Hard drive crash!
26/August/2006 12:46 Filed in: Personal
Ouch!
My hard drive crashed and I lost all my data...needed to do some reconstituting of the website.
I did have some backups, but I was not backed-up enough...
I was working on a Classical Greek Grammar...that's gone...must start from scratch! (and I was 80% done! arghhh!)
No more messing around! I got a 500GB hard drive to do more comprehensive backups
My hard drive crashed and I lost all my data...needed to do some reconstituting of the website.
I did have some backups, but I was not backed-up enough...
I was working on a Classical Greek Grammar...that's gone...must start from scratch! (and I was 80% done! arghhh!)
No more messing around! I got a 500GB hard drive to do more comprehensive backups
|
Parking closed permanelty!
12/August/2006 11:26 Filed in: Work
I got a broadcast message in my inbox yesterday (from
the higher ups in the University food chain) and they
said that in order to rehabilitate the indoor garages
will be more than $150
billion
dollars. - yes your read right - $150
BILLION
!
So to fix the garages so that they are suitable for parking and human use would be fiscally impossible and irresponsible, instead they will spend the money to make sure that the garages can support the buildings that are built above it, and prevent parking an pedestrian access permanently. So what will they do? Just pump a whole bunch of concrete to seal it up?! And where will we find parking? After all UMass Boston is a commuter school! There are no dorms, people come in, take classes, leave. People also go there to work! I seriously hope they come up with a solution soon!
To quote a professor "if you ignore problems, they just fester and when you try to do something about it it's too late" (paraphrasing)
Well done UMass! Well Done Massachusetts! a 30 year old campus is facing big problems because of poor construction and ignoring of problems that should have been fixed long long long ago! Campuses like Harvard are older and are not facing such horrific problems.
The ball is in your court, let's see what you do with it.
So to fix the garages so that they are suitable for parking and human use would be fiscally impossible and irresponsible, instead they will spend the money to make sure that the garages can support the buildings that are built above it, and prevent parking an pedestrian access permanently. So what will they do? Just pump a whole bunch of concrete to seal it up?! And where will we find parking? After all UMass Boston is a commuter school! There are no dorms, people come in, take classes, leave. People also go there to work! I seriously hope they come up with a solution soon!
To quote a professor "if you ignore problems, they just fester and when you try to do something about it it's too late" (paraphrasing)
Well done UMass! Well Done Massachusetts! a 30 year old campus is facing big problems because of poor construction and ignoring of problems that should have been fixed long long long ago! Campuses like Harvard are older and are not facing such horrific problems.
The ball is in your court, let's see what you do with it.
Can't have your cake and eat it too!
09/August/2006 12:43 Filed in: Work
Last week we learned that because of the parking
closings when the fall semester comes it will be
mayhem!
As you had seen in the article that I posted in a previous entry UMass Boston lost about 1800 parking spots with these garage closures.
Now the parking situation was not ideal to begin with, depending on when you came to campus you might be driving around for a while before you found parking, image now! So what the question in "where to park?" - Our wonderful option is to park further away from the University in a parking lot, which we still must pay for parking even though it is an inconvenience, or park on the streets of Dorchester, which isn't a great place (there have been a lot of shootings there in the last 6 months and it wasn't all that great to begin with).
So the university has to choose who they give priority to park on campus - up to now the staff got certain reserved areas in the morning where they were given first dibs on parking. This makes sense - you commute into work, you come here to work, you pay for parking, so we might as well give you first dibs. Now this changes, students will get first dibs for parking - students who might not even come here 5 days a week for classes, whereas the people that work on campus, the people that do put in 40 (or more hours) per week get the shaft. This comes down to a simple decision: Do you permit your clients (the students) to have first dibs or your employees? In any business context it is a shade of gray - you cannot outright pick one over the other. The clients are your main source of funding, your employees make the place run! One cannot exist without the other and both are commuters since UMass Boston is a commuter school.
The problem comes in for employees. Some people, like me, spend an hour in traffic (each way) to get to and from work. In bad weather conditions this time spend in the wonderful state of traffic augments, throw in the fact that the I-90 connector tunnels are closed (see other blog entries for that)...well...you can imagine that if employees are not given a semi-soft guarantee that they can park at work, ...well it's just the cherry on the top, isn't it?
I can't wait to see what happens in the fall.
As you had seen in the article that I posted in a previous entry UMass Boston lost about 1800 parking spots with these garage closures.
Now the parking situation was not ideal to begin with, depending on when you came to campus you might be driving around for a while before you found parking, image now! So what the question in "where to park?" - Our wonderful option is to park further away from the University in a parking lot, which we still must pay for parking even though it is an inconvenience, or park on the streets of Dorchester, which isn't a great place (there have been a lot of shootings there in the last 6 months and it wasn't all that great to begin with).
So the university has to choose who they give priority to park on campus - up to now the staff got certain reserved areas in the morning where they were given first dibs on parking. This makes sense - you commute into work, you come here to work, you pay for parking, so we might as well give you first dibs. Now this changes, students will get first dibs for parking - students who might not even come here 5 days a week for classes, whereas the people that work on campus, the people that do put in 40 (or more hours) per week get the shaft. This comes down to a simple decision: Do you permit your clients (the students) to have first dibs or your employees? In any business context it is a shade of gray - you cannot outright pick one over the other. The clients are your main source of funding, your employees make the place run! One cannot exist without the other and both are commuters since UMass Boston is a commuter school.
The problem comes in for employees. Some people, like me, spend an hour in traffic (each way) to get to and from work. In bad weather conditions this time spend in the wonderful state of traffic augments, throw in the fact that the I-90 connector tunnels are closed (see other blog entries for that)...well...you can imagine that if employees are not given a semi-soft guarantee that they can park at work, ...well it's just the cherry on the top, isn't it?
I can't wait to see what happens in the fall.
Hellsing OVA (episode 1)
05/August/2006 09:14 Filed in: Entertainment
A few days ago I saw the Hellsing OVA.
I must say that I was both confused, and surprised.
Comparing the Hellsing series, the books, and the OVA, both animated versions follow the book - but the OVA seems to do a better job at doing that.
The OVA on the other hand seems to squeeze a lot of things together and we don't really see the conflict that Seras has with her vampirification. We don't see the struggle to remain human that we see in the series. I honestly don't remember how they spin this in the Manga - need to re-read it
I can't wait for the next episode!
I must say that I was both confused, and surprised.
Comparing the Hellsing series, the books, and the OVA, both animated versions follow the book - but the OVA seems to do a better job at doing that.
The OVA on the other hand seems to squeeze a lot of things together and we don't really see the conflict that Seras has with her vampirification. We don't see the struggle to remain human that we see in the series. I honestly don't remember how they spin this in the Manga - need to re-read it
I can't wait for the next episode!
Hot and sticky
02/August/2006 17:03 Filed in: Escape
Triple digit temps
02/August/2006 08:50 Filed in: Personal