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.

“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1952

“It’s not a hole in the wall. It’s a…. controlled penetration.”

Must….not…. take out of…. context….

As overheard in a staff meeting this morning, this is how my boss (not to be confused with a PHB,) explained how GPS technology works:

However it works, it makes it work.

That quote’s a keeper.

This came in from Elizabeth from The Reputation listserv:

The text of the opinion states: “On the evening of May 29, 2003, Hayden was smoking crack with three other folks at a trailer park home on Chain of Rocks Road in Granite City, Illinois. Murphy, Sr., who had sold drugs to Hayden several years earlier, showed up later that night. He was friendly at first, but he soon called Hayden a “snitch bitch hoe”1 and hit her in the head with the back of his hand.” Footnote 1 — explaining “snitch bitch hoe” — reads: “The trial transcript quotes Ms. Hayden as saying Murphy called her a snitch bitch “hoe.” A “hoe,” of course, is a tool used for weeding and gardening. We think the court reporter, unfamiliar with rap music (perhaps thankfully so), misunderstood Hayden’s response. We have taken the liberty of changing “hoe” to “ho,” a staple of rap music vernacular as, for example, when Ludacris raps “You doin’ ho activities with ho tendencies.”"

I appreciate the humor, and the fact I know where Granite City and the Chain of Rocks Road is.

CITES is having problems with their spam tool. That’s not so bad – it is a new service, and I’m sure lots of people are signing up for it. It’s their status update that cracked me up:

4:36 – Working with the vendor. Working on restoring to condition database was at last night’s backup.

Here’s a piece of chalk. Go up to the blackboard and diagram that sentence for me. I want to see how you do that.

“On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.”

I always wondered what that meant…

I’ll let the sports websites recap the Illini’s amazing regular season, which ended today. We were responsible for more records broken and streaks shattered than I could have dreamed possible back in November. I knew we were good, but we’re damn good, and it’s been a lot of fun being an Illini fan this year.

Twenty-nine and one is respectful. The loss today, our first in a long, long time is a little sad considering we could have gone perfect. But the loss won’t hurt us. We should still be #1 ranked tomorrow (although I doubt with all the votes,) and we still won the Big Ten outright and will have the #1 seed in the BigTen tourney this coming weekend. We will still be a #1 seed on Selection Sunday (just seven days away!) and we’ll roll all the way through Indy, Chicago, and St. Louis. I leave you with Coach Weber:

“Being undefeated was never one of our goals, it just kind of snuck in there,” said Weber. “We’ll learn from this and move on. The next stretch is the most important of the year. That’s what people are going to remember.

“The way I look at it, you’re going to lose sometime. Better to lose now than three weeks from now.”

“I am not your personal Google.”

Why do people think they’ll get better answers to simple questions from me than Google? Seriously, searching isn’t that difficult, and it’s less annoying for me. Google and the Wikipedia are way smarter than me – go there first.

[Edit: Marc points us all to JustFuckingGoogleIt.com ]

Here’s something to think about for 2005. And I’m done for tonight. Honest.

It’s the Bruce Mau Design Incomplete Manifesto for Growth It’s one of those “Everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten” lists, but not so lame. I think everyone could take a few of those ideas into their lives. Props to Chantelle for showing that to me.