Oh man what a week. The craziness has begun... e-mails, website updates, application changes, new technology-figure-outness, new intern.
At least I have something to look forward to tomorrow. USC first home game! $40 round trip tickets from Stockton to Long Beach makes it even better. :-) So I hope the weekend will be fun.. Dinner on Friday night in Hollywood and the game on Saturday and back on Sunday...
There are just a fw things that seem to either stay or even get sexier as time passes. One example is my car :-) I know it sounds silly, but I bought this thing in the spring of 2001. (Thanks to Randall to snapping some pretty awesome photos.)
It all began at 11:59AM with a simple little post from @mherzber. Nothing major, just an observation about some visual displeasure with the first slide of the second keynote speaker’s Powerpoint on Tuesday. And then it got bad. Very bad. Then worse. And worse. And worse. Both the keynote AND the Twitter backchannel during it. Severalpeopleoutside the conference caught on and have talked about it, and I thought it might be of value to provide a voice from someone who was there, and explain what happened, how, and why it’s not all bad.
Today I was asked about em dashes for a web page about work-study. Normally I would just puff about it and go "well web pages do not support that type of typography", but today I figured I better look into this. No that's not where I had to use it—in the word work-study—but would have been funny if it was. It is actually something quite different than I expected.
Now reading more about it on wikipedia, I may start using it instead of my parenthetical breaks that I normally do when I write.
More of the various dashes out there http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash and of course not to confused with a hyphen or a minus sign. :-)
Pacific University in Oregon, not University of the Pacific.
Pacific University board votes to bring back football Boxers hopes to field team by 2010 if boosters can raise needed funds By John Schrag The Forest Grove News-Times, May 26, 2009, Updated 17 hours ago
After a 17-year absence, it looks like football is coming back to Pacific University.
The Pacific University Board of Trustees approved the addition of football to the school's athletics offerings on Friday.
Pacific's 21st intercollegiate athletics program hopes to take to the field in 2010, contingent on boosters raising all of the necessary start-up expenses -- pegged at about $1.5 million.
Ah emails... Something so simple can turn so crazy. As the article mention below, email accidently went out to all applied to the school... Being the guy who send out the bulk of the emails for various groups of students I spend alot of time checking, double checking and checking again what I am sending out! (Misspelling creepin there), but gladly I have not sent accepted emails to denied kids, but I can see how that can happen.
Actually we sent out kids to a website that looks up their decision in real-time to aviod confusing like this :-) But in many cases they do start getting email that are target to admitted student before their letter actually makes it ot the mailbox at home, so I hope in those case it was just an early surprise vs. what I did NOT get in? Oh man I do not want to be in the shoes of that Admission Director...
Reallly... no I mean really. All I ask is for a box of hot chocolate since Ido not normally drink coffee in the office. Didn't need to hear that today..... Time to look for a new job.
From the Chronicle of Higher Education January 14, 2009 Guest Blogger: Report Weighs the Benefits and Risks of Social Networks From Tracy Mitrano
Thank you, Berkman Center, for sponsoring the task force that has examined the sexual-predator allegations associated with social networks!
The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University is about to release a report that — according to The New York Times, which reviewed an early release — lifts the patina of pederasty that has long plagued social networks. While acknowledging the reality of isolated incidents, the report redirects the focus to the many positive aspects to social networks, and points out the adverse effects of child-child bullying both on and off the Net, according to The Times article.
Commenting on a second-hand account always carries a risk, but I’ll take a leap and suggest that this finding sounds appropriate. Of course the awful incidents of pederasty deserve serious attention and notice — and we should urge social-networking services to perform appropriate monitoring for such illegal activities. But unfortunately some sensationalized media reports have led to misperceptions, suggesting that social-networking services are mainly breeding grounds for such activities.
Millions of young users see the communication opportunities of services like Facebook, and many parents and college leaders have provided guidance and helpful hints about how to manage privacy in the new online realms. Today’s students are learning how to develop a sense of self and to understand the relationship between the virtual and physical worlds, especially in light of physical-safety risks.
Social networks are here to stay; in fact, they are no longer even “hot.” They have become an integral part of adolescent development. One undergraduate told me last year that during rush at his fraternity, a brother was stationed at the door. When a pledge entered, the fraternity member would asked him for his name and immediately check the student’s Facebook profile. If the rush did not have one, it was a mark of suspicion; if he had one but it was completely open, that state was equally suspicious. The best posture was having a page but carefully using the privacy setting to keep full disclosure limited to a selected group.
So the issues for young people and social networks are nuanced. My owns sons (middle- and high-school age) report that MySpace is for when you want to sell yourself to the world, Facebook is for use at college, and Linked In is to show your employer — and this from a 12 year old!
Social-networking services reach well beyond the early media depictions, and many people know that the question is not whether Facebook and MySpace are good or evil. Millions of adults also enjoy their use, especially at colleges. Alumni organizations, for instance, have found them to be fantastic tools for posting pictures of new spouses, babies, and career improvements, for connecting old friends, and for disseminating information about reunions.
The question of whether social networks would have a place in higher education has long been answered with a resounding Yes. The question that remains is how we might find them useful in teaching and learning, as well as in purely social contexts. And that question strikes a chord with a larger quandary about outsourcing in general: Should it be homegrown or come out of a box? —Tracy Mitrano
Tracy Mitrano, our January guest blogger, is director of information-technology policy in Cornell University’s Office of Information Technologies, where she also directs the computer policy and law program.
A scandal on Facebook, well that story title caught my attention. As the web guy in admission and enrollment at Pacific, I spent a lot of time on the internet both a a surfer and creating content. AS social media had taken hold over the last 3 years, I am always looking for what the new and great thing will be.
