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.

Start Patching

Microsoft has released the April batch of patches, and it's a big one. The MS04-011 bulletin lists fourteen different services that are patched by the update it references. If you're using a Windows machine, it's time to hit WindowsUpdate and start patching. The patches don't all seem to be there right now, but they're trickling in as I right this, so patch right now. Patch later today. Patch tomorrow morning. There are so many holes being revealed that one of them is sure to be exploited in the near future.

Good Question

I watched Meet The Press this morning, and about choked on my orange juice at this exchange:

MR. RUSSERT: June 30: You're going to turn the keys over to the Iraqis. Who do you turn them over to?

AMB. BREMER: Well, that's a good question, and it's an important part of the ongoing crisis we have here now. We've always said that there are two dimensions to dealing with the problems of Iraq. One, of course, is the military dimension, which we're working on right now, but the other is to give a political perspective for the Iraqis to have more and more responsibility. We've been working on that for months. We are now working with the secretary-general of the U.N.'s special representative here, Mr. Brahimi, to figure out the best way to get a representative government in place before the end of June so it has a little practice and then turn over sovereignty to it on June 30. And I'm confident that working with him and with the Iraqi people, we, in fact, will get that. We'll get a representative government in place before June 30.

"Well, that's a good question"?!?!?! What the hell kind of answer is that? I think post-June 30 Iraq is going to make the current situation look mild. I think it's time for Bush & Powell to go to the UN, hat-in-hand, and ask for some help.

Market forces

Ahh, you have to love the hypocrisy of the right wing. They say they're all for letting market forces regulate industries, that government shouldn't be doing it, unless it's someone having the audacity to talk about sex, then they should be regulated. If the speech was really that offensive, wouldn't Stern's ratings force him off the air? Wouldn't a boycott of his advertisers be the mature thing to do, rather than infringe upon his right to free speech? If Stern has a large audience, wouldn't it stand to reason that the "public sense of decency" has changed? I wonder if there are any universities in Canada that need a Sysadmin, I'm starting to see it as the Land of the Free, and the U.S. as the Land of the Right-Wing Religious Zealots, who simultaneously have a strange fear of, and fascination with sex and nudity of the human body, but no problem with graphic violence. I, for the record, enjoy both.