Flat Out Like a Lizard Drinking

Ok, I've been holding out for the camera cable but I haven't been able to get it. I should be around this weekend so I'll try and put some pictures up for the past posts if I get to it. These entries were getting old so I had to put them up.

So Tuesday, back to work. I woke up tired and slept most of the way to work on the tram. As I got off I realized something horrible. I either had my wallet stolen or it had fallen out of my pocket on the tram ride. My wallet had absolutely everything in it. My license, student ID, money, credit cards, tram pass, and an ems gift card were all in there. So I ran inside and called the tram company and they said they'd look for it and to check again after lunch. It was difficult to concentrate but the rest of the morning I made some last minute formatting and corrections on the surveys and integrated the target samples that both Max and I had selected.

After lunch, I called the tram company and luckily they had found my wallet and it had just fallen out of my pocket. They gave me an address and tram stop I needed to go to so I could pick it up. Luckily, it was on my tram route and on the way home. The rest of the day at work kinda flew by. I made some more pivot charts which linked our sample selections to their brigades and their brigades to their captains. The first step in conducting the survey would be to call the brigade captains and ask permission to talk to the volunteers within their brigades. I also talked to internet services and sent them a link and a press release (which I wrote) to post up on the members only, brigades online website. Max spent the day talking to the regional training managers to let them know what was going on and to spread publicity for our online survey.

On the way home I stopped at the address I was given to pick up my wallet and of course, they were closed. I decided I would pick it up tomorrow on the way to work. In the meantime, I had no money and no way to get any. As a result I spent the rest of the night just chilling in the apartment and washing clothes from the Adelaide trip. It's not like I could go out anyways because it absolutely poured. Some of the hardest rain this region has recieved in years. It just came down in buckets. It was funny watching the Asians get caught on the tennis court in the middle of the monsoon. They were all huddled underneath a tiny overhang which offered almost no protection and took the rain for like 30 minutes. I guess they thought it would stop...nope.

I went to bed early Tuesday night and woke up refreshed on Wednesday. It was still raining pretty hard. On the way into work I was able to get my wallet no problem. Luckily, everything was there and nothing had been taken. In the morning I secured a 100$ gift certificate to the CFA shop as incentive to volunteers to take our online survey. I also worked out the details with one of the online managers to have a link to our survey put in one of their weekly online newsletters. The newsletters are open to the public to view but the link takes you to Brigades Online where you need a password to get in which all members have. So once the newsletter is released with our link in it, I'll send it to you guys to check out. But don't even try to take the survey because you won't be able to. If there is interest I can send out a link for a dummy survey for you guys to check it out. Spent the rest of the day calling Brigade Captains. This signified a change in focus for the project. For the next couple of weeks we will be doing little else except making phone calls. Over 400 of them. We even got cool little telemarketer headsets. We found that a decent amount of people did think we were telemarketers. Apparently that's what a random American voice on the phone means to most people. So the next couple of weeks could be difficult.

I went home and had dinner. The rain cleared up and it was nice outside but I had another meeting with my useless advisers at 7:30. I kinda just tune them out now and stare at them like they're speaking Arabic when they talk to me. I have never experienced professors so technically stupid and just culturally inept at WPI. I'm glad that they teach civil and CS because I'll never have to see them again after this project. I thought our advisers were going to be Professor Ault and Barnett when I was interviewing. Then things changed, Professor Barnett stopped working at WPI and Professor Ault got more classes and responsibilities to attend to in Worcester. Had I interviewed with Professor Lemone and Salazar for this trip I would have turned down the invitation to come. They are that bad.

Spent the rest of the night relaxing and hanging out with the roommates. It seems we've gained a 5th roommate. Katie hung out with us all night and actually ended up sleeping on the couch. Zan is her project partner and she's definately got a thing for Putnam. She stayed with us for one night in Adelaide because the other girls had left. So she was the 5th person in our 4 bed room. She said she'd stay on the floor but when it came time to go to bed she wound up sleeping in Putnam's bed. So anyways it's kinda weird but at least she hangs out unlike some of the girls.

Thursday morning I woke up and took the tram to work. It was raining again, it kinda sucks but this region desperately needs it. I had an early meeting with my advisers and sponsors at 10am. Everytime we have one of these meetings Lemone says something borderline racist or at best totally culturally inept right to my sponsors. They kinda just look at her like she has bugs crawling out of her head. She might as well, nothing useful comes out of it. So when Lemone says something stupid/racist then it's Salazar's turn. I was saying in the meeting that firefighters had expressed wanting more hands-on practical training like if you can put up a ladder, show it to me. Everyone understood except Salazar who said "Like a picture?, They want more pictures in their training books?" I swear he was that kid in middle or high school who asked the dumbest questions and it would take the class forever to do anything. One of those people you just want to smack when they open their mouths. It was because of people like him (Lenon, stupid jocks, etc.) that I didn't care senior year of high school. Anyways our sponsors just kinda looked at us with a look that said, "Is this guy seriously that dumb?" and we moved on. Later Salazar would say something dumb again and I'm sure they were like "Wow, he really is that dumb." I now understand why the civil major is such a joke at our school. So in summary, the morning meeting was again totally useless.

We spent the rest of the day calling Brigade Captians. We don't have much else to do. On the bright side our online survey is doing very well. In just 24 hours it managed to get 28 responses. We're pretty excited it has been so popular. We expected to get around 200 responses but it may end up being a lot more than that. We caught an early tram back because we had a practice presentation at Vicdeaf near our apartment. Again it was an idiotic waste of time thought up by our all-knowing advisers. We were supposed to take 15 minutes to talk about our results so far. Barely anyone had real results. We had by far the most with the responses to our online survey. So what it ended up being was just a BS-fest. No one wanted to make a 5 minute presentation when we were allotted 15 minutes. It was flat out painful. We didn't get out of there until 8pm by which time we were all starving. It was too late to cook much so I made myself and egg and ham sandwich. Again we just hung out because it was kinda too late to do anything cool. Again, Katie hung out all night with us and ended up sleeping on the couch again. Well weekend soon. I don't have many plans but we'll see what happens. Possibly clubing on Friday and a footy game on Sunday.