In the meantime, I ran across this and was very impressed. Making Visible the Invisible display at the Seattle Public Library. I want to do something similar to that, at Siebel Center, on its display wall, with IT information from the department or campus.

I also called Insight to see if I could save money on my bill. I cancelled HBO, so I’ll just have to hang with Chuck or Nate if I want to watch the next season of the Sopranos. (And all the older seasons, if you can sit through them, are on DVD.) I decided that, for the first month or two, I didn’t want to give up the cable box/HD/DVR capabilities yet. In fact, I ordered an upgrade … The dual tuner model of their DVR is only a nickel more than the single tuner for the next 12 months (then it’s $3 more per month.) So that’s getting upgraded next week. In the meantime, I’ll just watch my pennies and if things get tight I’ll cut down to just the extended cable plan (gotta have my comedy central.)

But, with football starting, and ESPN and FOX in HD, I don’t really want to get rid of the HD pak yet. That, and then basketball starts I want to have a digital box so I can either see the games in HD if possible, or order the Full Court games/days I want.

The other choice is that I get a digital pak (meaning some select digital cable channels) for free. I’m currently getting the sports one, but I’m considering changing it to the family one. (That way, if mom ever visits, she can have her discovery health. *shudder* Oh God, it would even be on DVR, so it could be rewatched and rewound. Ew.) I’m a little annoyed that would mean missing the SciFi channel, but in reality I never watch any of these extended channels (sorry Josh, I just don’t get up to the golf channel,) so it doesn’t really matter (and it doesn’t save me money.) Here are the paks:

Movie Pak
502 WE: Women’s Entertainment
503 Independent Film Channel
504 Fox Movie Channel
505 Lifetime Movie Network
506 Sundance Channel
516 Encore Wam
517 Encore
519 Encore Love
521 Encore Mystery
523 Encore Westerns
527 Encore Drama
529 Encore Action

Sports & Lifestyle Pak
160 Sci-Fi Channel
161 GSN
163 SOAPnet
164 Fox Reality Channel
273 Bloomberg
274 History International
275 GAS
401 Fox Soccer Channel
402 ESPNEWS
403 ESPN Classic
404 Outdoor Life
405 Golf Channel, The
406 NFL Network
407 CSTV
409 Fuse
410 MTV Hits

Family Pak
120 Noggin
121 Discovery Kids
122 Biography Channel, The
123 Discovery Home
124 Discovery Times
125 Military Channel
127 Toon Disney
128 Nicktoons
130 DIY Network
131 Fine Living
162 BBC America
220 Discovery Health
272 Science Channel, The
276 VH1 Classic
277 VH1 Country
278 VH1 Soul

I think I already have enough referral points to apply. Now I just need to make a commercial.

So I found this flyer on Undock and Go which states it’s on all the newer laptops. Daaaamn. That’s a feature I want, and my laptop isn’t that old!

I tried a BIOS update, and a few more seemingly obvious updates for my D600 to have this functionality, but each time I press the undock button, it goes to standby. I hope that this would be a software feature, but maybe it is tied to the hardware/motherboard. I opened a case with Dell’s online support (echat) but I think I’ll take it to email.

Anyone have any ideas/pointers on where I can adjust the Undocking button features in Windows? (Assuming the BIOS and chipsets are set.)

[ Edit: After talking to Dell through their web chat, email, and phone support, it was as I feared. A chipset change between D600 and D610 allows for hot undocking -- this isn't something I can enable via BIOS or driver updates. The best I can hope for is that TSG orders a D610 and I upgrade. Until then, I'm stuck in standby -- literally. ]

[ Edit 9/14/05: Turns out Dell was wrong! While mucking around in the BIOS today for another reason, I found a toggle that controls if undocking goes to standby or keeps the system live. I set that to keep the system live, and now I'm able to undock and go as I had hoped. Yay for the features, but boo to the *three* Dell technicians who didn't know about the BIOS feature, or tell me to look there. Granted, I should have thought to look there too, but that's what you call support for. At this point, I'm just happy it does what I want. ]

It’s just not true. Not anymore. If you haven’t been to your local library, go there and check it out. Ask the person behind the desk for a tour. My personal view is that it’s the job of the libraries to match their users up with the information they’re seeking. These days that means books, magazines, DVDs, CDs, Internet terminals, community groups, community resources, self-help… You name it. These aren’t pie-in-the-sky dreams. These are things happening in Everycommunity, USA, today.

