RIP College Computer Lab

A friend recently sent me an article about the eventual closing of many college computer labs around the country mostly because of the extensive personal computer ownership of college freshman. The main part of the article is below.

It's very exciting and very sad to watch technology evolve over the years.

It's directly because of all my time spent in two different computer labs that I chose the career that I have now. I worked in two separate labs through my 7 years of college. My love for teaching actually started in my home town community college computer lab. One week the instructor was gone so the head of the department asked if I could help out. It was an AppleWorks class on the Apple II e.

RIP the Campus Computer Lab, 1960-2009

Posted by kdawson on Saturday March 28, @05:03PM
from the passing-of-an-era dept.

theodp writes "When every student has a laptop, why run computer labs? That's a question schools have been asking themselves as computer ownership rates among incoming freshmen routinely top 90%. After only four freshmen showed up at the University of Virginia in 2007 without a computer of their own, the school decided that it's no longer worth the expense of running campus computer labs. Student computer labs have been a staple of campus life since the '60s. So what are the benefits that will be missed as other schools follow UVa's lead?" The university's report notes understanding that "that students need collaborative space where they can bring their laptops and mobile devices to conduct group work, especially as the curriculum becomes increasingly team- and project-based." One of the spaces formerly occupied by computer labs "has been transformed into a technology-rich collaboration area."

My $1,000,000 idea

So, do you ever have one of those ideas that you just know is so cool but you lack the motivation to do anything with it, and then out of the blue some months/years later you see your idea as reality?

Well, about 5 years ago when RFID was in the news I had this idea of a way to track all the stuff in my house. Basically my idea was to install RFID tags in anything that I wanted to inventory and needed to find quickly.

• Car keys
• Glasses
  
• Wallet
• Cat

Basically anything that seems to get misplaced often enough to warrant tracking.

Then with a simple RFID console I would quickly "lookup" the item in question.

Well similar ideas using wireless transmitters are now becoming household items.

It's just a matter of time before we can find other common household items with much smaller tracking devices.

My life as a Head Banger

So, I have a new "project" which is probably way more difficult than I assume it will be.

I'm going to start digitizing my life. It's similar to Digital Scrapbooking just a lot less cool and creative.

I thought I would start with some old concert ticket stubs since many of them are fading quite rapidly.

Since I wanted to stick to one picture there are a handful of concerts I either left out, couldn't remember or lost the stubs.

Here is the chronological list up to 1998, which I assume is the point where I stopped thinking I was cool for seeing Poison 3 times and just threw away the stubs.

3/15/1986 Kiss
12/11/1987 Whitesnake
12/5/1988 Poison
5/28/1989 Bad Company
7/12/1989 Cinderella
3/11/1990 Motley Crue
5/27/1990 Kiss
12/9/1990 Poison
2/27/1991 Damn Yankees
6/2/1991 Warrant
12/3/1991 Rush
6/10/1992 Genesis
5/23/1993 Paul McCartney
4/8/1994 Rush
9/20/1996 Dave Mathews
12/2/1996 Hootie and Blowfish
5/24/1997 Edgefest
8/31/1997 Counting Crows
12/31/1997 Garth Brooks
11/25/1998 Lita Ford