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Friday, December 21, 2007

The Societal Impacts of my Coffee Consumption


I love coffee. I love the smell, the taste, the feeling after the first sip. Rarely a day goes by that I don't have coffee and never a day goes by when I don't have coffee at work. I also have an interest in Public Administration. That interest stemmed from a PA class I took in college that I hated until I was able to apply it to real life and my job. The most important thing I learned in that class from Dave Ivers was that if as an employer your workers are producing at 50% of their capacity, you as an employer are playing about par for the course. With that thought in mind its comical to think about the 40 hour work week. I'm convinced though that there are a ton of public administrators out there that assume their employees work at 100% capacity for exactly 40 hours per week. I find it even more ridiculous that the impression is that the amount of work someone is assigned should take exactly the amount of time that employee works - miraculous. People are literally tied to a 40 hour a week job that could be done in 15 hours a week. Sure there are exceptions but that is largely the case. People always claim to be "busy", busy googling your own name does not constitute 100% of a workers capacity.

Since its the day before vacation I started thinking about how unproductive I was being and noticed that it killed time to refill my coffee. I thought it would be interesting to see how much productivity is lost in a given year because of my drinking coffee.

During the average work day I fill my coffee cup between four and five times. Each trip takes about 45 seconds and I actually make the coffee about two times per week, which takes about 4 minutes.

So 4 times per day x 45 seconds x 5 days a week = 15 minutes per week to pour coffee
Two times per week brewing coffee x 4 minutes = 8 Minutes per week to make coffee

So far 23 minutes per week.

What happens when you drink a pot of coffee in the morning? Bathroom break! I'd say in a given day I got to the bathroom 3 times per day because of all the coffee. At 2.5 minutes per trip (its down the hall) that is conservatively 7.5 minutes per day.

7.5 minutes per day times five days a week 37.5 minutes per week of secondary affects of the coffee.

So 23 minutes for coffee making and pouring and 37 minutes for those secondary affects we have 60 minutes per week.

We'll remove vacation time and say 60 minutes times 50 weeks per year for the annual total of 3,000 minutes or 50 hours. My work week is 37.5 hours which means 1.33 work weeks (conservatively) are used up directly because of my coffee consumption. In our "budget" the average cost for a staff hour is 40 dollars (we're frugal) that is just personal costs not indirect or other.

So 40 dollars times 50 hours is $2,000 per year in lost productivity. I'm not the only one who drinks coffee either.

I'm an administrative nightmare!

My cup is empty, time to refill.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Merry Freakin' Christmas


Ann Arbor is a very, how can I put this...liberal town. Even though I grew up here I never really noticed it like I do now. It might not be as bad as some people say but sometimes the political correctness seems a bit over the top.

I don't know when this happened, perhaps I only really notice it now because a friend of mine pointed it out, but nobody says Merry Christmas anymore. Why is everyone afraid to tell ME Merry Christmas? I can understand saying Happy Holidays on a news broadcast but when did Merry Christmas become taboo? If someone said Happy Kwanza to me I wouldn't be offended. Happy Chanukah?- Hey to you too, put on your yamaka and celebrate Chanukah- good for you. I'll stop my rant before I begin to babel but it's like this country is losing its identity because we are afraid that others will get their hurt feelings. Let's be proud of our history and traditions. Part of that is tolerance and acceptance of non-majority religions but that doesn't mean giving up your own identity.

So please, can I get a Merry Christmas?

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Les Wasn't More or The Road to Rich's


Despite the near foot of snow and the fridged temperatures in Ann Arbor there is certainly a sense of relief circling the town about it's newest employee, Rich Rodriguez. After Michigan's head football coach Lloyd Carr announced his retirement in November the area has been a buzz with speculation which first climaxed the morning of the SEC football championship game between Louisiana State and Tennessee. Kirk Herbstriet reported that LSU's Les Miles had agreed to become the next coach at Michigan. This was confirmation of rumors that had run rampant for weeks. It seemed the logical fit, he was a "Michigan Man" with great ties to Ann Arbor and this was his dream job. Everyone KNEW he was going to Michigan. The problem was, Herbstriet's source was wrong and Les Miles signed a new lucrative contract to stay at LSU.

