We celebrated my birthday today. Alisa called Kelly's and told Heather it was my birthday and that she should embarrass me. She brought me a candle stuck into a coffee lid while singing Happy Birthday. After I met with the PI on the course, I came home and opened my presents from Phil and Jackie. They had gotten me a 
buff and an Istvan Bierfaristo beer stein. The buff is really cool -- you can easily wear it in a bunch of different permutations. I'm looking forward to using it under my bike helmet. I'll have to take a ride tomorrow to try it out. Daniel got me a SpubSpub mousepad and Charlie gave me a gyroid in Animal Crossing. (If you want to see some gyroids, you can play this flash game where you have to find andd match different kinds of gyroids.) I had already opened my other presents: Richard got me sound-canceling headphones to help during the transatlantic flight and Lucy contributed to getting the new digital camera I got before we went to Gettysburg. We continued celebrating after work with a tandoori chicken dinner followed by chocolate cake from Atkins. They know how to make cake.
There's another piece of exciting news, though: We're expecting a new baby! The due date is, appropriately enough, April 1st. We've been making the rounds telling people.
The meeting with the PI went well enough. She isn't happy we're making the course materials freely available on the web, but she's adamant that the student produced materials be password protected. It's clear to me that it's a mistake to lock down these kinds of materials. First of all, because it's a sham. It's so easy for anyone in or associated with the class to repost or email any of the content in the class, that you can't assume that anything you write won't be leaked anyway. You don't have to look any farther than the highly publicized Laurie Garrett case to see how the network blurs or flattens barriers between public and private spaces. If you know you're writing for a public space, you're less likely to have these kinds of problems occur. Another related issue is one of context: if you make sure the whole record is available, it's hard for someone to present one piece, out of context, and use it to distort your position. Finally, I think students produce better work when they know they're writing for a public audience. But I don't think it's important enough to take a stand over. I will state that we are doing it over my objections and move on.