Author Archives: joel

About joel

Retired Higher Ed administrator, flyfisherman and geek

College visits…

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Off today on some college visits. My youngest son, Jeff, is considering Guilford College and UNC-Asheville. Visited Guilford this morning. I was very impressed. A small school, but beautiful, spacious campus (over 300 acres). Things got off to a good start when we drove up in front of the admissions building and they had a parking space reserved with a sign with Jeff’s name on it. Nice touch! I was very impressed with the programs and the facilities. They have about 1400 traditional students and 1000 “non-traditional” older part-time students. Spent about two hours there. Jan and Jeff did an open house at Guilford in June, but I’d never been there, though I work not 5 miles away at UNCG.

I’m writing this from Asheville, NC, where we’re staying for the night. The UNCA open house starts first thing in the morning. We decided to splurge and stay in downtown Asheville in the Mariott Renaissance hotel. It’s just across the street from the Thomas Wolfe memorial, and just a block from the Asheville downtown area. Asheville seems to have a very vibrant downtown, lots of restaurants, theaters, bars, etc. Had some great pizza at Mellow Mushroom. They must have had 50 or 60 beers on tap, including about 20 from local microbreweries. I had a couple (or 3) from the Highland Brewing company, their Oatmeal Porter and the Gaelic Ale. Two of the Gaelic Ales, in fact ;-). Looking forward to visiting the UNCA campus in the morning. That’s all for now!

Google IMAP

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So, Google now supports IMAP for Gmail! Fantastic! I’m testing it right now with mail.app on my Mac running Leopard (I’ll do a blog post on Leopard later). It seems to work well. Because of the nature of Gmail, it does some things differently. Here’s a chart that describes common IMAP actions and what happens in Gmail. There is one thing that it does that doesn’t seem to be described in the Gmail documentation. It’s not a problem, just undocumented. When you delete a message from the IMAP Inbox, it removes it from the Gmail inbox, which you expect…it leaves it in any other labels where the message may appear. However, it also creates a new Gmail label “deleted messages” and puts the message there, as well. It’s not really deleted (in the Gmail trash), apparently just flagged.

I’ll keep on using it a bit. I’ve gotten really used to the Gmail web interface, however. The one thing that this does, though, is reenable use of X.509 certificates for digital signatures/encryption, as that’s handled in the client.

Halloween tradition…

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Last night, as has become a tradition in the Gibbon Drive cul-de-sac, we set up tables, chairs and a portable fire pit at the street. Each house contributed bottles of wine, we ordered pizza, and brought our collective candy for trick or treaters. We also had “give away” cups for the adults ;-). It was a great, warm night, and we had a good number of kids coming by. Also, a increasing number of parents came by, and many brought their empty wine glasses to be filled for their “treat”. A lot more fun than simply waiting at the door, plus my dogs don’t have to put up with the doorbell!

Educause

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I’m posting this from Seattle, where I’m attending the Educause conference. Internet response is somewhat turgid, since I’m using my Blackberry for a modem (but it’s still pretty cool that I’m able to do that, with a Bluetooth connection to the device while it sits over on the other side of the room). This has been a good conference. The sessions have been pretty interesting, and the “side meetings” have been especially fruitful. It’s ironic, but I’ve had great conversations with my colleagues from 7 of the other UNC System schools. We had to go 3000 miles to get together, but there is a lot of value in what we’ve discussed.

I leave tomorrow to head home. I wish I’d had some extra time to explore the area, as this is the first time I’ve been to Seattle. There truly is a Starbucks on every corner here ;-).

Off to Educause…

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I’m headed off tomorrow to the annual Educause meeting in Seattle. I’ll try to blog some if I see or hear anything compelling. I’m looking forward to actually getting some work done on the flight out & back, as I need to get some traction on several projects at work; seems that the “crisis du jour” keeps pushing things back…

Back home Saturday…

Pigs are among my favorite animals…

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…they are very tasty 😉

We had neighborhood party this afternoon…my house, our next door neighbors, and one other neighbor. A pig, a keg, some wine, and a potluck. A beautiful fall afternoon.

Every good southern boy needs to know how to cook a pig, and I was very pleased with how this one came out. Very moist, juicy, and not at all overdone. About 7 hours at 275 degrees for a 77 pound pig. My barbecue sauce is a simple mix of vinegar, brown sugar and red pepper. Rub the pig in salt, lather in sauce, and cook.

The keg was Octoberfest from Carolina Brewery. Very nice.

Wakefield band competition…

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The Chapel Hill High Marching Tigers had a great performance at the Wakefield “Heart of Carolina” competition on Saturday, 10/7. We were 2nd in the AAA class, and we had 6 first and 2 second places in the individual recognition areas. It was a long day! We went early for the fesitival (a 2nd performance opportunity), getting there at about 2PM. We got back to Chapel Hill High at 1AM, and then had to unload and put away gear. Way past my bedtime, but fun to hang with my Pit Crew buddies!

New Eagle Scout!

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My youngest son, Jeff, passed his Eagle Scout board of review Tuesday night, 10/2, and has now joined both me and his older brother in achieving Boy Scouting’s highest rank. I’m quite pleased! I was Jeff’s scoutmaster for much of his scouting career (I’ve just passed that on, as I “retire” from scout unit leadership). Scouting, Marching Band, and Karate have been big things for Jeff. Now, he can focus on trying to finish his black belt in karate.