Slowdown

It's pretty sad that I haven't written anything on this weblog for several days, considering I haven't been busy at all. I'm in the slow part of the semester right now, but things will pick up in a couple of weeks, I'm sure. This week, we were essentially told that we had nothing to fear but fear itself by our university president. The state legislature and the governor are going to cut our budget, how much remains to be seen. If it becomes a 10% cut, I may be looking for a new job, as I'm a recent hire, and thus the first to be laid off. Anyone looking to hire a tech support guy?

A hiring freeze has already been implemented, so if you were looking for a job at UNI, you're going to be waiting a while. A hiring freeze means that we may not have the faculty we need to teach courses next fall, which in turn means that we may not be able to offer as many classes, which means that some students won't graduate on time. Add the almost-certain increases in tuition that will be coming this fall (think at least 10%) and you've got an unhappy student body to deal with as well.

What to do

I'm posting this from within Internet Explorer 6.0, which apparently breaks the WYSIWYG editor and the fancy little formatting bar in Manila. Hopefully, Userland will get this fixed soon...

Macintouch linked to this list of things that Apple should do to reclaim the education market.  I don't agree with all of them, especially the large number of requests for lower pricing on several items.  To me, the most important things for Apple to take from that list are:

• Assume that the IT person is a Windows person, and you've got to sell them on Macs.
• Make Mac Certification easy and cheap to obtain.
• Provide a special software package with the utilities for IT departments.
• Offer better education channel warranties that 1 year. (this is the most important one for me)
• Give school districts more advance notice of product developments, even if they have to sign NDAs.  (This is also ridiculous on Apple's part.  Our Dell rep handed me their roadmap, showing me when each of the new models would be introduced for the next year.  Try getting that from Apple.)
• Encourage hardware loaners to schools. (This is especially important for places that don't have an installed Mac base.  Loan out some PowerBook G4s to some of the Administrators, and see how quickly they order more)

Dell introduced their Optiplex GX150 mini-tower today, just as the roadmap I saw last month told me they would.  This is the machine that I plan to standardize on for faculty and staff for all of our spring/summer purchases.  By next fall, I imagine that a Pentium 4 chipset that uses SDRAM will be available, as I'm not keen on the expensive RDRAM memory.

Standards

It's hard to be motivated at work, when it's 50° outside for the first time in four months.  Maybe I can ride by bike to work tomorrow...

I'm glad to see that Intel has abandoned the HomeRF standard in favor of 802.11b.  It's ludicrous to have two standards, one geared at home users, and the other at corporations.  It makes no sense, since the primary use of wireless is for laptops and other mobile devices, which you would use both at work, and at home.  Why would you want incompatible systems, requiring two cards to access them? 

Long Day

Want to buy something that really sucks?  Amazon is having a sale on many of their vacuum cleaners.  Since I don't own one (I've been borrowing a friend's) I decided it was a good time to order.  I'd wanted one that didn't have a bag, so I chose this model.  Since it's over $99 (by 99 cents) there's free shipping, and by using the code "AMZNTENPRCNT" you save another ten bucks.  That makes it quite reasonable, considering the bag-less variety usually sell for much more than the 89.99 this will cost me.

Tuesday is always a long day for me, because I have class for three hours after work.  I wind up being in this building from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. only to find myself back here Wednesday morning again at 8:00.  Maybe I should just install a cot in my office.  I could probaby sleep under my desk if I brought in a sleeping bag and pillow...

I spent much of this morning buying hardware (not computers, think drill bits and gaskets) only to realize that one of the pieces won't fit the drill I borrowed.  I guess I'll be going back to Ace hardware tomorrow to exchange that.

My root-canaled tooth has been bothering me all day, despite my frequent doses of Acetaminophen.  I think it's time to upgrade to morphine.

On a positive note, I've got at least one person interested in the internship position we're going to have next year.  The Cooperative Education office is handling all the administrative work with the applications, all I have to do is choose those I'd like to interview from the resumes they send me, and then select the one I'd like to hire.  That makes it much easier...

Break's Over

Slashdot linked to an interesting article about the reliability of software, and the futility of the short upgrade cycle in technology.  While I understand those who get frustrated at having to upgrade every 3 years, I think we're starting to hit a plateau right now.  If you've got a Pentium II CPU or better, your computer still does e-mail and the web just fine, not to mention all the word processing you'll ever need...

I did, however, enjoy this little tidbit, part of the section that suggested software companies should be liable for the shortcomings of their software:

"Essentially, people are selling business software that is no more reliable than creative software," says Lanier. "It crashes all the time -- it's totally unpredictable. There's not sufficient benefit to justify that unreliability. If each new version of Windows offered incredible ways of enhancing our lives, then we'd accept bugginess. But the current system, left to its own devices, will lead to eternal crap. I don't see any force in the current system that creates motivation to give people not-crap."

I saw over at ActiveWin that Yamaha has introduced a 20X CD-RW drive.  Now that's what I call fast, you can burn an 80 minute CD in only 4 minutes....

 I watched Almost Famous yesterday, on DVD.  This was really an excellent movie, and I have to agree with Roger Ebert when he says it should have been nominated for best picture of the year.  The phrase "love letter to rock and roll" really describes this movie well, and it's a movie that everyone should see.  I really liked the note Ebert put at the end of his review, which reads:

Why did they give an R rating to a movie perfect for teenagers?

And then I wondered the same thing, the brief nudity is so brief that I wasn't sure I saw it.  The drug use isn't glorified, you can find much worse on television. The language certainly isn't over the top, or shocking in any way...

Spring Break is now over, so I've gone from having very little to do at work to being overwhelmed, all in the course of three hours.  I've also been chewed out for not having one of the multi-media stations in a classroom ready to go for class today.  This is because a new podium was installed to house the computer and VCR for the classroom, but the doors that came with it were not the correct ones.  I didn't want to leave the computer there unsecured, so I didn't install it last week, hoping that the doors would be in soon.  They aren't here yet, so I get chewed out for it, of course.

It's one of those lose-lose situations, I could either not have the station ready, in which case I get chewed out.  Or, I could have put it in there, and risk having it stolen, in which case I'd really be in hot water.  My co-worker and I have tried numerous times to convince the faculty that they really don't need the computers to teach their classes for a day or two, and that they shouldn't rely on them 100%, because hard drives fail, servers crash, zip drives go bad, projector bulbs burn out, etc. 

Yet, you'd be surprised at the number of people who cancel class if the computer isn't working.  I guess they don't grok blackboards and overhead projectors...