Since CITES is nuking this out of ph tomorrow, I wanted to save the quote here:

“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”

– Thomas Henry Huxley

It’s sad that CITES is working on two different projects for directory services and authentication services, and (oddly, but par for the course for this campus,) they are distinct focus groups. Although they’re similar services, they’ll design them separately. Until 5 years later someone decides that’s dumb and starts a third project group to unify them.

But it’s better than it used to be.

I just lament campus doesn’t want to be a facebook/phone book anymore. (I’ll save the rant about moving from structured data to a reliance on unstructured data for another day.) I also think it’s funny the quote above directly applies to doing the hard work needed to really have a good, solid, extendable directory service.

Florida Keys ready to welcome tourists

If it were me, I’d wait for the storm surge to go down first.

Originally uploaded by TromboneKenny.

Good selection of stories on Google News today…

Instead of looking in a pumpkin or candy bag on Halloween, we should look up. Venus and Mars will be visible.

Gas companies profiting hand-over-fist, and ABC analyst defends them. I still stay it’s obscene and the government should do something to make sure the companies aren’t milking the general public while they line their pockets. 33% increase in profits this quarter? Why is the raise at the pump so high if the gas companies aren’t paying more for fuel?

Speaking of companies doing illegal things, SBC is buying AT&T and going to take the AT&T name. It’s interesting to me that not 20 years after Ma Bell was broken up for monopolization violations, the baby Bells have slowly shattered and reconfigured to form a small number of very large Bells, and those are remerging frequently too. And they’re keeping the same pre-split names. Sounds like history repeating itself to me.

• The 86 Rules of Boozing
  they’re so true

I just got back from a Distinguished Lecture talk by Dr. Carley, a CS prof at CMU. The talk was titled Dynamic Network Analysis Applied to Counter Terrorism. Even though I read the abstract, I went into it expecting discussions of adaptive Internet network devices and using traffic/flow systems to isolate cyber-terrorist behavior. The talk was a little looser than that; using any intel to map relationships, communication, resources between role players in terrorist organizations (and corporate espionage.) She talked about her research allowed quick mining of this information, and estimated projections of how social networks would reform if certain evens happened (elections, assassinations, etc.)

Does that sound like Computer Science to you? Maybe not, but what it reinforced (again) for me is that CS isn’t a standalone discipline. Really, what she is doing is information science… taking data in some form, figuring out how to assemble and internally construct and associate that data, and then finding effective and useful ways to get current and logical near-term projections from it. Social networks overlap all of my academic interests; CS, Speech Comm, LIS. Even though the talk was not directly tied to my interests, I enjoyed it.

At the Q&A in the end, I asked her if her expertise and her challenges fall more into Computer Science or Sociology/Anthropology. She said that currently, it’s almost all CS. The intelligence organizations know what information they want to track and have available, and what results to desire; they just need new, fast, dynamic, accurate ways of creating and modeling that data. These are certainly computer science issues. But, she acknowledged that in a few years, once the CS is up to speed, the social scientists will have to look at that data and come up with new theories and new requirements.

This is very close to where I think we are across all computer systems. They’re good enough, or shortly will be good enough, to do whatever we want. The really cool stuff involves reapplying those systems for previously unconsidered means (and thus, make them inadequate again.) And so the cycle begins again. It also starts to answer the question of why Computer Science keeps doing all these things that don’t seem to have a relevant cause today… it seeds the future capabilities and research in nameless/countless other areas.

The really important, influencial people in the future will be ones who understand the current limits and capabilities of technology, and also understand the future direction of (information, entertainment, transportation, investing, marketing, you name it.) Using Professor Carley’s software, we could probably start to map and interpolate that data.

Hi. I haven’t blogged in a while, but quite a few of you have. Good for you! In the situation where I can either be living life or reflecting on it, I’ve been keeping a pretty full docket lately. Everything’s going well. Here’s an update. To keep it brief, each thought/paragraph will have no more than three sentences. Some might be Haiku.

With my family and Andrew’s help, my deck is now cleaned and stained. It even beads up when it rains, and it only took 15 months to get it done.

Now the front door, furnace and shower tile need attention. Some of those sooner than others. Thanks for all who have or will be recruited for help.

Football players should not punch other football players, in the helmet or the nads. Helpful tip: If you are ejected from the game, make sure your special teams coordinator knows to replace you so you don’t get three (three!) illegal formation penalties.

Alumni band is still the best part of homecoming, right after tailgating. Congrats to John and Annette on their future meatball. One year I would like to win a homecoming football game.

I had one of the creepiest dreams/nightmares in recent memory last night. Some spirit animated dead objects, like leaves and cornstalks, and used them to manipulate/monitor us. I could sell this as a novel if I knew how to explain it as creepily as it happened in my head.

Congratulations to the Saint Louis Cardinals for an excellent season. Goodbye Old Busch; I’m sorry I didn’t get to spend more time at you. As Cubs fans say, there’s always next year, and I’m looking forward to your new digs.

I don’t like the Stros,
And AL – who cares? But I
Still can’t turn it off.

Class is going very well. I’m getting exposed to lots of neat areas of study in LIS, and even the things that I don’t think will interest me have me wanting to learn more. I wish the class was discussion based so I could have more interaction with my peers and get their perspectives on things.

I like the horn playing
God Bless America in
The World Series on FOX

I’ve been getting better at getting organized. Almost all my work day is schedule time, and my inboxes at both places are finally empty. Now to buckle down and do what I have to do.

Basketball season tickets arrived yesterday, and I squealed like a little girl. Now that football and baseball are officially over, I can focus on the really important things. Go Illini!

Thank goodness for digital video recorders, allowing me to not miss the shows I like and get caught on them when I can. I haven’t moved a Netflix movie in a month, and I’m still behind on my watching, but at least I know they’re there when I can get to them.

The newer, IN shows I’m watching this season: How I Met Your Mother, Commander in Chief (The Breast Wing,) E-Ring, American Dad, Lost. Shows on the way OUT: Mythbusters, ALIAS, SNL, Jeopardy! What do you think I should be watching?

Baseball in HD is great. The pitch explaining baseball Scooter, and the FOX analysts are not. (Except for Joe Buck.) I want CBS HD by March.

I am borrowing a Toshiba M200 TabletPC from work to try using for my classwork. It’s basically a laptop with the added feature of being able to write on the screen. I’ll blog more about it later, because the tools and ed tech available are as interesting to me as the schooling itself.

…

So there you have it, and there you are. I’ll try to stop in here and say hi more frequently. In the meantime, I’m still reading up on your stuff, so keep those cards and letters coming. Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow. *Dave throws pencil at camera.*

PS. I bet Houston is really, really getting tired of late game home runs costing them the game.