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Just a couple of random notes for today while I'm working my brain into a frenzy.
The departmental printer is broken today, and is supposed to be for most of the next week. Since my personal printer (the supplying of which I am resposible for) is out of ink, I don't know how I'm going to print all of these things I need to print. Printing (and then copying) these things is one of the reasons I came in early today...
The good news is, though, that am now happily greeted each day in my office by something that smells like Jolly Ranchers. Jose, in his office next to mine, has installed a cherry air freshener on his heater unit. It makes the whole area smell fruity, which is always just an odd surprise. In fact the first day, I asked him if he was eating candy.
The other good news is that today, finally, my office is able to access the "FLASHZONE" wireless internet. This comes nearly one whole year after the building was deemed wireless by the university. This whole debacle was ironic on several levels. For one thing, being the lowest ranking doctoral student with his own office, I got the one that's right next door to the building's network hub.
When Kent built this hub in a closet, they didn't design it very well, and they put in too many server racks. Now, to service these racks, they had to put a door in behind the racks, accessible only from my office next door... which means any time they need to service the computers, they have no problem just unlocking my door, moving whatever they want, and going into the server closet. Beyond this annoyance, my office is constantly full with the whir of many little tiny fans.
So despite the fact that the building has been declared wireless by the university for over a year (which made it nearly impossible to convince them to put a hardwire connection in my office) and despite the fact that all of this server bullshit (and the accompanying annoyance) was right next door, my office was a wireless deadzone. Until today, when I turned on my iBook and he announced that the "FLASHZONE" network was available and at full strength.
For the first time since I was at Ball State (which has been a fully wireless campus since 2000, I might add), I am now on the internet on a college campus wirelessly.
A sad thing I read today is that in Detroit, which is arguably America's monument to the failure of the American manufacturing system, many houses are selling for cheaper than the new American cars that the city makes its name from. It's probably time for that city to start an urban homesteading program. The times I've been to Detroit, I always notice that it's just a very sad place. Beautiful in its own way as a "real" and broken human landscape, but depressing.
So many broken dreams in one place, but this picture is never the portrait of capitalism. Instead, Wall Street and Ferraris are the pictures of the system's success. I think that any advertisement from now on that shows the success of the business psychopath (you know, the success-at-any-cost, gotta-pay-the-Lexus-payment-or-kill-myself-trying type) should be a split screen with Detroit, kinda like how medicines have to show side effects.
Then again, the fact that Lexuses (Lexi?) are the new American dream, because of shoddy American manufacturing, may be part of what doomed Detroit in the first place.
Posted by Your Friendly Neighborhood DJ on March 20, 2007 06:40 AM | Permalink
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