I was no exception to the Miles love fest. The guy seemed like the perfect fit. Miles and Ann Arbor were like two giant bodies with gravity accelerating them at each other faster than the media could keep up with (or slower than they could create it-hmmm).

After the love affair with Miles died down some (it never completely did) Michigan was in talks with Greg Schiano, the coach of Rutgers, the Scarlett Knights, College football's Cinderella team of 2006. Schiano said "I've decided to remove my name from consideration". And Wolverine nation let out a collective sigh of "Would've been nice", and then silently thought: were still getting Miles!

And just as Ann Arbor's nerves were tensing up, fearing nobody wanted to come to Michigan Rich Rodriguez was announced as the next coach of Michigan Football.

The improbable, up and coming coach from West Virginia breathes a breath of fresh air to wolverine.

It became apparent that changes were needed for the Michigan football program. Those changes were needed once Lloyd Carr decided to retire, up until that point he was doing just fine in my book.

So now instead of pure speculation I am excited about the ACTUAL new coach. He's almost everything I'd hoped for in a new coach. My two biggest concerns were that the next coach was young and that he planned on staying at Michigan for a long time. We'll see about the latter but he did mention in his press conference that he'd be at Michigan until about the time his son would be the top QB prospect in 2017, thats good to hear.

I'm nervous about the growing pains but excited about a "new" Michigan football program.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Matt Groening, I owe you one


I've watched The Simpsons regularly since it came out about 18 years ago. I didn't know what the Tracy Ullman show was, but I probably would have watched it there too, but, I was eight! I have the first eight seasons on DVD (I'm falling behind) and I throw one of them in two or three times a week. It's also on every night at 11 on the new CW channel (what does CW stand for?). What I'm getting at is that it really is a comfort for me. Since I've been watching it since I was in 4th grade and am so familiar with all the episodes, just hearing the theme song has a way of relaxing me.

I ended up having a particularly difficult day at work today. Trapped, puppet, pawn, peon, are the words that come to mind to describe the way I feel and the way I am treated. I usually try to calm down on the drive home and often Mitch Albom does the trick but today I was listening to Bill Simonson on the ticket 1050 WTKA talking about George Mitchell's steroid probe in baseball. Not the most relaxing thing. So by the time I got home I was still stressed. I played a few Guitar Hero songs and had a lunchable but was still felling down. So at about 7:30 I popped in season 7 of The Simpsons, hit play all and have been relaxed ever sense.

So to Matt Groening, thanks for the pick me up and I'm sorry about the copyright infringement.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

To go or not to go: My ten year high school reunion



I think I'm reaching one of those first milestones of old age. And by that I don't mean OMG I can't believe I'm 22. Well, I guess it may seem that way for some. Anyways, the emails and messages are beginning to flow in about my ten year high school reunion.

I'm helping with what I can, submitting emails of people I know and at least staying in the loop. The truth is though, I don't even want to go.

What makes this experience a little different is the advent of social networking sites between graduation and today, specifically myspace and facebook. When I joined each one of those, the thing I liked to do was search for old friends and acquaintances from high school whom I'd lost touch with (which was about 98%). One of the things that struck me was how many people I don't remember, and by that I mean I've never heard of the person.

Here's what happens to me though when I find someone through those networking site that I DO remember well from high school. I'll go on their page, see where they went to school and what is going on with them. A part of me wants to reach out and reminisce about the good ol' days but the other part of me is worried that they'll think "wow, this loser can't let high school go".

Normally I don't concern myself with what people think (ok that was a lie) but isn't the point of a high school reunion REALLY to try to prove how much more successful you are then others and to see how unsuccessful others are?

Of course there will inevitably the people that run up to you and remember more things about you in high school then you do, then another person will come up and expect you to introduce the person of which you can't remember their name. I've got a few outs in that situation, a violent coughing fit, cell phone call, waiting for the person to introduce themselves and then apologize and pretend you didn't even realize you hadn't done the introducing. Of course, none of those make you feel comfortable about it.

And of course there will be the awkwardness when you find a group of ten people and you realize you didn't talk to 3/4 of them in high school, so why should you now?



Conversely, I suppose meeting up with everyone and talking about those good ol' days would be good, after all it was a pretty important 4 years we spent together.

