January 2006

Desert benefits

January 31, 2006

One of the great benefits of living in desert southwest is the early start of the spring growing season. With the end of January comes the arrival of Growers Supply, Ramm Fencing and many other catalogs to get the spring projects underway. With a much expanded garden (double the size) and probably doubling the number of trees planted on the place it will be a busy spring. Probably won't figure out how to incorporate a water wall this year but just might get a system for collecting rainwater.

Contact management software for OS X

January 30, 2006

I wrote sometime back about the really sad situation that has become of SOHO Organizer. The message that a converter for previous data will be available "some time soon" is still on the website. Apparently instead of doing anything about really getting the hundreds of bugs fixed they're "focused" on universal binary. There also seems to be time available to delete posts if people raise too many concerns.

Bottom line is the end user gets buggy software that will not run properly on either architecture.

Dick Morgan for university president

January 29, 2006

With the resignation of Carol Harter as UNLV's president there has been a great deal of speculation about Dick Morgan being picked to be the next university president.

In a KLAS TV story Chancellor Jim Rogers says he's been approached by people who think Morgan should be president - of UNR that is. The comments lead one to believe that they were prior to there being an opening at UNLV.

Elsewhere in the Las Vegas Sun Regent Harry Rosenberg says of Chancellor Rogers "The behavior I'm seeing is typical of Mussolini".

On a personal note I'll be linking to all the stories I come across on this topic. However, I will be unlikely to comment much from a personal perspective. Morgan is my second-level supervisor (my boss' boss). He is an adept administrator and simply one of the best administrators' I've had the fortune to work for as well as being an outstanding person. As much as I don't relish the possibility of Dean Morgan leaving the law school, I have a great deal of interest in seeing people with Morgan's skill and management style leading Nevada's institutions of higher education.

The business limiting information on health care

January 29, 2006

Last fall the October 2005 issue of Seventeen was pulled from the shelves of 2500 Albertsons stores across 12 states. The complaint centered around an educational health article written by Jennifer Howze entitled Vagina 101. According to Associated Press articles on the magazine story it "shows a drawing of a woman's genitalia with arrows pointing out the clitoris, the labia majora, the labia minora, the hymen and the anus. It provides a one-paragraph description of each part of the anatomy, under the headline "Owner's Manual." On the second page, the author addresses what's normal and what's not — from the color and consistency of female discharge to how to detect a urinary tract infection."

Silly click-wrap agreements

January 28, 2006

Each winter those of us in the United States get to spend some quality time with a pencil and paper, or the computer figuring out if we paid the government of the United States enough last year. Living in Nevada I no-longer must figure the state's portion as it is already paid or the kind folks from California and the other 48 states come to our desert oasis to pay them in exchange for the microscopic chance of cashing in and going to live on the beach.
Silly clickwrap agreement
Anyway, I downloaded the latest version of Turbo Tax and it comes with a click-wrap license agreement - not at all unusual in this day and age. What is unusual are the terms. In order to use the software, I am supposed to agree that I have "read and printed" a copy of the agreement. Both in the past tense. Read. Printed. The only problem is at this point in the program there is no possibility of printing the License agreement.

All of this is enough to make one wonder if anybody reads this stuff before they ship the software. Oh, and the software needed at least five updates, that is the software I downloaded today needed five updates.

Harter resigns from UNLV

January 27, 2006

Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents Chairman Bret Whipple told the Review Journal today that UNLV President Carol Harter will be stepping down on June 30.

KLAS TV has an article about Harter's departure and speculation on the process for finding a replacement. KESQ has a story saying Chancellor Jim Rogers, who has butted heads with Harter, did not force her out. He expressed a need for a "less centralized management philosophy" in the University's next leader.

In other system news John Ralston has a letter from Regent Linda Howard to Chancellor Jim Rogers.

Second-chance fraud

January 26, 2006

Consumers Reports Money Matters flyer this month has an article on avoiding fraudulent "Second-Chance" offers on eBay. Reading the article I thought it should have taken a bit different approach. The bulk of the article focused on the high rate of fraudulent offers that attempt to mimic eBay's legitimate program.

The bottom line is this. If you use eBay to buy or sell do these two things:

  • Always handle transactions by going to http://www.ebay.com/ and logging in to the site with your username and password.
  • Always pay with Pay-Pal or a credit card. Anybody who is a legitimate seller in this day and age must accept these forms of payment. Most won't take anything else

eBay has some more tiips.

There are also several things you should never do:

A bad day

January 25, 2006

Sometimes it seems days just start out bad and get worse. Then again it could end up getting worse.

The preview test

January 25, 2006

Sitting down to watch Closer. The preview test - how good do the previews look - suggests it should be a good movie.

Kirkuk Weather

January 24, 2006

On January 22nd my aircraft and our sister ship just barely arrived at FOB Warrior near Kirkuk through increasingly poor weather without having to turn back to FOB Speicher. In retrospect, we should have turned around because the weather did not clear for 48 hours leaving us stuck. You all might remember that I spent Christmas night in Kirkuk under similar circumstances.

In addition to our crews, another flight of 2 UH-60s from our company got stuck at Speicher. This totaled 16 crew members and about 50 passengers all stranded. We were put up in the transient housing section of the FOB which, I have to say, is not well maintained. We stayed in a well heated tent on bunk beds but did not have sheets, blankets, pillows or towels. The bathrooms were filthy and the showers overcrowded and clogged. Nonetheless, we were warm, safe and dry and, as Ive said many times before, things could have been much worse.

One good thing about FOB Warrior is that the Air Force shares the base. For whatever reason, this seems to bring better facilities to the base. We spent many hours at the "Clamtina". This is a club set up in a clamshell aircraft hanger. We sat around drinking "near" beer from bottles, eating fresh popcorn, and playing board games. It was actually a lot of fun. I think we all forgot for a few moments exactly where we were and why.

We finally returned to Speicher today only to be sent on a four hour "battlefield circulation" mission. The mission went without a hitch and I am finally back in my own CHU.

Pages