Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

Are you not employeed by the University in computer life or in real life ?

A (very) knowledgeable friend of mine used to ask, "Are computers making your life easier yet?"

It's the other guy--the one doing the lecturing. He's graduated and off to a postdoc at Harvard. His "employment" at Berkeley terminated after the last class of the six-week summer session.

Hmm. Sounds like someone fixed "the glitch."

NEVER buy, deploy, or use software that has a cutesy name. Not even the smallest, slightest trace of cutesiness can be permitted. It is an infallible predictor of logic rot.

The secret is to get a job at the Richmond Field Station so you can hide from the system and not have to deal with this.

Cal always seemed behind the curve, technology wise. When I was there, it seemed like we were the last UC to get phone registration.

Well, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Aren't we being a little too quick to accept Brad's story? The computers used by large bureaucratic organizations have never caused problems for anyone I know. That's why computers are used in the first place -- to avoid subjective human error.

It is clear that Zizka is a large bureaucratic computer.

I think this is how Mario Savio started.

Zizka, please please please tell me that you are joking.

Computers and faceless, acephelous bureaucratic organizations have feelings too. People think that they can insult them at will, just because they have no rights under American law and are not considered "human", just like slaves or Native Americans in the Nineteenth Century.

This is simply a case of outsourcing at work. This computer program was obviously written in India. Brad, I would have thought you would be embracing this kind of situation as being for the greater good of the American economy.

Zizka, your mood has been a bit flip as of late and it seems to have coincided with the reemergence of your use of your full "nom de blog" - Zizka / John Emerson. What gives?

Isomorphic excuses:
Student - The dog ate my homework.
Teacher - The dog ate your grades.

This reminds of the story of some paper (?NY Times) that published an obit of a man who was very much not dead. He complained and was told that while the paper could not retract the obit, ("If the Times says you're dead, then you're dead!") they would publish a birth notice with his correct birth date.

I suppose that you've already tried "rehiring" the grad students in order to end-run the system? That would be either too easy or too complicated.

GIGO. Game, set and match to the programmer.

I'm guessing that the "cutesy name" Frank referred to above is related to the (extinct) golden bear on the California flag?

Zizka, don't get me started on the abuse of the 14th Amendment, and don't tell me computers are ready to be added to the list of "persons" along with corporations. ;)

Go for it, John.

Enron does not deserve all that abuse, especially because it has passed on to a better life. The heartless cruelty of meatware horrifies me. Also, the Windows Operating Syatem is doing the best it can, but it's hard to keep the morale up in the face of so many cruel remarks.

Well, some UC campuses are hopelessly old fashioned and still use paper gradesheets. So far, no error messages from that system.

Besides, shouldn't the "instructor of record" in fact be the one who enters the grades? After all, it is the instructor of record who is ultimately responsible for them, since the instructor of fact (in cases like these) is far more likely to have, say, graduated and gone off to a fine postdoc!

Sounds like either programming or YOU have been offshored - finally.

I'm having very similar problems trying to transfer a (little-used, fortunately) domain name from one registrar to another. Current registrar has had the updated/correct admin e-mail address for many months but continues to supply an outdated/no-longer-functioning e-mail address to the requesting registrar.

Sigh.

Its funny that the software has been burdened with this additional level of complexity in order to maintain the quaint fiction that professors actually have some involvement in the courses that graduate students teach in their name.

Come November, you can get Condi Rice to be
your Provost. Provosts can do software, right?

Tele-Bears robbed me of an A- once. Man, I needed that A-. I could round my GPA up instead of down by one-tenths. Damn you Tele-Bears!