Risk 2210. Hey rich when you tire of Risk, try Risk 2210 as well. Faster paced, and some nice touches that inject randomness and the need for extreme strategy shifts into the game.

Buying RAM. Just ordered my RAM up atCrucial, wow what a great experience. They have a complete DB of machines by manufacturer or motherboard, they walk you right thru the selection process. Very nice.

Karen Holbrook Letter. Received this week from Karen Holbrook, President of The Ohio State University:

_To our alumni and friends:

As a university community, we all congratulate our football team and coaches for their extraordinary season and Saturday’s tremendous victory. It is a remarkable accomplishment and they have made us very proud. We all left Ohio Stadium knowing that our Buckeyes had given their all to bring us to the verge of a national championship.

Sadly for all of us, the line between celebration and rampage was crossed Saturday night. I am certain that by now you have all seen the news accounts of the illegal and destructive behavior exhibited in the university area by a number of our students and fans. While some may say it was in response to our great victory, there is no way to draw any connection between the remarkable grace and poise of our team and the appalling actions that took place. To even try and make that connection is a gross insult to our coaches and our players.

Throughout Sunday, I met with members of the senior university administration and with Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman and members of his staff. Following our discussions, we invited members of the news media to meet with us and I released the statement below. The mayor shares my dismay and disappointment with what took place, and together we have agreed that we will vigorously pursue all legal sanctions – both criminally and through the university’s judicial process where students are identified. For the university, I have authorized Vice President for Student Affairs Bill Hall to use all means necessary to deal with this unacceptable behavior by members of our student body.

The majority of our students celebrated appropriately and in moderation. Many students took leadership roles in an attempt to ensure a safe celebration. Unfortunately, a minority chose to ruin for the rest of us what had been a joyful occasion. Rather than reveling in our opportunity to become national football champions, we are obligated to respond to the damage to our community, our reputation and our university.

This is a community problem, and its solution will require collective ideas, support and cooperation. In the days ahead, we must all give thought to how we address this situation, both immediately and for the long term.

Sincerely,

Karen A. Holbrook President The Ohio State University

STATEMENT FROM OSU PRESIDENT KAREN A. HOLBROOK IN RESPONSE TO OFF-CAMPUS RIOTS, NOVEMBER 24, 2002

Yesterday afternoon, we witnessed all that’s great about intercollegiate athletics – a spirited, competitive football game that went right down to the last second. Last night, we witnessed the very worst in reaction to what had been a joyful occasion. The behavior was criminal and unacceptable. And unfortunately, many of those responsible appear to be our students.

First, allow me to apologize on behalf of The Ohio State University community for last night’s actions. I express apologies to our city, to those who suffered property damage, and to those fans and supporters who did celebrate in an appropriate manner.

Mayor Coleman and I have been speaking throughout the morning. In addition to expressing apologies, I commended the actions of our city police and firefighters, along with our university police and security personnel, for their effective and professional approach to dealing with these appalling circumstances. I also informed the mayor that the university will cooperate in every way possible with the police as they investigate this event. As in the past, those who were arrested will be immediately suspended from the university. Those who engaged in criminal activity will face expulsion. Earlier today, I authorized Ohio State’s vice president for student affairs, Bill Hall, to use all means necessary to identify and address those responsible.

To this end, we will review the television tape and other photographic evidence of last night’s events and identify as many of those as possible who were involved. We also ask that anyone, students or otherwise, who can help identify the participants in criminal and destructive behavior to come forward and do so by contacting Bill Hall, vice president for student affairs.

We have 49,000 students at our Columbus campus. The vast majority celebrated responsibly and in moderation. Some even took leadership roles in an attempt to ensure a safe celebration. It is embarrassing that the actions of others, exhibiting the worst behaviors, have blighted what was otherwise an exceptional day.

