Move Out Day

Wow, this year has been a blast. I seem to have this cursed blessing of getting involved in more than I know what to do with, and this year has been no exception. Between Engineering, Tau Gamma Kappa, my business, my campus committee, the State-Langon neighborhood, random personal projects like this blog, and my friends, there has been something to do no matter where I turn. I love it.

Everything seem so surreal now. I'm sitting here with a bag of chips and a half of a thing of salsa hoping that I'll be all packed by the time my mom gets here. Man this salsa is too hot for me. Besides my desk, everything still looks normal. However, anyone who knows me knows that my computers are no small deal. I just spent the last 2 hours shutting them down and packing them up - Save my laptop of course :)

Just a day ago I fell asleep in this desk chair completely exhausted from finals. Just a day ago I was eating with all of my dormmates. Just a day ago I felt like I should study some more for my exam (I didn't). Just a day ago I was riding the bus, hanging out at the Union, and enjoying Library Mall. Just a day ago Madison was everything I had gotten used to over the past 8 months. Just a day from now I will be heading to an interview for a summer job. Just a day from now I will be getting ready to host the first party of the summer. Just a day from now I will be driving, mowing the lawn, and working on my potato cannon.

Now I'm heading home back to my family. Heck, I don't even know where home is anymore. I've signed a lease for a house that starts in August on the dreaded August 15th, but my lease here has ended. I've lived with my parents for a full 6 weeks in the past 8 months; I'm not entirely sure if I can call that home anymore.

I don't expect this blog to stop over the summer. I write because I have interest in these things. Madison may be gone from my surroundings for a while, but it certainly won't be gone from my thoughts. I just hope that the Madison I have grown to love doesn't leave while I'm gone from it.

This salsa is really spicy.

SigEp Fire - Devistating

What a horrible experience. This fire was so big that I was scared most of the time I was watching it. Many people don't realize what kind of problems happen when fighting a fire. If you look at the video you will find good examples of what I'm talking about here. First off, the water pressure wasn't high enough around here, possibly because of well #12 being shut off recently, although I can only speculate that having 5 or more fire hoses running full blast takes more pressure than a city water system is really made for. When I got back to my dorm at around 2:15 the water pressure was still low; and I was still am covered with soot from standing on the other side of the street for a half hour. On the soot note, not only do I still smell like smoke, but a friend of mine who lives a block away from the fire said that he thought his building was on fire because he saw smoke coming under his door from the hallway! I am not looking forward to walking to class tomorrow; and it's a final at 8am.
Now, the hoses that were running were pumping out some power. No hose has less than two people at it. These hoses are not your typical garden hose; They're at least 5 inches thick. Heck I'm not sure any normal houses have water pipes this big. There's roughly a gallon in every foot of that pipe.
The nozzles on those things are pretty crazy too. They are known to have serrated blades (yea, the same kind of serrated blades you would find on a steak knife) that pulverize the water into a fine mist to help cool the air - important because of the extremely hot fumes coming from the fire. If you watch the videos, you can see that every once and a while the fire disappears and for a second you feel at ease. Too bad, the fires just building up heat inside. The water doesn't really cool the air, just the ground it reaches. As the air gets hotter, more things in it are able to burn, then you get a jet of fire spewing from the building. It's very sudden, and almost always accompanied by a gasp in the crowd.

Those of us standing in the crowd quickly realized that the air quality had bottomed out. Every once and a while I felt like I was breathing in soot. This picture was taken from my dorm a few blocks to the North-East. You can see a water jet from the Ladder that was on the scene. This must have been a particularly tricky fire to fight because it was mostly focused on the back. There wasn't very good access to that angle.

At some point in the video, you can visibly tell that the firefighters were focusing on preventing the fire from spreading. It's a little hard to watch because even though you know they are wetting down the other buildings to protect them, you're left watching the fire go somewhat unchecked. The papers have already reported that the building is a complete loss. Also, at least one firefighter has been brought to the hospital, but the residents are all reportedly safe and healthy.

Don't mistake the streetlight for a flame. It lights up the mist and smoke to look like a giant blaze sometimes.


If you are interested in the original photos or video, please e-mail me. These photos have only been cropped and zoomed, not adjusted in any other way.

SAFEwalk "fully" staffed

After the whole debauchery that seems to have happened over the past few weeks, Gordon Graham of Transportation Services claims that they are back up to full staff and ready to handle all requests. In the press release it was stated that they hired replacements for all of the 11 students who left. Also, they noted that on an average day, only 1 hour of a 5 hour shift is spent walking around.

