Woohoo! Promotion day! No longer will I mire away in the blue-collar nomenclature of Network Technician. Nay! For today I rise up as the university’s first Wireless Network Engineer. Ta-da! Not much in the day-to-day will change, but my email sig is already teh upgraded. Plus, the salaried nature of new position vs. the wage rate of old means no more time-sheet bubbles ever! Woohoo!!!

Ooh, ooh. Bonus! Not only did my voicemail get played first on episode 792 of CNet’s Buzz Out Loud, but they named the episode after my extempore exclamation, Odin’s Beard!

Move-In Day for new freshmen at MSU is over. Locals may now exit their homes and resume normal activities.

With the rollout of a new system for ResNet registration and use, it was decided that IS staff should be on-hand Saturday during move-in to assist any folks who were having problems registering and remediating their machines. The new system requires a scan of your PC or Mac every 4 weeks to verify that you have legitimate AntiVirus and AntiSpyware software installed on your machine and that the definitions for those apps are up-to-date. Registering is not a huge deal, and we provide high-end McAfee AV/AS software to students free of charge if they don’t already have a legitimate suite installed. But any time you take 3500+ college students with numerous flavors of Operating System, manufacturer, hardware, etc., all in various states of disrepair and meltdown, you’re going to have some problems. Some machines wouldn’t fully run the scan application, many were still using the 1-year subscription of AV that came with their machine intially years after it had expired and stopped updating, several balked at the “Big Brother”-style mandate of requiring AV/AS software. But by and large, it went well. Of course, I’m certain most students hadn’t actually sat down and plugged in their PCs by 5 o’clock last evening, when we broke for the day, and I fully expect full-blown riots in the streets come Monday morning when thousands of students have been unable to triage their own setup and have been without internet access for an entire day.

And of course, by internet access I mean the one and only website they cared about getting to on Saturday. Webmail? No. Blackboard? No. Google? Are you kidding? — Facebook. — 3500 students back on campus for the first time in 3 months, many for the first time ever, and what do they want to do? Sit in their rooms and Facebook.

Ruddy kids. Get a frisbee.

Got the new WordPress app installed on my iPhone. Posting this from the gym. The wife and I tied a few on at a wedding reception last night so I’m punishing myself with an extra run on the elliptical. Ooh, that machine is evil!
Also check out the new do. Missy’s doing entirely but I could get used to it.
Also, Dr. Dunn at the Apple… surreal. But it was good times seeing Clarence Dobbins again. Plus, my wife can DANCE!

So the new iPhone 3G arrived today. I had ended up upgrading the wife to the new phone since her account was eligible. The plan was then for me to take her iPhone 1st gen and finally switch our numbers so I had the new phone. AT&T store lady assured me they did that all the time.
True. They do switch numbers all the time. But not between iPhones. Apple has the big brother no-no on iPhone swapping. I think it’s a piece of their ” don’t buy iPhones to unlock and re-sell deal. So Missy’s enjoying her new iPhone 3G and I’m rockin’ last year’s model. But hey, at least I got some kind of iPhone. I’m just glad the whole process is said ad done.
Oh, and the MSU discount doesn’t apply to the iPhone at all, FYI. Just one more thing…

Talk about a great day. The Newport Aquarium in Newport, KY, just across the river from Cincinnati, is amazing. It’s a great medium-sized aquarium with some really wonderful exhibits. Sharks, rays, turtles, frogs, penguins, lorikeets. An aquarium with penguins and lorikeets! Wow!
There was so much to do Liam could barely focus on one exhibit before racing to the next. But I think if he had to choose, shark petting would be his favorite exhibit. Shark petting? Let me say that again. SHARK PETTING! I’m telling you man, these aquarium folk are nuts. I mean, how many fingers should you lose before you decide this particular exhibit may not be the best of ideas? But boy did he love it. Danger is, after all, his middle name.
Afterwards we waited in line for a balloon animal from a guy who looked a lot like Mark Twain. His appearance was apt, as he told stories about the animals as he created them. This guy could make amazingly intricate creations from a little latex and air. I saw a seal bouncing a ball on its nose, a palm tree home to a monkey eating a banana. He even made a seagull with a fish in its mouth. Like, inside the balloon mouth. All of that amazing talent and what does Liam want? A butterfly. I mean, it was a great butterfly and all but come on, kid, lets challenge the guy. At least ask for a space butterfly with rocket ship and cosmic death ray. Not just a plain ol’ Lepidoptera Rhopalocera. (Yeah, I looked that one up. Sue me.) Whatever makes you happy, son. Check out the set on the Pictures page from our adventure.