• @drasch you, apparently. #

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It’s ironic that yesterday central IL had severe spring weather (thunderstorms, tornados, softball sized hail, flash flooding, yadda yadda) and the word of the day on calendar was tornado. (How did it know?) It comes from the Latin tornare, which also gives us the word “turn”.

I tried to leave work around 6pm and beat the weather home, but I was stuck in the middle of it. Really blinding sheets of rain on the way home … it was harder to drive in that rain than some blizzards we’ve had. When I got into the neighborhood, I had to forge through some backed up storm drains… It’s really freaky stopping at a flooded intersection and watching the water gurgle and surge up closer to you. Apocalyptical almost. Thanks Tony for putting that in my head.

Everything at my house was okay, and other than a frazzled shepherd, we survived the storms just fine. Anyone take any damage? I poured a few bourbons, put Zelda on the big screen and weather updates on the little one, and kicked some Gannondorf butt.

AlwaysIllinois.org (the University of Illinois social network) is now providing free, permanent email forwarding. You can get a whatever@alumni.illinois.edu address and forward it wherever you read your mail. That’s not a bad deal if you don’t already have a .edu address … the AlwaysIllinois stuff is free and low/no-spam, and .edu addresses can come in handy for student discounts on Internet orders.

The caveat is that you can’t change the alias once you’ve set it, and you only get one. So decide now if you really want to be chiefilliniwek@alumni.illinois.edu and grab the address before Marc does.

The local radio station has been using a sound quip from High Fidelity lately as an ad/fill/whatever those things are called:

“Oh, kind of a new record. Very nice, Rob. A sly declaration of new classic status slipped into a bunch of safe ones — very” WPGU

I get a private small chuckle out of that, knowing they replaced the name of their radio station for the word “pussy.” Kudos, WPGU!

I’m being obtuse because I want to avoid some obvious keyword searches. If you work in IT around campus, this might interest you. Otherwise, just assume it’s me being, well, me (sorry 2.67 readers….)

If you (or someone you work with) will be attending a certain conference next Wednesday, and want to play a certain game based on things that happen (which is similar to a game with numbers and certain cards that one draws on,) contact me ahead of time — or find me at said conference.

Wink wink, nudge nudge.

Clue Stick

Originally uploaded by TromboneKenny.

This fall’s academic schedule is different than recent history at UIUC… classes start on a Monday (Aug 25th.) This ends the ridiculous Wednesday-is-a-Monday scheduling weirdness — but also pushes everything up a few days. I’m trying to plan our beginning-of-fall events, and looking around on the campus sites, it doesn’t look like anyone has posted their August events yet. I don’t know when Quad Day, or First Night, or even band camp is. I know that the res hall move in day is the 21st (a Thursday.)

The campus calendar for August is pretty slim right now. But it includes a Goat School on Artificial Insemination. No kidding. I can’t make that stuff up. It’s after the Occult Science and Garden Tour of the Japan House, but before the Agronomy Day and Tea Ceremonies.

• OpenPanel.com | Open Source Server control panel
  (tags: isp management)

Richard pointed out istwitterdown.com to me, and I good laugh at at a simple interface answering a simple question.

So I decided to make isthenetworkdown.cs.uiuc.edu and populate it with 8 ball answers.

Both of these were way funner than they should have been.

• Sage: a feed reader for Firefox
  (tags: rss)