Jacob stiffed at Circuit City

In the Black Friday feeding frenzy this morning, opportunists at Circuit City abused the system and left Jake and Andrea shivering in the cold. Here’s what happened.

Long on the prowl for a notebook computer he could take to classes, Jake was encouraged when the Thanksgiving newspaper advertisements listed a name brand laptop computer for $299. He and Andrea got up at 3 a.m., drove the 30 miles to San Luis Obispo, and got in line in freezing weather.

At the appointed hour, Circuit City employees handed out all the vouchers for computers to a few people at the front of the line. Those people, now armed with multiple vouchers, walked down the line offering to sell the vouchers — at a profit for themselves — to others in line. One of the scalpers was asking $100 just for the voucher. In this manner, if he had three takers, he would be getting a free computer.

Jake and Andrea refused to play that game, but told store managers, pointing out one of the scalpers in line to claim a computer. The Circuit City managers’ response was “there is nothing we can do about it.” What do you think?

Elijah acknowleged for Web 2.0 contribution

Hey, family, Elijah has his name on an important augmentation to a leading piece of software that is part of “Web 2.0.” Moodle is called a number of things, including “course” software, “collaborative” software, a “content management system.” It is part of the Open Source community.
Call it what you will, it is used at many universities as an online teaching tool. It is also used outside the academy in the corporate world and by some news organizations as an online publishing environment. It is at this stage of Web development an important piece of software.
Elijah and a colleague at Humboldt State have received open recognition for a plug-in they created for Moodle. The plug-in allows users to bring data created in proprietary exam generating software from Respondus into the Moodle environment. You can read about it at the Respondus site.
You can learn more about Moodle at its site.

Atarah Atkinson Photography

Atarah’s been hard at work with her new camera, and has lots to show for it.

Check out her work at:

http://www.myspace.com/atarahatkinsonphotography

or email her at sallyjoe@gmail.com

For a small sample in this space, you can see her work in the 2007 entry, “Atarah Atkinson Moves.“