We're number 66!

This is how you really know that nobody respects the tournament that you're playing in. Check out the spelling on the front of the t-shirt. Since I saw the picture I've been sitting here trying to think of a university that would sound funnier with only 1 letter missing, but I think they may have taken the cake with West Virgina*. The 2005 athlete graduation rate at West Virginia is 66%**. I wonder if these guys even knew. "Yes, we just won the NT!"

* Even just as hilarious is that the spell checker on here doesn't have a problem with Virgina.

** They calculate athlete graduation rates based on 6 years, I wonder of that is the norm? The main reason for this second footnote is that I feel like once I break the footnote seal I need at least 2....anyways, Let's Go Mountaineers, Let's Go Drink Some Beers!

Worst timing ever...

Ok this is pretty funny what just happened to me. One can get from my office in Oswald Tower to my house in a couple of ways. The easiest is the bus, which I wish I took today, that has a stop near my apartment and near my office. Or, one can drive to the football stadium parking lot and take a free loop bus that also stops near my office, which is what I did today. When I left Oswald Tower the sun was out. There seemed to be a thunderstorm brewing but I felt safe that I would easily beat it home. But you know what they say about assumptions. By the time the loop bus made it to Beaver Stadium it was absolutely pouring rain. But with no shelter to be found the only choice was the mad dash to the car, not easily done in flip flops.

Long story short, I got absolutely soaked, even though it was only about 150 yards to my car. My only solace was watching people wrestle with umbrellas as they made the same desperate dash. Why people think that an umbrella is going to do much good when the rain is coming in sideways I will never know. I saw no less than 5 get turned inside out by the gusts. To top it all off, by the time I got home the sun was out again. I guess it is true what they say about timing, and my lack of it was readily apparent this afternoon.

Keep your eyes on the clouds!

Just a little taste....

So this past weekend was the Sociology and Crime, Law, and Justice Graduate Recruitment Weekend. Last year I had managed to fake my way into having a few schools fly me out for these weekends. It is a pretty cool time. You spend a few days getting pampered with good food and, depending on where you go, some free booze too. Besides having to talk about your research interests about 100 times, it feels pretty good to have people tell you how much they want you to join their program. It is basically a nice ego boosting couple of days.

This was my first year on the other side as I had to help swoon the recruits this year, but in the process discovered a secret reason for these lavish recruitment weekends: It gives graduate students a little taste of the lifestyle we're supposedly working towards. As most people who live paycheck to paycheck know money is always kind of tight. As in, if I go drink some beers (and then maybe some more beers) some night than I might have to extend the amount of days at the end of the month where meals have no danger of being called mouth watering. Even though I repeatedly tell people that money isn't everything, they often counter by pointing out I only say that because I have none. Only time will tell with that debate.

But it's the life we, as grad students, choose to live and part of that is because dangling out there is a career (if we choose academia) that was ranked #2 in the US last year (you'll have to take my word here as I have no citation to document this claim). But every once in a while the higher ups give us grad students a little taste of the good life. So a couple times a year we might get treated to professionally catered meals with open bars, or as in the case of recruitment weekend a $40/plate brunch that would blow your mind. As a side bar here, I might have managed to eat $40 worth of food being that this brunch had everything from an omelet bar to a desert bar covered. As another side bar, it was really strange for me to go to a dinner where there were no trash cans to be found, despite the buffet and open bar. I probably walked around this professor's house for 10 minutes looking for a trash can or recycling bin before I realized that the servers circulating the crowd were on top of it. One of the servers found it pretty funny when I gave her all the crumpled napkins that had accumulated in my pockets throughout the course of the night.

So while the recruits are now gone and it's back to business as usual, it is only 363 days and counting until brunch at the Nittany Lion Inn. And I'm left with one important lesson: Throwing away plates and empty beer cans is hard work, pay someone to do it for you.

More Warner Jeep fun...

I really wanted to get this video out to the world since I took it becuase it is so awesome. During the previously mentioned trip to Meeteetse the folks and myself took a little day trip up the Wood River. I had just gotten the new digital camera and really wanted to shoot a video, so we thought what better way than to show the Jeep flexing its muscles.