But this is something that I was expecting but wonder if it being addresses as a serious problem.. On Facebook, anyone can create a group. A place where Facebook user can share information, see like-minded people etc. But what if a paid services sets up such a site?
He has done some wonderful research on the subject. At my own school, I have identified several groups that may or may not be legitimately created by students, but I will try on finding out.
This does make me worried as over the last 2 years we have used Facebook in the Admission Office to effectively communicate to students that would in some cases gone unreachable.
I hope there is a solution as admission letters from Pacific are going out and hope to see a place where these a admits can share stories and being friends as the class of 2013.
In my normal course of work on a Wednesday at Pacific, its amazing how a simple photo on the social media site Facebook (http://www.facebook.com) and some comments about it turned into a stroll down memory lane and connecting with some classmates from as far back as 7th grade all in an afternoon.
It started with me looking for correct email addresses for some recent applicants to Pacific for a our first e-newsletter. In doing, I so got a “notification” that an old classmate of mine posted an old photo from a filed trip that looks like was taken 20 years (when we were in 7th-8th grade at Commodore Stockton Skills School) at a Pizza Hut. It quickly turned into a discussion of who is in the photo and seeing commentary from people that I haven’t heard a peep from in 15 years!
I find it amazing what Facebook has become. Not just connecting with current friends, but with friends from the past. Connecting both passively and actively with posted profiles, to playing online games with each other, commenting on photos or sharing their "status" and notification of their daily lives, Facebook has really changed the way people communicate in the normal course of life. I admit that I communicate with people that I do not directly work with more and more exclusively on Facebook. I will even admit that I have conducted business transactions solely on Facebook. Who would have ever expected that.
Lets see what the IPO looks like once Facebook goes public :-)
You have to love Pete Caroll for consistenly thinking outside the box. Its what makes him the greatest college football coach in a long time..
Dan Woike Rivals.com College Football Staff
The USC football team has had penalty problems all season long. Only five more teams earn more yellow flags each game.
Saturday at UCL A, it appears they'll be starting the game with a penalty already called on them.
Richardson
Brian Cushing and his Trojan teammates are planning on wearing cardinal jerseys Saturday at the Rose Bowl against UCLA.
Monday, USC coach Pete Caroll told the media and his team that they'd be breathing life into a tradition that's been dead since 1982 – where both UCLA and USC wore their home jerseys when the two teams meet.
By wearing their cardinal jerseys Saturday, the Trojans will be penalized and will lose a timeout in each half.
"It might (cost us). I don't know. I don't care about that right now," Carroll said. "We'll play without it. I think it's worth it. I think it's a fun thing to do, and I think our fans will appreciate it over time."
Is the free market to blame for the current global financial crisis?
Author and conservative scholar Dinesh D'Souza will tackle that question and others during a free lecture, "Technology, the Market and the Virtue of Prosperity," on Thursday at University of the Pacific.
The discussion is expected to include whether unrestrained greed or the lack of strong governmental regulation is to blame for current market volatility; how technology continues to drive economic growth; and whether entrepreneurial impulse can be tempered with prudence and self-restraint.
The lecture will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday in Grace Covell Hall on the Pacific campus, 3601 Pacific Ave., Stockton. The public is welcome.
In order to streamline the application process for students to Pacific this year, us in enrollment are adding a BIG fancy application button on the homepage. (originally was going to be in the corner and I was like "Humm ...you know I can put it front and center?")
I know to most flash guru's this is 2nd grade work, but you have to understand how large organization structures works and how long it even took me to be able to even update the flash file and try to figure out what the original 3rd party vendor did. So after about a couple of months of twisting crazy actionscript around and such This is what I came up with...
I won't be implementing the fading image for now as it was just a proof of concept more than anything. anyways, just posting here to remind myslef of when and how I did this :-)
Thanks you Randall for helping on getting this up and running. Finally can get some good data on browsers and such for some future web development. So far its seems good and as I expected the admission page is fairly high up the list just after the Homepage and the A-Z directory... Time to start doing some Search engine optimization (SEO) on this site.
I had the opportunity to go see and meet Dr. Greg Anderson and listen to his presentation last night at the Haggin Museum. A professor at the University of the Pacific (UOP), he gave a talk yesterday (August 7th, 2008) about John J. Audubon's animals and their legacy in natural history. This was part of the Haggin Museum's collection of Seventy original hand-colored lithographs that are on display. They are from John James Audubon's magnum opus, The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. They will be on on display at The Haggin Museum July 6-August 24.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A gallon of gasoline is costing U.S. drivers a record $4 on average at the gas pump, and prices are likely to keep rising if soaring crude oil prices do not retreat from record highs, according to an industry analyst on Sunday.
They have Stockton, CA pegged as the highest price per gallon in the survey...
Anyone reading this is already well aware newspapers are making the (slow) transition to digital, and just like the preferred format of music has moved from CD to mp3, newspapers will eventually move from print to entirely web-based/RSS operations.It’s just so much better and more efficient way of receiving information.Print is still hanging around but it won’t last.
Unfortunately newspaper Web sites, on the whole, are still playing by the old rules of the Web and are not nearly as nice as professional blogs to read and follow.A few things I’ve noticed from this perspective that are especially frustrating:
I swear its the same song, but here is a copy of the newest video that is out for our series for Admitted students at Pacific.. As I was uploading it ot YouTube, I swear I had a sense it was going to be a something from Napoleon Dynamite :-)
In any case, its a cool video about our New University Center.
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