I can't believe the spin some people get away with. Just because only one hour of work is done on a 5 hour shift doesn't mean that that 1 hour of work is easy. I worked in retail for a while, and sometimes nobody would be in the store for an hour straight, then, almost magically, the store would get flooded with customers. Just because I had time to do nothing doesn't mean that I could serve 50 people at once moments later. Also, averages are devastating to statistics. I could only imagine that the workload on a weekend is greater than during the week.

Also, this "fully staffed" thing doesn't jive with any report we've had outside of these official ones. "Fully Staffed" should mean that the employees and the customers are satisfied with the service that is being done, not that the number of staff members is up to some arbitrary number.

Rather than Graham assuming that we'll trust him now, maybe he should respect the negative reports lately and prove them wrong with an outside review. After all, you don't win trust in the blogging community with press releases.

OMG, 911 truely botched this thing.

Wisconsin State Journal reported some depressing news about the whole Zimmerman situation. It seems that the cops were on a wild goose chase for "2 men" until around April 15th. The search for those 2 men started when the 911 center stated that when calling back Zimmerman's cell phone, 2 men answered and responded that the call was a mistake. Of course we all know what went wrong here; Zimmerman's call was never returned.

How about this for responsibility: County Executive Kathleen Falk doesn't want to discipline the call center's supervisor because it wasn't his fault; Well, if it isn't the overburdened employee's fault, then who's is it? Certainly nobody can be to blame for not staffing enough people, and someone could be to blame for not funding the center properly. Oh, I'll through out those arguments for the basic fact that a 2004 report said that they needed to increase staff, and they didn't even bother to get enough to bring the center up to par with others. The comparison is 10.something people per 100,000 calls right now to the average of 11.something people per 100,000 calls.

And I quote from the Wisconsin State Journal article:

Despite the county not following the recommendations of a 2004 report that determined immediate staff increases were needed for the center to keep up with the increasing number of calls, Falk again insisted the 911 center is not understaffed. "I have no data or information that tells me we are understaffing the 911 center," she said.

...

It seems to me like the question isn't if someone is going to take the blame, it's who: Falk or Joe Norwick, the call center's director.

Sadly, some individuals are corrupting the fraternity system's image for all of us.

The Critical Badger just reported on the alleged hazing in Sigma Phi Epsilon, and the New York Times is reporting on a recent incident at San Diego State University that lead to 75 students, mostly fraternity members, being arrested for drug charges related to selling.

I don't even know what to say. It's appalling to hear of the individuals who corrupt the image of the fraternity system. There are many valued leaders on campus involved in fraternities; Don't let your image of them be ruined by these other people.

SAFEwalk Under Pressure

There's been quite a bit of talk recently about the SAFEwalk employees leaving over poor management. It's funny how the problems echo the Union's problems not too long ago. It could all boil down to the simple problem of not enough money in the budget for the campus, but I think that we're seeing the culmination of management issues long in development.

The thing that sparked my mind is the mention of the Transportation Services. In the past they have forced ASM to agree to the city bus systems request for more money even though the price had already made a (semi)-long-term deal. Also, pre ASM Blog, the Campus Transporation Committee had trouble getting any more than demands from Transportation Services. If I remember correctly, a request for the budget by the board was met with a discussion with one of the campus' administrators telling them to just approve the budget. The administrator (I cannot remember who), was surprised that they weren't even presented with it of course. Jo Matzner was the student normally reporting to the Shared Governance body. Sorry for the lack of details, I don't normally take that detailed of notes during the SG meetings.

It's about time the management practices of Transportation Services get reviewed and the committee in charge of it is given more power to make things better.

Mifflin Arrests: UW Students or otherwise?

With Mike Verveer advocating for a student led organized block party next year, I'm afraid that city officials will start blaming the students for the record number of arrests seen this year. Don't let this happen yet. We need the police department to release the number of actual UW-Madison students arrested at the block party. I think all of us students are in agreement that we were fairly warned of the rules this year.

Ok, lets give them a break and let them throw in the MATC students too.

Bush's Elementry Reading Program Ineffective. Who do you blame?

I can't believe politics. The New York Times article, "Reading Program is Called Ineffective" explains how progress has not been made in grades 1, 2, and 3. Ever since the No Child Left Behind act, people have been blaming the White House for it's inadequacies, and it might have problems, I don't know; I am not an educator or someone very versed in educational policy. However, I do know that when a one billion dollar plan is approved, you can't expect it to succeed nearly as well when the budget is cut 60%. There seems to be some scandal going on over officials of the program having an interest in publishers whose books they pushed schools to buy. However, I am appalled at Washington's strategy of cutting funding to programs when they don't like how it is run rather than working to make the program work better.

