Life as Edward Jensen

If you need a quick laugh (and hey, don’t we all?), I present to you the first recorded conversation to an IT helpdesk, ca. 14th/15th century.

This clip originally aired on the NRK (Norwegian national television station) program Øystein og jeg.

-Edward Jensen

The biggest news to come out of ASU in the past few weeks – outside of President Obama speaking at Commencement – is the launch of the ASU Facebook application.

The program connects one’s Facebook account to their course schedule allowing students to interact with others in a social media setting.  Users of the ASU Facebook application create a profile that is independent of their regular Facebook profile but contains their course schedule.

If you’ve used the Facebook application, what do you think of it? Any comments? Any suggestions for improvement? We’d love to hear your feedback: leave us a comment.

-Edward Jensen

Last week marked the graduation of the Class of 2009 from ASU.

Last week also marked the end of tenure for three of my fellow Student Ambassadors.  Candi Henriquez and Amarone Thach have been with us from the beginning and Kirsten Martin joined us a year ago.  All three have made significant contributions to the program and though we are sad to see them leave us, we send them out into the world to go and change it, which they will.

To Candi, Amarone, and Kirsten: we thank you for your dedication to the College of Public Programs and we wish you only the best in your future endeavors.

-Edward Jensen

In the midst of what seems like the endless stress of Finals, I thought I’d post something light-hearted:

He is Yoram Bauman PhD, the world’s first (and probably only) stand-up economist.

-Edward Jensen

So I’m trying an experiment to track some of Metro’s bell-happy drivers using Twitter.

In the days since Metro’s been operating, I have heard drivers that have sounded the bell along the entire route without interruption.  For those who live along the route and for those who are on the train, this is rather annoying.  (If you’re on a train and you hear a clicking noise, that’s the bell ringing.) The standard procedure for Metro is to ring their bell once upon crossing an intersection, arriving a station, and again when departing a station.

Here’s what you do: if you’re on a train where the driver is bell-happy, send a tweet with the train’s number (e.g. 132B), where you are (e.g. Palm Ln/Central Ave), direction of travel (east- or west-bound), and, if not posting in realtime, the time (May 7th, 7.30am).  If you live near the Metro line, getting the time is incredibly important since you might not get the car/train numbers.  Most important, though: put the hashtag “#metrobell” so we can easily identify these tweets and pass along the drivers to Metro.

Please share (and retweet!) so this becomes most effective!

-Edward Jensen

If you’re on Facebook, join the fan page for the Downtown Phoenix Civic Space and get event reminders, join in the conversation of what you’d like to see at the park, and meet fellow park supporters.

-Edward Jensen

A quick hit for a fine Saturday morning here in the desert:

More than one-third of the trains, equipment and facilities of the nation’s seven largest rail transit agencies are near the end of their useful life or past that point, the government said Thursday. Many have components that are defective or may be critically damaged.

A report by the Federal Transit Administration estimates it will cost $50 billion to bring the rail systems in Chicago, Boston, New York, New Jersey, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., into good repair and $5.9 billion a year to maintain them.

Go read the rest here.

-Edward Jensen