March 13, 2007: I am a graduate student

Oreo and I slept in all that we could this morning. We were very tired but I felt much better after a good, solid night’s sleep.

As of today I am officially a graduate student. I am not officially accepted to the program yet – that will take some time as there is paperwork yet to turn in and I don’t know what the chances are that I will be rejected but it is somewhat of a possibility I support. But classes start today and I am registered for “Current Themes in IT” – I know, I know. I am just taking the one class this semester to see how things go. I am currently very busy and there is no way that I should attempt two classes right now. I am hoping that I can handle four classes per year which will let me wrap up my degree in two and a half years. I am doing the all distance Master of Science in Information Technology degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology with triple focus (the standard) in Application Development, Project Management and Hospital / Medical Information Management. Each focus is three courses which, with the one that I am taking now, makes a total of ten at forty total credits. I hope that that is all that I have to do but it will be a while before I have a clearer picture of the entire degree program. The focus for now is just to get the ball rolling and to keep it rolling even if only taking one class at a time. I don’t want to lose momentum.

I can’t actually get into the distance learning system until tomorrow. Hopefully everything will be setup and working by the end of day tomorrow so that I can log into the class, get my books ordered and get started on the class. I am looking forward to getting back to school. It has been a few years since the last time that I took a class even though I just graduated from Empire State in November. It is weird for someone as old as I am to suddenly go from being a college dropout to having a full fledged university degree in November and now being a grad student! Being a college dropout was a significant piece of my identity up until recently.

Silvester Stallone proves why he is a bad roll model for children as he was arrested today in Australia for drug smuggling. While the drugs were almost certainly for his own personal use – the act of smuggling controlled substances across an international border is always a major charge.

I had a mostly average day today. Busy but not overly so. I was really glad to get to come in late though. That made a huge difference. I also have my Rockstar Juiced Guava again. I bought a supply of them while I was in Scranton last night (helps to offset the cost of the drive since they are a dollar less per can there than here at the office.) For some reason they stopped selling them here at work. Apparently they follow the school of economics that says “if a product sells out so quickly that you can’t keep them in stock – stop stocking them.” Considering it was the only energy drink that they sold out of week after week and considering that they makes close to a 100% profit on them (they sell them for about three dollars a piece and they cost less than two to buy wholesale – maybe a lot less) it is crazy for them not to keep them completely stocked. But instead they dropped the entire Rockstar line and now only carry nasty Full Throttle drinks from Coke that nobody drinks. I don’t understand.  Although the people who stock the fridge are not the people who make extra money from the items selling.  The stocking is controlled by the stockers and the cashiers.  Both of whom benefit from the drinks selling as little as possible.  This is an example of an inverse financial incentive that is so common in business today.  I think that the principle of inverse incentives should be one of the first things that they teach to collegiate business students.

Today I learned why it is unwise to put someone in the dryer.  Basically it is hard to start the dryer and have enough time to get away!

Okay, that is enough from me today.  Be well.

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