“What do you do with a B.S. in Political Science?”

So I’m about 3 months from returning to Portland State University to get a degree in Political Science to go with my degree in Arts & Letters. The plan after I graduate is to either get my teaching licensure in social sciences and/or language arts, depending on the economy at that stage in the game, or work for the government as a political analyst. I’ve always been interested in the “why?” behind a situation, not so much the resolution of the situation, but the “How did we get here and where is it going?” analysis.

I’m planning to actually go to college, that is, attend full-time and take “in person” classes, not “more or less” part-time and take as many online classes as I could find because I was working and it was easier on my schedule. I’m quitting one job and the other job has offered me the scheduling flexibility to make this a reality. This, combined with the new GI Bill, means I won’t see much of a change in my pay, just a change in my workload.

Of course, there are a large number of unemployed and underemployed teachers at the moment, judging from the number of licensed individuals I’ve interacted with that are working at diners or coffee stands. But, I don’t know if this will continue to be the case, as I’m still at least 2 years away from having my teaching license. I need 48 credits for the Political Science degree, and your average GTEP program is 4 or 5 terms. I might get my Master’s in Education while I’m headed that way, since it’s essentially a handful more credits and a paper to achieve.

Some folks have asked me why I don’t go do computer science. The harsh reality here is that I hate fixing computers. I was always a systems and networking guru, not a “Why doesn’t my printer work?” guru and I have zero interest in software development as a profession. I’m also wildly out of practice, as evidenced by my willingness to reject work because I would be in basically the same boat as the client, that is, using Google to figure out what’s wrong rather than just knowing.

Pack weight

And so the odyssey of “How low can I go?” begins. According to REI.com, my Redwing 3100 pack weighs 3 pounds, 6 ounces. On my scale, it weighs 4.2 pounds. The difference is that my pack is probably the 2008 version whereas the one on REI’s site is the 2009 version. Looking at their site, I could save about 2 pounds by getting an “ultralight” pack, but that requires spending about $150 on a new pack, just to save 2 pounds (assuming my scale is accurate). I think there are probably better places to save weight than the pack, at this point.

Ultralight Backpacking

Er, is this thing on? *taptaptap* Yeah, I know, not much in the way of readership, but I keep meaning to post, then time goes by, and, anyway…

Attended a rather informative session on the topic last night…now very intrigued to see how light I can get my pack. I won’t be down to a <7 “base weight” any time soon, but I think there’s definitely some weight to be lost. Something to start working on this weekend, one supposes.

Also, AdventureTrek 2010 is coming…and I want to work sweep on the hiking portion, so this drives part of that motivation.

Managed to get about 30 people to the Venturing Program Forum at Sunset Trail District’s roundtable last night. Let me just say this: jawesome.

Aaron Douglas kidnaps small children, or: Emerald City ComiCon

Pictures: My Flickr photostream

This is not meant to be a “review” or an article about ECCC. It’s just what I experienced while I was there, as I can remember it after a four hour drive. I attended three panels out of the 20 or so panels, so I can’t speak for any of the other programming.

Let’s just say that after spending four days at Dragon*Con, I was dreading two days of ComiCon. These fears were apparently unfounded. ECCC is not D*C, or even a “mini-D*C”, it’s a convention for comic books. Despite some last minute hiccups involving my lodging (which were resolved by making a phone call to the Hilton and reserving a room), I got into Seattle pretty early on Saturday (noon-ish), then wandered over to the convention. Stood in line for maybe 15 minutes, got a pass, found Liz (well, she found me…creepy stalker time), wandered the show floor for a while. D*C seemed…like a madhouse compared to ECCC. Sorry, but it’s true.

Tried to go to the Jewel Staite panel, totally revealed how much of a moron I am by pronouncing her last name wrong (I know, totally fired… >_>;), ended up not getting into that panel, so instead we sat in line for the DC Nation panel. Now, I’ll admit that I’m not a comic book guy. I can identify the “big” stars, but I couldn’t tell you plot lines, identify supporting characters, or anything, but I was entertained by DC Nation. Of course, they had a lot of “So this one character that appeared as a supporting character on page five of a co-feature last year, he’s been gone for twenty years, are you going to bring him back and give him his own weekly serial?” questions where the panel was like, “Wait, what?”, and a lot of “So what happens in the next issue?” questions where the panel was like, “Uh, find out next week…you know we can’t answer that…o_O;”

