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If you’re an Oliner, and you missed out on the fun that is today’s CCO meeting, you’re in luck! Running commentary of the CCO meeting, brought to you by the utter torment of every CCO meeting I’ve been to in the past. If you’re a super masochist, feel free to read along in real time.

11:17 AM - I check the morning e-mail and get the obligatory CCO meeting reminder, with current budget overage projections. We’re about $8K over, an extraordinarily high amount, even with Olin’s fascination with spending more than its got. I scan the list of clubs asking for money. One club is asking for $5K without any descriptive information for what it will be spent for. This is a super no-no. The club president might just be dicking around with us, but if it’s an actual request, we’ve got
to hear why. $5000 for comic books might be a stretch.

11:55 AM - Couldn’t even escape the CCO meeting horrors at the breakfast table. The big clubs everyone’s looking to cut include ROC (Republicans of Olin College), Open (Olin’s GLBT group) and the aforementioned comic book club. Overall those clubs count for about a fourth of the overall spending. A few clubs are on the opposite end and ask for no money. Guess which ones we like more.

11:59 AM - The rooms slowly filling up. A few last-minute breakfast table discussions have allowed some people to opt out. CCO meetings are done on a per-club basis, so if you can convince someone to represent your club, you can skip out and watch the early games. Of course, you run the risk of not having reasons for your club to take the money, so you might lose half your budget. Hope that’s some good football.

12:00 PM - This is my fifth CCO meeting, so I’m more or less an old pro at this. A few other people in the room have been to as many as me, but I think no one’s been to more. Mark, one of my suitemates, is sitting in on his first, representing the Disc Club. The representatives for ROC and Open have arrived, but Zach, representing the Comic Book Club hasn’t shown up yet. If he doesn’t arrive, his $5000 budget will be in jeopardy

12:03 PM - Light the tires, kick the fires, this meetings been called to order! Angela hands out a voting stick for each club; we’ll use this to vote on motions on the floor. I’m anxious to get started so we can get cutting!

12:05 PM - Best lines of dialogue: “We have a deficit of a little ove….I’d like to make a motion to cut comic book club. Ok… all in favor?” Everyone raises their hands. The current deficit is about $3500. ROC also cuts their budget by about a thousand dollars, returning some money back to the pool.

12:09 PM - We start going through club by club, deciding how relevant each club’s line items are in comparison to the mission of the club.

12:12 PM - “What is a cheese outing?” If you’re wondering, it’s an outing to a local cheese farm subsidized in the spring. Current deficit is still at $3500.

12:14 PM - We’re down to the Christian Club, and there’s a little bit of confusion, but things get resolved rather quickly. Mark talks briefly about the Disc club, but his budget escapes cutting.

12:20 PM - As people get bogged down in the line items for Farmers United, I go check out some test-strategy techniques for the GRE I’m taking tomorrow. I’m not looking forward to it, to say the least. I’m fairly certain I can take the math portion without trouble, but the verbal and written might be a hassle. It’s remembering things like verisimilitude that will be the death of me.

12:23 PM - “What are 26 units of white gas?” “Actually, it’s 26 gallons.” “Oh.” A math error gives us our first real cut, about $38 dollars, or 1%. God, we’re going to be here a long, long time.

12:30 PM - We cut about a hundred dollars from FOTA since we’re unsure what the money will be used for. I hate to see new clubs and new club presidents get up, are clearly passionate about their clubs mission, and get shot down by the group. Friendly Fire’s new president is requesting just under $300, not a high amount, but the club didn’t spend much during the first semester, so the president will get some flack.

12:36 PM - Still on the Friendly Fire club. Another rookie mistake: not checking out the internet before hand. Friendly fire’s big request was for network cables at about $120. A quick web search shows that $55 would do the job just as well. Guess who wins?

12:43 PM - Ali, the SAC chair, comes and chats with us about doing more co-sponsored events. It’s a refreshing break from the hassle of budget cutting.

12:45 PM - If you’re fretting that I’ll never get out of this meeting, don’t worry. At some point, clubs will start cutting their budgets by small amounts, which will get us closer to the goal. A few straggling club presidents in clubs with reputations for responsible spending show up a little late and we go back to discuss their clubs. Due to a different math error, we’re still hovering around the high $3k mark.

12:52 PM - We’ve down to Game Club. I get ready to pull up the NFL scores. With the Bucs far out of the running for everything except the 1st pick sweepstakes, I can’t decide which team I’m going to cheer for in the playoffs. Is this the year no one wins it? Most teams, besides San Diego, looked awful last week, with the Pats and Colts getting rocked by the AFC teams from Florida. I’ll go out on a limb here and pick the Saints to face the Chargers in Glendale. (Speaking of which, this
is one of those years where people in Arizona get to see great football, with three high-profile games lined up: The Fiesta Bowl, The BCS National Chapionship Game, and the Super Bowl. Kinda makes up for the Sun Devils and Cardnials, no?)

