Sean's Blog

Every now and then, I see something interesting in the BG News. In this case, it’s an article titled BG Wi-Fi. From the article:

More parts of Bowling Green will soon have access to a rapidly advancing Internet technology: broadband over power lines. The technology, which turns power lines into network cables, was first introduced to BG by Dacor Internet Services two years ago. In an agreement with the city of Bowling Green, Dacor launched a test line on parts of West Evers Avenue, West Wooster and North Grove streets in 2005.

The article goes on to explain the issues encountered, areas covered, and planned improvements to the system. My boss and I appreciated the following:

The old service connected customers at 11 mbs, much faster than dial-up, but paling in comparison to other high-speed Internet, like the University’s fiber optic Ethernet.

What I also liked was Wi-Fi Hotspot map they included:

Note: I did not create this flash file.

Portable fan forces residence hall evacuation, flooding from sprinkler system.

I saw the fire truck and emergency vehicles over at Founders on my way home last night, but figured it was just a false alarm, as is typical in any college residence hall. Well, at least no one was hurt and the fire was contained. I did like the quote about a student who wanted to air out her room but was concerned about starting another fire. If fans were a large fire threat, they wouldn’t be allowed in to begin with. I have two fans in my office over at Saddlemire, which is mainly due to the fact that the building gets rather hot in the spring, summer, and fall, so I’m assuming I’ll still be able to have them.

I was rather distraught though, that a fire on campus, even though there were not injuries or fatalities, was beat out by the death of Anna Nicole Smith as the main article on the BG News website. That’s almost as bad as Paula Zahn bumping her discussion with Richard Dawkins after the horrifically biased “panel” the other day, so that she could waste air time talking about Anna Nicole.

On a related note, I set off the smoke alarms last night while pre-crisping some pepperoni for our pizza.

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Kelly Kaczmarek was sitting in her ethics class yesterday afternoon, when a campus police officer came to question her about having what appeared to be a weapon. Kaczmarek was one of several students carrying toy Nerf guns on campus as part of a week-long role-playing game called Humans vs. Zombies.

Brought to you by the same city which arrested those who had airsoft guns.

If you want to read more about Humans vs. Zombies, go here.

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This post is not a bomb.

That’s right, Girls attempt real-life version of video game; Residents alarmed; teens could be charged. I first heard of this story from Jacob, one of our student managers. He was skeptical about this, as it was an April 1st online article, and we all know how crazy the Internet gets on that day.

I thought nothing more of it, until I saw this webcomic, which jokes about all the “?” blocks being taken down because they might be bombs, which then prevents Mario from saving the Princess. There was a link at the bottom which lead me to this page, which shows a picture of a box being examined by a firefighter, but also of the use of similar boxes a year earlier as an art project. The art project was done to beautify public areas that advertisers attempt to take over.

Really, I wanted this post to be funny; I truly did. Considering this, you should also be aware that on March 2nd, a student was arrested because of a sticker on his bike. Yes, the sticker did say “This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb”, but, unbeknownst to the police, the sticker is for a punk band in Florida. You would think that, a policeman who say a bike with a sticker such as that, would do some research first. While I know police cruisers have electronics, I doubt they have a full-fledged laptop in there. They could, however, do a simple call back to HQ and say “This is officer Dalton. Could you Google quote This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb end quote for me? It’s a band you say? Thank you.” Done. If someone wanted to make a bike into a pipe bomb, do you think they’d take the time to make a sticker for it?

Where to go with this… this way, I guess.

This article appeared in the April 12th issue of the BG News, the campus newspaper at BGSU. While it allowed them to include all the information about what happened, this news is kind of outdated. If an article was going to be written, it should have been done in mid-March instead of early/mid-April. Then again that’s just me.

While I’m at it, I suppose I should just say, that as an alumni who read the campus newspaper, and now as a member of the campus community as an employee, I believe the campus newspaper should not be a Monday-through-Friday publication, but instead by a Monday-and-Thursday publication. The Monday edition could have a recap of the previous weekend’s events as well as detail anything that would be happening that week. The Thursday edition could have a recap of that week’s events and have information about what is happening that weekend. Done and done. I would feel that this would make the publication better. Then again, that’s just me.