Yet Another Boring Weekend (YABW)

Some people rented movies: Along Came Polly and Pirates of the Caribbean. Along Came Polly was alright I guess nothing special, I don't know if it is even worth renting. Pirates of the Caribbean I saw probably for the 5th or 6th time, still good just hate watching movie I seen already over & over again within the same year.

I bought 3 movies from Hollywood video (3 for $25): Master & Commander, Last Samurai, and School of Rock. I was happy just to find three movies I liked. :)

I'm still working on my thesis paper, re-reading about Monte Carlo Methods making sure my thesis is correct, I might be adding a little in that section of my paper though. The Temporal Difference section was shorter and easier to read then I thought. That is the next section I have to thoroughly write on. After that I will probably write a MC version and a TD version of a Tic-Tack-Toe game. It would have been easier to write up a blackjack game to show these methods off instead, but o well.

I hopefully am done before Aug. 8 or I will have to pay for an additional 1 credit again. I am starting to worry about money, because I know moving to California is not going to be cheap, and I will need to get a new vehicle once I'm out there. I will also need to get a map of L.A. and Long Beach since I will probably get lost. Got way to much to think about right now.

1) Thesis
2) Presentation Material
3) Clothes for the presentation?
4) Packing
5) Travel
6) Money
7) Sell Car
8) Buy New Car
9) etc..............(And a lot more) :(

Part III: No Respect for the R.A.

The first thing you learn about being an RA is the lack of respect you get from the students, other offices on campus and your bosses.

They teach the RAs in training that you are now part of the college staff, and that you will have to follow and enforce the college’s rules and regulations even if you might disagree with them. The RAs on this campus are basically treated as the lowest class of citizens; we are given all the mundane work that no one else wants to do.

We have to work at all hours of the days, especially when we are on duty. This of course is obviously in the job description. We end up with 3am calls for lockouts, and stupid questions like “can we borrow the pool balls”, then at 9am in the morning we get calls from the other offices looking for our bosses. The thing is our boss is usually late to work, while we are not supposed to be late. She lives right above her office so its not like it’s a traffic issue or something to get to work. There is sometimes the excuse that she “forgot to un-forward the phones”, so basically she is blind in the morning and has trouble doing something that should become a repetition. Now getting back to the all hours of the day wakeup calls from students. We were basically, been told not to call our own bosses at these early morning situations unless it’s a death or rape situation. The excuse they gave us, this is the funny part, “We work all the time 24hrs a day for 5 days a week (huh?!?!?!? - what a lie) and we need our break from res-life”. The truths about their hours are maybe 9am – 4pm for the weekdays where they are in the office for maybe 4hrs of that max. . They use the excuse that they are in meetings all day.

--RA Schedules--

The RA schedule is always full, this past semester I hardly ever talked to my roommates, because I was always busy and only taking two classes. I would get up every weekday at 10am and not be back home until 12 Midnight. The reasons are classes, lunch, dinner, meetings, 1-2 hours of study time/ homework time, 1hr of work, and RA programs. This is not including RA duty, which can happen 1-2 times a week. Now I’m not whining here, I can accept a full schedule, but our bosses don’t respect that we got other things to do. The give us extra work to do, which is also part of the job and I’m not here to complain about this either, where we got to go around to our residents and get signatures stating that they moved in, signatures on their room damage sheets, signatures on their fire/health safety report, and signatures if they might want to stay over any breaks that might be coming up.

--Programming--

Here is the problem, they think us RAs have all the time in the world, and that we only spend 15minutes setting up programs and running them. It actually takes about 15 minutes just to think of an idea and fill out the necessary paper work to request money, then about 1 hour to buy the materials or setup reservation, 1-2 hours to make advertisements and post them in every building, another 20 minutes to setup for these programs, about 3 hours to run the program, another 30 minutes of clean up and then finally 5 minutes to do a program evaluation. That’s about 7 hours out of our time to do a program, where we have to do this 3 times a month for 3 months. Now we do get our room paid and 50 dollars for each semester to spend only on food. That’s about $2350 dollars we get back in our pocket. We have been requesting for a better RA package for years (obvious reason for the decline in RA applicants). Other schools give their RAs a stipend position about $2000, free room and free meals. The excuse they give us is either one of the following:

“We can’t afford to give a better package” – I can understand this one.

“It’s all because of 911, we are in a budget crisis” – They used this one for 3 years straight.

“The budget hasn’t been past in the state congress yet this year, we are in a budge crisis” – This happens every year and we are probably given about the same amount of money every year.

