On The Road

/

Today, I'm setting off for Omaha for Thanksgiving.  I'm going to visit my friend Jeremy, since he's come to Iowa several times in the last year, and I haven't been to visit him since May of 1999.  I'm putting in half a day of work, not that I'll do anything, since all of the students and faculty have already left, but I'm not going to blow a whole day of vacation when I don't need to be in Omaha until this evening.  I'll probably get a lot of weblogging done, and maybe I'll clean up my desk...

How not to get a new computer

/

Looking for a good CD? I just got Cher's Greatest Hits album. It's surprisingly good, lots of good tracks on this CD, from "After All" to "If I Could Turn Back Time" to "Gypsys, Tramps, and Thieves". It's one of those CD's thats filled with pretty good songs, and not much filler. Some of these totally take me back to high school, or even junior high.  Cher is one of those artists that no one is really a hard core fan of, but everyone sings along with her songs when they're played on the radio...

Do you have to be crazy to smoke cigarettes?  No, but apparently it doesn't hurt.  This MSNBC article reports Harvard Medical School researchers have found that nearly 45% of cigarettes are consumed by people with a diagnosable mental disorder.  They use a pretty broad definition of mental disorder, including alcohol abuse.  It makes sense, if you buy the "Biology of Addiction" explanation, this view holds that certain people are more susceptible to addiction because intoxicants like alcohol, nicotine, and other drugs produce a greater sense of pleasure in them than they do in "normal" people. 

In any case, it should help us men at the bar scene, if the girl is smoking a cigarette, don't date her, you've got nearly a 50% chance she's crazy...

The more I listen to it, the more off-base I think the Republicans are about the manual ballot counting.  They claim the process is "manufacturing votes" or that it is somehow unfair.  They're either completely ignorant of how these machines work, or willing to say or do anything to prevent recounts. 

It's pretty simple when you think about it folks.  The counting machines try to shine a light through the holes that would be punched for the Presidential candidate.  If the machines don't register a vote for any candidate, you review it by hand.  When you look at the ballot, it becomes obvious that the voter did vote for a candidate, but his/her little punching tool didn't quite punch the "chad" all the way out of the ballot.  Take the case of Miami-Dade, this is a perfect example, 10,000 ballots didn't register a vote with the machine.  Did those 10,000 people not vote for a Presidential candidate?  Some probably didn't, the majority probably did.  So you look at the ballot, and see if there is a mark on one of the "chads" that indicates if it was struck by the voter, but not completely through.  If one of the "chads" indicates it was struck, and none of the others do, it's pretty clear what the intent of the voter was. 

Don't penalize the voters for out-dated voting technology.  I also think that this process should happen in every county in Florida, not just the ones that the Democrats requested, but the Republicans had their chance to request hand-counts as well...

Salon.com is carrying an AP story about Cheney's residency.  Should he be considered a resident of Texas or Wyoming?  It does matter, and the relevant clause was put in the 12th Amendment for a purpose, to prevent one state from having too much power.  Bush and Cheney are a lot alike, both from Texas, both oil men, both are convicted drunk drivers...

"Someone cannot be a resident of two states simultaneously," said Bill Berenson, the Fort Worth attorney representing three Dallas County residents who are suing Bush and Cheney. "If Mr. Cheney wanted to run for political office in Wyoming he would be prohibited from doing so. Some of Wyoming's statutes state that."

Beaver College is now going to be known as Arcadia University, according to this story over at the BBC.  I guess they're tired of being joked about.  This tidbit from the story is rather amusing:

The problem has been intensified by the rise of the internet, as some systems - designed to screen out sexually-explicit material - blocked access to the college's website.

I've broken my listing over at Weblogs.com now.  I changed the title of the site from Tech Support? to Tech Support so that this page would appear over at Jim Roepcke's site.  Having the ? in the title screwed with the scripting, apparently.  So, if you normally found my site via Weblogs, you'll need to add it again so it registers the updates correctly.

I've been working on the requests that faculty have made for new computers.  I don't have the final say on these, but my opinion counts for a lot, since I know who really needs a new computer, and who doesn't.  The maximum allowed on these grant requests is $5,000, an amount that virtually no one needs to spend on their computer.  I couldn't spend $5K on a computer for myself and feel that I legitmately needed every part.  So, it kind of trips my bullshit detector when a faculty member requests a computer that happens to cost $4,970.  I had a faculty member like that in my old college too, I think they just go to Dell's web site, and click on buttons until the total comes in just under $5K.  In some ways, I'd almost like to give it to him, since there wouldn't be any room left in the grant after shipping to buy him software for the computer.  He'd have the OS and that's about it, no word processor, no anti-virus software, etc.  But, what I have to keep in mind, is that the average system I'm configuring for faculty costs $2,100, and that's with a laser printer and the software included.  If I gave this person what he wanted, I'd have to deny two other people computers.  The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few...

Manic Monday

/

Dell has introduced a new Dimension model, the 8100 series.  They feature the new Pentium 4 Processor, and a snazzy black and silver case.  I don't want one, they use RDRAM, which is still too expensive for me.  I'll wait until Intel or VIA finish the chipsets that will use the cheaper, and in some cases faster, SDRAM and DDR SDRAM.  It'll probably take 6 months, but it's worth the wait...

I didn't want to get up this morning. I didn't want to go outside in the freezing cold.  I didn't want to go to work.  I didn't want to deal with users having computer problems that they caused.  I didn't want to work on the yearly equipment inventory.  But, I'm here, I'm doing it, but I don't have to like it....