UH plans to introduce an emergency text messaging system that can be used to alert students during life-and-death situations, such as school shootings, according to Dan Nakaso’s article in the Advertiser today.

Emails were recently sent to 50,000 students in the 10-campus system encouraging them to sign up for the special text messaging.

Campus officials previously used email to communicate with students during emergencies, such as an October incident in which a 46-year-old man was arrested for threatening to shoot 30 students at UH-Manoa.

During the Feb. 14 shooting at Northern Illinois, campus officials sent students email and voicemail alerts, according to this article from the AP. The school did not have text messaging alerts.

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville recently introduced text alerts along with several other universities across the country. Announcements at SIUE are also broadcast through a speaker system on the 2,660-acre campus.

But the AP article also notes that students at many campuses with text message alert systems have been slow to embrace the program, citing “feelings of invincibility and reluctance to give out personal information.”

I’m sure it’s probably also related to questions about the effectiveness of text message alerts. UH students first have to register for the service and those without unlimited messaging will have to pay for any emergency texts. UH officials said in the article that they expect only 10 percent of students to sign up.

The emergency texting system is designed to do what email can’t, that is, get in touch with students when they’re on the go, walking around campus or sitting in class. But when I was in college, I also almost never took my cell phone to class since I had profs who were notorious for kicking students out of the room if a cell ring disturbed their lectures. So I either left my phone in my room or turned it off during the day unless I was expecting a call.

UH students can check this site for emergency status updates and to register for the new text messaging system.

My computer is showing today’s date as “Feb. 29, 2008″ — a once-in-every-four-years event.

The chance of being born on a leap year day is about 1 in 1,500. There are about 4 million leap year babies worldwide, according to the Detroit Free Press, which has an article today about the pluses and pains of being a “leaper.”

Besides the pesky question of exactly when to celebrate your birthday, some are things I’ve never even thought about, like having trouble registering for online services with programs that don’t recognize Feb. 29 as a valid date. Or how about being arrested for having a driver’s license where the birth date and expiration date don’t match.

On the upside, a leap year baby can say she is celebrating her 13th birthday when she has lived 52 years.

There’s even a site, the Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies, which promotes awareness of leap-year-baby issues.

We have leap years today because the Earth takes 365.242 days to orbit the sun — not a neat 365.

Early calendars were based on lunar months, which average 29.5 days, according to an article in National Geographic News. One year consisting of these months would be about 354 days, throwing off important annual festivals, marking for example the start of certain agricultural seasons, as well as religious celebrations.

The Romans began adding days to the calendar to make up for the lost days, but those charged with the responsibility started to exploit their duty for personal gain — to see their candidates hold office for a longer time, for example.

Calendar years soon fell into disarray. So in 46 B.C., Julius Caesar instituted a single 445-day year, known as the “Year of Confusion,” to set everything straight and prepare for the adoption of a new 365-day “Julian calendar” with an extra day tacked on every four years.

But because the duration of a solar year is slightly less than 365.25 days, the now commonly-used Gregorian calendar was introduced. So now, every year that is divisible by four is a leap year, BUT — years that are evenly divisible by 100 ARE NOT leap years, unless they are also evenly divisible by 400, in which case they ARE leap years.

Totally confused? Well, you only have to worry about this every four years. On most years. Divisible by 100 and 400. OK, we’ll just call it the “Day of Confusion.”

I’m working overnight shifts tonight and Saturday, which basically means I monitor things in the Advertiser newsroom from midnight to 7:30 a.m. when the other staff start coming in. Since we became 24/7, someone’s got to be here overnight to make sure news is covered when it breaks and to update and add to our breaking news posts.

It’s slightly strange being in the newsroom all night since it’s just me and the chatter coming over the police scanners keeping me company right now. And I’m wondering why on earth I’m watching Carson Daly’s TV show…

You should see the stuff that starts appearing on TV around 3:30 a.m.

NBC debuted its new series “Quarterlife” last night.

The series, dreamed up by “My So-Called Life” and “thirtysomething” creators Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, follows the life of twenty somethings dealing with various twenty-something-related issues: relationships, break-ups, roommates, rent, work, office politics … posting information about your friends on the Internet…

The story focuses on quarter lifer Dylan Krieger, played by Bitsie Tulloch, 27, who works as an associate editor at a magazine and keeps a video blog.

The interesting thing about the show is that it started as an online video series and social networking site and was featured on MySpace. It was actually first rejected as a TV show by ABC, produced for the Internet and then purchased by NBC. The 32 online segments were much shorter — only about eight minutes long, as internet videos made for people with short attention spans probably should be.

I was working and didn’t get to watch last night, but caught a web clip here. You can watch the full episodes online here.

Critics gave the debut hour-long TV episode so-so reviews.

It seemed almost like there was TOO much drama and self-introspection. I appreciated the show’s effort to focus on issues affecting twenty somethings, but on an average day, I’m not sure if my friends and I are ever that bothered or pensive. Plus, all the characters look like they came straight out of a 90s Calvin Klein ad.

C’mon - being in your 20s isn’t THAT much of a struggle!

Anyway, I’m not giving up on the show. I’ll probably tune in next week.

Although the show’s debut was on a Tuesday, “Quarterlife” will appear on NBC on Sundays at 9 p.m. with episodes available online afterwards.

PHOTO: MySpace.com

During the first weeks of college, we had these getting-to-know-you-type workshops that were supposed to help all of us understand a little more about our dorm mates’ backgrounds.

In one exercise, the workshop hosts asked a series of questions and asked us to stand on different sides of a classroom according to our answers. For example, one of the easier questions might be: “Have you ever seen the Pacific Ocean?” — everyone who answered “no” would stand on one side, everyone who answered “yes” would stand on the other.

One of the questions was “Have you ever felt discrimination?” Thinking I would stand up for Hawaii and all its melting pot wonderful-ness, I was the only person who chose to stand on the “no” side of the room while everyone else went and stood on the other.

Yes, I was quite naive at the time, first to think that I would never feel any sort of racial discrimination in Hawaii (a BIG topic for another time) and second, for automatically thinking only of racial discrimination and ignoring the other kinds of discrimination out there.

As twenty somethings just starting out in the working world, we face enough problems to complain about but not huge hardships. However, one of the biggest problems I’ve encountered is discrimination, particularly based on the fact that I am young and the fact that I am female.

I’m not talking about at the Advertiser, but about reactions from people I meet while doing my job. As a reporter, I am always out in the field, talking to people and meeting them face-to-face. So, it’s been a quite interesting — and frustrating — to observe how people to react to a young female reporter just trying to get some answers.

Case in point: I was once in Kailua, investigating a pedestrian accident when one of the men I was interviewing asked me why I had been assigned to the story.

“I mean, aren’t you supposed to be covering dog shows or something?” he said.

Ouch.

I don’t know whether his comment came from the fact that I was young, female, a combination of both, or something else. Whatever it was, it stung.

I’m probably additionally handicapped by the fact that I look younger than I am. I’m 24, but I could probably still get the child rate at the movie theater. Taking a flight by myself last year, a kind stewardess asked me if I were old enough to be seated in the emergency exit row. I believe you have to be 18 to do that.

I suspect that men my age may also encounter age bias when applying for a job or maybe even in the workplace. It’s the feeling that you’re starting at a disadvantage and you just have to prove yourself.

Don’t get me wrong. I love what I do. It’s just unfortunate when people don’t take you seriously based on factors you have no control over, like your age or gender.

It just makes my everyday work a bit more of a challenge.