The Great Taste of Nothing

Since the eruption of Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajokull, the International ATA reports that airlines have lost over $1.7 billion.

What!?!

Yeah, I know that European air travel was halted for a period of time because of the volcanic eruption in Iceland, and that sucks… But I’m more concerned about how someone comes up with the outrageous name Eyjafjallajokull (“AY-yah-fyah-lah-YOH-kuul”).

Now that makes perfect sense.

This spells trouble for those who might need to print large documents (like me). A limit of 350 pages per semester? Seriously!?! I just finished a project for ECON212 where I had to print 45 copies of a 10-page document for the class. Honestly, I don’t have a problem paying $5 (100 over quota * $.05 penalty) to make a good grade, but that was just in a single session. We’re not even including

• the 2 copies of a 30-page paper I had to print to turn in
• the ECON310 scans of a book we need to print for class
• or stuff for ANY OTHER CLASS.

350 pages, though it may sound like a lot of wasted paper, is not much in the life of a college student. I’m just glad that I have my own printer, though it pains me to waste MY paper and MY toner.

Way to go, Clemson.

–

Here is a copy of the email I received earlier:

Clemson has adopted a new policy aimed at saving money, reducing wasted paper and making printing in public campus labs more efficient. Uniprint from Pharos Systems has been awarded the contract for software that will allow the university to implement this policy.

The Print Quota Policy, recommended by the Budget Task Force on Information Technology and approved by Administrative Council, will establish a per-page charge for those over the quota in the CCIT-managed student labs, the CCIT-owned plotters, and for departmentally managed student labs.

The issue of excessive printing was repeatedly mentioned when Clemson asked for comments and suggestions about its 2008-2009 budget crisis. That was November 2008 and the university had just announced mandatory furloughs to handle the immediate crisis and formed 11 budget task forces to consider long-term strategic decisions for the future.

Clemson University has seen a steady increase in volume and cost in public labs where it has provided unrestricted printing for many years. During the 2008-09 academic year, print volumes hit the 12 million-page mark in CCIT labs alone, and 2009-10 projections are close to 13 million.

“We found that Clemson is the only ACC school that did not have a print quota in place,” said Janell Bohlmann, director of project and service management in Clemson computing and information technology (CCIT). “We researched implementation at many schools and solicited input from students who served on the task force and from representatives to Student Senate.”

According to Mike Nebesky, Clemson’s procurement director, Pharos’ Uniprint software will help manage the university’s print quota system by tracking the number of pages students print and interfacing with their Tiger 1 cards to debit accounts for the per-page charges due when they exceed the quota.

Quotas for all undergraduate students will be 350 pages per semester. This applies to actual sheets of paper, not printouts, as a two-sided printout counts as one page against the quota. Quotas for all graduate students will be 500 pages per semester. Both undergraduates and graduates will pay 5 cents per page over the quota.

Sometimes even the lowest brightness setting on my MacBook Pro just isn’t dim enough. Especially when I want to save battery, I wish there was a solution that would allow me to dim the backlight on screen even further. After searching around, I stumbled upon DarkAdapted. While I’m not going to go over DarkAdapted’s thorough list of features, I’ll let you know my favorite: it’s free.

Although DarkAdapted can be used control individual gamma levels to create a custom mix of red, green, and blue, I usually gang the sliders, move change the backlight of the screen to it’s next to lowest setting (not off), and slide the slider group until it is comfortable.

The farther you dim the screen, the more battery life your MacBook will yield. It’s a win-win!

Visit DarkAdapted

I was watching Star Trek: The Next Generation last night while working on a project (long story), and I was so deeply touched amused by Spot’s poetry, I thought I would share.

An Ode to Spot
From “Star Trek: The Next Generation”

Felix Catus is your taxonomic nomenclature,
An endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature.
Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses
Contribute to your hunting skills and natural defenses.
I find myself intrigued by your sub-vocal oscillations,
A singular development of cat communications
That obviates your basic hedonistic predilection
For a rhythmic stroking of your fur to demonstrate affection.
A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents:
You would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance;
And when not being utilized to aid in locomotion,
It often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.
Oh Spot, the complex levels of behavior you display
Connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array.
And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend,
I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend.

I realized the other day that my car, Ol’ Blue, is now 14 years old. If my car were were a person, someone could legally have sex with it in the State of South Carolina. Wow; I feel like a father.

I had some strange dreams last night, but most of the details are too vague to remember. One dream, however, I can still remember like I’m still asleep.

I was in a television ad for a new product (I don’t remember the name, but that’s irrelevant). It was this weird little 3D animal sticker that looked like a cross between a rat, a rabid squirrel, and a cat. It was advertised as a “driving assistant” to help you reverse out of your garage. The commercial proceeded to show me backing out of the garage and pulling the Home Alone

because I was too scared to back out, fearing I would break off a car mirror or hit somebody. The miracle product goes on the inner wall of the garage door frame and you’re supposed to watch the creature carefully as you back out “because you wouldn’t want to hit such a cute thing”. Once your sideview mirrors are safely past the little guy, you’re supposed to remember to keep looking behind you. “If you see the nipples of a jogger, you should stop.”

And those were the instructions for perfectly backing out of the garage.

It seems like a pointless product, but I’m assuming it’s sold as a joke in some South of the Border novelty store. Maybe I should scratch the side of my car coming out of my garage as an excuse to get one. Seriously, I’m not sure what this dream means, but I’m never eating in Harcombe again.

Here’s another company, Think Geek, that’s notorious for their April Fool’s Day newsletter. Here’s the latest edition. I particularly enjoyed the moodINQ – Availability: future

While some people see April’s Fool’s Day as a childish way to spend your April 1st playing practical jokes on your peers, the internet has changed everything. The lighthearted have now jumped on the April Fool’s Day bandwagon and use the day to gain laughs and increased site traffic. Google, an innovative company, has previously had jokes such as “Gmail Paper“, and I’m sure that Google’s recent announcement of their name change to “Topeka” is just following suit. I’m not sure I’d go Topeka something, but you can head on over to Topeka and try it yourself.

For the first time in a really, really, really long time, I have no email in my inbox.

That is all.

I LOVE Dropbox, the free application that allows me to effortlessly sync files over multiple computers, and more importantly, my iPod. One drawback that I’ve found with the application is that only those files within the main Dropbox folder will be synced.

I keep meticulous records of everything that I do, which includes all files that I accumulate at Clemson. When I’m without my laptop and want to look at a PDF article from a class, I’m at a loss to read it unless it has been posted on BlackBoard (the class management system in use at Clemson). I don’t want to move my entire organized Clemson folder into the Dropbox folder, but unless I do this, how can sync my files? Previously thought impossible, I’ve learned that this word does not exist.

The answer is symbolic links.

Similar to a shortcut, a symbolic link will sync all of the files in the linked folder as if it were in the Dropbox folder itself. This opens up a world of possibilities for syncing, accessing, and sharing files with multiple users across the internet on multiple platforms.

To create a symbolic link in MacOSX, open up Terminal and use the ln command, for example:

ln -s /path/to/folder/name_desired_folder/ ~/Dropbox/desired-folder

If you find that venturing into the Terminal is a bit too hard to make a Symlink, there’s a great tool that streamlines the process called SymbolicLinker, by Nick Zitzmann. This provides a contextual menu (for Leopard and below) or a software service (for Snow Leopard) that allows the user to create symbolic links to files without ever leaving the Finder.

Get Dropbox Now!