I've got 9 months to think about it. Should I go?

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

My blog is full of fuel

While I told myself I'd be careful not to blog too much about blogging, this post is to give thanks to a blogging community that has welcomed me in with arms wide open. I was yearning for an online community that was exactly that: a COMMUNITY. Not just an assemblage of bloggers trying to promote themselves. I wanted to learn and share with a group of people whose focus is to make bloggers the best they can be.

Fuelmyblog
lets people view blogs on a variety of different topics and lets readers "add fuel" if they like what they see. The more fuel that is added, the more notoriety you may gain. Probably more importantly than that, the FMB forums offer an opportunity for everyone to introduce themselves and to get help from bloggers quite literally across the world. The site helps users promote through word of mouth instead of just allowing a place for meaningless self promotion.

So if you are a new blogger, or interested in starting a blog I highly recommend you join fuelmyblog.com. Your questions will be answered and you'll certainly get your name out there.

The site was generous enough to select me as the blog of the day. A humbling honor, the type that really keeps the drive alive and makes me feel even more welcomed in by a great group.

And speaking of that community, I would be remiss if I didn't mention a great accomplishment of the theirs, a book! Click here to find out more on this exciting product.

And so, thank you to fuel my blog for this award which I will proudly display!

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Photoshop buttons

The last few days I spent some time improving the look of my blog. While blogger templates make things really easy to manipulate, it has its limitations. So I created a new header in photoshop and made a few small hacks to the html code.

In addition to the banner, color and font changes I also spent some time looking around different websites set up for bloggers and social bookmarking, all that web 2.0 stuff. I noticed that a lot of these sites used similar styling in their logos. After examining them I thought I could probably create similar things pretty easily with my limited self-taught knowledge of photoshop.

It sounded fun, so I went ahead and created, I guess I'll call it a logo, for this blog. Cool eh?



Feeling pretty good about it, I went ahead and made one for Amy's online portfolio (note work in progress). She's pretty busy with school and hasn't been able to do much with it yet. So here is the one I came up with for Amy Connor Live.




Let me know what you think. These are a little bit larger than what I'd recommend using on a blog or site, but, you get the picture. If you are interested in having me make one for your blog leave a comment. Unless I get a bunch of requests I'll even do it for free.

Tick tock... Your Magna Carta is showing!

I'm so bummed its Monday. Minute by minute the day is slowly passing. However, I'm convinced the clock on my computer has a glitch that makes it skip back 20 minutes for each half hour that passes.

And so as time marches on...slowly... I find my mind wandering and thinking about time. Much like my thoughts on space, I have a real interest in time. It's very intriguing to me to think about things that happened 100, 200 or 1,000 years ago. Even more than thinking about them it's thought provoking to me to see some of the remnants of the things we read about. The Coliseum, the Declaration of Independence, DINOSAUR BONES.

So all this deep thinking reminded me of a news story I heard over the weekend that I thought you'd enjoy. It involves a piece of history that is, well, timeless.

One of the 17 remaining copies of the Magna Carta is going up for auction. Yep THAT Magna Carta. While admittedly I didn't realize before this weekend that there were 17 copies left of it, the founding document of modern democracy, I still find the fact that a private citizen can purchase a copy quite interesting. Of the 17 copies, 15 remain in Great Britain throughout the archives, one is in Australia (I don't know why either) and the last is being sold. The lucky auction house is Sotheby's ((BID) for those of you investors out there). The document will be auctioned on December 18th and is expected to fetch between 20 and 30 million dollars. So while I won't be able to match that (unless that lotto ticket is luckier than it looks) I am very jealous of whomever will end up with it. I mean, talk about a center piece to your art collection.

And what a great ice-breaker for when you have company over!

Hey what's that thing framed in your hallway?
Why, thats the Magna Carta.
By jove!

I'm certainly envious of the winner. He or she will undoubtedly have much to think about each time they pass it by.

And I'm still stuck here, tick, tock, I hate this damn clock.



Once information of the auction is available I'll be sure to update this post with any information I can find.

UPDATE the lucky auction winner was David Rubenstein from the USA. Reported price 21.3 Million USD.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Bloggers Block

I started blogging about five months ago. Since then I've learned an awful lot.

