My one box and I made the drive from Oakland to Portland yesterday, and today I had my first day at Catlin Gabel. I proudly carried my one box to the tech office, opened it, and ... discovered that it was the wrong box! Instead of my precious workplace knick knacks, I only had the detritus from my office at home -- an old telephone, a box of camera accessory packaging. I guess I really have succeeded in moving my work life into the virtual space, as about the only item I miss from the box is my "emergency sweater."

I received and set up my new MacBook Pro today. Yes, it is as easy as everyone has been saying to install Windows using Parallels. I was especially impressed with how easy it was to increase the RAM allocation to the Windows virtual machine. I would like to set up a second VM at some point to run Linux. I believe that we are going to build our new intranet on Linux instead of the Windows servers I have grown accustomed to using, so I will have to become more familiar with navigating a Linux environment. I might even use my laptop as a testing server for new software.

Learning about a different technology program is extremely invigorating. Altiris deployment software is my new best friend. With one click, I installed the client software on my computer. With a second click, my colleague Dave installed Office on my computer! The software can also remote control client computers -- very handy for quick support calls and how-to's from across campus. Mac-only campuses likely use Remote Desktop for this. If I understand correctly, Altiris is cross-platform. The software isn't cheap, but it provides tremendous value to tech departments.

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