In the past, I've just read about it, but this year I'm finally going to SXSW Interactive myself. I hope to learn a few things and meet interesting people.

If nothing else, it will be nice to be around other people who have jobs similar to mine, to talk shop with people who have different perspectives.

Many people who own and build web sites are annoyed by the new AutoLink feature in the current beta version of Google's Toolbar. Fortunately, the internet is full of smart people who know something about how web pages work, and someone has already come up with a solution for disabling AutoLink.

For a while now, I've been having trouble connecting to the Windows fileserver here at work with my iBook. I thought that some change made to the Windows server was to blame, but it turns out that it's Panther 10.3.3 that's the problem.

When I tried to use the Finder to access servers in my workgroup, I'd click on a server alias, get a login box, and then get the message "The alias 'X' could not be opened because the original item could not be found." Searching on the error message with Google brought me to this page, which explains the problem and gives a solution.

Now I'm back on the intranet and able to use the iBook productively again!

It's time to go home for Christmas, and time for the annual overhaul of my relatives' computers. Used to be that it was just my mom's ancient Mac that needed an annual going over to make sure it could lurch along for another year. My husband, Mac genius that he is, always handled that.

Then my mom got a nifty new iMac at work which she brought home over Christmas break for a tune-up and Q&A session as well. Not long after, my dad got a Dell laptop so he could work from home. My grandfather also got a Dell. Since George doesn't do Windows and my brother doesn't do tech support, I ended up supporting those by default.

So I'm heading home with a CD loaded with goodies: Windows XP SP2 (just in case), Ad-aware, Spybot, Firefox, and Bruce Schneier's recent article on PC security. (Grandpa's internet connection is glacial, so I don't want to make him download anything more than necessary.) Dad's laptop is going to be a breeze, but Grandpa's desktop is going to be a challenge. Who knows what junk has accumulated in there since last year?

I'm happy to do it, though, if it means that Grandpa is still willing to use his computer. Technological progress always comes at a price.

Here's his CV (or resume, for those of us on the other side of the Atlantic).

In trying to advertise a couple of job openings recently, our research group has run up against high prices and low response rates for traditional help wanted ads in the paper, and on large sites like CareerBuilder. The university job listings are of course free, but don't seem to get a very good response, either.

Where are the best places to advertise an IT job opening that are free or low-cost and are likely to get a good response? I have so far suggested Craigslist, and I'm thinking of suggesting Geekfinder. Can you think of any others?

23-5617-1021-401-72-1-429-12-5-79-434-2-1932.
11-1691-8-59-21-41-2161-2-1056-1650, 542-12-1339-37267.
147, 5443-9-21851-4676.

The movie industry likes to rank movies by box office gross, not counting for inflation, because this means the movie on top will always be a fairly new one.

However, using the Yahoo! list of top-grossing movies of all time and a handy inflation calculator to adjust all amounts to 2003 (the most recent year the calculator can do), the original Star Wars blows away the competition. It grossed $1,423,852,836.89 2003 dollars, compared to E.T.'s $839,840,340.63 or Titanic's $673,897,526.76

This better correlates with anecdotes I've heard about people who saw Star Wars forty times. With the advent of the VCR, who does that any more?

Our church has recently started recording the sermons on CD each Sunday. It's my job to get the CD after the service, rip the sermon to MP3, and put it up on the church web site. Nobody (other than the guy who set up the recording system) really knows how to work the CD recorder. There are hand-written instructions on it that tell which buttons to push in order to record and finalize the CD.

Apparently, some people are using the CD recorder as a regular CD player in the church. I've noticed that when I pop the sermon CD in my computer at home a random title and track listing pops up. I'm guessing that these are the title and first track from the last CD in the player. However they got there, they are burned into our original sermon CDs and can sometimes be humorous, as when the sermon was titled "The Pope on the Rosary" for a few weeks running (our church isn't Catholic). It's also kind of interesting to see what people have been listening to in the church during the week.