One of the first things I learned about this blogging business is that just about everybody blogs about blogging. At first that didn't make any sense to me, but then I realized how many others are out there like me that constantly seek out new ways to get people to listen to what they have to say. From reading all the blogs about blogs I ascertained that there are really three types of blogs.

Personal Blogs - A persons journal or description of their experiences.
Niche Blogs - Where a blogger sticks to a topic that they are (hopefully) an expert on.
The General Blog - A multi topic, catch all.

The latter of all these is, according to the blogosphere (I've been waiting to use that word), by far the most difficult. Like an idiot I of course chose the most difficult.

Not surprisingly I was writing with about three loyal readers, myself included.

I sought out comments on my blog everywhere and anyway I could. Unfortunately since my topics vary so greatly, one person's favorite part was another person's only frustration. Lot's of people don't want to read about Michigan football, but then others want to hear about it if for no other reason than Michigan football is something I'm very passionate about.

After considering everyones advice and thinking more about what I want to do with this blog I thought back to my first post. I think I was on to something. This really is my sounding board.

I was beginning to worry too much about what to write to gain and retain readership and not enough about having fun. I was also worrying too much about toeing the line to please everyone with my opinions (although I'm getting better at speaking my mind). Really, the point of this is to get out my opinion and if you disagree, thats not a problem, its an opportunity to have intelligent conversation with occasional name calling - that stuff is fun. If there is one thing I can advise at this point in my blogging experience its just that: have fun!

So, while I risk losing a portion of what I've built in terms of readership. With this blog, WYSIWYG. I'll try and add bells and whistles that I think are cool and I'll work on the format of the site (the blogger templates can be a challenge to customize). In terms of topics though, theres gonna be a mix, and some of you aren't gonna like it. Sometimes I'm gonna post about my opinions on current events, sometimes I'm gonna talk about going out at night and hanging out with friends. I'll occasionally post the results of some of my investigations in my ongoing thirst for knowledge and sometimes I'll even get a bit political. I can't tell you how much I've been wanting to write about Michigan and Les Miles this past week. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow!

I hope you enjoy reading this stuff half as much as I enjoy writing it. I hope you digg me, stumble me, comment me and link to me from your own blogs because this blogging stuff is really fun. After all, linking is the most sincere form of flattery to a blogger.

So now that I've reaffirmed the potpourri style of this blog, I need your help to find others like me to boost my blog roll. I've searched high and low, used all sorts of blog aggregator services to find other GOOD blogs that cover at least several topics. If you know of any please let me know.

And for your viewing enjoyment, heres a picture of my cat punching me :)

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Security vs. Privacy or The Pursuit of Safety


Where do you draw the line between increased security and infringement on your privacy?

It's an important issue, and hotly contested. With each passing day the likelihood of being caught on film increases. While the United States has been a little less amenable to ubiquitous surveillance than elsewhere, that's not to say that we're not far behind. And in many ways, it has already arrived.

Some people get it right, when it comes to this type of surveillance. They understand that its a necessary evil, especially post Columbine and post September 11.

On a less global scale, this argument has become the hot issue at my old stomping grounds, Ann Arbor Pioneer High school. At Pioneer there is a proposal to add 53 digital cameras to record the hallways, cafeteria and parking lots at the school. After having success at the school district's other large high school, administrators are set to decide on the addition of cameras to Pioneer later this month.

Everything was progressing fine when, all of the sudden, the goddamn ACLU comes to crash the party and protect the rights of the "poor, violated, young future of America" (Yea, I am being sarcastic). Give me a freaking break. Don't you have something better to do with your time? We aren't talking bathrooms, not dorm rooms or college classrooms, we're talking about HIGH SCHOOL. Yes KIDS attending a public high school (how's that funded again? OH, RIGHT!) and there is concern about their privacy in the hallway.

I don't care about the reports that say the investment in major security systems cameras hasn't paid off. This is entirely different. Liz Margolis, the Ann Arbor Public School Director of Communications even said that there weren't any cases she could think of in the time the cameras have been installed at Huron of the cameras catching anyone in the act. However, she is also quick to point out that there HAS been a reduction in the amount of crime and vandalism. Maybe that's because the vast majority, of even the kids that are committing these crimes, are not evil beings, they are kids that KNOW they can get away with stuff. These surveillance cameras would be a deterrent and that's exactly what they have done.