“Enrollment is down this year, we are in a budget crisis” – They say this at the end of every year, HELLO we haven’t had an orientation yet, how do we know this stuff before hand?

--Decisions Decisions--

Now we are not police, but we have to enforce the school’s policy with almost no authority. So a lot of the time we have to go on our best judgment of what is breaking a rule, it’s a small fine line. The most common incident on this campus is loud music. When do us RAs decide that something is to loud? Well it depends on each RA tolerance of the music and how loud it is. If someone played loud country music out their window, I would probably be over there in 5 seconds, but playing Alt. Rock I might wait 2 hours to say something. Now if we do end up writing someone up for the loud music you would hope that your bosses would back us up and support our decision. This is obviously not the case, if anything we get reprimanded for doing our job. So when this incident happens again or something totally different the students give us little or no attention to what we say since they know they will not get in trouble or they might be sent a piece of paper stating what they did was wrong (a slap on the hand).

--Unwritten Rules No One Tells Us About--

Even if we don’t break the rules some RAs still get in trouble. On this campus the ability to play beer-pong at one time was legal. One day during fire inspections of one of the RAs suite, they find a table that is used for beer pong. The RA who lives in this suite got fired even though the table was not his and it was perfectly legal according to the student handbook. Fast-forward to the next year when a new student handbook came about and they finally add one line to the alcohol policy stating that drinking games are not allowed to be played. Now us RAs were forced to go around and enforce this new rule with hatred coming from every student, and the reason that given was: “We believe that drinking games peer-pressure people into drinking”. Well Duh, but it still doesn’t mean they still have to drink, and most drinking games I have played don’t even get me drunk.

--RA of the Year--

Once a year there is an event called “Spring Formal”, where rewards are also given out. One of these rewards is the RA of the Year. Us RAs assume that these awards are given out to RAs that have done their job and beyond, at least that is what is told to us. Well we are all wrong and stupid in believing that, it’s a popularity contest with the bosses. It goes to the one whom tattles on their fellow RAs, or is close buddy with the bosses. One RA who has been here since the dinosaurs, just kidding KJ, has never once won this prestige reward, many students know him, talk to him and believe he is the best RA here at SUNYIT. This person has won every other possible RA award and the made up ones, but has never been allowed to win the ass kisser of the year award, I mean the RA of the year award.

--Being Watched All The Time--

The other offices on this campus love to spread rumors about us RAs being slackers, not doing our jobs, etc. They like to think that we have it easy in res-life and treat us like the black sheep of the family. We are highly underpaid, overworked, tired students who have to walk around and do everything with perfections in our grades, actions, and programs. We are constantly ridiculed that there are no programs on campus, which is obviously not true. We can’t make mistakes dealing with money, must react quickly and appropriate to non-important and important situations, all while we are suppose to show that we are a model student.

So I here writing this long report on how poorly we are treated in the past, which is nothing compared to how we been treated the summer so far (4 weeks into the summer). I have been working for res-life now for 4 years, and been doing the mail service a majority of that time. This job was once a 2-hour per day job for 5 days with a decent pay probably around 6.50/hour. During the past semesters this job was dropped to 1 hour per day for 5 days with my pay probably around 5.15/hour. While they have been decreasing my time and pay, they have also increase my job criteria. I had to go around and deliver phone books to every suite (about 100), go through every newspaper (about 100 daily) and tear off the names in the corner, and post a flyer on every suite door stating how the newspapers are dealt with (even though I put several up in the mailroom the week before). I still have to maintain the mailroom, deliver mail to every box, forward mail, update the forwarding list every semester, and other boring mail clerk duties.

--A Surprise Twist--

I have been an RA over the past 4 summers now, and I know what a summer RA has to do. (duty, programs, orientations, etc.) This summer they didn’t even tell me that they weren’t going to hire me to do the mail. I had to find out on my last paycheck that they weren’t going to pay me anymore. The excuse given to me by the secretary: “We don’t have the budget to hire Temp Service over the summer” (another budget crisis?, HA).

Instead I am supposed to do it for free, because now every RA over the summer has to do 8 hrs of work in the office. This leaves us with no time to have a job since we got to work in the office during the day, evening and night. I don’t know any job that that is flexible for us RAs to be able to get paid elsewhere. Essentially I and other RAs have no or little income for food, while working for free.

--Here it comes the punch below the belt--

Then it is rumor that they hired a temp service worker full time up in Mohawk, (odds are this rumor is true heard from multiple sources) and she is living up there with air conditioning suite all by herself. They are trying to keep it a secret, but being an RA we catch on quickly.

