Great weather, weekend update, and the Powell Doctrine

The weather took a brief detour into Indian Summer these past two days (after several days of fall coat weather). I took advantage of the weather to head out on a bike ride (out to Kitchener airport, incidentally; ~10 miles each way). On the way, I realized that the lite-rock radio station CHYM-FM just won't leave me alone:



Other than that, I had a relatively frustrating meeting with chief grad student and my advisor earlier that day, so it was good to take out my agressions by dry heaving around the countryside. First, we agreed to meet for breakfast on Sunday to talk about plans for the Vancouver Test Hut we are doing at the end of this month. They decided to move it to Sunday afternoon but didn't bother telling me, so I spent the morning in 'idling' mode after leaving messages and waiting. Second, we spent a lot of the meeting discussing things that I didn't need to be there for (future of the graduate group/recruiting new talent, finances of this job), or that should have been dealt with weeks ago (selection of walls for the test hut). The bottom line was that we finished up around 5 PM, while I was expecting to be done a little after brunch. I got a bike ride in, but it pretty much blew away the time I had slated for school reading today.

It would have been a good opportunity to broach the PhD topic with them, but to be honest, I am getting less and less enthusiastic about the idea. Even with it floating around my mind, I still have not been struck by the, "Yes, this is really the opportunity I need to take" bug. Instead, I have just been hearing internal echoes of, "I don't know if this is a good idea, Yogi." I guess that one thing I like about limiting myself to a Master's is that it is a demonstration of the Powell Doctrine in a graduate school setting: have a clear goal and exit strategy, use overwhelming force (in my case, one course a semester), and I know that I can sustain the commitment of one more year or so. Part of me definitely makes the association: "PhD = quagmire."

Incidentally, I find it completely tragic that our current involvement in Iraq runs counter to the Powell Doctrine in every way, that we are seeing the problems that could have been predicted as a result of not heeding it, and that General Powell was the mouthpiece that the administration used to make the case for the war. Sorry... enough politics for now.