Worms

Al has joined the wireless world. I helped him get his Airport talking to his AT&T Cable Modem, as well as his desktop machines. The 802.11 technology is very cool, and I'm happy to see that more people are starting to adopt it, as that means the price will come down. It's not outrageously prices now, but the average joe is still looking at $500 to outfit his house with wireless technology, compared to $100 for a basic wired home network. It's been hectic here at work the last couple of days. We had a few faculty members contract a couple of those nasty Visual Basic Script worms. We've now disabled the Windows Scripting Host on all of the computers in the college, as well as updating a lot of antivirus software. Today, I'm looking into purchasing the Enterprise Edition of Norton AntiVirus, with which we can force virus definition updates from the server-side. These were particulary nasty, as they attacked all the .jpg files in our public server space, and destroyed them all, meaning we had to go to the tape and retrieve backups, only to have another infected faculty member wipe them out again...

Patriots

Al gave me a nice little write-up over on his site today. I don't really know him personally, but I found his site via "John" and I've come to enjoy reading it daily. Let me return the compliment by saying that I really appreciate the difficulties of the job he does, I worked in a hospital for a summer, right after I graduated from high school, as a trained backup monkey in the MIS department. I know what a difficult job nurses have, especially on the graveyard shift where I worked, hours of boredom, punctuated by moments of sheer horror, when a patient codes. I worked on the same floor as the ICU and the CCU, and that remains the only time I've seem someone die... The dream was alive, for three long quarters, at Jack Trice Stadium today. The Cyclones hung with the Nebraska Cornhuskers as long as they could, certainly long enough to prove they were contenders, but came up short in the end. The Cyclones need to win two more games to be eligible for a bowl game, which "Jeremy" and I have vowed to attend, regardless of location. Do they have a chance? Let's take a look at who's left to play:

Oklahoma State

Texas A&M

Missouri

Kansas State

Colorado

Kansas

How many of these can ISU win? All of them, if they play like they did for the first three quarters today. Realistically, I expect them to definitely beat Kansas. Colorado could fall very easily, and Missouri and Oklahoma State are certainly within the realm of possibility. Kansas State looks to be unbeatable, especially at Manhattan, and Texas A&M always seem to beat the Cyclones. If ISU can beat Kansas and Colorado, they've got a shot at a bowl berth. If they beat Kansas, Colorado, and Missouri or Oklahoma, they're bowl-bound, and so are "Jeremy" and I. Iowa State hasn't been to a bowl game since 1978 (we were two years old), so if they go this year, so are we.

I might be getting ahead of myself, but as I look over the list of bowl games, I find myself hoping that if ISU gets a bid, it's somewhere close and/or cheap to go to. The Aloha Bowl is probably outside our budget. It looks like there's a good chance we'd be going South, as three Big 12 berths are in Texas, one is in Louisiana, and another in Phoenix. For at-large berths, it'd be nice if they played in the Motor City bowl, or even the Las Vegas Bowl, it's cheap to fly to Vegas. Only time will tell...

It's snowing! It's a balmy 37 degrees outside, and the snow is starting to come down. I turned on the furnace for the first time last night, when I got home from work, it was 60 degrees in my apartment. It's a good day to stay inside, watch football, and do laundry.

I woke up early this morning, and decided to finish off Patriots, by David Drake. Drake writes excellent military sci-fi, but this book is more of a parallel of the American Revolution, set in outer space. This book certainly wasn't boring, but it wasn't exactly a page-turner, and the material was a little juvenile. Still, it was entertaining, and a good way to spend a Saturday morning when you're feeling lousy with a cold.

Cold

The University has put up their new web site design. I saw this last week for the first time. It's better than the old one, but that's not saying much. They paid a firm called Netcasters, from Boston, to do this. No, I don't know how much they paid. They are encouraging all of us to use the top University Nameplate, and that black navigation bar in our departmental/college sites. We'll see. It has turned cold almost overnight. I had to scrape the frost off of my windows this morning so I could see to drive to work. I dug my wool-lined parka out of the closet, but it's starting to look pretty ragged, time to get a new one...

Not only is it cold outside, but I've come down with a cold as well. It started as a sore throat, but has turned into a wonderful sinus problem, I can't hear, I'm full of phlegm, and my head hurts. Too bad I just started my job and I don't have any sick days yet...

