School is all done with now, and has been for a few weeks. I am now working for my school's IT department, in the Architecture group. It is turning out to be a pretty cool job. I am working on several Internet2 projects, like MACE-dir, eduPerson, and Shibboleth. The work is really interesting, and I am enjoying the opportunity to do design analysis and such. Also, a very nice aspect of doing work for higher education is that everything I write is Free Software. So it is a pleasant work environment.

I have also just started my DVD collection. I bought Almost Famous, High Fidelity, American Beauty, and Fight Club. Now I am in the process of deciding what other movies I should get, and what versions of those movies are the good ones to get. Beyond the annoyance with CSS and Region Encoding, DVD consumers are really taken for a ride in terms of releasing multiple versions of the same movie. Some movies have a normal version, a collectors edition, and an ultimate edition. I can understand a movie-only cheap version, and a special/collector's edition, but having multiple enhanced version is frustrating. And then you also have to consider quality of transfers, etc. I love the higher quality of DVDs though, and I certainly can't go back to VHS. I intentionally held off on buying movies until I started collecting with DVDs. To make myself feel better about buying DVDs, I am buying used copies off of half.com, so I don't support the MPAA's DVD policies. The flip side is that I am also not supporting the actors or writers, but they get so little anyway, it doesn't make a difference. Too bad I can't decide where my money goes in terms of royalties.