Here is funny little quote from the Ann Arbor News Article "We as Pioneer students were concerned about our privacy, and also about the way that it was brought about," said Bennett Stein, 17, student council executive president.

HA HA HA! PLEASE don't give me that BS. You aren't concerned with your privacy. You're concerned about getting caught! If you just don't want to get caught skipping classes and loitering, just say so. Please save me from this privacy argument. You can't bring a gun to school, can you? Why? Because a group of 3,000 kids has a different set of rules. It's good you have an interest in your rights..but if at 17 you are already siding with the ACLU, I fear the next thing to be taught in the Ann Arbor schools is intelligent design. Kirk Cameron need not apply.


My question is, what the hell could some 16 year old be doing in the hallway that shouldn't be caught on tape? If you don't want your mommy to find out about the guy you are dating then don't go gallivanting around the hallways. And while some may think that these tapes will be FOIA-d, give me a break, the only things that would be interesting enough to show on youtube are things that warrant the cameras in the first place! The PUBLIC school doesn't have some obligation to not tape the FREAKING HALLWAYS. Think of what this could prevent.

So, please ACLU, please go elsewhere to try to protect crime and eliminate punishment.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Condo Courtesy

I'm trying to think of all the cliches to describe condo living.

"Take the good with the bad"
"You can't win 'em all"
"Keep your chin up, kid"
"It is what it is"

While its great to not have to deal with shoveling the walk and having a workout facility 100 feet away, sometimes the conveniences seem to come at a steep price. Consider the following.

After coming EXCEEDINGLY close, yet failing, to making a new HD TV purchase and contributing to the Black Friday epidemic, I found myself in want of..something, ANYTHING. Once my Id kicks in, I have trouble stopping it and end up having to make some grand purchase to get my psyche back in check. To solve it this time I purchased a boxing heavy bag and stand and boxing gloves. After a short two hour assembly I found myself banging away.

As I'm taking out my aggressions on 70 pounds of padding, however, I'm becoming increasingly nervous about annoying my upstairs neighbors. You see, my new boxing station is directly underneath their bedroom.

To ease my fears I've set up two rules for myself with regard to use of the heavy bag.

1. Don't hit the bag after 8 pm or before 10 am
2. Don't workout for more than 45 minutes

I know they can hear me when I'm working out in the garage. I also know they are of the opinion that when you pay a lot of money like we both did for a condo that you expect to not have to deal with noisy, disrespectful neighbors. I'm of that opinion too. Conversely, I paid lots of money for my place and want to be able to do WHAT I want to do and feel this falls within reason, especially when my rules of courtesy are employed.

But what do you think? Are my rules reasonable? Is this sufficient courtesy or am I being a bad neighbor?

Saturday, December 1, 2007

If you believe, they put a Michigan man on the moon.

My first real interest in astronomy was piqued about 15 years ago on the gulf coast beaches of Florida. With little light pollution obscuring a night sky view I was able to see more stars at once than at any other time. I started thinking about what was out there, how far things were and different ways to try and comprehend truly astronomical numbers. It was just fun to ask myself all those questions!

I often correct my friends when I hear them say something along the lines of "the moon is bigger than usual tonight". I point out that there is a simple explanation behind why it looks so large. When the moon is near the horizon it appears larger because the eye references it to the size of objects on the ground. This gives the illusion of the moon looking much larger than when it is high in a clear night sky.

With this "point of reference" consideration in mind, I started to think to myself, how big would the earth look from the moon? While I know the earth would look significantly larger in the night sky from the moon, I thought it would be interesting to see what a known point of reference, such as the state of Michigan, would look like on the moon from earth. So, I took an image of the moon and one of Michigan and scaled Michigan to the approximate size it would appear as on the moon. Michigan is approximately 400 miles long and wide and the moon is approximately 2150 miles in diameter which would make Michigan, oh, about 18.5% of the diameter of the moon.

Bigger than I imagined. In this example I have placed the state on top of the crater Copernicus.

So, next time you look up at a full moon, here's something to think about.