|
|
|
freedom like the web
Monday, September 14 2009
I had to go into Eastern Correctional Facility down near Ellenville today to deal with a list of accumulated computer issues in the lab there, so I carpooled with Gretchen, who happened to be teaching a class or advising students or something. Before leaving, I ate some leftover manicotti Gretchen had made for dinner last night. I've learned from experience that it's a bad idea to work in an environment as frustrating as a prison when one has low blood sugar.
Today was less frustrating than other visits to the prison. Initially there was a glitch wherein my approval to enter the prison hadn't reached the front gate and I had to wait for a someone higher up the chain of command to provide a manual override. (Much like a Windows XP machine, sometimes a corrections officer requires someone to press the familiar control-alt-delete key sequence.)
In the prison computer lab, I worked with Jed (who has taken on most of the computer maintenance issues, in addition to his numerous other jobs in the Bard prison program). The computers in the lab have all been locked down using the Group Policy Manager (by someone who knew more about that rabbit hole of arcania than I did), and changing it to allow certain things that needed to be allowed was far from intuitive. But there was a route around most of our trouble: the lab's web server, which provided a miniature one-server HTTP experience for the students who, because of prison policy, are cut off from the actual internet. Jed had been installing folders of course material on each workstation, an impossible-to-maintain data nightmare. He'd been doing this because sharing out a folder to everyone on the Group-Policy-controlled file server had proved impossible to configure (come on Microsoft, there has to be a better user interface for that thing!). But he hadn't considered the potential of the web server, which, because its technology has origins outside of Microsoft's prison-based model, is inherently open, and not even the Microsoft Group Policy Manager (at least in our configuration) messes with the files it makes available. So we put a bunch of crap on the web server, not even bothering to make web pages linking to the material since the webserver was configured to allow the browsing of its directory tree.
This evening when I got home, I immediately went out to pick up some lumber for the outhouse I plan to build (it's a scaled-down version of my composting toilet idea, based on wisdom acquired from a month and a half of experiments involving altered bathroom habits). Gretchen had been planning to cook a Thai dinner but decided I should just pick up some Chinese food instead. So while I was out, I went to the Burrlington Coat Factory Plaza and bought some booze at the cluttered liquor store there. Next door is the Kingston Wok Chinese place, so I looked at the menu posted by the front door and decided the place wasn't very vegan-friendly, as it didn't have any mention of tofu or fake meat on its menu. So I went to the China Rose to Go on the part of Ulster Avenue that may actually be Albany Avenue. It's a branch of the sister restaurant in Rhinecliff, and though not nearly as good, is at least reliably-acceptable.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?090914 feedback
previous | next |
