But attempts to deploy a wireless LAN have been frustrated by first-form students removing the antennas from the access points, in the conviction that these make superior wands.
Of course, this obstacle was dwarfed by the so-called magical-interference problem. Reluctantly, at your request, I did raise this issue in a series of phone calls with Cisco Technical Support.
It quickly became clear that magic was not an issue with which Cisco Tech Support was familiar, even when escalated to the highest level. I patiently explained that, of course it was not magical spells per se that were causing interference, but the transmission of the wizard’s (or witch’s) energy, via the wand, occasioned by the spells. This explanation was met, variously, by expressions of confusion and outright disbelief and not infrequently, by ridicule.
A supervisor finally confirmed that Cisco had no plans to modify its radio-frequency management software to detect and compensate for magic, but that I could file a request for change through my Cisco account representative. In retrospect, I believe this, too, was intended as humor.
In vain did I describe how online courses could increase the school’s revenue stream and achieve profitability goals; the greater flexibility, not to mention safety, of using 3-D online simulations of boggarts instead of the shape-shifters themselves; the desirability of an online potions catalog, cross-referenced with the Ministry of Magic’s database of potential side effects; an interactive, voice-automated Parseltongue translation system; a Defense Against the Dark Arts curriculum based on next-generation gaming software; a digital library to replace the heavy, often musty tomes of incantations; and an information security infrastructure to block access by He Who Must Not Named.
Yet when Professor of Divination Sybill Trelawney said the proposed IT architecture was “insensitive to the Inner Eye,” I realized my efforts were hopeless.
The Problems With IT At Facilities of Higher Education
This is Horribly Unfair!
I don’t even like Babylon Five!
Racists for Obama
So there’s this anecdote floating around the internet. It goes something like this:
There’s this guy going around canvassing for Obama somewhere in the south, or the west, or one of those states that’s probably not going to go Obama, anyway. He knocks on a door and asks the older white lady who answers who she’s planning on voting for. The lady looks confused for a second, then shouts into the other room for her husband, “Hey, who we votin’ for?”
Her husband shouts back: “We’re voting for the nigger!”
The lady looks at the canvasser and says, “We’ll be voting for the nigger, sir.”
I wasn’t quite sure if I could believe the anecdote … until I read Esquire Magazine’s piece, Why White Supremacists Support Barack Obama.
Charming.
The Reason Meme
The REASON Meme:
1. Who are you voting for in November? Obama.
2. Who did you vote for in 2004 and 2000? Kerry and Gore.
3. Is this the most important election in your lifetime? Honestly, they’ve all felt pretty important.
4. What will you miss about the Bush administration? Not a whole heck of a lot.
5. Leaving George W. Bush out of consideration, what former U.S. president would you most like to have waterboarded? Andrew Johnson. Worst. President. Ever. Actually, I’ll go with Drew Carey’s answer: “The sooner we stop coming up with lists of people to waterboard, the better.”
And I tag … everyone who is voting.