It not like I don’t mind doing the job, but they treat us like they are doing us a favor of giving us all this extra, unnecessary work meanwhile without a thank-you, monetary pay, or special treats (like lunch). Then they go behind our backs and treat other people with more respect by giving them a job versus their own RAs whom have more experiences of doing mail and handling special conferences.

SUNYIT Part II: Money and Power (The two evils depts. on this campus)

Being an RA at this school for 3 years plus has shown me how money is squander so easily at this school. One of the first things you notice is that all the money goes to only two departments, Admissions and Athletics.

Admissions some how gets the money first because their reason is "We recruit the students". They end up with brand new furniture that is leather, nice desk lamps, new carpeting, new computers (almost every year), have 3 full time administrators plus advisors for freshmen, and international students, and two full time secretaries. Now here is the problem,

1. Enrollment at this college is getting worst every year. An example of this was this previous orientation. Only 25 students, and this year's setup was the worst ever.
2. Admission only recruits people, after that they want nothing to do with the students.

The admission department on this campus is given to much power. My previous boss was fired because she got on the bad side of admissions on day. She stated that they wanted us RA's to do a job that has nothing to do with our job, I forgot what the job was but it was some ridiculous request. Once her contract was up the school just happens not to reinstate it, basically telling her she is fired.

Athletics is another weird department on this campus that is given way to much power. At one time the game room was a nice location, then athletics comes in takes over the room and moves the game room to a crappy, sweat sock smelling room like dungeon with no ventilation or windows. All the equipment in the game room has deteriorated to almost no use. Meanwhile athletics was given money to put new equipment in the old game room.

Some how the athletics dept. has convince the administration at this school that they are some how important, and that they "recruit students". The thing is our sports here are terrible we have a losing record in every sport except basketball. The school is small and no one shows up to any of the games, taking aside basketball. I have no clue how someone falls for that line.

In the past few years the school has decided to become a four-year school instead of an upper graduate only school. That is a good move, however the path that has been chosen is totally idiotic. We need to expand this school's on campus housing, get more academic buildings and a larger dining hall. There is no way the school will be able to survive on only admitting less then one hundred freshmen a year, especially since they need to stay on campus for the first year or two.

Now guess what the first building to be built is? You might have guessed it, a new athletic complex, with an indoor soccer field and hockey rink. Hockey??? We don't even have a hockey team yet. So while SUNY tries to spend a multi-million dollar project on athletics, we are stuck here with no development in the important areas.

Then there is the process of hiring. When the school was hiring a new hall director, a new director, and a new coach, guess who was given more attention. The coach had 8 people interview him from different depts. on this campus, while the hall director had only 3 people, and the director had none.

Karthik Rajaraman

Well I just heard from Karthik today via email. He and his wife, Savitha, have moved to Parramatta,Australia (near Sydney). He has gotten a new job as a network analyst for a American insurance company called RGA (Reinsurance Group of America). He says that his manager is in Canada permanently, so he will be managing everything there for all the offices in Syndney, Malaysia, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and HongKong. He says he does a lot of traveling to these countries, and should be coming back here to the U.S. soon for some traveling also.

SUNYIT Part I: In The Beginning (The first year was the best year)

Ok, SUNYIT is not a very well known school especially in the southern part of New York where I went to school. The only reason I went to this school is because of the price of tuition was cheap and there was on campus housing. I have always commuted to school and have never had the on-campus experience. These are the main two reasons I decided SUNYIT as my school to transfer to.

The campus was actually social at one time; it's hard to believe that by looking at it now (will discuss this in the later and in the other series). Drinking was allowed outside where the alcohol just had to be in a plastic cup. There were I say on average about 15 students outside everyday in each quad. The parties on this campus happen every weekend starting on Thursday. Now for some this might be weird, but here at SUNYIT at one point classes were only Monday through Thursday. So Thursday was a large party day after classes got out everybody will start drinking and hanging out then at 10pm head down to the bowling alley (SUNYIT student are allowed to bowl for free on Thurs. Nights) and get more drunk.

There was also a place at one time on this campus where people could have hanged out. It was called the "Game Room"; the place was kept up to shape. It had 2 free billiard tables with pool sticks, chalk, and a bridge. These tables were in nice shape. There were also a foos ball table, and a ping-pong table. The place had seating and a surround sound stereo system. On average there would be about 10-20 students in this room (I'm guessing on the dimension here) 20 feet x 50 feet, with a window to lookout into the campus center.

In the beginning of school, I remember the tour up to Mohawk (the nicer residence hall) how they had air conditioning, cupboards, nice looking furniture, microwave/fridge combo, new carpet, clean white walls, nicely cut grass, etc. The place looked real nice and beautiful.

