Wednesday, October 15, 2008
GD
The battle with writer's block continues. Perhaps it's the 5 weeks of hotels, rental cars, and airplanes that is inhibiting my creativity? Whatever it is, I've got some content to create for some admission office emails and need to get the juices flowing. Blog, please help me out.
I'm driving around in a Prius for the next two weeks. I feel very pretentious and am enjoying looking down on all those people who are killing the environment with their traditional cars. For a car that is so revolutionary adn marketed, the interior sucks. There's an obnoxious beep that turns on when you put it into reverse. The radio controls are on a touch screen which is cool, except there's an area on the dashboard that looks like a radio should be there. In fact it is there, it's just covered up by a tinited piece of plastic. Forget the touch screen, just put the radio controls where they belong. My only other complaint is that the seat is killing my back. It's like having a seat with lumbor support and having that lumbar support cranked all the way up. Maybe some people don't mind that, but my back is feeling it and it's only been two days.
Just found out that F. Scott Fitzgerald is buried in Rockville, MD, not far from here. He's one of my favorite authors and I definitely plan on visiting and paying homage when I get some down time (i.e. tomorrow).
Microbrew in a can. Nice. Way to go Oskar Blues Brewing.
Bought Weezer's Red Album. Awesome.
Everytime I've worn either a Red Sox or Patirots article of clothing durring one of their respective games, they've lost. No more. Sox and Pats stuff is in the closet till the off season.
I do want to talk about some work stuff though as I've got some things that I need to work out in my head. One of them is femine vs. masculine influences in marketing. This is something that I've been thinking about for a while now. Mostly because the male:female ratio in my office is 1:5. For a year or so I was the only male on our marketing committee of seven. Now there are two and the committee's up to eight.
I sometimes don't think I'm serious when I say that the color purple (our school color) is a big issue for the teenage male. I know it sounds stupid, but it is. It was a hang up for me, and I watched a father and son walk out of our office on Monday, dad saying "too bad about the color" as his son was trying to drag him out. Now the dad was saying that to me, but it was clearly a situation where the kids says, "No way dad. Purple is gay. I'm not going to this school"
They're teenagers and by definitiion, irrational. Throw in the testosterone, and they're completely insane.
It's my contention that it is also an issue when you put a photo of a bunch of lame looking students on a piece. I know it's not a nice thing to say, but I think for the competative male coming from the competative academic environment, it's an issue. We're pretty close to 50:50 now so it's clearly working at attracting the students that we have on campus, but I wonder sometimes how much my opinion is either a. understood, or b. valued. I'm sure it's valued, but in such a minority, your confidence can be shaken. It certainly could be that I'm not presenting myself well. I'm not the best verbal communicator. (That's why this is such therapy for me)
This mostly came up because my newest coworker (happens to be female) commented that our campus doesn't seem to have an in your face feminist movement on campus. We seem to be pretty balanced. I definitely agree with her and wholeheartedly. The entire idea of a campus being different seemed completely foreign to me. I do wonder how long we can maintain that balance though. I think that the declining rate at which men pursue and succesfully complete college education is going to be a growing issue. As a country, our young men are getting lost in the school system. They're not being engaged, and I don't hear much about it - a little, but not nearly enough as the situtation warrants.
This post is way longer than I intended. Guess that writer's block has cleared up.
----------------
Now playing: Weezer - Troublemaker
via FoxyTunes
I'm driving around in a Prius for the next two weeks. I feel very pretentious and am enjoying looking down on all those people who are killing the environment with their traditional cars. For a car that is so revolutionary adn marketed, the interior sucks. There's an obnoxious beep that turns on when you put it into reverse. The radio controls are on a touch screen which is cool, except there's an area on the dashboard that looks like a radio should be there. In fact it is there, it's just covered up by a tinited piece of plastic. Forget the touch screen, just put the radio controls where they belong. My only other complaint is that the seat is killing my back. It's like having a seat with lumbor support and having that lumbar support cranked all the way up. Maybe some people don't mind that, but my back is feeling it and it's only been two days.
Just found out that F. Scott Fitzgerald is buried in Rockville, MD, not far from here. He's one of my favorite authors and I definitely plan on visiting and paying homage when I get some down time (i.e. tomorrow).
Microbrew in a can. Nice. Way to go Oskar Blues Brewing.
Bought Weezer's Red Album. Awesome.
Everytime I've worn either a Red Sox or Patirots article of clothing durring one of their respective games, they've lost. No more. Sox and Pats stuff is in the closet till the off season.
