Whew! We're pretty much finished with the move into the LAS building. They're still bringing in the furniture, cleaning the floors, completing construction in the lecture halls, dusting everything, and generally working all around us like bees. This morning, as we were commenting to the visiting Carnegie Mellon IT guys about how few problems we'd had with power over here, a contractor working on the UPS unceremoniously dropped power to the entire machine room. People started complaining about not being able to check their email, which alerted us, but we were unaware of the full scope of the problem until we got down to the machine room and all the lights were out. C'est la vie.
The latest version of AOL Instant Messenger, 5.5, is compatible with iChat for audio/video conferencing. It's still in beta, you have to install an upgraded RTC on Windows, you have to be running Windows XP, and you (obviously) need a sound card and a webcam. I have yet to actually make it work, but Carl and I are still trying. :) Once the bugs are ironed out, we'll be able to videochat with our operating-system-challenged (i.e. Windows-using) friends and family out there.
I learned yesterday about a faux pas I made back in November. I have a money belt that needed some minor altering, and I had taken it to a tailor to do the work. It took all of about five minutes, and when I asked him how much I owed him, he waved me off. I figured that he was being charitable due to the fact that it was Ramadan. Yesterday, though, I had another minor alteration made by a different tailor (you can get custom-tailored suits and such made here for very little money, by the way), and this tailor waved me off when I asked about my bill. Somehow, I realized that this was just his way of allowing me to make an offer, so that the net result of the transaction would be one of mutual favors--he did me a favor by fixing my belt for free, and I did him a favor by paying him anyway. I gave him ten riyals (less than $3 US), and he was quite happy with that (I'd have spent more than that just buying needle and thread, for crying out loud). Hopefully the other tailor--the guy I stiffed--didn't think too poorly of me. Learning how to think Arab can be very challenging.
Posted by jon at February 10, 2004 08:14 AM