Today was the 
BCRC 
OpenHouse.
It all came off without a
hitch. It would have been nice if we had attracted larger crowds.
At first I was
a bit disappointed, but upon reflection I decided that what was at
least as important
was engaging the people that we did. There are tremendous things
going on in the department!
One aspect of my job I've always appreciated is getting to participate vicariously
in all of the myriad research and teaching activities in the department.
After taking out leadership elements, Comcast has their psyops battalion hard at work trying to win the hearts and minds of cable modem subscribers. They say, "we're going to provide you with an improved high-speed Internet experience" but the only piece of actual information in the whole message is "you will be able to receive all e-mail sent to your attbi.com e-mail account through 2004". The rest is just psychobabble, e.g. "you're going to be seeing some great changes very soon" including "a host of new, exciting features and enhancements". How about just reliable service? The most "exciting features" they could provide me would be a static IP, symmetrical data rates, and a return to an AUP that explicitly guarantees the right to offer services. Instead, we get "a new, exciting homepage, to use". Yeah, right.