After the convention stuff on Saturday, grabbed stuff to eat (I think Liz is scared of my truck now -_-;) wandered downtown Seattle to take some pictures, ended up throwing away a lot of them, then went back and crashed at the Hilton. Got up Sunday morning, stopped at Starbucks (so many, srsly…had Wil Wheaton walk by me in Starbucks, though), wandered back over to the convention and plopped ourselves in line for the BSG panel. Promptly got told we should go ahead and go sit in the panel beforehand because they weren’t going to clear the room (something of a con foul, in my book, but I can see their point), so we sat through a panel on how to make webcomics, which was actually pretty good. I’m sure they realized that a lot of us were just in there for the BSG panel, but we were engaged, at least.

BSG panel was awesome. Well, it wasn’t so much a panel as Aaron, Tahmoh, Michael, and (I’m sorry random guy whose name I couldn’t remember and I couldn’t place you) going, “We know how awesome we are, there’s no need for us to tell you about ourselves for 40 minutes then ten minutes of Q&A, let’s just go with the frakking questions!” Lots of good questions (No, Michael Hogan’s character (Paul Tigh) did not know that Kate Vernon’s character (Ellen Tigh) would be coming back in 4.5 as one of the “Final Five” after she had been poisoned; Aaron Douglas would pay money to see Tahmoh in spandex and singing in a Joss Whedon musical à la Dr Horrible; Lee should have been a Cylon; Tahmoh will beat you to a pulp if you attack Grace Park, even if it is a scene in a show), some random Dawlhaus questions (Tahmoh sez to give it a chance…apparently Joss Whedon had to make some pretty serious changes at the request of the network and that seems to have jostled things a little). I really wanted to ask how far out the final five knew they were the final five, but we were limited to one question for time’s sake. That panel could have been two hours long and still had everyone’s rapt attention. They’re all class acts, but Aaron Douglas is outright hilarious. He probably could handle a 50-minute panel all by himself and have a total riot at it. At one point, he grabbed a little kid who had been sort of wandering towards the stage with a camera, set her on the table and helped her take pictures of the crowd (that’s your “D’awwwwwwwwwwwwww….” moment, ladies and gentlemen). But apparently he’s always on his Blackberry on set (maybe someone will post a video of the panel?)

One thing I will note that’s different from D*C is that ECCC is pretty “family friendly”. I don’t remember seeing a lot of family units at D*C, and I saw a lot at ECCC. Also a lot less costumes, and those that were there were pretty good. Also seemed like if you weren’t “in the convention”, you weren’t “at a convention”…I didn’t see quite the wandering masses of people that I saw at D*C (probably a scaling issue), but ECCC didn’t follow you back to the hotel. Of course, I stayed at a Hilton that wasn’t one of the “con hotels”, so this may have had something to do with it.

I don’t remember a lot of D*C. None of it really stuck…but I will remember Wil Wheaton walking by me, I will remember asking Michael Hogan a question (Mr Hogan and fellow panel attendees: sorry if I seemed a little rude with the “Since you haven’t answered a question…” opener, but it seemed like all of the questions were for Tahmoh and Aaron), and I will remember not wanting to run screaming back to my room in the middle of the day because I was tired of being trapped by the masses. ECCC 2010, we are so there, dude.

Side note: crepes are a delicious thing. Crepes with nutella and strawberries, doubly so, but hard to justify at $7.00 a pop, plus $2.00 for a cane sugar Coca-cola (but so worth it). Subway workers: you’re at work, act like it and pay attention to your orders, not what’s on the radio. You stay classy, Seattle.

Upgraded to WordPress 2.7…

Everything appears to be functioning correctly, but if you notice anything amiss, please let me know so I can fix it!

MPA Programs

So I’m seriously considering getting my MPA. I think my future lies in working with a non-profit youth-serving organization in some form (currently the Boy Scouts of America), and I think that an MPA would be the ideal graduate degree towards this end. Of course, the query becomes: where do I want to get my MPA from?

I’m currently looking at:

• Portland State University
• University of Oregon
• University of Washington
• North Carolina State University

PSU is ranked 49th in the Nation for MPA programs by the US News and World Report, while UO got 57th, and UW got 14th. UW’s program far outstrips either of the other two, but I also think that this would be my “dream school” application. Well, them and Harvard.

Arizona State seems to have a pretty good program, if the rankings are to be believed, but Arizona is not my cup of tea. Any other programs I’m forgetting/overlooking?