After school programs that teach D&D games? Or, web resources, to help with breaking news when a natural disaster comes through?

You can see why, with this philosophy, I don’t see myself going to be a traditional old-school librarian… Instead, I see everything we enteract with on a daily basis coming into the library, and the library being a focal point for providing information back to the user. Think of it as a physical search engine … Google is nothing more than a virtual library on the web. The challenges for your local library are the same as Google’s… What information do people want? How can we provide it? What will bring them back and make this an even better resource? Where’s the next round of money going to come from?

That, other than the money thing, is what interests me the most.

What got my attention last Monday was that the subject on the email said, “For Tues: Rosencrantz and Guil…” Ros and Guil Are Dead is a great play and movie, and I highly recommend it, but that’s not why I’m posting. I got the email Monday afternoon, and it said “for Tuesday.”

I love my Netflix, and I really think for movie-rental fans, it’s as good as sliced bread. My only continual bitch is that it takes too long for movies sent from St. Louis (the closest distribution center,) to Champaign. My shortest time having a movie, according to Netflix, was 7 days from checkout to checkin, even if I watched it the day I got it and put it in the mailbox the next day.

So I was a little surprised the email sent at 4pm on Monday said I would get the movie on Tuesday. I was more surprised the next day when there was a Netflix envelope in my mailbox, and even more surprised when I opened it and found the return address was to a distribution center in Springfield, IL (splitting the distance between Champaign and St. Louis.)

As an experiment, I quickly watched R&GAD (what you’ve been is not on boats.) I also watched another movie I had whose return envelope was to St. Louis and dropped them both in the mail the next day (Wednesday.) I’m a gambling man… I wonder which will win and get checked in first?

I was midly annoyed, but not surprised, when I got both emails for the checked in movies at the same time on Friday morning. Now, Wednesday – Friday is pretty good, considering most of the first day they sat in my mailbox waiting for the letter carrier (Note to self: ask postal employee best place/time to drop off out of town mail for quickest CU-area departure.) And hour later, two “For Sat:” emails from Netflix. They arrived the next afternoon.

I’m really pleased Netflix opened a closer distribution center, and I look forward to milking it up as much as I can. I’m curious if it’s a full center, or if it just ‘caches’ the next movie in my queue so it’s quick-to-mail-close when I’m ready for it. And why did my STL and Spfld destined checkins take the same amount of time to arrive? Where is the bottleneck?

And in the shoe’s-on-the-other-foot department, I know that Blockbuster is testing using local stores as distribution centers, and the store 1/2 mile from my house is one for the Champaign area. Same $18/mo for three movies, and I think you get two in-store coupons for rentals. Reviewing my queue, nothing is that odd or esoteric that BB wouldn’t have it when Netflix does — and the ability to drop off or pick up my movies on the plan is damn appealing.

But, I _LIKE_ Netflix. I don’t want to leave it, especially if I see them trying to do better. If I had the time and money, I would subscribe to both and try it out, but I don’t have the time for that many movies and the extra $20 is not a good idea right now.

So, Netflix, keep impressing me. Blockbuster, keep impressing me. I will award the best with my money – although it might take me until next summer to have the time to evaluate what “the best” means.

PS. Yes, both of the Saturday movies are going in the mail tomorrow morning.

That search kept leading me across two major devices. Completely disjoint websites that I found through different avenues would advertise one or the other, and sometimes both.

So, being ready for change (knowing that a lot of it was about to happen in my life,) and having a few weeks before classes started, I found ways to implement them.

