susabelle's Blog

Interesting topic, Matt. I work for a college, and we like to think the way we run our IT department makes us one of the top responders in our industry. It is something we strive for every single day. We've put in place many customer-friendly processes and have slowly but surely changed our corporate culture. Instead of being the most feared department on campus, our clients are now eager to call us for assistance. It has been a slow change I've watched for the last 8 years, and I think we are getting more and more respected every day. We still have a long way to go; I'd like to think it will always be a work in progress. There should always be room to grow, change, and get better.

Yes Deisel was cheaper here for years. It has swapped now, and the truckers are complaining loudly!!

On my side of the river (Missouri) we are still under $4. But on the Illinois side it is over $4. And diesel is 4.58. Scary!

Friday's Toddism:

Debris, which he always pronounces "derr-biss." Todd, it's Deh-bree.

LOL

Agh! I knew there was a reason I wasn't doing Twitter!!

You even put me in the trivia...how cool is that?

I almost always listen to it in the car on my commute; half the show in the morning, half in the evening. If I'm at a particularly interesting spot, I will put the headphones on and listen while walking into work, which just makes everyone I pass mad at me because I can't hear them talking to me. LOL

Todd's laugh IS the greatest, isn't it? My son is 18 and sometimes is in the car when I'm listening to GNC podcast, and he just cracks up every time he hears it. It is the most human thing...and makes me like listening all that much more.

It was not your cheap headphones. He did say Expel. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

I'll do my best...I don't want to repeat news we see everywhere else, I want unique things whenever I can.

This week there have been a TON of articles on GNC. It's nice to see that. There are a lot of blogs I check multiple times a day because of the added content, and GNC is going to become one of these if things stay the way they are.

I am happy with the current format of the show; I get a ton of information there and can check out whatever interests me later.

I'd love to see some interviews with key industry people once in a while, that might be nice. I'd almost want that to be a separate show, though.

The technology is advancing, just slowly. Big companies and especially the utilities are reluctant to buy into solar production because the per kilowatt hour is just too high (about double the cost of fossil-fuel electric production). I wrote about this a week or so ago on GNC. There are advancements, it IS getting there, but it is slow. I don't think we'll see much of a change in the next 5-10 years, but after that, we may see significant changes.

I am running Windows Vista on my high-end desktop machine, but even then, it is rather slow. It is purty though, I'll have to give you that.

The truth is, Vista is great if you have a machine that can handle it. Most of us don't have that advantage. I know my new laptop is coming with Vista, but it's also been boosted to its highest level of processor and ram, so that it can run it. I'd no more install Vista on my older laptops or desktops than I would try to install a MAC OS on them. It just isn't going to work on older machines.

That being said, I work on a large college campus, and we are not moving to Vista anytime soon, either. We have it deployed in one classroom where we are teaching it, but that is about it. There are no immediate plans to deploy it, either, because our equipment just will not run it, and the higher costs of newer machines is not in our budget during an economic crisis.

I have to agree. The Toddisms are the fun part. It makes you human. If I wanted the borg, I'd go listen to something else.

What I find fun is your colloquial speech. Often you'll say something, and the English teacher in me (I have a minor in secondary education and a minor in English) just wants to get out a red pen and start marking up my iPod. But then I go look and find out that the pronunciation you're using is just a colloquial part of speech from Michigan, where you're from. I find it interesting that you've kept a lot of that, despite the fact that you haven't lived there in many years.

"Broughten" is one of my favorite colloquialisms.

Name: Susabelle
Location: High Ridge, Missouri, a 'burb of St. Louis
When you started listening to GNC: It was the first podcast I downloaded when I got my iPod in early April 2006. Haven't missed an episode since.
Your profession: Lab Manager/Adaptive Technologist at a college
Favorite Pizza Topping: Not a huge fan of pizza, but like everything.
One place You've wanted to go: Iceland and Greenland
Mac or PC: Both, although I'm an avowed PC person, just use the Mac once in a while so I can say I know how.

Hah...another place for me to talk. There can never be too many!!