Ed are you still looking for another job? There were several job postings in the career section of the saturday edition of the edmonton journal for a UNIX administrator and other computer administration jobs.

Happy Birthday Keri!
(sorry i missed your shindig on friday)

Thanks AL

And a big thank you to Paras and Andy.... Thank you for the gift... although Matt thinks it's funny that I can't seem to get the kazoo to work... he says it's my failure as a musician. Though he seems to like to rub it in that he can get it to work.

How did you know i wanted a new puzzle?

Happy Birthday Keri!

Further to that last post, and because I'm working on a library research assignment that involves finding strange studies, I found a randomized controlled trial about video games and laparoscopic surgery. Strangely enough, it was in The Journal of Endourology. I'd link to it, but I went to it through the UofA library proxy, and I doubt it would directly link for anyone else (besides, I'm not sure anyone would want to read the whole thing.) Here's the punchline:

Conclusion: Video game aptitude appears to predict the level of laparoscopic skill in the novice surgeon. In this study, practicing video games did not improve one's laparoscopic skill significantly, but a larger study with more practice time could prove games to be helpful.

-- Rosenberg et al. Can video games be used to predict or improve laparoscopic skills? Journal of endourology [0892-7790] yr:2005 vol:19 iss:3 pg:372-376

I was telling Andy about this already, but a study has found that laparoscopic ("keyhole") surgeons who play video games are over 30 percent better (ie. finished a standardized laparoscopic training exercise faster and with fewer errors) than those who did not play video games.

Hooray for studies that justify my wasted time!

Ah, good ol' aLp:

K9 is back!

And Happy Birthday, Keri.

Here Andy, tutorials galore.

You can force/doublecheck the boot mode (ie normal or safemode) by tapping F8 when the computer starts up and selecting whichever mode you want