So here is link to a YouTube video of the Jeep playin' in the water:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__jJ4yGi-PY

Unfortunately my camera cannot do sound. Enjoy!

Some quality time with Willy

Before I moved to State College I spent a few glorious weeks in Meeteetse. Since I was pretty much by myself during the days, I put in some quality time with Warner Jeep. The Jeep spent the majority of the time posing and basically showing off. I know some of you have seen these pictures, but for those that haven't I think they are really great.

The Jeep also insisted that I take some in black and white so that people could really get the sense of that 'ole timey' feel.

Ok so this a test post to see if Maggie got her feeds to work.

A musing on technology....

Like most people (I think), I'm reminded on a daily basis about how far technology has come. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of technological advances - Google pretty much runs my life these days - but this time of year always sparks a memory of something lost to technology. See in Meeteetse, Wyoming things came about a bit slower. People cannot believe it when I tell them that I never saw MTV till college and I can remember receiving VHS recordings of the Simpsons via Stuey in Syracuse.

However before the Internet made this particular practice obsolete, this time of the year marked maybe the most frantic 30 minutes the Warner household would experience all year. Over hand make brackets, and later simple computer created printouts, we would sit down on Selection Sunday and scramble to get all 64 teams filled in correctly. Between the necessary griping over whatever seed Syracuse received and frantic scribbling on brackets, this 30 minutes really contributed to the Madness that is March. So while now moments after the Selection Show you can print out a complete bracket, I kind of miss those frantic minutes helping my dad get all 64 teams down.

Feel free to post other aspects of life lost to technology...

Greetings from Central PA

In a conversation with my little sister she recommended that members of our family should all have blogs so that we can keep up to date with each other's activities. I thought that it was a great idea and so while I wait for the second round of the NCAA Tournament to tip off I figured I would sit down and write my first post. While I didn't share her same problems with finding a name that wasn't taken (both codywray.blogspot and codywarner.blogspot were both available, I obviously settled on the former), I did struggle in deciding what I would post. Well a lot has happened over the past year and I think that is a good place to start.


To begin, in June of last year I packed up and left the great state of Wyoming and headed east. While some of my Wyo friends remarked that it was simply a return to my Yankee roots, the real reason was that I was accepted to Penn State's Crime, Law, and Justice Program. Somewhere during the course of my undergrad education I realized that having a real job was not on my radar yet and decided to forge ahead. So I made the move to Pennsylvania and started the program this past fall.



A lot of my friends with jobs - and subsequently money - think that I'm pretty insane to stay in school all this time. But I am a huge nerd and love to learn. But school can be a little overwhelming at times. I can only read so many chapters and articles in a given week before my brain has had enough. However, I've recently learned that there has to be a balance. While my thirst for knowledge will never been quenched, I cannot fill it completely with academics. So this past winter I started learning how to do a couple things that have brought a lot of peace and joy to my life.




First, thanks in large part again to my little sister, I learned how to snowboard. I had made a rather unsuccessful attempt some time ago and swore over my bruised body and ego that I wouldn't be strapping into a board anytime soon. Then this past winter thanks to several homebrews and some encouragement I decided to give it another try. Thanks to some quality instruction I was able to pick it up pretty quick and am now totally hooked. While I never felt any sort of regrets for not trying again after my first attempt, I learned a valuable life lesson this time around. It takes a lot of determination to get up one more time than you get knocked down - or fall in this case. And that lesson has helped quite a bit off mountain as well. Any grad student can inform you that you feel knocked down quite a bit.



The other thing I'm learning to do is brew beer. However, this is less of a learning experience than a fulfillment of a destiny. After having witnessed growing up countless batches of beer being brewed and then drinking some of the finest brews around over the holidays I decided my time had come. Luckily a fellow grad student had the same itch and we decided to split the cost on all the equipment, and unfortunately the finished product as well. The pictured batch is an Extra Special Bitter (ESB). Soon it will go into bottles and early next month into my belly. Hopefully some day I can reach the bar set by my pops and make beer that people really like.





Well my apologies go out to anyone that decided to read this, it got quite a bit longer than I anticipated. But when you learn you've got to share. Who knows what my next learning experience will be...I'm leaning towards traveling. This hick has never been outside the United States and I think it is about time to see the world.