old card which was about to expire.  They said to expect a 7-10 day wait to replace the stolen card.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008, still not having a replacement card, I called their number.  After confirming my identity, I got the response "What, you don't have it yet?  Will you be at **your residence** on Friday?"  They're sending my newest card installment by FedEx, probably overnight since I called late on Wednesday and it's supposed to be here today.  We'll see if it actually shows this time....