August 2007 Archives

I along with several of my ITS colleagues were "Hall Haulers" on Saturday as the Class of 2011 moved in to several of the Pollock Area halls. The new arrivals were mostly first year students, but we did see a few returning students. It was a great experience. Most of the folks we helped didn't expect it and commented on how organized Penn State was. Despite our jokes, it was fairly organized. We had University of Texas orange colored shirts and name tags which identified us as "Hall Haulers" and there were plenty of police, student auxiliary, and folks from the Penn State Traffic Unit to move cars in and out of precious parking spots. I was amazed at how composed most of the parents were. I guess cell phones really help spread out the good-byes.

We met one set of parents who seemed very organized. As we started speaking, the mom told us that this was her fourth Penn State student and that she's had a child enrolled in Penn State for the last 10 years. She told us that one of her kids who didn't go to Penn State was applying for graduate admission this fall. If her luck runs true, she'll have someone at Penn State well into the next decade.

A couple of observations:

• My back didn't hurt as much as I thought it would on Sunday
• Even at the grocery store, I always seem to pick the cart with the bad wheel
• We live in an Age of Abundance
• Guitar Hero guitar game controllers seemed to be pretty popular
• Far more students had laptops than desktops
• If I had invented the circular, collapsible clothes hamper, I would probably be retired from Penn State ($14.99 at you know where, Made in you know where for probably $0.50 and EVERYONE had one)
• We should only let students who have taken a vow of poverty live above the ground floor in McElwain (slow, small elevator and difficult floor plan).

Coolest Thing I Saw: a young lady had a pink sit-up pillow (I think people call them "Husband Pillows") with a pouch for a music player and speakers in the arms of the pillow. I'd probably get a different color, but I could see getting one of those.

Thanks to Claudia Caracci now with Enrollment Management for suggesting ITS participation in Arrival Week-end. It was a very rewarding experience.

I had an opportunity to test my home IT business continuity plan last night. It failed.

We had an electrical transformer in my neighborhood blow at about 3 this morning. I think the "boom" was what woke me up rather than the lights going off, then on, then off. What kept me up was the alarm on my fairly new UPS. I went to where I leave the flashlights so I can find them, and that worked. Two of the three flashlights were working (as they say, "Two out of three ain't bad."). The new UPS performed very well. I've made two oversights in my plan:

1. I don't know how to silence the alarm in the dark.
2. I had the monitor plugged into a surge protected slot rather than a UPS slot (so the computers were working, but not the monitors).

Fortunately, it was only about a two hour outage, but that did mean I had to shutdown the computers. In terms of outcomes, things went well once I plugged the monitor into a UPS slot and then shutdown ("Are you sure you want to shutdown?").

It looks like I have to revise my plan and practice some more. I might also go to ready.gov and check for other things I should pay attention to.

It makes one think... How good are our work plans? Are they written down? How often do we practice?

Phil Rizzotu died the other day. I never saw him play, but when I was growing up, he was part of my favorite baseball broadcast team. Whether he was paired with Bill White or Frank Messer, "The Scooter" was always entertaining. I don't know that you would call him a "good" broadcaster, but he had the essential skill for a baseball broadcaster -- he never seemed to run out of stories. He also had a way of drawing them out of the folks who visited the booth for an inning or two during a broadcast. These weren't all former jocks either. Some of my favorite interviews were with Meat Loaf ("Paradise by the Dashboard Light" anyone?) or politicians.

For many years, Scooter would "come out of the press box" and do some bunting drills for the current Yankees. Maybe I'm seeing this through the rose colored glasses of time and childhood, but back in the 1970's and 80's, I think a typical major league baseball player would listen to a legend like Rizzuto and actually learn something about bunting. Today, bunting and "small ball" in general don't seem to be valued skills and I don't think most major leaguers (except guys like Jeter) would listen to an old geezer who used to play for their team three decades ago (when you could still play an entire career for one team).

I'm jaded.

I don't watch baseball much any more, even though the opportunities are much greater. I've been put off by the "labor/owner" problems. In spite of the fact that he's done some things right (like inter-league play), I believe the commissioner should not be part of ownership. I think "performance enhancing" drugs are prevalent and ignored by both the owners and the players union. New Hall of Famers Cal Ripken, Jr. and Tony Gwynn are about the last major leaguers I really care about. It's sad, but Major League Baseball did this to itself.

They don't make'em like the Scooter anymore. Maybe "Only in New York" could a guy like Rizzuto succeed, but succeed he did.

Good-bye Scooter. I hope you're feasting on the "Holy Cannoli!"

On Monday, one of the elevators in the Computer Building received replacement hydraulic fluid. The replacement fluid was soy-based oil rather than a petroleum product. I did a little "googling" to see if soy-based elevator oil had different properties from what we traditionally use in elevators. It turns out not only does it behave in the same way as the petroleum based product, but it has a high flash point and it is bio-degradable. The Statue of Liberty elevators use a soy-based product too.

If I get a chance, I'm going to talk to someone in OPP about where it goes after it's extracted (Not McDonald's I hope!), how long it lasts compared to petroleum based hydraulic fluid, and how many of the elevators at Penn State already use this product. For all I know, the fluid in our elevator was already soy-based. More to come...

Tim Robinson stopped by our ETIE (Emerging Technologies Information Exchange) on Wednesday. Tim is a guy that I've known for years (since I worked for the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences in the early 1990s). Tim caught us up on some of the things he and the College are working on for fall. The real kick off for the fall semester in EMS happens on August 21 when the first year students begin what EMS calls TOTEMS, Total Orientation To Earth and Mineral Sciences. EMS first-year students move into their dorm rooms early and immediately leave for three days at Raystown Lake where they interact with faculty and other EMS students. It's a really innovative program and guarantees that EMS students know a group of their fellow students before the semester even starts. Even if they move on to other colleges, they have friends all over campus for the duration of their Penn State stay.

Tim is also responsible for the sphere in the EMS student center in Deike Building. If you haven't seen this, by all means go see it. It's a 4 foot diameter sphere with four projectors projecting images onto the surface. At any time you can see images of the Earth, including weather patterns or ocean currents; the Moon; or Mars. We brainstormed a few new ideas for it. My idea about covering it with one-inch square pieces of mirror was soundly rejected. He told us he was headed down to Florida later this week to install one of these at a university down there.

Tim often guest lectures about information technology in the EMS first-year seminar classes. In my humble opinion, as one who had input on the creation of first-year seminars, I think EMS models "best practices" for what these classes are all about. Tim teaches various centrally provided systems -- ITS student labs, eLion, the Penn State Portal, the Penn State Portfolio, and the University Libraries digital collections. In many ways, this was no different from my freshman seminar (OK -- that's what we called it then), where we learned how to use the card catalog, find periodicals, and write "research papers." It's just been updated by several decades to reflect new ways of acquiring data and information and turning them into knowledge. Tim and the ET group spoke about doing something with mapping mashups for the fall. I'm sure you'll be hearing more about this in the fall.

It was great catching up with Tim and exploring our common interests. I wish him continued success with some of these innovative first year programs and hopefully, I'll be blogging about the results of some of these conversations soon.