Can I keep it?

I'm testing out a 1.25 Ghz 15" PowerBook this weekend, in the hopes of being able to keep it. It's coming out of our on-campus Apple store, and has been used as a demo. Hopefully my dept. can come up with the money to make it mine permanently, I miss the iBook I used to have. I requested one of the new 12" PowerBooks, but our Director told me to check with the Apple Sales group first, as they'll usually give us a hefty discount on these slightly used models. This one has the SuperDrive, 80GB hard drive, and AirPort Extreme already built in. What more could you want? There are really some great apps for the Macintosh these days, and OS X is a lot more mature than it used to be. I think when my grandparents need a new computer, I'm steering them towards Macs from now on...

I'm back

Well, I'm back in Iowa, and back at work. I came back today for my first annual review since joining my new department. It was a good review, pretty accurate, both in where they complimented me, and where I was criticized. I was rated "Highly Satisfactory" overall, so I think that means they're keeping me. :)

Higher Ed. Blogger

Just so I don't forget about it when I get home, I need to add this site to my list of daily reads, it belongs to another Sysadmin in Higher Ed who also runs NetBackup.

Give us your blood... or else.

This article pretty much sums up why I never wanted to join the Greek system in college. "Punishment for not giving blood is going to be quite severe"? Encouraging people to donate blood who shouldn't, just to boost your stupid little sorority's morale? That's despicable, and hopefully the chapter boots her right out of their dumb little club. At the very least, they should teach her how to use an apostrophe. I just had no enthusiasm for a lot of the "forced fun" activities that went with the Greek system. What if I don't feel like working on your lame lawn display or parade float? Or your blood drive? And, most of the Greek houses I was in at ISU were in danger of being condemned. I was in one where you weren't allowed to walk on certain parts of the second floor, because you may fall through. I swear I am not making that up. I couldn't believe people would pay to live in that place.

XServe RAID

We've got a demo unit of an XServe RAID in at work, and it's a neat piece of hardware. I'm not in charge of it, or anything, but I've poked at it a bit, and seeing 3.5TB of storage in that little unit is pretty amazing. We're considering using it with some non-Apple systems, just as an economical method of getting a lot of storage for a small price. AlienRAID is a great resource for this sort of thing, and Apple has certified the unit for use with Windows, Linux, and Netware now. So far, the only drawback seems to be that it takes hours to initialize the disks, but I'm sure that's true of all arrays of this size.