I haven’t taken the GRE yet, but if my GMAT scores are any indication, I’m competitive. Of course, so are all of the other people applying to these schools, so that’s not really much of a plus or minus.

Packet Racket v2

Okay, so the previous iteration was a little cumbersome, so here’s round two:

And the rest of the pictures:

The case is a dry storage box from Joe’s Sports that was like 28 bucks. Used a soldering iron to melt mounting holes in the sides and bolted the TNC and radio into place. The changes that are next up are to mount an antenna connector, GPS antenna connector, serial connector, and Anderson power connector in the little flip-top tray in the top so that I can set things up and keep the lid closed.

Car repair for the rest of us…

As some of you know, I recently purchased a used 1989 Chevrolet S-10 pickup (regular cab, some options). It had a few flaws that I was aware of—being 19 years old, brakes down to “needs some pads”, seems to have a hesitation problem); and a few that I became aware of—brakes were actually “Uh, yeah, replace all four sets of pads, the rotors, and your two front calibers are shot, plus your hoses are pretty far gone”, the heater core leaked like a sieve, AC system is out of whack, oh, and it may and or may not be leaking oil.

I let Midas deal with the brakes, and $900 later, I could actually stop properly. The heater core had been leaking long enough that the front passenger side carpet, padding, and soundproofing were all soaked through. I cut the infected areas out, and figured I’d deal with the leak eventually.

For those of you who don’t know, the heater core is part of the coolant system loop, and happens to be located in a duct behind the dash. The replacement instructions are, paraphrasing a little: drain coolant, unbolt and remove shroud, remove heater core. Installation is reverse of removal. Don’t forget to refill the coolant system with 50/50 coolant. Sounds easy, doesn’t it?

What this really should read is: While you’re picking up the heater core and the coolant, go ahead and buy the hoses that connect the heater core—you’ll understand why when you go to remove the core. Drain coolant to a level lower than the input of your heater core, any more than this is a waste of good coolant (or just going to take too long); now, remove the radio and unbolt the main computer from its home (trust us), unplug connectors, set computer and radio aside, then remove access panels covering the last two bolts that you didn’t know existed, undo these bolts (one of which will actually only be accessible because you removed the computer), remove the passenger side cabin light (this sucker burns like fire), unbolt the passenger side of the dash, and while tugging the dash forward, wrestle the shroud out of its home. Set this aside. Unbolt the two copper straps holding down the heater core.

Once this is complete, consume a beer/beverage of your choice. You’ve been working for an hour and a half.. Okay, now, go ahead and cut the hoses off of the core (I recommend just slicing through the hose and then splitting the chunk left over). Don’t bother trying to remove them neatly because you think you can reuse them. They’ve been on the truck 19 years. Now, wrestle with the heater core. It’ll come out of there once you align tab A with slot B. Don’t ask us where these are located. By the way, the heater core is lower than its inlet hose, so it’s actually full of coolant still. Be careful!

Reinstall the heater core. Again, this will all just sort of “happen” as long as you play nicely and remembered to eat your Wheaties. Oh, and don’t forget to tug the wires out of the way lest you wedge one between the core and the plastic housing and can’t figure out why you can’t get the housing to come off. Wrestle the shroud back into place. Reinstall the bolts. Don’t worry about that one you can’t reach and the one whose mounting clip you broke because you didn’t realize the one you can’t reach existed.

Connect the heater core back into coolant loop with the hoses you remembered to buy (you did buy them, right?). Refill radiator. You may have to do this a couple of times, as the heater core’s loop drains into the engine block and you had to drain all that to get the heater core out, remember? Refill the overflow bottle. Go ahead and throw the bottle of coolant in the truck. You’ll probably need it a few times in the next day or two as the air bubbles get out of the coolant loop.

Boy, that sounds like a lot less fun. But it’s also infinitely more useful.

We recently upgraded to WordPress 2.6.3…

I haven’t seen any strange behavior, but I didn’t totally follow the upgrade rules, so anything is possible. The 2.6.1 to 2.6.3 changes should be minor, but if you notice anything dodgy, let me know!

P.S. We know permalinks are currently defective. GoDaddy appears to do something funky which causes them to become borked whenever you change the setting. It should correct itself in a few hours.

P.P.S. Permalinks are back online. If you notice anything else weird, please let me know. Also coming soon: a proper photo gallery.