Are you ready for some football?

I sure as hell am. Tech’s going to kick butt this year (hopefully). With Graham Harrell taking the reins of the nation’s most prolific passing offense for the umteenth year straight, I’m actually quite optimistic of our chances of finally taking the Tech program to the next level.

For those Tech alums and fans who don’t live in Lubbock, Jones Stadium (it’ll always be Jones Stadium – not that Jones SBC/AT&T Stadium crap – but that’s another rant in itself) has had its seven year old astroturf replaced with the ultra-trendy field turf. The sideline has also been “enhanced” with a brick wall as seen in the picture below that I took a couple weeks ago from the top of the West Ramp.

Looking good, isn’t it?

We’ve got season tickets again, but we moved seats. This past year we had the two most annoying guys sitting behind us who complained about everything. Let’s just hope those guys didn’t move too!

Go Tech!

System Administrator Appreciation Day

Apparently, today is the 7th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day. Why have I never heard of this? What a novel idea though!

A sysadmin unpacked the server for this website from its box, installed an operating system, patched it for security, made sure the power and air conditioning was working in the server room, monitored it for stability, set up the software, and kept backups in case anything went wrong. All to serve this webpage.

A sysadmin installed the routers, laid the cables, configured the networks, set up the firewalls, and watched and guided the traffic for each hop of the network that runs over copper, fiber optic glass, and even the air itself to bring the Internet to your computer. All to make sure the webpage found its way from the server to your computer.

A sysadmin makes sure your network connection is safe, secure, open, and working. A sysadmin makes sure your computer is working in a healthy way on a healthy network. A sysadmin takes backups to guard against disaster both human and otherwise, holds the gates against security threats and crackers, and keeps the printers going no matter how many copies of the tax code someone from Accounting prints out.

A sysadmin worries about spam, viruses, spyware, but also power outages, fires and floods.

When the email server goes down at 2 AM on a Sunday, your sysadmin is paged, wakes up, and goes to work.

A sysadmin is a professional, who plans, worries, hacks, fixes, pushes, advocates, protects and creates good computer networks, to get you your data, to help you do work — to bring the potential of computing ever closer to reality.

So if you can read this, thank your sysadmin — and know he/she is only one of dozens or possibly hundreds whose work brings you the email from your aunt on the West Coast, the instant message from your son at college, the free phone call from the friend in Australia, and this webpage.

Reprinted from sysadminday.com

Interesting Numbers

50 billion: the number of e-mails dispatched every day wordwide; in 2001 the traffic was less than 12 billion

88 percent of e-mails are junk including about 1 per cent which are virus-infected

32: The average number of e-mail messages received per person per day. This is rising by 84 per cent each year

440 million: The number of electronic mailboxes in use, including 170 million corporate ones, growing by 32 per cent per year

1,035 million: The total number of mobile phone text messages sent each month in Britain

37: The average number of texts a user sends per month compared with 21 in 2001

1 million: The number of children aged under 10 in Britain – one in three – who own a phone

8: The average age at which a child gets a mobile phone in Britain

From: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2270472,00.html

T-Mobile Sidekick 3

I finally have it.. my new toy: a T-Mobile Sidekick 3. Getting it was the hard part, but I’m not going to make this a complaint post. I’m thoroughly amazed by this device.

1. Web Browsing. Amazing. It’s not some crappy WAP text browser. Nope. The SK3 has a javascript-interpreting, image-displaying engine. Granted it’s not the same as a computer or laptop, but it’s pretty damn good for an SXVGA 16-bit 65,000 color 240 x 160 screen. Browsing speed is far better than I had anticipated. It’s of course no T1/Cable or even DSL. But from my tests and such, it’s faster than dialup since it’s on the EDGE network.
2. Email. Free @tmail.com email account included! Very convenient. Ability to check other accounts, but I’ve read that email is not saved on those remote servers, so I’m reluctant to try with my main email accounts. I’ll maybe set one up just for testing later on.
3. Instant Messaging. Simple and nice. Conversations are easy to follow and participate in. I’ve tried Yahoo IM and AOL IM (AIM); it also supports MSN.. but who uses that anymore?
4. Keyboard. Very easy to adapt to. It’s not a regular keyboard, although it is QWERTY style. Some symbols are in different places, so it’s simply a matter of getting used to it.
5. “Operating System” – slick. Very slick for a handheld device such as this. It’s no OS X by any means, but it’s very nice and smooth.

A couple pics:

I was very skeptical about ordering this since I actually hadn’t heard of anyone using T-Mobile in Lubbock. But I’m quite pleased with the speed and clarity. I actually only bought the Sidekick Data Unlimited plan for $29.99/month since I’m happy with my RAZR and Cingular mobile service. Maybe I’ll just have one device sometime in the future, but not yet. Besides, voice calls are $.20/minute with my Sidekick Unlimited plan so that’s there just in case. All in all, I’m thrilled with the Sidekick 3. I’m off to enjoy it now.

Congrats!

Congratulations to my darling wife Monica on her new job! Instead of driving 45 minutes, she’s accepted a kindergarten position at Lubbock Cooper North Elementary School that is eight minutes from our house.

Congrats Honey!