No work and all play...

Classes were canceled at ISU today also, but John was still expected to show up.  I don't understand that logic, that employees who live many miles away are expected to come in, but we can't have classes for the students who live on-campus?  I think it's class discrimination against university staff, as the faculty don't have to show up if they're not teaching. 

The Buy.com deal of the day is a Panasonic KXP-6500.  It's a laser printer, going for only $135!  I haven't used a Panasonic printer since my old KXP-1124 dot matrix, but that's a great price on a laser printer...

No work for me today!  The University has canceled both classes and work for the day, due to the weather.  I'm going to watch some movies, do some baking, and play some computer games.  I don't even think I'll go outside, except maybe 3 feet to get my mail from the mailbox, when and if it is delivered.

Apple Harvest

Should AOL buy Apple?  That's what this article suggests, over at MSNBC.  The rumors are that Sony is looking to buy Apple up, and no one is claiming that AOL is even interested, but the merger would make a lot of sense.  Imagine being able to buy your iMac, you take it home, plug it in to your Time-Warner cable modem, and you're instantly on AOL.  Now lower the cost of the iMac to $300 buy bundling all that together, and you're well on your way to owning the home user market. [via Macintouch]

Think Titanium

Time is running a piece about recycling old computers.  We send a great deal of ours to the University auction, especially old monitors and printers.  I send the 486 computers to auction, but the Pentiums I generally strip the good parts out of, and toss the rest in a dumpster.  We've still got a lot of them in service, and to keep costs down, I hoard the old floppy, CD-ROM, and hard drives.

We had an Apple demo today on campus.  They had free donuts, so of course I went.  Everyone I talked to was there to see the new Titanium Powerbook.  Unfortunately, there wasn't one to be seen, as Apple couldn't get one to their own reps to demo to us.  This would be a classic example of, as Steve Jobs put it, Apple "f***ing up" in the education market.

You've got a captive audience of people who have come to see a hot product, many of which are waiting to have a hands-on experience before buying, and you can't even get a demo unit to your own employees to make the sale.  This is why Dell is getting the bulk of our business.

The Eerie Canal

So I went to the dentist this morning to get a cavity filled.  He said we might have to do a crown on it, depending on how it looked.  Lucky me, I get not only a crown, but a root canal to boot.  I'm numb, I sound like I'm drunk, and I'm drooling.  I've never had a crown or a root canal before, and I"m hoping this isn't going to hurt too much when the novocaine wears off, but I'm betting it does. 

I think I'm going to find a new dentist, I just found this one, but he doesn't use nitrous oxide, which is a necessity for any work done on the left side of my mouth.  This root canal was on the right side, so I was okay, but I'm unable to be numbed completely on the left.  If you've never tried nitrous, and your dentist has it, ask for it sometime, you won't be half as tense...

Update: Yup, it hurts.  I can't chew on my right side at all, and my whole jaw aches.  These are the times I wish I had some narcotic painkillers on hand...

MUOTD

The score for this winter stands at:

Icy Sidewalks 2, Seth 0

I just had my second fall of the winter.  This was less scary than the first one, but more painful.  My first fall, a few weeks ago, landed me square on my back/buttocks.  This one landed me square on my left elbow and hip, the kind that can break bones.  Nothing is broken, but I'm betting I get a couple of bruises by Sunday...

It's snowing outside, and it had covered up some ice on a friend's sidewalk.  I came walking down the sidewalk, donuts in hand (don't ask), and wiped out pretty good.  At least I fell on my left hip, my right one has my pager and my Leatherman attached to it, it would have been an expensive and painful fall...

Microsoft's next version of Office may be called "Office XP", according to this article from News.com.  Anyone have a guess as to what XP stands for?

eXtra Pricey?

I'm playing with My Userland On The Desktop (not a catchy name) and I'll be the first to admit that I don't get it.  Okay, I get what it could do, but I can't make it work right for some reason. 

I can't even figure out how I'm supposed to get XML out of this weblog, and I can't figure out why I'd want to use it, because most of the other weblogs I read aren't available via it. 

I also get occasional errors, for no apparent reason, and I don't think I'd want to use it much, as I use many different computers, all running Windows 2000.  I log out of them when I'm not using them, so if MUTOD isn't available to run as a "service", then it won't be running, and these updates of content in the middle of the night aren't going to take place.

So what am I missing?

Update: Whatever I'm missing, Al is missing it too at least.  And Steven offers some insight into my frustrations.