12:59 PM - We’re painfully chugging along as clubs continue to knock of $50 and $100 from clubs. At this rate, I’ll be out of here just in time to take my GRE tomorrow.

1:00 PM - Ahh, the meat club. While people argue about whether meat is a good value, I’ll plug ecto, a really great blogging interface. The interface is similar to Outlook, so it feels similar to writing an e-mail to the world! I was pleased to find that it kept track of the word count in the status bar at the bottom. By the way, if you’re keeping track, we just went over 1100 words.

1:05 PM - It’s like pain, constant constant pain. We’re *still* $3700 over. But we’ve just cut some serious cash from Midnight Riders,

1:11 PM - “I can just donate some PVC adhesive. I mean, my dad’s a plumber.” This is why I love Olin meetings.

1:12 PM - Hmm, my arm’s falling asleep. This could make blogging difficult.

1:15 PM - Let the games begin. We’re on ODP, an example of one of those clubs where the estimates seem impossibly high. While I appreciate the mission of the club, it seems like such a money sink. We cut about $200. Open, the club asking for the most on the list, is about 7 away. My club is over 20. Sigh.

1:20 PM - Back to the GRE. Nebulousness? Nebularity? Nebulosity? Surprisingly, only two of those are right, even though all three pass the squiggly word test in ecto.

1:37 PM - Nitpicking discussions. We’ve made it about three more clubs on the list. I’m going to cry. I want someone to just wrap their tie around their head and yell “Follow me, follow me to freedom!”

1:41 PM - Ahh, crap. A firefox crash. I really want a new computer, as this one’s lasted me all four years. Once I graduate, I think that will be the new purchase for me. Of course, thanks to Olin’s wonderful IT department, this compy has been redone a few times in terms of software (I’m on my fourth install of windows.) My contributions to the CCO meeting have dwindled down, but after OTASA and OWW (Olin Taiwanese-American Student Association and Olin Weekend Warriors, a nerf gun club) Open
is on the board, which will be much fun.

1:45 PM - Just one club away now. I’m getting out the helmet.

1:46 PM - So, here’s the deal with Open. I respect the mission of the club, the people involved, the organization as a whole. But in general, they’re a really bitchy club to work with during the CCO meeting. They’ve almost always got the largest budget for things I’m just not sure we should be spending student money on. I realize this is the 21st century, but I just don’t think student money should pay for a drag show. I’m sometimes in the minority on this, but with the budget still over $2600,
people will look hard at the club.

1:47 PM - Open’s on the board. Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria.

1:50 PM - So far, it’s not so bad. Open’s willingly cut about $350 from the budget, mostly for things like prizes and the performer. The club budget is at about $1750.

1:57 PM - Nearing the two hour mark, and we still haven’t gone through the entire list yet. Sigh

2:03 PM - The group from Open is down about a third from what they asked for. We move on.

2:05 PM - Some people want a coffee break. Others want to finish the first pass. Angela decides that we’ll take a break after the first pass. So it is decided.

2:07 PM - Can I mention how much I love del.icio.us? On my main blog, links are now provided daily by the integrated extension in firefox? It’d be great if i could format the output to the XML-RPC (geek for remote posting) so that it didn’t display tags and put a little bit more into the formatting of the content. Also, I need to remember to use proper English in description.

2:10 PM - Blog gets the squiggly line of death in ecto. I’m just saying… Then again, ecto gets the squiggly line of death as well.

2:12 PM - We’re down to Rock Climbing Club, and there are about seven clubs left on the list. Since Open, we haven’t spent much time on each individual club.

2:15 PM - With the same 2+ hours in the meeting, I could have: ironed my shirt, watched a movie, or slept. Maybe I shouldn’t think about what else I could be doing with the time.

2:20 PM - 4 clubs until I’m up on the board for trivial. I don’t anticipate any real challenges. I spent all my money last semester, I’d like to go to three tournaments in the spring, but I’ll knock it down to two to appease everyone.

2:22 PM - Speaking of movies, I haven’t seen any good ones lately: I’ve been super busy with finishing up the semester. I think the three that I’ve probably missed that I would have liked to see are: Casino Royale, For Your Consideration, and Letters from Iwo Jima, the National Board of Review’s top movie of 2006

2:31 PM - Trivial is still two clubs away. I’m reading to figure out if Pulp Fiction had a title screen. I think so, but it’s not on the definitive movie title list. Maybe I’m not seeing it.

