Back To School

I watched Life is Beautiful last night. What an outstanding film, truly an uplifting and beautiful movie. I watched it on DVD, in Italian with English subtitles. A dubbed-English audio track was also available on the disc. I give this movie 9 out of a possible 10 points, and would definitely place it on my "must-see" list. I enjoyed it much more than Jakob the Liar, which is a very similar story, but isn't nearly as funny, charming, or touching as Life is Beautiful. I'd write more about what I thought of the movie, but I thought that Roger Ebert's review was right-on. Say what you want about Microsoft Windows, but at least the problems that I face aren't as bizarre as the ones on the Mac platform. Today's bug is that pressing any of the function keys (F1-F12) will crash the Mac. This is on our netboot machines, and it happens no matter what application you're in. The wonderful thing about a bug like this, is that it affects those who are the most advanced users, since they know the keyboard shortcuts. Those people are also the ones who gripe the most and the loudest when something like this happens.

I'm quoted on today's page over at MacWindows. Since their link will die in time, I'll post my comments below, in case others are suffering from the same difficulties in regards to changing passwords in a Windows 2000 domain from a Macintosh:

I've had the same problem here, and it gets even weirder than that. If I create a new user, and check the "User must change password at next login" box, and the user then logs in with a Mac, they are prompted to change their password. If they then go to a PC, their new password does not work, but their old one will! However, from a Mac, the new password works, so in effect, the user has two passwords for the same account. Changing their password again from a PC seems to clear up the problem.

Today is the first day of school. Actually, tomorrow is the first day of school for me, but for most of the students here at the University, it's today. Campus is crawling with students, I had to park three times farther away from my office building than normal, and four freshmen have already stuck their heads into my office to ask directions.

To Reign In Hell

Now, before anyone gets excited, let me point out that this is not a how-to book! I just finished reading To Reign in Hell, by Steven Brust. It was a thorougly entertaining novel, written about the revolt in Heaven. Sacreligious? Probably, but very thought provoking. The bad guys aren't always who you think they are, with lots of palace intrigue and mis-understandings to boot. I've read several other books by Brust, my favorite are his Vlad Taltos series, which started with the excellent novel Jhereg. Swashbuckling adventure, set in a world of magic, but written with a very wry sense of humor. I had the opportunity to meet him at a science fiction convention in Minneapolis a year ago, and he made quite an impression. He was striding around the convention in a black leather jacket with a green parrot (yes, really) riding on his shoulder. I talked to him briefly as I got him to sign my shiny new copy of Dragon, and he seemed to be truly appreciative of any comments or praise I had to make about his books.

Alien Crossfire

I grabbed a copy of Alien Crossfire, the expansion pack for Alpha Centauri, over lunch today. Now I can't wait to get home to play it. Alpha Centauri, like Civilization II, and all other Sid Meier games, is incredibly addicting. I've lost entire weekends to these games before, refusing to even pause to eat! I've been playing quite a bit of Diablo II lately, but I'm starting to get a little burnt out on that.

When JavaScript Attacks

Just when I was starting to enjoy life, Jeremy has to go and give away the ending. And just who is this mysterious Ibid person? Is it just me, or does the kid pictured below, which I snagged from Iowa State University's site, look like some kind of satanic gopher? Who approved this picture for the main site? What did they think this image conveyed?

What do you do when you hate the web site of the place where you work? I don't mean the University I work for, or even the College, I mean my office.

If you're viewing it in Internet Explorer 5, on a Macintosh, you're probably saying "What's his problem?". If you're using anything else, you'll see what I'm talking about. Using Netscape on a PC? Click on the Labs & Equipment link. The JavaScript will crash your browser quite nicely.

I'd like to take this opportunity to publicly distance myself from this website. I had nothing to do with the development of it, other than activating IIS on the server where it resides. I'd have been happy to churn out a FrontPage site in a couple of days. It might not have been as flashy, but it would have worked! Instead, a graphic design student from our college is doing our site. It looks cool, but try to navigate the site in Lynx, or Netscape 3.0, I dare you.

Paths of Glory

It's nice to see that I'm not the only person who is no longer a fan of Netscape's Communicator. This article over at MacWeek hits the nail right on the head. I found the following quote especially interesting, since it's approximately what I say once a week when advocating use of Internet Explorer over Netscape's Navigator to a user: Netscape cannot succeed simply because it isn't Microsoft. If that's Netscape's best reason for being, it doesn't deserve to succeed. I'm not going to use a product because of what it isn't, or who the developer is not. If the product doesn't help us get our work done better than the competition does, we won't use it.

I have no company or product loyalty. I use Outlook Express and Internet Explorer because for the way I work, they are the best products. If iCab or Opera releases a browser that is better for me than IE, I'll stop using IE. Simple as that. If Netscape 6 turns out to accomplish those goals, then it will earn its place as my Web and e-mail application of choice. . . . Until something better comes along.

I got up nice and early this morning, and vacuumed my apartment. I bet the neighbors loved that, but it's my revenge for their apparently late night dance parties. After cleaning, I settled down and watched Paths of Glory, a Kubrick film from 1957, which I found very entertaining. Is it just me, or do older movies not spoon-feed the audience quite so much as newer ones? When I saw What Lies Beneath on Friday, I leaned over to my companion and whispered "Hey, that was foreshadowing" when for no apparent reason, this lab technician explained all about this chemical that can render a person unable to move, but still conscious. It's one thing to provide some clues in a whodunnit, it's another to alert the viewer with details with all the subtlety of the neon sign that flashes "Snack bar will close in 5 minutes".