Governor blogging

With very short notice (middle of Friday afternoon), we were told the following:

Governor Riley will be on campus this Monday, November 7, at 11:15 a.m. to address all employees. The meeting will be located in the xxx Lecture Hall and will last about 30 minutes. Please plan to arrive at 11:00 a.m. to allow everyone to be seated before the program begins.

Classes will be dismissed at 11:00 a.m. to allow all faculty to attend. Only the 11:00 a.m. classes will be affected by this dismissal. All other classes will meet as scheduled.

Please let Dr. xxx know if you cannot attend.

Now, I thought it was good to get a chance to hear the Governor's thoughts on the 2-year college system here in AL, but I could have done with a bit more notice. I have a mini-mester principles class (usually runs till 11:40) that is having a test on Wednesday and I'd planned to finish preparing them today. As it was, I had to try to squeeze too much into too short a time. I'm pretty sure I know what the outcome will be, but I'll deal with that next week.

Anyway, point is -- I got to hear the Governor speak today, but now I'm even more behind. Oh, as for the Governor's speech ...

It was not a bad talk. He spoke about how economic and workforce development are THE priority issues for the state right now and the 2-year system will continue to be the leaders in these areas. In addition, we (the state) just got a bazillion dollars in federal grants for workforce development, etc. It was a typical "rah rah" speech, but it was pretty good. Of course, Gov. Riley is not hugely popular because he opposed the 6% education raise last year, but I think the man is a realist who doesn't like to promise the impossible. Anyway, that's just my opinion -- which I keep to myself around my co-workers.

So, blogging will be brief this week while I try to catch up the econ folks and teach the Poisson distribution to stats.