2:33 PM - Taboo, the club on the board, is requesting $75 for a “Fetish Fair”. While I don’t like the title, it’s cheap enough to fly under the radar.

2:34 PM - That was fast. Trivial and Tennis Club both quickly escape the wrath of the group. I think people really want that break, but we have to get through Yearbook first.

2:35 PM - Ahh, Yearbook. It’s a club that over time has become less annoying at CCO. At my first few CCO meetings, Yearbook needed a lot to get going. But lately, as they’ve become self-sufficient, things have been going much better.

2:36 PM -Break! You know you’re excited. Use the next ten minutes to think about things. Or eat ice cream. That’s what I did.

2:48 PM - Aaand, we’re back. We’re $1500 over right now, or about halfway to the goal. As we approach the end of the third hour, we might be done by dinner time. A more realistic goal is 3:30. Let the second round of cuts begin. We knock off antigravity club’s (yes, such a thing exists) stilts/powerisers for $350.

2:52 PM - Off-topic, I’m pretty excited to be going home next Wednesday. It’s going to be great being home, relaxing, and just not burning the candle from both ends.

2:57 PM - There’s a lot of confusion as to the different kinds of CORe money: pretty much it breaks down as CCO money and New Initiatives.

3:00 PM - It’s that time of the meeting! Everyone comes together to make the last cuts. A big thanks to SAC and the clubs who cut down at the end. Trivial and Disc Club both gave up about $150 each to keep it civil. I’m outta here. Rock out Olin!

Technorati Tags: Budget, Olin College

Filed by Adam College at 1:17 pm under Life
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Why is it that everything I write lately feels so foreign, the click-clacks under my fingers out of place? I am restless; I cannot sleep, the product of a late nap and caffeine. I pluck out the words from the darkness. To claim I have had little to write about would be a lie: I am, at heart, a writer still, now and always. My life streams from pens and keyboards. To claim I have had little time to write is also a lie, though striking closer to the truth. I’ve been bee-busy since October. But, I feel the biggest reason I haven’t written is just how unsure I am of sharing things.

One of the most fascinating things about reading a blog is the glimpse into other peoples lives. In the blogosphere, the human condition unfolds, decoded from the ever-flowing bitstream. The kids were a handful today…I’m so frustrated with my boss…omg, does he liek me?….

There is a great balance in the world of the blog. At once, everyone and no one is your reader, your friend, your crying-shoulder, your advice-giver. The great thrills I’ve had in writing have been the strange and random readers who step into the light, ever so briefly, and weigh in on the humdrum I write. But, I know that for every reader that steps forward, 10? 100? stay in the shadows, reading.

I don’t think this makes me paranoid. I’m merely calculating that there exist roughly 1259 people out there who have read my blog and think they know me. I wonder how many of them know me, in the same sense I know myself. What have they learned from my writings? What’s the impression my written voice projects out there into the universe?

What I’m trying to say is, I don’t think I want to write about myself anymore. This flies in the face of what I’ve been taught: write about what you know best. The thing I know the best is myself. And while introspection is good, the most important part of introspection is the personal nature, the privacy of self-learning.

I apologize for the ramble. Again, it’s late. If you feel like you need to weigh in on this, give my self-esteem a boost and leave a positive but honest comment about me. Anything will do. (After all, I’m done writing about me, that doesn’t mean you can’t)

Filed by Adam College at 2:28 am under Life
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Filed by Adam College at 9:05 am under Olin
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Technology was spelled wrong this *entire* time. I just realized it. A loser am I.
I guess that shows how many attentive people visit my site. What a contretemps.

Oh, and I’m 21 now. Hooray. Thanks to the many who sent birthday wishes!

Filed by Adam College at 4:13 pm under Life, Technology
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Pulled minutes ago, from everyone’s favorite site.

Good to know I’m living in a building “currently under construction”. And that I lived in one all last year.

Technorati Tags: Olin College

Filed by Adam College at 1:54 pm under Olin
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As a few of you might know, I’ve been on a Disney kick lately, listening to music from around the theme parks in Florida. Yes, such things exist. Call it what you want (weird, sappy, an attempt at seeking escape to a dreamworld of fantasy that’s enabling me to rationalize working in a cubicle) but for me, this is the music I more or less grew up on.

Living in Florida has a few perks, hurricanes, poor drivers, and poorer voters be damned. One of them is great discounts at theme parks. Another is proximity to aforementioned parks. I’d estimate that my family probably went to Disney World somewhere between 30-40 times between first grade (1991) and 2001. Throw in another 8-10 times for school related stuff, and maybe another handful of times post 9/11, and I would say it’s not unrealistic to guess I’ve been to Disney World on the order of 50-60 times.

