"A bee's nest of bees that don't sting."

This is a bee's nest full of bees that tickle. Which in my opinion is significantly worse in my book.

What does this quote even mean you might be asking yourself right now. In a short conversation held with Chad on Sunday (2-7-2010) afternoon about the formation of Manbearpig we concluded that this group was a bee's nest. We have some pretty big plans for making an impact in our seminar in professional writing. For instance, with the latest news on what "The Situation" and "Snookie" from MTV's "The Jersey Shore" are up to completely changes some of our idea's for the final research paper. These two superstars have decided to copyright their alias's... Well Situation and Snookie, Manbearpig is looking forward to professionally citing you.

As for what went down today, not a whole lot. We are in the embrace of another snow storm here in Slippery Rock and the meteorologists say we could recieve up to seven inches of snow. This brings up the question of having class canceled tomorrow (Please don't cancel Jason!). I attended GIS class (even though it was made optional because of the weather) and we delved into the area of LIDAR and Cloud Point Data Sets. This was awesome to learn about and a great intro class, I am really looking forward into digging into this topic. This is the portion of GIS I am most interested in because it opens to door to using GIS as a analytic tool (which is what I would like to do post graduate school). After class ended I went and spoke to Chad for a little bit. He informed me that he had to send his weight lifting shirt back to the company he bought it from and expressed some displeasure in having to do so. He said the shirt was too small for him to fit in and if he was going to compete in a weight lifting competition the shirt needed to be the proper size. Yes that is correct Chad is looking into competing in a weight lifting competition! Good luck dude.

Till Next time,

Cheers,

dan

"Hey Dan, I bought my first benching shirt"

Today has been relatively uneventful. I woke up later than usual and cursed at myself for falling asleep with my contacts in. My eyes feel as if they have been infected with anthrax...

After running a few errands, I made my way to campus around 1 oclock to meet up with my GIS group about our presentation in class today. This presentation is going to be epic and I am looking forward to presenting it. This is where I ran into Chad for the first time today, in the ATS advanced GIS lab...

Chad was sitting in front of a brand new mac computer looking at grown men bench press massive amounts of weight (over 400lbs for 20+ repetitions). Chad is an avid weight lifter, he is a gym rat if you will. I was interested in why Chad was so enthralled with watching these (he referred the guys as gorillas), so I asked him what the deal was. Turns out that Chad watches these guys bench press to perfect his benching form. The conversation went one way and then another, then finally Chad told me that he had purchased a kevlar bench pressing shirt so that he could get one rep for over 450lbs! Way to go Chad!

to be continued...

After the brief meeting in the advanced GIS lab with Chad, it was time for us to head across the hall for Environmental Geographic Information Systems (GIS)class. Our groups were presenting our first project of the semester for the class, the Slippery Rock University/Community Green Map. My group (Jake Moore, Liberty Merrill, James Stitt and I) had a steller performance. James knocked the socks off of this presentation, while Jake and Liberty relished in the great work that they had completed. I played a relatively small role in this project, my team is serious haha. They grabbed the bull by the horns on this project to say the least. Our map was pretty solid and did a great job of conveying of the recreational opportunities in the Slippery Rock area along with some sustainability initiatives that are taking place around the university. However, we may have been bested by Chad and his team mates Tim Zeitler and Emily Wilkinson. Their performance was almost flawless, they even introduced a "roll over" feature a concept that no other group had brought to the table. They suggested having icons that were so interactive that when you rolled your mouse over them a photo popped up showing what the descriptive icon actually is in the real world! wowza! Their perfomance had one weak link which was blaringly obvious though, and it was all Chad's fault. For some reason Chad decided to make the roads on his map pale yellow, which took away from their importance on the map. Why Chad did this nobody knows, but it definitely took away from the overall quality of their map... Shame on you Chad.

-End

cheers,

dan

"Poking at the bear"

Today in professional writing, class began with Jason going over the final group project which is due at the end of the semester. He then informed us that he has finished writing his doctoral dissertation and for doing so received much applause.

After Jason's applause we selected groups for the final project. I gladly joined up with Chad and Cory St. Esprit for the project. I pointed out to Chad (The Dirt Water Fox) that he is wearing his favorite "I Care House" long sleeve t-shirt, which has "I Care about myself, I care about others, and I care about my community" written in a font that looks like a five year old wrote it. In response to this and my blog about him, he told me "you are poking at the bear". This really brought a rise out of Jake Moore and I. We next selected a name for our group. Staying with the bear theme, we named ourselves "manbearpig". After the groups had time to formulate all of their group names and become one with them, we presented our group names and did a brief introduction in front of the class. Here, Chad informed the class that our group name was "manbearpig and not manbearpigs because manbearpig is plural for manbearpig (like deer)." The name manbear pig has significance to our group, we are using it kind of as a parody of a parody. The term manbearpig was created by the makers of south park to make fun of Mr. Al Gore and his ideas on climate change. Since we are students of the sustainability field, we are in turn using manbearpig in an ironic fashion.


Group presentations finalized and Chad informed Jason that we were changing our group name to manbearpig, because he thought that the plural version of manbearpig was more appropriate for a group name than the singular version which is manbearpig.

Wayne Myers brought up the anti-technology society known as the LUDDITES, this was completely random and it really confused me. The luddites are hard to get a hold of because they have no phones or internet, which is what Wayne was trying to say. The conversation went on a bit of a tangent and we talked about the luddite compound likely being full of advanced technology weapons such as guns and the irony that is there.