The first isn’t really a technology, it’s a methodology. It’s a personal productivity/organizational method called “Gettings Things Done” by David Allen.

Some of you reading are fresh out of college, and some are fresh into new areas of your life… One of the most important things my boss Chuck imparted to me when I started my first non-student job is that you need to learn an organizational system. The first time you work outside of someone else’s schedule (like a class schedule, etc.) you usually bottom out because you’re not used to that much personal responsibility.

I started at work with the Eagle planner, and took some seminars on that and the Steven-Covey planner/Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, so I’ve been trained in a few systems, and use pieces from them in my life. However, I knew my system wasn’t complete and I was missing things. Plus, very soon I would have to balance class and work, as well as home/personal stuff — and do that on a tight budget, meaning more planning for shopping and meals. I needed something better, and everyone was raving about how great the GTD system is. So, I grabbed the book from the library and started reading.

You know I already make lists, and am very action oriented. Sure, a “plan” is good, but things I can do and check off are great. The GTD system gives you a system to write things down/store them and organize them in a way that they’re easily available and yet not taking up space in your noggin. GTD says get everything out of your head, and then organize it. Use an inbox. Process. File. Review.

It’s amazingly effective. It gives you that peace of mind you have when you leave work right before you go on vacation, when you know everything is managed and taken care of — combined with the age old trick of putting something next to your keys when you have to remember it the next morning. It’s out of your head, so you can focus on what’s next at hand without having to struggle to remember what you’re forgetting, combined with a trusted system you can easily access and get that information back when you’re ready to use it.

Sound simple? It is. This isn’t rocket science, and we’re all probably doing some of it. GTD just gives a framework to be more effective. (Beth is probably rolling her eyes at this point in the post, because she’s heard about this system a ton. Sorry, Beth.)

Since I started a few weeks ago, I have all my filing in order. I have set action lists and project lists for home, school and work. I have physical inboxes at home and work that I work in and out of. I have a ‘tickler’ file to store things I’ll need in the future. I have a label printer. I have one email in my inbox, which I should really file but I want to watch a lecture it’s reminding me about first.

The cool thing about GTD is that it’s technology agnostic. Like paper and manilla folders? Use them, one idea per page. Have a new Palm or Visor/Treo? Store them all there. Live and breathe in Outlook? Use those categories/sections. Use a combination of all of it (like I do.) In a future post, if people are interested, I’ll talk about what I’ve come up to implement GTD.

The book tells you to take 3-4 days and sort your entire life — I just don’t have the time to do that a week before the semester started. So, I’m going for incremental improvement. Each day, I file a little more, implement a new part/section of the plan into my life. I’m satisfied. Tonight, after I’m done blogging, I’m going to do the “weekly review.”

If you’re interested in finding a new workflow management plan for yourself, pick up the book or buy me a beer. I’d be happy to sell you on it. I’ve already hooked two people, and, hey, I was right about the TiVo, wasn’t I?

The second technology that the hip students are using these days is TabletPCs, but this post is long enough. I’ll talk about my new toy under a different heading.

Oh, yeah. Exactly that. But even so, why so much publicity around late August. Some of these vulnerability have been around for months. Do hackers go overdrive in the summer, causing more ‘ploits in August? Do they think about college students coming back? Or do developers work all summer on their bugfixes and roll out the patch packages in mid-August, when they hope more people will install them?

Or am I just naturally busier in August? Security incidents/reports/notices pull me away from my other projects, and I notice them more?

NASA officials have announced plans to the begin the countdown to a July 26 launch of Space Shuttle Discovery. The countdown will start Saturday, with a test of the External Tank to follow early on launch day. If all goes well with the test, the countdown will continue to liftoff at 10:39 a.m. EDT on Tuesday.

I’ll have to tell Chuck I might be a little late on Tuesday morning. I can’t help but think of Bill Murray from Stripes: “Alright boys, just like last time… ONLY BETTER!”