That may seem like a lot, but you have to remember a few things. That’s 50-60 over the course of a decade and a half, which is only 3-4 times a year. And none of those trips was longer than four or five days, and most were a pattern like this: leave after school Friday afternoon, hit Epcot Friday night, go to Magic Kingdom Saturday, go to MGM Sunday Morning, and leave no later than Two PM Sunday afternoon. (That’s essentially the perfect 3 park schedule by the way.)

Still, I agree, that’s a tremendous amount of Disney for one kid to ingest, regardless of timespan length. And when you consider my family also owned every Disney animated movie (except Pete’s Dragon) in their gigantic clamshell cases, owned Disney stuffed characters, read books about those characters, and so on, you see that we’ve got a pretty Disnified house.

I am lucky to know that this same time was a sort of golden age for theme parks, especially Disney World. The growth that the Orlando resort has experienced in my lifetime is astounding: adding two new theme parks, opening a dozen hotels, adding shopping centers, attractions, water parks. I know that this unparalleled expansion was offset by the loss of attractions I loved. I realize that change is, for the most part, good.

Why? That’s an excellent question. Part of it was the escape that WDW provided then (and we’ll get to why it doesn’t now in a second). Part of it was the physical location: just 90 minutes up I-4 from my house. Part of it was the cost, which didn’t hurt so badly back then. But I think most of it was my grandfather (my mom will inevitably read and correct this if I’m wrong) also liked Disney and took his family often. There’s a whole back story here that involves this company, my grandfather, the opening of Space Mountain, and the oil crisis of the 70s. I might write that book some day.

I know there’s a term for people further down the scale than me: DisneyFreak. I know there are people who travel to all eleven theme parks around the world, post trivia online, compare rides in Anaheim and Orlando. I know that I am not quite one of these people: I only read the trivia posted online.

But I also know that it doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or anyone from Tomorrowland) to figure out that Disney World has lost its way. I’m listening to this music from dismantled attractions now sold on eBay, stories once told in the half-light that will never entertain again.

Maybe the magic is gone for me: maybe time, that evil villian, has robbed me of my innocence. But when I listen to the in-ride audio and music (and yes, such things are easily had online) only some of what I feel is my own personal nostalgia: the memories of trips past. The other part of what I feel is confusion, from an engineering and business perspective, wondering *why* Disney’s made some of the decisions they have, especially at the parks.

Of course, this problem is multi-faceted. Universal, just up I-4 even farther, is directly competing for the same market. The overall travel market suffered, perhaps irrecoverably, after 9/11. Gas prices are soaring. But my personal opinion is people will still pay, and pay handsomely, for happiness, for peace of mind and pieces of future nostalgia. People will always pay if you can simultaneously take their cares away and give them happy memories at the same time. Why else would movies be so popular?

Disney’s problems lie somewhere else then, beyond competition, rising costs and prices. I think the Disney problem is they’re just not as good as they used to be at manufacturing the product. I know that it’s always been about making money from the Disney side, but I feel like what they’re selling is no longer what it once was. The Disney empire has gotten so large and expansive, WDW has simply become a grand Disney store: an outdoor arena for advertising and selling.

Back in my high school days, when I was involved in television production, we had a oft-repeated motto: “All we do here is tell stories. Your success is determined by how well you share them.” So too, should this be the motto of the company founded by Walt Disney.

Technorati Tags: Disney, Walt Disney World, Nostalgia

Filed by Adam College at 10:45 am under Life
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For those not in the know, Washington DC has a fantastic subway system. It’s so top notch for a variety of reasons: A) It’s illegal to eat, drink or smoke (and this law is strictly enforced), which keeps the cars *very* clean, and B) The trains run at regular intervals, unlike the T. The trains also run late when they should, until 3 on Friday and Saturday nights.

Still, taking the Metro in and out of town everyday can be boring at times: There’s not a lot of scenery, and a boring book can cause a wasted 20 minutes. So ocassionally, I take a look around at fellow passengers.