I do want to talk about some work stuff though as I've got some things that I need to work out in my head. One of them is femine vs. masculine influences in marketing. This is something that I've been thinking about for a while now. Mostly because the male:female ratio in my office is 1:5. For a year or so I was the only male on our marketing committee of seven. Now there are two and the committee's up to eight.
I sometimes don't think I'm serious when I say that the color purple (our school color) is a big issue for the teenage male. I know it sounds stupid, but it is. It was a hang up for me, and I watched a father and son walk out of our office on Monday, dad saying "too bad about the color" as his son was trying to drag him out. Now the dad was saying that to me, but it was clearly a situation where the kids says, "No way dad. Purple is gay. I'm not going to this school"
They're teenagers and by definitiion, irrational. Throw in the testosterone, and they're completely insane.
It's my contention that it is also an issue when you put a photo of a bunch of lame looking students on a piece. I know it's not a nice thing to say, but I think for the competative male coming from the competative academic environment, it's an issue. We're pretty close to 50:50 now so it's clearly working at attracting the students that we have on campus, but I wonder sometimes how much my opinion is either a. understood, or b. valued. I'm sure it's valued, but in such a minority, your confidence can be shaken. It certainly could be that I'm not presenting myself well. I'm not the best verbal communicator. (That's why this is such therapy for me)
This mostly came up because my newest coworker (happens to be female) commented that our campus doesn't seem to have an in your face feminist movement on campus. We seem to be pretty balanced. I definitely agree with her and wholeheartedly. The entire idea of a campus being different seemed completely foreign to me. I do wonder how long we can maintain that balance though. I think that the declining rate at which men pursue and succesfully complete college education is going to be a growing issue. As a country, our young men are getting lost in the school system. They're not being engaged, and I don't hear much about it - a little, but not nearly enough as the situtation warrants.
This post is way longer than I intended. Guess that writer's block has cleared up.
----------------
Now playing: Weezer - Troublemaker
via FoxyTunes
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Within a mile from home
We're into week four of travels with Drew. I've got a few things on my mind that I've been meaning to blog about but I just haven't had either the time or energy to get on it. It's time to suck it up and write before I go nutty. Here's some random brain dumps, and I'll try to write something more interesting soon. This is total therapy.
----------------
Now playing: Flogging Molly - Within a Mile of Home
via FoxyTunes
- I saw a book today in Barnes and Noble titled something similar to, "3 Ways to Tell You're in a Lousy Job." Seriously? This guy has an entire series of books like this. This is the next career for me. Writing books on how to let people who are in miserable working environments know that they are in a miserable working environment.
- If this ass can write a book, anyone can. I was once again hanging out in B&N and picked up his book, I Hope There's Beer In Hell. I thought it was an interesting title and skimmed a couple of chapters. What crap.
- Vermont needs a Chipotle.
- Yes I am a dork. I went out and bought Iron Man as soon as it came out. I'm also completely stoked about the new Star Trek movie and the prospects of a Green Lantern movie. Comic book dweeb.
- I, like everyone else, have been paying attention to the financial mess and Congress's attempt to fix it. I really got annoyed today when I heard some Senator say that the common American doesn't understand commercial paper and the need for banks to borrow from each other and that's why we were outraged by a 700 billion dollar buyout. Please. It's not that hard to figure out. We were outraged b/c Wall Street screwed us. and made a ton of money and now are trying to screw us again and make us pay for their mistakes and greed. I obviously don't have an answer or a solution, but I don't have much sympathy for CEO's with multi-million dollar buyouts. You've helped out the top for eight years now. Let's help out the middle class.
- I'm beginning to feel bad for Sarah Palin.
- So far, TBS is doing a great job with the MLB playoffs. Much less annoying than FOX. I'm really enjoying not hearing Joe Buck and Tim, I'm such a NY Yankees homer, McCarver.
- Seriously Enterprise? Two cars in a row without cruise control. At least this one has power windows and locks.
- I was telling someone about some of my job responsibilities and got, "Really? You don't have an intern to do that?" Sweet.
- I know I'm not supposed to like Starbucks, but I do. Tripple grande skinny latte please.
- Had my first Five Guys experience. Awesome.
- Been enjoying Flogging Molly and the Lightning Seeds on my iPod.
- Also really enjoying Netflix's Watch Instantly feature. So far have watched Hogan's Heroes and The Dirty Dozen. I'm expecting a long day in the airport tomorrow and have Guns of Navarone queued up. hulu.com also rocks.
----------------
Now playing: Flogging Molly - Within a Mile of Home
via FoxyTunes
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