I was riding the bus to school, but also to the ticket office where I picked up hockey tickets for tonight and was astounded by the line for NIT tickets. Apparently there are quite a few people who are a) not embarrassed to be in the NIT, b) not working at 9:05 on a Friday morning, and c) not ashamed to line up on St. Patrick's Day to buy tickets for a contest in which they'll cheer wildly for Michigan to beat the ever-living snot out of Notre Dame in basketball.

Due to our sponsor's apparent Irish heritage there is no conference call today and the morning MAP meeting was gleefully, blissfully, productively short. That has left time for 'data mining' as I call it and a little of this and that online besides.

Yesterday after MAP call I went to Hale for the launch of the new iMpact, which is our online realm here at Ross. The new iMpact is a collaboration with iTunes and is pretty neat, but I'm scared at how excited people are to go virtual at school. A U-M computing services survey focused on the idea of technology replacing attendance went out this week, too. Tech is great if it takes a subordinate, supporting role: I want crisp overheads, inline videos, interactive websites, and central repositories for information. Tech is a ripoff if it replaces the classroom experience; any university can take tens of thousands of dollars and turn it into a stellar website, but I want to get a decent website, stellar professors, and lasting peer relationships from my thousands of frosties.