Finally, it is sad to note that last night’s behavior is not unique to Ohio State. There were similar events at other campuses in the hours following major games yesterday afternoon and evening. And indeed, this is a national and ongoing problem and regrettably has become an all too common characteristic of our society. What the ultimate answer might be, I am not certain. But, it is my view, that such behaviors must be addressed on many fronts by university presidents, parents, and by the students themselves._

Hunger at Thanksgiving. I heard from friends back in Marion that 1000 free meals were served yesterday from just one church for the holiday. Multiply this by the number of active churches, organizations, shelters, etc, and that is a pretty phenomenal number of meals for a town with a population of 35,000, in a county with a population of 66,000.

It is saddening that so many people need help – but I am glad there are so many people back in Marion who are helping out.

When I stopped at QFC this am, i bought one of their pre-packaged bags of groceries for the food bank. Something I intend to do every trip to the market from now on.

Tong is interested in Ensim Webppliance. Hey Rich I am willing to consider running Webppliance but does that mean you intend to move some domains back to my server? And what are the key features you want? I guess you are not having fun supporting Michelle, Zagula, etc, and want to automate the pain away? (Also PS your link to ensim is busted in this post)

Best place to buy RAM? Hey tong, i need to buy some ram for my xp box, i am swapping way too much. i am up at crucial, is this the best place to buy?

ipod for Windows. Brad got one of these and loves it – i got one of these recently and finally got around to setting it up. easy to set up – i was already using musicmatch and that’s what it uses too with an ipod plugin. what a cool device. i got it with 20GB, which is supposedly enough for like 4000 songs. now i can take my entire music library with me wherever i go. i bought it direct from apple and it came within a couple days. a great xmas present. Personally I don’t totally get it. My music library is 10000+ songs, well over 20G, so i can’t take my whole library with me. I’m not sure how to decide what to take. And the idea of hauling my data around is odd to me, i’d rather just stream it up from my server to anyplace I am. But maybe it is time to try it out.

Allie’s Essay – First Place. Way to go Allie – INSIGHT showcase of student work

If I Was In College Right Now. Tong and I have had a little thread going about college – what would we be studying/doing if we were college age right now. I’ll let Tong speak for himself, but as much as I love software and networking, I think I’d be focused on materials science and the merge of materials science and information processing. Nanofabrication, the IT technologies to let us design and control materials and material fabrication at atomic scales, “smart” materials, etc. I just love this area and suspect that I would have a lot of fun in this area.

Or instead of diving to the atomic level, I’d go high and study architecture and urban planning. My first love, this is what I wanted to do when I was 13. I love the pure design thinking, the human orientation of the design work, the blend of aesthetics with science.

I’m certainly not unhappy with the choices I did make – software, digital technology, networking has been a fascinating path and there is still a ton to learn and do in this domain.

Blog Community Ethos. Wow something I love about the blog community is that anyone will respond to your email or comments. Truly friction free communication. Partly a function of the software, but more a function of the kind of people drawn to blogging – people I like. Also you are encouraged to put your thinking out for public view, which allows dialog, criticism, and refinement, and makes your thinking that much clearer. Kind of like the benefits of open source, applied to thinking.

As we approach Thanksgiving, I am thankful for the blog community – for the great communication, for the open sharing of ideas, for the experimentalism, for the risk taking.

Santa Switch. I miss Will Ferrell on Saturday nights – here’s a little fix

ieHTTPHeaders. Hey Adrian you wanted to know more about what was really happening when a browser requests a page for your embedded browser – check this tool out – ieHTTPHeaders

Comments. Added comments just for Adrian. Not sure I want comments really. :)

Xbox and 802.11. More info on Broadband Reportsforums. Thanks Adrian.

Windows Movie Maker Beta. Finally downloaded this and started playing with. The pros – lots easier to use and less buggy than a lot of the shovelware you find with vidcap cards and with systems. A huge con– it is impossible to discern what codecs it is using, or to force it to use a particular codec. I want to share a move with some folks over the web, and they are using unknown systems. How can I pick the exact codec I want, how can I pick the most compatible cross platform codec? If I want to force it to use DivX, how do I do that?