Gonzo

I've become self-conscious about the loser titles I come with for blog entries. So much of my life is driven by reaction to events, that I rarely feel like I bring much reflection to my blog posts lately.

Today, found that The Story of Stuff was available at dotSub so I could start working on making a translated version to present at TAKE. It seems like a good fit with the goals of the conference and would be a good point for the beginning of discussion.

I met with groups of students working on research proposals today. Great stuff! All of the groups came in with a lot of questions about what they were going to do and I felt like they all went away with a much clearer perspective of what they were going to do. In each case, I felt like we narrowed the topic they were planning to pursue to something doable. In every case, the topic was still interesting, challenging, and required a lot of further definition and provided a lot of room for further refinement. But I felt like the groups left with a good sense that what they were doing was interesting and worth working on.

I've spent a fair amount of time chasing down quotes for computers to replace the BCRC computers. There's a good chance we'll replace them this fiscal year. It turns out that Apple doesn't make exactly what we need. You can either get the mini (for <$1000) or the Mac Pro (nearly $2800). There's nothing in between but the iMac -- which includes a display we don't need and doesn't have a "normal" form factor (ie, that is expandable and uses standard parts). We usually aimed at the $2000 spot and got a reasonable educational discount. Unless they can come up with a really persuasive educational discount, I'm going to think seriously again about going with Linux. I don't need the headache.