Listen on 80

It’s just so typical of MS.  The 900 pound gorilla goes to a party and wonders why nobody wants to play.  The business entity that chews up and spits out anybody that gets in the way of their interests can’t understand why stock holders don’t like their company going to bed with MS.  Imagine that.  Whe the CEO of MS comes out and says he can’t understand the reaction it means that he truly is clueless, in every sense of the word.  It’s all just so MS, what a hoot.

A local website design company was smart enough to interview me for a contracted programming position.   Seems the owner needed someone to make her cute, mass produced templates actually do something besides being fluffy.  We talked.  Yes, I can do password protection, yes I can do mailing list forms and yes I can do all those other things that require a server side language.

Then we talked about Dreamweaver.  If I absolutely must do Dreamweaver, I can but I am faster without it and can beat most people using it in a fair race, but I digress.  She basically said I was old fashioned and I basically said she needed to be smarter than her tools.  When she asked what I wanted for salary, I told her I would start at $10/hr. to prove my abilities but then I wanted $15/hr. within 6 months.  As I parted company, she told me she would decide and call me, either way, before the weekend.  That’s been a few months ago now.

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I was at the airport this morning, early. Like still dark early. No, I wasn’t going anywhere, I was dropping off and you know ‘dropping off’ means park and walk her in. So while she negotiated the ticket line I went in search of Starbucks, of course. I headed for one of those ‘you are here’ signs but heard the hiss of the steamer and deviated to the counter.

Of course the airport Starbucks doesn’t do short lattes.

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I always love to read these stats.  For this site:

OS

1. Windows XP 76%
2. Windows 2000 10%
3. Linux 4%
4. Vista 0.5%

BROWSER

1. IE6 59%
2. FF3 16%
3. FF2 10%
4. IE8 0.1%

There you go.

Last night while manning the computer lab, keeping the computers safe from the students, I had a student tell my boss and I that he had multiple pass words that all worked.  As it turned out, he had had two names, one with a hyphen, and one without. When the hyphen name was changed to a non-hyphen name his library card stopped working. Huh?  Well we kicked it around and decided that both names were in the database but the hyphen name had been ‘retired’ and that was the name the library card was attached to.  We sent him to the librarian because the two systems are entirely separate, of course.

When he came back he was happy and everything worked.  Interestingly, library cards carry two numbers; a library card number and a student number.  Evidently though, the cards are attached to the student name, not the number, otherwise the card would have still worked with name change.  So the conclusion is the university is running an antiquated legacy hierarchical database.  Or not?

I finally cracked under the strain. I’ve told you all about my plan for subversion, if not world domination and the way the fools treated me; making me a lab assistant instead of a programmer, ha. But now I get the last laugh. Seriously though, just what does a guy got to do?

I pursued my present course as a positive step toward fixing a big problem. My first reaction was to exploit the weakness and bring them to their knees, rubbing their noses in the fruits of their ignorance but then my wife thought better of it. So instead I thought I would volunteer to work with the website and I could fix it through subversion within. This met with insurmountable objections from the IT department on many levels but I suspect mostly because the IT department has no direct control of the website as far as I can see.

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I was just asked where I was. Hmmmm, a serious question, that. It reminds me of the questions my therapist asks. I don’t have an answer for her either, or for me as far as that goes. But perhaps I am being too metaphysical here.

No, where I am at is not really a secret. I guess I figured all universities are pretty much the same as far as I have ever noticed (and I have been at a few). I don’t see any need to drag the university through the mud for my enjoyment and prosecution when I can talk specifically yet have it apply generally.

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I had a very interesting conversation with the Assistant Dean of Students today. This lady is the person responsible for my job here in the computer lab. She asked me if I would be interested in a Teaching Assistant job. DUH, YES!

It would just be with the basic computer entry level students at first and the hours would be less than what I’m getting now, but I think I could keep both jobs if I wanted to. The good thing is that these jobs tend to become permanent after the Master Degree is earned. Cush!

Of course I said yes, but the position is not finalized yet. I’ll keep you posted.

Yup, (nodding head) yours truly has done the impossible and made the honor roll and Dean’s list (the good one). Just got done with the reception before reporting here to the computer lab for my shift.

Woo-hoo! Never done this before.

Now that Firefox 3.5 is a reality, the university website and blackboard has another browser it doesn’t support. I wonder if the much anticipated upgrade to support Firefox 3.x and MS IE 8 will be arriving soon? Imagine, a major piece of software not supporting browsers representing 95% of the market.

Dollars to dough nuts they will still browser sniff and the software will break with each new release.