The best so far, however, was this week's sermon. The CD is titled "Sing You Bastards!" and the sermon track is labeled "C'mon Laugh You Bastards." I'm not sure whether the music director was trying a little tough love on the choir, or our assistant rector was looking for some new jokes for her sermon.

Of course, I change the label to something boring and appropriate before I put it online. But wouldn't it be awesome if you saw one of those signs outside a church announcing the week's sermon title that said, "C'mon Laugh You Bastards"? That would be one sermon I'd want to hear.

He may officially be the Representative from Virginia's Ninth District, but during the last few years he's often seemed to be one of the few people in the U.S. Congress representing the District of Cyberspace. Rick Boucher is running for re-election this year. I can't vote for him since I live in South Carolina, but to those of you who live in VA or near enough to help with his campaign, I suggest you take a look at the links below to see who I'm talking about. I'd be sorry to see this guy go.

DMCA Foes Find Allies in House
Two Congressmen Push for DMCA Amendments (/. story)
Boucher's DMCRA To Get A Hearing On May 12 (/. story)

Well, the nutcases over at Christian Exodus have decided where they want to move: South Carolina. As someone who lives here, I'd like to say, please stay home.

This state has enough problems without a bunch of radical loons deciding to make it their base camp for launching a fringe political movement. Our education system isn't so good. We're having trouble keeping jobs and maintaining public infrastructure. And on top of that, we're still trying to improve race relations (with no help from another fringe political movement, thankyouverymuch).

We've elected a wonderful governor who is helping fix our budget problems, but he's still got a long way to go and is getting little to no help from the good ol' boys in the legislature. Bringing in a bunch of people hell-bent on destroying our government is not going to help the situation any.

And speaking as a Christian, it sounds to me like these Exodus folks have not been reading their Bibles. If they were, they would know that Jesus told his followers to go out into the world and spread the gospel, not huddle together in a little enclave of like-minded believers. Most of the New Testament is about people going out and founding new churches. If these Exodus people really took their mission as Christians seriously, they would be moving to the state with the fewest Christians and finding ways to help the poor and disadvantaged there.

Did you know that July 2 is the middle day of the year in non-leap years? The things you can learn from Wikipedia. It's also the birthday of Hermann Hesse and Richard Petty.

What are you planning on doing on July 2 this year? It's a Friday and the beginning of a long weekend in the U.S., so I will probably be working as usual, then going home and relaxing on the back porch.

On the surface, this place hardly seems like a bastion of facism. But according to this article, Rio Rancho principal Gary Tripp has decided that the students at his school may not create art or poetry that disagrees with his personal political opinions.

Tripp fired teacher Bill Nevins for supervising a poetry club where the students dared to express alternate opinions. Then he tore down art around the school that he didn't agree with and fired the art teachers who refused to censor their students' work. Here's another account of events from a local New Mexico paper.

Censorship makes my blood boil, especially in this case where it's public school kids who probably don't have the option of going to another school and escaping the situation. I really hope that someone comes along and tells them that their principal is wrong: it's OK to have opinions, and OK to speak your mind.

I saw this comic in the Atlanta Sunday paper, and thought it was pretty neat, if a little cheesy: Stone Soup

I just received the following message, sent to the network outage listserv:

UPDATE TO EXISTING OUTAGE BULLETIN
 
This notification was originally posted for 4/28/2004 10:20:05 AM. It has since been updated with the following information...
 
Details of System Outage:
****UPDATE (4-28-04 11:35 AM)
 
This outage was created by a termite swarm in the closet where the primary switch is located. The insects crawled into the switch and shorted it out.
 
The room is still full of termites and repairs cannot be completed until they have been removed. If insecticide is used, we will have to wait for an "all clear" before returning to the room to replace the dead switch.
 
Updates will be posted as information on the termite invasion becomes available.****