Firstly, there is a mathematical formula for when it’s OK to take the seat next to me. That formula is: never. And it is especially never if there are other open seats in the train. And it is unequivally never if there is an open *row* of seats elsewhere in the train. This has happened to me more than a few times: I’ll be in a mostly-empty train, and some random person will hop on and take the seat right next to me, even though there are seven empty rows of seats. And it’s not just subways! I’ve parked my car in the middle of an open lot with *at least* 15 spaces on either side in one direction, and three empty rows in the other, and some person will have still come park their car way too close to my driver-side door, and there are still 15 open spots, three open rows, etc. Why?? Cars don’t benefit from strength of numbers. They don’t keep each other warm, they don’t befriend each other. All you, sir or madam who likes to park close to other cars, have done is earn yourself a nice passenger-side dent. Enjoy. But I digress…
Another quirky habit: Last week, I boarded at Dupont Circle to head out to Grosvenor. That’s about a 15-20 minute ride. Two minutes in, I’m minding my own business, ocassionally checking out the other passengers for interesting quirks (yes, among other things…) when I notice a not-unattractive Asian woman sitting a few rows ahead of me, and facing the opposite direction. She’s combing her hair, using a small vanity mirror to check it out.

I head back to my book for a page or so, until the train arrives at the next station (National Zoo/Adams Morgan). Quite a few passengers board/deboard the train, so I’m bumped in the elbow, and I look up and around again. Hmm… the woman is combing her hair still. You know, I’m not really sure how long it takes, but that’s a long time. And her hair is pretty straight….

I go back to the book for another stop… and when I look up again, she’s *still* combing her hair. In fact, she’s re-combing portions of it I saw her comb before. The passenger sitting behind her (from my POV) looks as confused as I probably do: Has she stopped? Why did she start again? And so on. Realize that by now, I’m halfway to Grosvenor, I’ve been on the train 10 minutes, and I’m pretty sure she hasn’t stopped yet.

By now, of course, I can’t concentrate on my book, so I close it, just looking at Hair-Comb Girl, Confused-Woman-Behind-Hair-Comb-Girl, and a few other passengers. Also of note is Clearly-Upset-Stomach-Guy, who’s turning various shades of red intermittently whie grinding his teeth and holding his abdomen.

To make a long and crazy story short, I get to Grosvenor and the woman is *still* combing her hair. About half the train has realized this, but Comb-Girl is too entranced with herself (she also hasn’t put down the little vanity mirror) to notice other passengers awed by this performance.By the time I alight from the train, 20 minutes have passed and she’s recombed her hair about six or seven times. Note that she was on the train before me, and was on the train after me, so it’s entirely possible that this could have been going on for over 30, even 40 minutes.

This could be the OCD award winner for best performance, 2006.

Technorati Tags: Metro, Subway

Filed by Adam College at 9:53 am under Washington DC
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Passing by the Treasury Building.

Mother: “Look kids (points to plaque), it says on this spot, Canada and the US became friends!”

Grandmother: “You know, just once, I’d like to pass by one of these damn buildings and see a sign that says ‘In 1870, absolutely nothing happened here.’ “

Filed by Adam College at 2:30 pm under Washington DC
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The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Courtesy of the AP.

Technorati Tags: humor, Bush

Filed by Adam College at 11:57 pm under Washington DC, Web
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Two pieces of audio today that may make you cry, but for entirely different reasons. The first is a fantastically beautiful cover of The Talking Heads’ This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) by the Arcade Fire from CBC radio up North. Let me be the latest to join the loooong list of Arcade Fire fans. (Time Magazine featured the band on it’s Canadian edition cover back in April 2005. They’ve been at the forefront of the Canadian rock/indie scene since.) Their first company release, Funeral, is an excellent example of good things brewing for the future of rock.

The other audio is a terrfying piece of Senate debate from Ted Stevens, Republican from Alaska and chair of Senate Commerce Committee. Ol’ Ted (emphasis on Ol’) moves into a solid first place on the “I don’t know shit ’bout technology” leader board with his thoughts on net neutrality, replacing Orrin “Let’s literally blow up the computers of internet pirates remotely” Hatch of Utah.

Stevens was poked fun at on The Daily Show, but the sad part is, very few people have the ability to get to this guy to talk common sense into him. He’s also president pro tempore of the Senate (which means, for once, I’m almost praying Bush, Cheney and Hastert don’t meet their untimely demise simultaneously.) Stevens is the longest serving Republican in the Senate… and he’s from fucking Alaska. Since most people on the Hill refuse (albeit politely) to communicate with members of the public unless they think they can get a vote out of it, it’s going to take an able Alaskan to get through to this guy. Good luck finding that. Not surprisingly, though, lobbyists and members of the media get a FastPass to Congressional members. Hmmm… who do politicans work for again?

Audio courtesy of the CBC and Public Knowledge.org (via ThrowAwayyourTv.com)

Technorati Tags: Ted Stevens, Net Neutrality

Filed by Adam College at 11:02 am under Media, Technology, Washington DC, Web
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