Hal mentioned that he was looking for a good online bill paying service. I've got to stand by Paytrust once again, I wrote up a little blurb about them last month...
I have a sneaky suspicion that this will earn a Darwin Award for 2001. The moral of the story is, diet before attempting to burgle via a chimney. Just because Santa is fat, and can squeeze down a chimney, doesn't mean you can too... [via dangerousmeta]
I'm calling a time out in my day. I've been running all over campus today, putting out fires and attempting to bring order to chaos. It's about 3:30, and I'm going to sit back, put my feet up on my desk, and do some reading for the rest of the afternoon. I've got to finish the first chapter of my Pohlman book before class tonight...
The Dean just dropped a note in my mailbox, urging me to apply for a co-op student for next year. Basically, I can fill out some paperwork, and if approved, the university will give me $3,500 to employ and teach a student how to do what I do.
I'm thinking about doing it, but before I do, I want to meet with the Dean and make it clear that if I do this, I'm going to put an emphasis on the teaching aspect of the position. I get the feeling that a lot of departments simply use the money to fund some of their student employees, without actually making it the educational experience it should be.
I'll have enough space in my new office area to give them a desk and at least a decent computer to use. I just have to make the time in my schedule to teach them what I can about the job.
John has supervised many students, including myself, maybe he has some thoughts...
The University is cancelling classes at 4:00 p.m., due to the bad weather. I get to go home a whole hour early. Since I was already planning on going home an hour early, now I'll go home at 3:00! I need to take care of some stuff at my apartment office, I figured by going home at 4:00, I'd get there before they left. Since they're part of the university, I'll need to get there at 3 now, since they'll be going home early too...
I watched the SuperBowl last night, I admit it. I even brought home a video projector from work, so I could pretend I had a big-screen TV for the night.
I really didn't care too much about the game, as my beloved Minnesota Vikings had lost the NFC Championship game to the Giants two weeks ago, by a score of 41-0.
Some of the commercials were really funny, and some were almost funny, and others were completely lame. If you haven't seen any of these, head on over to http://superbowl.adcritic.com and you can watch them in either Quicktime or Windows Media Player formats.
Winners: The Bob Dole Pepsi ad, the Volkswagon in the tree ad, the E-Trade Monkey ad, and the E-Trade Matrix ad. I also liked the guy with the voice box blasting the Tobacco companies, and the extremely white guys in the "Wassup?" commercial.
Losers: The EDS ad with the squirrels wasn't as good as last year's ad with the cats, the Pepsi machine knocking Kasparov down an elevator ad, and the Levi's 569 re-issued jeans.
I was underwhelmed by the spinning instant replay cameras. The video looked like it was shot through some little webcams that were intended for computers, way too blurry for me. Also, they need more cameras around the stadium, the frame rate on that pan was unacceptable to me. Show it to me again in five years...
Why was there a sock on Britney Spears' arm?
Why did they let the Backstreet Boys sing the national anthem? And Boys, here's a tip, if you're going to sing the national anthem, try not to look like complete losers, maybe dress up a little. Just a thought.
Did anyone else notice that "Fuck" and "Mother Fucker" were both broadcast over the air while the players were being introduced? Apparently, someone at CBS then decided that maybe they should broadcast on a few seconds delay, and cut out the rest of the swearing.
They say that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. I guess I should be flattered by the way that Mike Jefferson has copied my web sites. I went to junior high school with him, and he's a nice guy, but he needs to branch out a little more on his design concepts.
Take his weblog, versus my weblog. Okay, we're both using the same pre-made theme, so it'll look similar. But I specifically changed some of the fonts and colors, added my webcam, the Manila badge, and a search bar for the site. [Update: He changed his weblog to a different theme]
Now take his personal site and compare it to my web site. Anything look similar to you? Read the first lines. Yeah, I thought so. [Now also changed]
Finally, take a look at his webcam, and my webcam. Convinced?
Everyone on the web borrows from other sources, I do it too. But if you're going to borrow, at least credit your source, or take the time to come up with some original text.
That said, a lot of my style for this site is borrowed from John, as well as Al, and subconsciously from many others, I'm sure. I blatantly swiped my webcam code from Leia, but she didn't mind.
So what's my gripe? I don't know, it was just bugging me. What do y'all think, am I off-base here?
Update: Dan weighs in with his thoughts... Mike posts his side of the story...
Well, yesterday's little snafu left a lot of us editthispage.com users without our weblogs for a day, much to our displeasure. Fortunately, Userland got us back up and running, by this morning. I'd like to complain, I really would, but I'm not paying anything to use this site, so I don't really think I have the right to. TANSTAAFL and you get what you pay for.
Yesterday, Buy.com had these on sale for $129.95. I bought one, and using the $10 off coupon for new customers made it even cheaper. Final price, after shipping was $127.92. I needed a new CD-RW drive for home use, my 2X drive just doesn't cut it anymore. This one had been given high marks by MaximumPC, and it has the "burn-proof" technology that is supposed to stop you from making coasters instead of CDs.
The web hosting service I use, UnlimitedWeb.net, has their new hosting plans up, just in time for me to renew my account. The prices aren't too bad, and I've never had any problems using them to host my personal site. Having the domain registration thrown in makes it a good deal. I'll fess up right now that going through that link to get service will score me a 5% kickback...
A serene calm has come over me in the last half-hour. I've finished all of the "emergency" problems that I've been dealing with for the last week. My phone has stopped ringing off the hook, people aren't e-mailing me every 15 minutes about the same problem, and I'm starting to like my job again. I've still got work to do, but it's not urgent, no one is waiting on me to get something done.
It's 3:15 p.m., so what should I do with the rest of my day?
I think I'll go home early and watch some T.V....
Garret has a link to the Green Eye Project this morning. I don't think I'll be posing for the pictures anytime soon. My combination of English, Danish, and German genes probably doesn't exactly qualify me as being ethnically interesting, despite the fact that I have green eyes.
