Let The Ginormous Spamming Begin

It's over: Facebook has allowed people to just select all people from your school and invite them to events. Before, the only safeguard from mass spamming was that people had to click through every name, but nevermore! Be prepared to get invited to events left and right.

P.S. Although my post sounds negative, I've actually been waiting for this feature for years. Yay for saved hours clicking through names one-by-one!

UVA's taking down their computer labs, what do you think?

So the University of Virginia has found that 99.9% of their students have their own laptops at school (duh?), and 95% of computer lab usage is attributed to the usage of free programs, and as such they've decided to start dismantling some computer labs. Good idea?

Bringing it a Penn context, I don't think it'd be a bad idea. Labs take a lot of money to run and keep updated. But I wouldn't say to take them all down. I'd say consolidate them. For example, whenever I do research using SAS I have to go to McNeil where the computer lab is pretty small and is only open until 8:30PM. Since I need SAS, what I can't do is that I can't walk to the next building over to use the Huntsman computer lab which is much larger, much more widely used, and is open 24 hours. My suggestion? Close the McNeil lab since not that many people use it anyway, put SAS on the Huntsman computers, and use the money saved to give me my own version of SAS so I never have to walk down there in the first place!

Done.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/03/whats-the-point-of-running.ars

I always wondered how to do this correctly

http://www.gunaxin.com/a-lesson-in-hanging-toilet-paper/15802

If you ever want to be an analyst...

Learn SAS, the statistical programming language. It will open up so many doors for you. I had to learn it while I worked at IBM this past summer, and although I thought I would walk away from the job not learning anything relevant to my future, I was completely wrong. It currently stands as the most useful job I have ever had (however, waiting tables is definitely still the most fun job I've ever had).

And if you ever have a choice to learn SPSS or SAS, learn SAS. SAS is harder to use and people know that, so if you know SAS you can be easily adapted to SPSS whereas vice-versa is more difficult.

NYT Makes Sun sound like a Whore

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/intel-boss-says-sun-was-shopped-all-over/

For those of you not in the know (slash those of you who don't really care about the goings-on of IBM), IBM is in discussions about buying Sun for about $7 billion. I'm kinda scared about the possibility (for IBM's sake). I don't really know much detail about either one of the firms, so this is really just coming out of the dark, but just think Sprint/Nextel.

I'm sad

I actually feel depressed after watching Monday's episodes of Heroes and Chuck. Man.

Doctor Cox is Awesome

A line from Scrubs, as Doctor Cox is talking to his girlfriend/life partner Jordan:

"Now hun, and when I say hun I don't mean the 'short for honey' kind but rather the Attila kind..."

Scrubs Season 8, Episode 11.

Hopefully, by the end of the semester, This'll be me.

Honestly, I feel pretty shaky on my leadership abilities. I don't know how I get into the positions I get into, but often times I do wish I was as cool, confident, and tactful as Obama. As such, I really enjoyed the following quote from his appearance on Leno which said a lot about how he views leadership, and his role in management:

Mr. Obama seemed at a momentary loss for words only once during the session, which lasted 35 minutes (although some of it might be edited for the final show). That was when Mr. Leno, after asking about how Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is holding up, said that “I love that it’s all his problem.”

Mr. Obama recovered and said, “Look, I’m the president. So ultimately all this stuff is stuff is my responsibility. If I’m not giving him the tools that he needs to move things forward, then people need to look at me.”

He added: “One of the things I’m trying to break is a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for someone else to blame. And I think Geithner is doing an outstanding job.”

I'm working on it. =/

From http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/heeeeres-barack/

A Pick-Me-Up

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/100-funny-photos-taken-at-unusual-angle-humor/

I think money can buy happiness, for the most part

Sorry, idealists, but I'm gonna have to agree with the New York Times on this one. Unfortunately I've had quite the internal struggle with myself over prospective future income and future careers. I may save that discussion for a later time. Take a look at this article in Economix about the happiest states in America which contains a graph correlating Median Household Income to some happiness Index.

If you're a little low on cash though, you could try making it up by watching more porn (no, that link does not go to a porn-site!), or move to a gayborhood and see if that helps at all (gay does mean happy, after all. I should know that after going to an elementary school named Gayhead for 6 years).

If those suggestions still don't tickle your fancy, try watching other forms of copulation. It sure as heck raises the happy meter for AJ. Yum, slug sex.