For the record, the plan was approved by a Republican controlled congress, and our championed Democrat controlled congress decided to cut the budget.

4AM - All Quiet on the Campus Front - Almost

The phrase dates back to WW2, with quite a bit of irony in the literal translation from German, "Nothing new in the West." Just putting it into Madison context revives that irony one more time. Saturday, May 3rd was the last day for undergrads of UW-Madison to let it all out before finals starts, and boy did they let it out. I feel blessed to be such a part of something so big. This year sparked a little bit of controversy with the Madison Police Department; If you didn't hear, the residents of Mifflin Street were briefed earlier on this week about how they can avoid receiving a ticket. Stuff like: "Avoid having open parties" and "Be responsible for those on your property or kick them out." However, the afterparties showed a different side of the law. Battle scars included tickets for trowing a bucket into the air, putting one foot out onto public property while holding a beer, and holding a 2'x4' sign that read "This is what a police state looks like"(5). In fact, the peaceful sign holder was pursued by a cop on a horse. The bucket was unavailable for comment. It goes without saying that the MPD was out in force - a record 400 tickets were issued; easily paying for their presence today.

I love this town for it's ability to overcome. The Mifflin Block Party was started 40 years ago as an organized way to protest the war. Back in it's heyday, you could find the Mifflin Co-Op out on the street selling food, beer, and whatnot to anyone around.(1) This year Capitol Center foods was an obvious winner in it's ability to sell all the booze people could pay for throughout the course of the party, a luxury in a town where you can't buy a decent bottle outside of a bar after 9pm. One win that still needs to be fought for, however, only became apparent a few weeks ago when Brittney Zimmerman was murdered in her apartment. Not only did this happen a few short blocks away from Mifflin Street, but even with the police presence today it seems like this terrible tragedy wouldn't have been stopped. Don't look to the MPD, look to the cruddy job the county has been doing with the 911 system. It has been readily apparent in the news that shortly before her death, Zimmerman called 911, but her call was not handled properly due to the load that the call center was under. (2) If I may pull a bit of info from the Capitol Times, Dane County Board Chairman Scott McDonell seems upset that the whole situation is turning into a bunch of people pointing fingers at each other rather than solving the murder. Give me a break. Finding the murderer is a given, but I don't want to see this happen again. Ever. I would like to point out that the County Board sets the funding for the 911 call center that receives calls from cell phones in the area. Further Reading suggests that even the police are playing the blame game (3); After all, we do have 3 police departments in town. Meanwhile the call center's story gets hazy as th press tries to find explanation about the job status of the person who answered Zimmerman's 911 call. (4) It recently came to light that they transfered to a different city position shortly after. While we could attribute it to Zimmerman's call, it seems like the underlying problem is with the workload that the call center is under. Why haven't we found out what the content of the call was yet? It is intentionally being withheld, although we can only wonder why. Very recently (we're talking within the hours here), the Wisconsin State Journal reported on 911 call center problems addressed in a 2004 report that directly addresses the issues that might have lead to Zimmerman's dropped call(7). I can't wait to see the reactions this article gathers.

The sun is rising, defiant of the ten thousand people ready to sleep till the afternoon. There is so much I wish I could have fit into this article about the block party, but in reverence to the excitement that I've been through today and the unique experiences that Mifflin brings to all it's attendees, I feel that they are best left for word of mouth.

Further Reading:
(1) Wisconsin State Journal article, "Mifflin St. Block Party still wild at 40". May 1st, 2008
(2) Wisconsin State Journal article, "911 chief: We fumbled the call". May 2nd, 2008
(3) Wisconsin State Journal article, "Cops not cutting it, Marino family says". May 2nd, 2008
(4) Wisconsin State Journal article, "Dispatcher was transferred, boss admits". May 2nd, 2008
(5) The Capitol Times article, "Mifflin Street party-goers upset with police". 6:35PM May 3rd, 2008
(6) Wisconsin State Journal article, "This Mifflin Street party is different". 12:35AM May 4th, 2008
(7) Wisconsin State Journal article, "2004 report warned of 911 Center problems". 12:03AM May 4th, 2008

This article was accidentally released before it was finished, please allow the changes made before 5:45am.

Political Limericks - I love it

From Badger Herald online comments:

There once was a man named Gore,

who thought he had a climate change cure,

then things like grain and rice,

went far up in price,

now he's to blame for starving the poor!

I have to look for more of these! Sometime next year you're bound to find me sitting in library mall with a guitar in hand singing goofy stuff like this.

Dang, I need to write one of my own.

Once there was a little student blog
It didn't try to break news
Only to explain and review
What has become the news zoo
It's still moving, clearing the fog