We then entered a discussion on talking in Rhetoric. Karen Abrams brought up a good point about talking to people she works with about sustainable systems. She stated that if she tells people shes interested in sustainable systems people often do not know what she is talking about, but if she says she is interested in green technology then people have a better grasp on what she can contribute to them.

*This class has taken a strange turn. During the break session, Wayne taught me how to find food in the garbage that is still edible. I actually ate a cup of fruit that was thrown away, oddly enough I feel like I could do it again. I may never go to the vending machine again.

We then proceeded to do a role playing session where Chad and Tim Zeitler played characters from the movie Office Space. Chad's rendition of Peter Gibbons was five stars! somebody get chad a trophy. However, Chad's acting was incredibly inferior to Tim's. Tim's portrayal of Bill Lumberg was spot on, he definitely outshined Chad.

The class was wrapped up with by going over more examples of communication errors that have been published. We separated into the groups that we formed at the beginning of class, manbearpig was reunited. Manbearpig had a mach comic strip that was picking on youtube, facebook, and twitter. We were to analyze this and figure out who the author was, who it was intended for (the audience), the comics effectiveness, and the comics flaws. Chad took on the task of being manbearpig's spokes person, this is appropriate since he is the team leader (the self proclaimed bear). He did a nice job of summarizing this comic strip, getting the point across with out using any profanity! Chad is beginning to use more articulate language now that he is a graduate student.

Tonight's class was a great success with exception to a few awkward moments, namely eating out of the garbage and Chad telling me to rub his shoulders (not gunna happen Chad, nice try though). A few other awkward moments occurred due to the t-shirt that I am wearing tonight. It turns out that some people are sensitive to the phrase "my other ride is your mother"... Sorry Jason and Karen! I left home in a hurry today and forgot that I had this shirt on... Don't ask what I was doing at home.

cheers,

dan


p.s. James Stitt said concoughphoney (spelling??) hats off James, this is definitely a two dollar word.

The Fox and "The Situation"

The second week of my seminar in professional writing was action packed. Jason made class very entertaining by using an analogy featuring MTV's superstar "The Situation". The purpose of using "The Situation" was to make us (the class) understand that the writing product was not as important as the writing process. After Jason made this clear, he went over the fundamentals of the writing process and showed us some flow models of how writing a paper should go.

Jason then showed a slide featuring MTV's "The Situation". Chad displayed his displeasure of this image by growling and stating that he hates "The Situation". He then went on to disrespect "The Situation" by referring to him by his birth name and not his television alias. Chad then gave a few reasons as to why he does not like "The Situation" and this seemed to bring him some solace.

The next portion of class was spent in the computer lab. While in the computer lab, we observed some examples of real world mishaps in professional writing/language. The class was divided into groups of three and each group researched a example provided by Jason. I had the delight of being in a group with Chad and Kyle Kraynak. We delved into a political website. This particular website was used to shorten website addresses so that they could be embedded into other web pages easier (websites such as twitter, facebook, etc.). The mishap here is that some people abused the site and shortened the addresses of pornographic websites and made it seem as though the political party was supporting these websites. This was very entertaining to see and also play with. Chad was the brains behind showing Kyle and I how this website worked and what its use as a tool was. Chad then went on to say that he wished he had known this site was available before the political party began blocking the pornographic/inappropriate websites. Implying that he himself would have enjoyed slandering the political party.

Todays class was very eventful and I obtained quite a bit of knowledge. I cannot wait until next week!

cheers,

dan

First Blog Ever

This is my first all time blog entry, it feels just as exhilarating as I imagined it would feel.

I am anticipating that my seminar in professional writing will be a fun and exciting class (this is the class that is the inspiration for this very blog.). The first class of the semester kicked off with a real bang, as the professor (Jason Stuart) spent the majority of the class getting to know his students. We all were asked to write a little about ourselves and turn it in to him at the beginning of class. Mr. Stuart then proceeded to read over the small autobiographies and talked to the individuals about what they had written about themselves. This process took up most of the class time and when the dust had settled, we (the class) all had a better understanding of who was sitting next to us. We also had a great perspective of Jason Stuart, he made a good impression with me and as a result I feel much more comfortable with the class agenda.

Historically, I am not one for english/writing classes. So when I seen there was a seminar in professional writing on the curriculum I instantly cringed in agony. I do not enjoy grammar or anything associated with grammar, therefore, I was not planning on appreciating this seminar one bit. Jason Stuart (who I will refer to as Jason from here out) alleviated all of my negative feelings about this seminar class when he stated "this will not be a grammar based course", I was giddy with excitement after hearing this. He went on to say that the purpose of this course was to teach us how to communicate in the professional world through writing and if we didn't know grammar by this point than that it is our own fault... Good point! Jason then pried into our past writing experiences. He seemed to be fascinated with the prospect of working with a class full of science writers (Jason's background is in english writing). By the way, my writing has been focused more on appealing to the scientific community. Jason told the class that in professional writing it is crucial to write in a fashion that everyone can enjoy, not just scientists.

This course should help me to expand my writing skills and open my mind up to another style of writing. I hope that this course changes the mental stigma that I have formed over the past years, which is that writing is a chore that needs to be done. I want to be able to write for fun and to express what is on my mind.

Chad Fette www.facebook.com/people/Chad-Fette/533530892 added some excellent insight when he made sure the class understood his undergraduate degree was in sport management. He went on to say that he has wrote "gigantic papers" notably one on the Baierl Recreation Center at Allegheny High School. This gigantic paper was over 100 pages and had over 40 appendices! Chad set the tone with this statement, letting everyone know that he is not afraid to write some incredibly long documents.

cheers,

dan