Big Fun Times at CSU
by Zube (zube@stat.colostate.edu)  
Created:  Jun 6, 2008
Updated:  May 6, 2010
http://www.stat.colostate.edu/~zube/bigfun.txt

Cable Costs
-----------
I went to CSU Ramtech, the software and technology on-campus store, to
buy some ethernet cables.  Here were the prices:

7' - $4.50
8' - $5.00
9' - $75.00
10' - $6.00

The 9' one is not a typo.

HVAC in my Office
-----------------
This is an odd topic, but I find it interesting even though it is
related to HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning).

The thermostat in my office has two dials, one for heat and one for
cooling.

Which one am I supposed to use?  It's hard to tell.

The only way to know which one is active is to move the dial a bit and
see if it hisses like a goose protecting its goslings.  If it does,
that's the active one.  Because only one is active, my temperature
choices are limited.  The building provides either heating or cooling,
but never both at the same time.  So if it is a hot day and the
building is being cooled, I can turn off the cooling but I can't get
any heat and vice-versa.

During the spring/fall months, swings in temperature cause the building
to be cooled during the day yet heated at night.  This would not matter
if the heat dial was active when heat was available and the cooling
dial was active when cooling was available, but that is not always the
case.

Here is a typical scenario in my building:

1) hot day, cooling available, so I turn the cooling dial down to 60
2) my office is cooled very nicely, even with servers running
3) during the night, the building switches over to heat, but the cooling
   dial is still the active one
4) hot air pours into the room and it's 90 or so when I get in the next 
   morning

Because of this design, during the spring/fall months, every night before 
going home I must set both dials to "off", meaning the cooling dial to 85 
and the heating dial to 55.

Parking Services
----------------
Consider the Oval, the ovaliest oval you ever did see.  Parking is
permitted around much of the Oval.  

Last week, signs went up that read:

"No Parking, Mar 13-17" 

on one side of the oval.  That's Saturday through Wednesday (March
2010).  The restrictions were for the annual trimming of the large,
lovely trees that sit inside the oval.

I'm one of the poor slobs that regularly works on Sunday and since I'm
too cheap to pay for a parking permit, Sunday is the only day I am able
to skip my long trudge from far, far away to my office.  The fact that
the 14th was included had me worried.  Would they really be trimming
trees on Sunday?

I wasn't disappointed.  There wasn't a tree trimmer in sight.  Half
of the oval was closed for no reason save that Parking Services was
incapable of writing:

"No Parking, Mar 13, 15-17" 

I would have reported this "oversight" to Parking Services, but they do
not have an email address on their web page and they are, predictably,
open only 8-5 M-F.

It continually amazes me how people who make rules and expect them
to be followed do not realize how stupid rules invite ridicule and
contempt for the whole system.