Today was filled with workshops and info sessions about Professional Improvement and Union Policy and Procedure. Was pretty neat to see all 26 communities and 42(?) schools represented at the conference. This is the first time in years that the NTA / NPIC have been able to get all of the Union Representatives and PI Liaisons together in one area.... and we got a lot of swag too ... and a lot of manuals and guides to bring back with us to our home schools (I'm just going to mail them up via Canada Post rather than pay the 125$ for excess luggage on my flight home - and yes, I am submitting that expense for reimbursement... as if I had known that I would be brining back extra stuff I would have brought a larger bag here with me than the one that I brought down).
And as usual, when you have large groups of people getting together, we all start networking and congregating in areas to talk about our subject areas. The science people went off and did their thing, the math people talked about math ... and then there were us geeks. We all stood around chatting about recent Linux releases, new sub-compact computers, whether or not we were going to participate in the computers for teacher's program where we can buy a computer and the NTA would "loan" us the money to purchase it and then we pay them back through payroll deductions, and of course anything geeky.
So long and Goodby
1 year ago
5 comments:
Here's hoping they move forward with that computer program sometime soon. My wife was told about it in April and nothing has happened with it yet. She's just about ready to cave and buy a new computer anyway rather than keep waiting.
Here's the update - supposedly, we are just waiting on Dell to update / create the NTA site on their site for us. It was (and I'm saying was as I have no idea if it was done yet, and Pat the PI guy in charge of it doesn't know if it was done yet either) to be put up today .... so all I can say is check ... and cross the fingers :-)
The only problem was last spring they were saying we could get PC's or Macs. And obviously Macs are the way to go. But thanks for the update...
Yes, Mac's are the way to go (I'm a Mac user over here). As far as I can tell, they haven't gotten the site updated yet, but it also might be delayed as we just wrapped up the conference today so Pat might not have had time to make sure that things got done yet.
The program seems like it would be a good idea. But, one thing that you might just want to check into is just order the Mac directly though Apple as you can get an educators discount (as the NTA doesn't think that they will get any major discount through Apple as they need to at least purchase 50 computers to qualify for the large order discount).
So, if you can swing the cash on your own, I say buy on your own .. if not, go with the program.
The site is updated today, and they do have Macs listed. However, it is the same discount you would get using the regular educator discount. However, there are a couple of things to consider. First, if my wife uses this discount (which appears to be an educational facility discount), can she still use her individual educator discount? Which is an important factor, as we're hoping to use that so I can get a new computer later this year. Two laptops means less fighting on who gets to use the computer...;)
Also, the discount on software appears to be larger than the regular educational discount. I noticed iWork was $45 (normally $75 or so with the regular education discount). Aperture is about $117, where it's normally around $170 with the education discount.
Those are nice deals to take advantage of. I guess we'll see what happens in the next few days. Thanks again for pointing the way towards the teacher website.
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