NWC DAYS 3-5
15 Jul 2006 09:55 AM Filed in:
NWC
For those of you following this, sorry
about not posting about the rest of the week. I have been going to
bed earlier, trying to keep my hours of 7:30am-6pm at the NWC. The
last few evenings have been spent putting together a list of
problem tickets as I struggle to get connectivity to the desks of
students and faculty. There have been many glitches that have left
me a bit frustrated. Pulls of networking cables to rooms where
there were not enough connections. It takes almost a day to get
those done. Then it is a follow-up to see if the ports have been
made active, then a follow-up to see that the active connection has
been put on the correct network. It is mainly the grad offices that
are having the major issues. I am sensing some frustration on the
part of the graduate students. I cannot blame them. They see the
work getting done, yet when they test the ports, no connection. In
the meantime, the rest of the NWC is beginning to fill up as some
of the NOAA units are moving in. This puts addition strain on the
NWC IT group has they rush around trying to keep up. I am afraid
that my delays will be increasing as this process continues. Owing
to the length of time it is taking to resolve some of these issues,
those offices that I have not addressed owing to faculty/students
not here over the summer, I will begin adding to the problem ticket
list. No point in letting these stay at low priority status.
Classroom furniture has begun to arrive. Overall I am pleased with the setup. The Instrument lab tables however, do not have power outlets. Just a small problem since we were going to use those tables for setting up some of the instrument labs and power is needed in order to run the equipment. Later next week I will see what can be done regarding this. I am hoping that faculty will start to become more involved in the process and not expect me to always be the front contact person. I personally still have two computer labs and a server room to set up for the fall and I cannot be spending all my time dealing with individual spaces and finer details. Own your space folks, use the problem web site and be understanding and patient when issues are not resolved as quickly as you want.
One benefit of the new network is that we have discovered a computer that has been infected with a trojan virus. Under the old system, we may not have discovered this. The user is not completely happy that the best solution for fixing this machine is a complete wipe and re-install of the OS. It cannot be easy to be going through a move, have work disrupted owing to the move and then find out that you are going to loose use of your machine because of a virus. The silver lining here is that the new network will be more secure and problems of this nature will be less likely. Of course, it is a MS Windows box that is the culprit. Those that know me know that I hate Windows. But I should leave that rant for another time.
I personally am loving the space. I hope that as we continue to find minor problems, that folks remember of what we have gained with this building as opposed to what is missing or not quite right.
mjl
Classroom furniture has begun to arrive. Overall I am pleased with the setup. The Instrument lab tables however, do not have power outlets. Just a small problem since we were going to use those tables for setting up some of the instrument labs and power is needed in order to run the equipment. Later next week I will see what can be done regarding this. I am hoping that faculty will start to become more involved in the process and not expect me to always be the front contact person. I personally still have two computer labs and a server room to set up for the fall and I cannot be spending all my time dealing with individual spaces and finer details. Own your space folks, use the problem web site and be understanding and patient when issues are not resolved as quickly as you want.
One benefit of the new network is that we have discovered a computer that has been infected with a trojan virus. Under the old system, we may not have discovered this. The user is not completely happy that the best solution for fixing this machine is a complete wipe and re-install of the OS. It cannot be easy to be going through a move, have work disrupted owing to the move and then find out that you are going to loose use of your machine because of a virus. The silver lining here is that the new network will be more secure and problems of this nature will be less likely. Of course, it is a MS Windows box that is the culprit. Those that know me know that I hate Windows. But I should leave that rant for another time.
I personally am loving the space. I hope that as we continue to find minor problems, that folks remember of what we have gained with this building as opposed to what is missing or not quite right.
mjl