Those can't-live-without-'em college essentials - Word, Excel and Outlook - are now available for almost half of what Penn's Computer Connection charges. The promotion, available at Microsoft's Web site theultimatesteal.com, offers the Microsoft Office software for $59.

Halloween approaches, and our thoughts turn to wicked things. Vampires, ghouls and . problems in urban planning. Wicked problems are practically indefinable. Issues like poverty, crime, broken infrastructure, failing schools and racism are tangled in a knotted mess.

Columbia will add M. and W. Squash Finally, every university in the Ivy League will have squash. Columbia, fresh off jumpstarting a $100 million athletic-fundraising campaign, announced yesterday that it make its club squash teams varsity ones. The promotion process will end in fall 2011, when the team will officially begin full varsity competition.

Tom Haxton wakes up everyday before dawn and heads to the Schuylkill River trails for a run. After that, it's off to Franklin Field for a workout with the Philadelphia Runner Track Club. And sometimes, when the fourth-year physics Ph. D. student has finished his research for the day, Haxton will head out for a short evening run as well.

This Saturday, Penn will launch the public phase of its five-year capital campaign with a celebration on College Green and a highly anticipated public declaration of financial goals.

Universities usually don't hold black-tie galas in empty parking lots. But that's exactly where hundreds of Penn alumni will be celebrating the kick-off of Penn's multi-billion dollar Capital Campaign this Saturday.

Quarterback Brendan McNally didn't know when he would get to make his Quakers debut. Now he's only one injury away from becoming the starter. The 6-foot-2 sophomore spent his freshman year and the first three games of this season behind the two-headed logjam of Robert Irvin and Bryan Walker, who were vying for the No.

The game didn't start off right for the women's soccer team. But in the end the Quakers took down a struggling Dartmouth squad to keep their Ancient Eight record perfect at 3-0. The Big Green (3-8-1, 1-2-0 Ivy) jumped out to an early lead after a Ali Hubbard shot found its way past Penn keeper Sara Rose just three minutes into the contest.

Penn Medical School's Department of Dermatology was ranked as the number-one academic dermatology program, according to a report published this month in The Dermatology Online Journal. This report is the first to rank dermatology programs based on academic achievement.

System of standards in place for TAs To the editor: Let me correct some misconceptions voiced in your recent staff editorial, "Making TAs better," (10/2/2007) regarding the preparation of teaching assistants at Penn. Contrary to the editorial, there are, in fact, basic standards of preparation for new teaching assistants that apply on a school-by-school basis.

Imagine a world in which everything cost as much as you wanted to pay. Airline tickets for fall break? $50 sounds reasonable. That Porsche you've had your eye on? Yours for a grand. Dinner at Le Bec Fin? No more than the Dollar Menu. Such a state of affairs is both ludicrous and impossible.

The Dartmouth women soccer team doesn't seem to believe that the closer you get to the goal, the better your chance of scoring. The Big Green have been far more effective from outside of the box than in. Struggling on offense, they have only scored eight goals in 11 games.

After a blowout win over Georgetown last week, Penn is ready to put the past behind it and restart its hunt for an Ivy crown when it takes on Columbia in New York tomorrow.

Former Neurosurgery professor Tracy McIntosh will proceed with his court-mandated resentencing for a 2002 sexual assault. McIntosh and his lawyer, Joel Trigiani, announced the decision Friday morning in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. McIntosh's other option was to try to withdraw his original no-contest plea and go to trial.

College sophomore Brandon Moyse never thought Buckcherry would get him into trouble. But when Moyse - who is also a DP sportswriter - opened his inbox last Friday, the rock band was the cause for a distressing e-mail: A message from the Recording Industry Association of America demanding that he remove one of the band's hit songs from his computer.

After last weekend's emphatic wins over Cornell and Columbia, the Penn volleyball team will attempt to duplicate that feat when it faces Brown tonight at 7 p.m. and Yale on Saturday at 4 p.m. Both games will be played at the Palestra. Tonight's contest pits the Quakers (8-6, 2-1 Ivy) against a Brown team (2-11, 0-3 Ivy) that was swept last weekend by league-leader Dartmouth.