Yet Another Wedding

My girlfriend and I spent the weekend in Carroll, Iowa, at yet another wedding.  We have three to go to this month, two down, one to go.  This one was for a good friend of mine from high school, and was a nice affair, except for the unnecessarily long Catholic wedding ceremony.  It took well over an hour, and we non-Catholics weren't even supplied with the script, so none of us even responded during the times we were supposed to.  Why couldn't he have married a nice atheist girl instead?

After the reception, I was elected designated driver to haul a bunch of high school friends to Ruby's, a local bar.  We checked out the topless G-String joint next door (the girls wanted to, and I swear I am not making this up).  It was disappointing to say the least, though I will say this, if you're looking for budget strippers, Carroll, Iowa has you covered.  They did things for a buck that cost $20 at the only other nudity-related bar I've ever been in.

Fortunately, the other half of the bar had Monkey's Uncle playing, and they turned out to be a pretty good cover band.  They had the crowd rocking along, and even did a pretty passable version of Billy Joel's "Piano Man", complete with harmonica.  The drinks at this bar turned out to be pretty cheap too, a round for the five of us came to only $10.50, which isn't too bad for two bottled premium beers, two mixed drinks, and my Pepsi. We left a little after 1:00 a.m. and went back to the Super 8 to crash.  If you're ever in Carroll, it has TWO Super 8 Motels, which is surprising for a middle-sized Iowan town, not to mention confusing if you made your reservation over the phone, and didn't pay any attention to the address of your destination.

We ate at Hickory Park on the way back through Ames yesterday, and stopped to check out the Reiman Gardens, since they've been expanded this year.  I ran into Donald Lewis there, who works with John for the ISU Entomology Department where I did computer support as a student.  He remembered me from doing all of the Y2K checks on the computer equipment, which dragged up a whole bunch of memories of boring computer work that I'd rather forget.

I got home to find a snotty message from one of our faculty members who couldn't figure out how to log in to his computer.  It wasn't exactly a difficult problem, he simply wasn't replacing my username on both the Novell login screen and the Microsoft login screen, even though this is discussed in bold in the documentation that we gave him when we created his Netware account.  I'll give him points for persistance, if not for reading comprehension, as he called my house 5 times this weekend, and stopped by my house twice.  Fortunately for him, I was on the other side of the state, saving him from a probable black eye, as I don't really like to do computer support on my days off, especially at my front door, and certainly not for user-error type of questions.

Cavity Search

I spent yet another afternoon in the dentist's chair today.  I'd recently finished my four visit root canal saga, only to be informed that I was due for a check-up and cleaning.  Fortunately, my teeth got a clean bill of health today, though I hate when they scrape the tartar off the insides of my lower front teeth.

The dentist pointed out that two of my old massive fillings would probably have to become crowns at some point, should they become damaged or have any decay develop near them.  I told him that he'd already used up all of my insurance money for this year, so he'd have to wait until next year to wring any more out of me.  I'll have to brush those two teeth especially well, I guess...

I got back from the dentist just in time to get drenched in the rainstorms that rolled through the Cedar Valley this afternoon.  I had to put my "Visor" in the plastic bag with my Subway sandwich to avoid ruining it in my mad dash from the parking lot to Sabin Hall.  I had an umbrella in the trunk of my car, but I'd have gotten just as wet retrieving it as I got running to the building.  I think my building needs an underground parking garage.

Brace Yourself

I'm gimpy.  My left wrist had been bothering me for the last couple of weeks, so I decided to have it looked at.  Yesterday, I called an Orthopedic office, but they told me I needed to see my family doctor first.  Unfortunately, I didn't have one here.  I chose one out of the phonebook at random, and he's turned out to be a good guy, and one of my co-workers takes her entire family to him as well, though I didn't know that before I chose him.

They got me in this morning, and he determined that I have some "soft tissue damage" to my wrist.  Basically, I've injured the tendons/ligaments there by carrying around a lot of heavy and awkward computer equipment at work.  He gave me a dorky brace to wear, and told me to let him know if it helps.  After wearing it for only half a day, it has definitely decreased the amount of pain I was having in the wrist, so hopefully I can avoid the steroid injections that would be the "next step" in treating me.  I'm avoiding lifting all of the heavy equipment for the next few weeks, so I can give this time to heal.  This makes me feel a bit useless at work, since I have to get my student helpers to babysit me.  One of them has strep throat, so she's not in any shape to be moving heavy objects either.  Looks like the faculty are going to be moving their own computers if they want them repaired quickly...

