It looks like Sprint has flipped the switch on their high-speed, 3G data network in the Champaign-Urbana area. As of this morning, my phone is showing the same data icon I see in the St. Louis and Chicago areas. I don’t use the broadband much on my phone, but I’m looking forward to the increased speed — even if it’s as much a perception of speed than true evolved functionality. It makes us not seem so rural when we have the same data plans as urban areas.

Now, to gets me a new smartphone to use all this tasty bandwidth…

New MASSMAIL:

It is time once again for renewal of campus parking permits. Significant
events in the past year have resulted in major changes related to parking.
A recent ruling by the Illinois Supreme Court said that parking fees are a
mandatory subject of bargaining. As a result of this ruling, the
University of Illinois has begun to significantly revise its parking
permit fee structure.

University representatives began a process of negotiating parking rates
with unions on each campus. For the Urbana campus, a number of agreements
have been reached that feature a sliding scale parking rate, based on the
annual salary of each employee. Specifically, the parking fees paid by
these employees will be 0.7% (seven-tenths of one percent) of their annual
base salary. Represented employees whose union contracts have not yet
come up for negotiation will continue to pay the FY08 parking rate of
$35.58 per month, pursuant to the requirements of Illinois public sector
labor law.

Chancellor Richard Herman and Provost Linda Katehi have decided to extend
the new parking rate structure to all nonrepresented employees on the
Urbana campus (faculty, academic professionals, and open range civil
service staff). Additionally, they have also added a cap to the sliding
scale structure that will provide an upper limit to the monthly parking
rate. For FY09, this cap is $40 per month. Therefore, beginning July 1,
2008, all nonrepresented employees on the Urbana campus will be charged
either: (a) 0.7% of their annual base salary per month for rental lot
permits, or (b) the designated cap of $40 per month, whichever is less.
For most employees, this new fee structure based on a sliding scale
percentage rate will result in a decrease in their monthly parking fee.
For the minority of employees who, based on their annual earnings, will
see an increase in their parking fee, the maximum increase will be $4.42
per month (i.e., the difference between the cap rate of $40 per month for
FY09 compared to the FY08 rate of $35.58 per month).

I’m not sure that I agree that parking factors into collective bargaining. (Other than I think parking should be free for employees. Bargain that.) Pretending that the employee’s parking lot selection is unbiased (*cough*), and that the waiting list for permits in their lots are honest and followed (*wheeze, choke, gasp*), I am okay with the old regime of standardize parking rates regardless of employment class (non-represented employees REP-RE-SENT!) or salary.

I didn’t like that when I was parking in a rocked lot 3 blocks away from my office, the Chancellor was parking in a covered deck right across the street from his office. Now that I’m also in a covered deck just a block from my office, I’m cooler with it. FWIW, I’m glad they didn’t go with the quality of the lot as a determination for pricing. I would pay a few bucks a month more for the deck, but I know a lot of people who wouldn’t.

But, anyway, my parking rates for FY09 will go down. (But not as low as when I started buying employee parking in 2001.) It’s so rare and unique to get something back I’m almost in awe… except that it serves as a reminder that the university doesn’t think I make much money. Nothing like a graduated scale to put me back in my place. Gary was right — campus parking really is soul crushing.

Doing the math, if you gross $61k a year, your parking rates stay the same ($35.58/mo.) If you make more than that, you see an increase until $68.5k (when you hit the $40/mo cap.) If anyone’s listening, raise my salary and I’ll pay the $4 without whining.

I think there need to be more incentives for people who sometimes drive, or carpool. With gas at/over $4/gal, I’m trying to ride the bus more. I wouldn’t surrender my parking hang tag unless I really thought I could ride the bus all the time, but at a daily hang tag for about $7, if I didn’t have to drive to campus all that often, I could still save money.

www.procure.stateuniv.state.il.us/dsp_notice.cfm?PN=1DFL901&UNI=UIUC

Campus had a bid for cable TV and Internet access to Orchard Downs (and the new student housing over at 1st and Windsor.) Not surprisingly, the purchase was awarded to Comcast. (I guess the surprise comes from four other groups trying to compete.) The deal wound up being over $2M for a 3 year commitment with renewal options. It would have been nice to use that leverage for BTN support, but I doubt that happened.

A while ago, I did some data mining on my Netflix rental statistics. I tried to make those tools open so other people could study their own. I’m sad to say that those tools no longer work (Netflix changed what data was available and the format,) but I’m happy to say someone else has picked up the slack and made much neater tools.

Netflix provides RSS feeds for users to view their queues, recommendations, reviews, etc. Feedflix (feedflix.com) is a free service that mines those RSS feeds (you sign up with your private feed code,) to show you more information about how you use Netflix. It goes a step further to aggregate everyone’s queues and at-home movies to show data that Netflix doesn’t publish. (For example, National Treasure : Book of Secrets is currently at the homes of 55 Feedflix subscribers, is queued by 376 of them, and has been reviewed 8 times.)

Some of the data you can see without submitting your Netflix data. For example, I am in the 10% of surveyed users whose queue size is between 400 and 499. Almost 75% of the surveyed users return their movies in 9 days or less. Yet another way I feel like an outlier (at least I have nice hair.)

If you use Netflix, add in your RSS feeds so we can get a larger aggregate picture of Netflix users. (You’ll also appreciate knowing that you’ve had the 24 DVD for 46 days and each rental has cost you $12 a movie.) The site is maturing, and I’ve talked with the developer. He’s always looking for more data and more suggestions on how to manipulate it. If you liked my day of week calculations or cost calculations, those are in Feedflix now, so be sure to check it out.

I’m really impressed with the Feedflix data and how its improved my Netflix user experience. My only existing criticism is the lack of sample size anytime a percentage is mentioned. (For example, 23% of Feedflix subscribers return movies within 3-4 days… but 23% of what? 100 users? 10,000? A million?)

I decided to upgrade to Firefox 3 beta on the tablet, in part because I was looking for more memory performance improvements and also because I’m about to reinstall the laptop anyway.

Things are mostly the same. I haven’t had any crashes yet. It add some new internal functionality that’s pretty cool. By default, it asks you if you want to keep the tabs/open pages when you close a window. There have been plugins for this in the past, but it’s nice to see it in the core. (And having the option of deciding to keep them, or discarding them. You can specify to always do one or the other.)

It also has a nice feature where it remembers if you’ve resized text sizes on sites regardless of tab or window. This means that if I bump up the size in a Wikipedia page (so I can read it comfortably from the couch — ctrl-0, ctrl-dash and ctrl-equals are my friends,) and I open a link to something else in Wikipedia in another tab, it uses the sizing from the previous tab. Nice touch.

If a page prompts you for a password, it asks if you want to remember/not-remember/ignore in a bar at the top of the page instead of in a pop-up. That nice because it loads the next page without waiting for you to answer about the password. It’s easier to ignore if you don’t want to use the password management features.

On the downside, many of my plugins are not FF3 compatible and I find myself really missing mouse gestures and a few other things I’ve just incorporated into my daily browsing. I’m also really annoyed to discover it still searches for plugin updates on startup, and fails to start the browser until you acknowledge pending updates. I wish it would check for updates after loading…. I hate starting the browser and not actually having it start (and then hunting through the open windows for the dialog box just because WeatherFox or DownThemAll has a new update.) If I start a browser, I want a browser.

All for now.

Edited, for Marc.

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.