Sampling Method

My car is fixed! It's about time, there was something configured wrong with the new computer in it, according to the mechanic. Now I just have to get J Dylan to drive me there to get it. It's raining, it's chilly, and I didn't bring a coat to work. I've been largely unaffected by any changes in the cost of gas, as I live a mile from work, and haven't filled up my car in well over a month now. It's starting to get colder, however, so I'll probably start driving to work, rather than walking or biking. I haven't had any significant problems with this car in the three years I've owned it, until last month. Apparently, what was wrong, was that a new computer has been put in the car (I won't go into the sequence of events that lead to that) but it didn't have the correct PROM settings. He's corrected that now, so it should work fine... I watched the excellent season premiere of The West Wing last night. I started watching this show last spring, and was instantly hooked. It's funny, smart, and insightful, it does a good job of taking you inside government, and really makes you realize that these people are only human. Rob Lowe really cracks me up, his character is so quirky and off-the-wall. Martin Sheen pulls off the role of the President very well, and is very Kennedy-esque.

My LandWare GoType! Pro keyboard came last night. It doubles as a second docking station for my Handspring Visor, as well as a keyboard. It seems to work pretty well, I wish it was just the tiniest bit larger, I can type accurately on it if I concentrate, but it's not quite large enough for me to type with reckless abandon, as I do on my desktop keyboard. Maybe I'll take it with me to class today and see if I can take notes on it. That should get some eye-rolls from my fellow students.

Here's an example of why sampling methods are important in polling. Yahoo is running an online poll in which you can vote for the president, they add up the votes in each state, and calculate the number of electoral votes each candidate would receive. As you can see by these results, they have Bush winning with overwhelming majority. I personally guarantee you that the final election results will look nothing like this. Why? Because the people most likely to have access to computers, and spending all day on the web are rich white guys, exactly the people who Bush does well with. This isn't random sampling, this isn't too likely to include many senior citizens, who have some of the highest levels of voter turnout, this is just for fun folks, so remember, it's worthless.

As I predicted yesterday, Gore did get a bump from the debates, the latest three-day Gallup poll results have him at 49%, Bush at 41%, Nader at 2% and Pat Buchanan at a meager 1%. Gallup runs rolling polls, in which they take all the data from the last three or six days, combine it all together, to try to get an accurate picture of who is in the lead. In the six-day stats, Gore has only 47%, Bush has 43%, Nader has 3%, Buchanan 1%.

Debates

I watched the debates last night, with a big bowl of popcorn. I thought both candidates were well prepared and didn't make any major mistakes, but I thought that Al Gore came off much better than did George W. Bush. Gore seemed slightly more presidential, and was able to quote figures (however distorted) to back up what he had to say. Bush was put on the defensive quite a bit, and tried to get away from the specifics of his plan, and focus on wanting to give people choices, rather than have the government make the decisions for the people. I thought that Gore missed a golden opportunity when Bush was talking about RU-486, he kept saying "Surely, we can blah blah blah" and "Surely, the FDA, blah blah blah" he said Surely about five times in that speech. When Gore got to speak, I thought he should have started in with "First of all, my name is Al, not Shirley" ";->" Bush's quips seemed far too staged and prepared to really have much impact, and he seemed to go to them when he didn't have anything else to say. Lloyd Bentsen's "you're no JFK" remark to Quayle, and Reagan's "There he goes again!" came off as much more natural. Gore seemed to stay away from prepared barbs, but his One Dollar for Every Two lecture left my head spinning a little bit. My take on it? Gore won, Bush didn't come across as a moron, which may have helped him with some people, but Gore's performance was excellent, and he came across as more prepared, more intelligent, and classier, after choosing not to respond to Bush's attacks.

So what's next? My prediction is that Gore will go up a couple of points in the polls, maybe open up a 5 or 6 point lead on Bush. Look for Bush to go on the attack more in the next debate, if he's down 7 points, it's his only chance. He'll play up the character issue a lot, because it's all he's really got to use on Gore. Their stances on most of the issues are so similar, it's only their methods of solving problems that are slightly different. What difference does it really make how often you want to test the students to hold the schools accountable? Any plan these guys come up with will be radically different after it goes through both houses of Congress.

Update: John says that the debate was a tie. Gallup says Gore won.