I've been trying to phase out my use of proprietary software like Microsoft Office, just because it makes a lot of sense to me. Not paying for software, supporting open source, using open document formats: all wonderful things. But, using products like OpenOffice.org has a few disadvantages: one of which I have overcome today.

• general

I'm not sure whether I've discussed this before are not, but I have a very big part in a very large choice that's about to take place in our office. We're at a turning point in the IT department, one that will effect us for a very long time - possibly the next decade or so. We need to decide on a development language to use: for web, for applications, and anything else we might do.

• php

Here at the County, we're getting hammered by a web crawler named "Pita+". The only information it provides for itself (and the only information I could find on it) was an e-mail address, which was 'webmaster' at 'pita.stanford college'. It didn't actually say 'pita.stanford college', but I'd rather keep that e-mail address spam free, even if it's spamming our site.

• content

A few days ago, the tallest building in Glens Falls caught fire. It was an electrical fire on the 10th floor, and it shut down the building and almost every office in it.

• networking
• server

Our Telecomm guy had a suprise for me the other day: one of the DAs was getting a Blackberry, and he had it for a little bit. He stopped by, and brought up the Warren County web site.

• browsers
• content