Jon's Notes

March 14, 2005

“Why should you know better than registered teachers about this?
I know you know computer systems better, but they're real teachers in the schools. So when they told us that we shouldn't discount belief in astrology and luck, well, why do you think you know better? And why do you want to knock luck?”
Jayne said, “They want you to believe in astrology and luck so you'll waste your time waiting for the planets and the stars to rescue you.” -Rebecca Ore, Outlaw School

March 13, 2005
“Take this rule: whatever weakens your reason,
impairs the tenderness of your conscience,
obscures your sense of God, or take the relish
of spiritual things; in short, whatever increases the
strength and authority of your body over your
mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent
it may be in itself.” -Susanna Wesley

March 10, 2005
Cisco's 79xx series VoIP phones are really flexible. I have been doing quite a bit of work with them this week, mostly with their services capability. Working with services involves a bit of detective work. The documentation is good, but there are little quirks that are not covered. voip-info.org has been a big help by providing another documentation perspective.

UI design is a breeze simply because it is tightly focused on consistently moving data. Of course, that means data-based developers can have a field day while display-driven developers think it's useless (insert wink smiley face here.)

Writing services for the 79xx is a interesting exercise because you are forced into disciplined web programming.
The phones don't support cookies, so you can't use them as a session tracking crutch. Passing a session ID around as a form parameter is too cumbersome. In the end, not using sessions makes everything easier. The service page sends a XML service page down, and the phone reacts to user actions by calling down a different URL. The whole thing feels RESTful.

March 06, 2005
Bacterial Meningitis at CUW It would seem that a Student at CUW has Bacterial Meningitis. That is not the sort of news that one wants to hear when going into spring break. At least they are warning us students about it. Dr. Sohn sent out a email warning just before noon on Friday. He asked message recipients to not disclose the name of the student in question, so I won't out of respect for Dr. Sohn. I would like to know why it took until 11:30a for an alert email to be sent out, since the student was named in the morning prayer email at 8a.

Reports from various MSM outlets: Journal Sentinel, WISN 12, CBS 58, and The Duluth News Tribune.
The Journal Sentinel states that the student is hospitalized at Columbia St. Mary's in Ozaukee, which is just up the road from Concordia. They also state that the student's name, age, and gender were not released.
WISN 12 does not provide any new information. CBS 58 states that the student in question is a Female Freshman.
The Duluth News Tribune picked up an AP wire story which states that student's name, age, and hospital information was not released. It is rather interesting that a Minnesota paper picked the story, isn't it? Googling for the student's (non-public by request) name reveals a link to a Minnesota parochial school.

It was mentioned in the prayer email for 2005-02-17 that two people in Kingsford Michigan had died of "a highly contagious bacterial meningitis." Kingsford is the hometown of another freshman female student. Probably coincidence, but I'd really like to know that the two students do not live in the same dorm.


Old Stuff

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