I did finally get our "FTE" figured out for the Campus Agreement we're interested in signing.  I came up with a final number of 198, which we'll multiply by around $50 to license our Microsoft products for the next year.  A lot of the other admins on campus are wary of making a deal with Microsoft, but my figures showed that we were spending at least that much now, without having as much software or being able to update every machine like we could under the new agreement.  Any thoughts on this controversial licensing program?

Still Kickin'

Relax, I'm still alive!

The month leading up to the start of classes becomes quite hectic for your average technology person working in an educational setting.  You've got new lab machines to set up, new faculty to baby-sit, new classrooms to get going, new workers to train, and the occasional network SNAFU thrown in just to make life interesting.

My goal was to start updating this weblog once classes started again, and life returned to normal.  It took a week of classes for things to settle down, but I'm starting to get a little more free time in my daily routine.

Here's my interesting link for today, the Code Red Vigilante.  This is a neat little Java program that'll respond to any machine infected by Code Red with a message warning the user that they need to clean up their machine.

Feedback

I've been receiving quite a bit of e-mail regarding my recent iBook review.  I was linked to from Macintouch, iBookZone, and MacSlash, not to mention several of the usual weblogging suspects in the Manila community.  Most of the mail has been positive, but there are always people like this, ready to ruin the reputations of Mac users everywhere:

seth, welcome to the world where TECHNOLOGY WORKS FOR YOU, not the other way around. we mac users have been more productive for years, than pc users, because the os has built in intelligence. we uninstall by dragging things to the trash and emptying it. we NEVER have install nightmares, and unlike *ANY* (incl 2000) windoze os, if you need to re-install the os, you NEVER HAVE TO TOUCH THE APPS. try reinstalling windoze without re-installing the apps. YOU cant- because of the registry.

i hope you realize how dumb (and MS centric) it sounded to anyone who has used solaris, or even the mac os (my macs- (i am responsible for over 20) crash about once per month-- and the crash is ALWAYS repeatable. The os does not go down because someone clicked a mouse button in word!!!!! Windows crashes are truly random, and tend to happen once a week if you dont push your machine, daily if you do. (Pushing means running 3 or more apps simultaneously.)) when you say win2000 is the best os(63,000 bugs sound familiar?)

i run 3d modeling and rendering software on my mac while i surf the internet (with netscape) in the background. if netscape locks up, i just force quit it....no real problems.
lets talk internet explorer-- to 'integrate; this and kill netscape on windows platforms, MS made this a piece of the OS-- they actually made it a 'shell' if you're familiar with unix terminology... that is why it brings down the os if it crashes, and also what make you MUCH more susceptible to hacking...ever meet a peecee user with a drive named other than 'c:'??? i thought not...thats another reason they are so easy to hack.

i am writing currently an article about 'real world' mac advantages, like these and many others. i will forward you a copy of the url it gets published at when it does. it will enlighten you so you dont go around making ignorant statements like 'win2000 is the best os' (Do you know what every win nt and 2000 webserver should be called? "kenny"- cause they die at least once a week!!!bah-da-bump)--- look at the uptimes of various webservers around the world (netcraft.com)-- it will tell you what REAL stability is- not 'look ma i can run 3 apps at once without crashing'-- just cause a buick is better than your old escort, it doesn't put it in the league of a rolls royce---and when you say it does, you just look dumb.

here is hoping you take this in the friendly spirit it was intended, just to let you know you sounded ignorant (not stupid- just not knowing)

cjmarch

Several others wrote me about using Fire as an OS X native instant messaging client.  I had tried it previously, but found it unstable.  I'm happy to report that the latest builds are working much better for me, so now I only need to reboot into OS 9.1 to watch DVD movies.

And, a few more people complained that the page didn't render properly for them in Netscape 4.X  Several of them accused me of being still biased in favor of Microsoft by not making my web page work with their favorite Mac browser.  My page works just fine in Omniweb, iCab, Mozilla, Netscape 6.1, and Internet Explorer.  Maybe they should just use a browser that works a little better...

I've also been asked by the VP of the Rhode Island Mac Users Group if they can reprint my review in their newsletter (circulation 500).  So, perhaps I'm not the ignoramus that Mr. cjmarch thinks I am.

Hi

I read your review of the iBook. Good writing.

I am the VP of the Rhode Island Macintosh User Group. We publish a free 12 - 16 page monthly newsletter, AppleSource. This is distributed to our members

(250+/-) and about 250 others in southeastern New England.

Is it possible to reprint your article. We would credit you and your webpage, note that we are reprinting it with your permission and note that it is a copyright article. We would also provide you with several copies of the newsletter.

thanks for your consideration of this request. Keep up the writing.

Juan Mariscal

VP, Rhode Island Macintosh User Group

http://www.rimug.com