I started my work-study at residence life office. It was an interesting, and I learn a lot about what many students don't know they can get, if only they ask.
I didn't join any clubs or extracurricular activities for the first two semesters, since I have had a bad experience of going to another college (that is over priced) and just had to much on my plate to get my grades up and live a normal life. I decided to take it easy for the first year.

After a few months of easy grades, I met some nice friends in the game room that also liked to play a lot and have fun every weekend bowling, drinking and going to clubs. Here a short bio on them from 3 years ago:

Karthik Rajaraman - An Indian (the country) graduate student in telecommunication.
Steve Burgess - A big tall white bald guy who loved to drink and meet girls.
Alex Calbaras (probably misspelled) - A long hair black guy who loved to meet girls.
Eli DeJesus - A short Hispanic who loved to meet girls.

While I been a student for the first year I have never meet any of my RAs, problems were non-existent I think they wanted a social atmosphere here on the campus.

At the end of the school year I have applied to become a Resident Advisor (R.A.), and was accepted. I also asked to stay on for the summer to help out. At this point my GPA was about 3.77 and my bosses who were in Res-Life were changing to different position at SUNYIT.

Jeff Schneider - Hall Director -> Athletics & Alumni
John Borner - Director of Res. Life -> Director of Campus Life
Cathie Hills(part-time grad position) - Asst. Hall Director
It was time for Res. Life to hire replacements.

Bonnie Borrowman Key - Hall Director of Res-Life.
Cathie Hills - (only one who stayed on for transition) Asst Hall director for Adirondack Hall
Mandy Miller - (also a part time grad position) Asst Hall Director for Mohawk Hall

The Asst. Hall Director is given special rooms on campus with air-conditioning, stove, refrigerator, etc.

This ends part I, stay tune for part II

Weekend

Well my friend from Elmira, NY came up this weekend to hand in some papers into the school. We rented Paycheck and Eurotrip, these were good movies even though I know the critics didn't like Paycheck. Eurotrip is just like the movie road trip, just as funny to watch, and more nudity (good and bad). Paycheck was a good thriller that lasted throughout the whole movie.

We also went to watch Harry Potter 3. I like the Harry Potter movies since it's a nice escape from reality.

I have also been asked to do reviews for Xbox games for 4gbg, so that should be a little hobby. It's a website that a bunch of us old gamers & ex-STGC members are putting together.

StephTheGeek.com > Geek Girl, Musician, Student, Cam Girl

StephTheGeek.com > Geek Girl, Musician, Student, Cam Girl
Here is a interesting site, a nice looking smart women with a nice singing voice. You can listen to the music, most of it is not bad, she could improve a little on the vocals by being a little stronger. In my opinon she is holding back, and all she needs to do is let loose a little more. Electric music is not my style of music, but I still enjoy some of the songs.

Sitefeed & blogbot

blogbot
Ok I have added a sitefeed which allows for people to either view my site in a newsreader or to be used on other sites. To test this aspect out I tried blogbot from the above link.

It installs itself in the broswer, which allows for easy access, and you can view if there are updates very easily by the number next to the feed name.

So to set up I had to add a new feed and enter the following:
Title: William Andrus
URL: http://www.cs.sunyit.edu/~andrusw/home.html
RSS URL: http://www.cs.sunyit.edu/~andrusw/atom.xml

Website Look Changes

I have been updating my website's color scheme, and updating the links. I have changed the title of every page also to a text type title that uses css giving it a 3D look, hoping that page load time will lower a few seconds. The code I have been using is:

<table width="80%" align="center"
style="filter:shadow(color:#000090);
float:center;"><tr><td style="font-weight:italic;
font-size:50pt;font-family:georgia;
color:#0000B0;
padding:0px;">
<p align="center">
CSS&nbsp;Code</p>
</td></tr>
</table>

I might be changing the color scheme slightly little more.

I want a Hybrid Car

I think the supply of hybrid cars should increase. When a vehicle can get 55mpg, everyone should probably think about one. Especially with gas prices around $2.15/gal and higher.
Hybrid Cars. Great starting point for hybrid research.

A great show on PBS called Scientific American Frontiers with Alan Alda (the funny guy from M.A.S.H) showed a good show of different types of cars from hybrid cars to hydrogen cars.
Scientific American Frontiers show on Future Car

Hydrogen, IMO, is the future but the near future is probably the hybrid cars.

Also, I heard that the gas prices are suppose to reach $3.00/gal sometime over the summer hike.