*sigh* Definitely one of those days!

[thewayne]

So I sign on to work this AM and one of the managers is bitching at me for moving some databases and that he can't sign on to the system. He was trying to sign on to the wrong system. And I'm not sure he has the right software to sign on to the system he was trying to sign on to.

So I go down to Alamogordo to the university to get my account reactivated. Since I didn't take any classes in 2009, my account was turned off. I get re-enrolled, but it's going to take them a few days to catch up and reactivate me online. No biggie. So I go to the bookstore to see how much the book is going to cost me for a remedial algebra class that I need to take. $178. My wife, who has a PhD in astronomy and astrophysics, never paid that much for a book.

So I go to the tire store to get two tires replaced. Back in August, I took my Toyota in for an oil change and my two rear tires had splits in the sidewalls. We replaced the rear tires immediately with the expectation that I'll replace the front tires in the winter. It's now winter, we've had about 4' of snow already and it was 3 degrees F when I drove down the mountain last Friday. So I go to the same dealer, different city, and he tells me the dealer in Las Cruces set me up with a pair of high-performance tires. A set of four tires that should be good in snow? About $550. Here's the kicker: I took Russet's new Subaru to the same dealer Friday to get the el cheapo factory tires swapped out with good tires, so they've gotten around $1300 from me four days.

So I'm heading home, and starting to drive up the mountain, when my tire pressure warning light comes on. I pull off to a gas station that has free air, pull out my tire gauge and check, and all four tires are at FIFTY PSI. That's almost 50% over-pressure. I called the tire guy and told him, I think the person who installed my tires had his pressure gauge set to metric, 50 PSI is 36 kilopascals, or something like that.


Some days it just isn't worth chewing through the restraints.

Comments

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

The price of text books in general is ridiculous. They claim it's because they're such small print runs, which I can accept a little, but $178 is ridiculous! What's worse, the last one that I bought was an "NMSU Edition". That meant two things: it has a 20 page insert in the back of questions submitted by NMSU, which gives it a unique ISBN, which means you cannot buy it online at Half.com or other sources.

It's definitely the biggest scam going in education IMO.

[thedragonweaver.livejournal.com]

I have decided that if I were to ever write a college textbook (chances: slim to none), I would format it as a PDF and offer it as CD/DVD only, with the option of a "new information" license at a nominal fee (which requires the original CD, natch.) You could put out textbooks at a fee that is comparable to a fiction hardback and STILL pay the author & graphic designers appropriately.

Most books don't need a physical presence anymore, what with college students all but guaranteed to have a computer. And there's the added bonus that if you *do* have to print some bits out, it's only the bits you need.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

There is a VERY big movement towards open source text books, but the amount of output is rather small. There's also a multi-university book rental operation going on where you don't own your books (you can buy them if you want) but rent them for about 25% of the cover price per semester.

I like the concept of ebooks as long as you can copy text from them. Being a computer programmer, the concept of having to retype sample code from a screen in to an editor is ridiculous.

There was an interesting article when Amazon announced the super-sized Kindle which was to be targeted at universities. One student's comment stuck with me, paraphrased: "when I'm writing a paper, I might have a half dozen books open in front of me." Switching between open documents is easy on a computer, doesn't work too well on the Kindle. I think it was earlier this week that Amazon announced they're reevaluating the Kindle system to look for streamlining/improvements they can make to improve the user experience, probably because of the reality of students reflected in that comment.