INFORMATION SERVICES
December 2005
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to Information Services
Announcements from the Bulletin, Today, Notification-L
12/20/05, "Why Did My E-Mail Message Bounce, and What Can I
Do to Avoid This?"
One of the most common questions we get is regarding bounce messages. A
bounce message is the message you get back when you send an e-mail to a
nonexistent e-mail address. They're the ones that begin with something
like "Your e-mail could not be delivered to ... blah blah blah ..."
Bounce messages tend to be a little cryptic. Follow this link for a
thoughtful explanation of why messages bounce and how to avoid problems
before you send messages:
www.macalester.edu/cit/docs/net/bounce_messages.
[Bulletin, also 1/6/06]
12/20/05, Telecomm Tip for the Holidays
Please change your voicemail greeting to correspond with your time
away. It's a great courtesy to your callers. To change your greeting,
access your voicemail box, then press 4, then 3, then 2 and follow the
prompts. For further information, feel free to call Telecommunications
at x6566. [Bulletin, also 1/6/06]
12/19/05, Firefox and Thunderbird Updates
In this notification-l:
12/16/05, Internet Connection Downtime - Sunday December 18
We will be upgrading the software on our Internet connection router on
Sunday, December 18, between 8:00 AM and 11:00 AM. We still suspect that
the recent outages have been caused by hardware problems, but we haven't
been able to confirm that with the vendor yet. The software version we
are currently running is recent, but has been withdrawn because of
problems, so we need to upgrade to a version that we can be sure isn't
causing our connection to go down.
The Internet connection will be up and down intermittently during the
time the upgrade is being done. The Internet can be used when it's up,
but be careful about doing any transactions that should not be
interrupted during the maintenance window, since the connection could go
down without warning. [Notification-L]
12/13/05, Information Fluency Celebration -
Today
All faculty who have taught a First Year Course
during the last four years should have received an invitation for our
celebration from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM today, Tuesday, December 13, in the
Harmon Room of the Library. [Bulletin]
12/13/05, Corporate Time for the Web
The Corporate Time for the Web (http://webcal.macalester.edu) server is
working again. The server has been updated to version 3.1 (from version
3.0), which is a minimal upgrade. The only goal yesterday was to get
this running correctly again, but in the process of doing that, we
upgraded it. The new version has a few new features that I thought
worth mentioning. They are detailed below in the release notes included
with the distribution.
New features in this release (webcal v3.1.0)
User features
12/12/05, Web Calendar
The web calendar server, http://webcal.macalester.edu, is currently
down. We are aware of and are working on resolving this problem.
Access to the calendar server using the Corporate Time client is not
affected. You may access the calendar from anywhere using the native
Corporate Time client, which is available for download at:
http://www.macalester.edu/cit/docs/howto/corporatetime/index.htm.
If you do not have a pressing need to access your calendar, please just
wait until we get the web calendar server working again. Thank you. [Notification-L]
12/02/05, Information Services Organization Changes
Effective in December, the college's information services organization
will take a somewhat different shape. The first important change will be
a split of the current structure with the Library reporting to the
Provost, Diane Michelfelder, and Media Services reporting into the
Library, with the remainder of the information technology organization
reporting to a new associate vice president for information technology.
The AVP position will report to David Wheaton, vice president for
administration and finance. It will be filled as soon as possible.
In addition to this broad change, the IT structure will have now have
four components: network services (led by Ted Fines), desktop services
(David Sisk), administrative services (Ramón Rentas) and academic
services (Barron Koralesky). This last group will be composed of the
current group of five academic information associates; Barron will
continue to support the science division as well as providing leadership
to the whole group. The first two of these departments provide overall
support for the college's infrastructure; the second two focus on the
unique needs of the administrative operations and academic programs.
This structure is effective immediately. - David Wheaton, vice president
for administration. [Bulletin]
12/02/05, Operation ELM Web Site is now Live!
Operation ELM (Effectively Linking Macalester) is now able to keep the
Macalester community informed about the day-to-day developments on the
Sungard® Banner administrative software project at the new Web site
found at www.macalester.edu/elm/. This Web site will have a link
featured under the "College News" portion of the electronic Bulletin,
allowing users easy access to information. Frequent project updates will
be posted at this site by the Project Steering Team and Operation ELM
Project Manager, Chuck Standfuss. Early in project implementation,
expect these updates to be infrequent; however, as the project moves
forward, we expect that important information will be conveyed weekly.
You are invited to return to this Web site as often as you like to keep
yourself informed about project developments.
If you were unable to attend the Nov. 2 community meeting in the John B.
Davis Lecture Hall, you can go to the site to view the presentation
(through the "view the introductory presentation" link provided for Nov.
2, 2005).
If you have questions about the Web site or Operation ELM, please
contact any member of the Project Steering Team or Chuck Standfuss at
standfuss@macalester.edu or x6911. [Bulletin]
12/02/05, New Systems Status Page
In our continuing effort to try to provide more information to the
community about what is going on in CIT, we have implemented a
monitoring package which allows everyone to see live, up-to-the-minute
status of some of our systems. Included on the page are e-mail, the
Novell servers, Moodle, Lester, central switch/internet connection and
more. You will find a link to the new live "Systems Status" page on the
CIT home page at www.macalester.edu/cit. Click on "Systems Status" in
the upper-left corner.
The Systems Status page shows a recent historical record of "uptime."
While the number of outages of e-mail has been unacceptably high, it is
also troubling to hear, "[Your least favorite system here] is always
down." Now we'll have some real metrics and we will all be looking at
the same data.
The "Systems Status" page is different from the "E-mail Status" page we
have been encouraging people to view before reporting a
problem (www.macalester.edu/email). The /email page is not live or
automatically updated; it is updated by hand. As such, it may not be as
up-to-the-second accurate as the Systems Status page. But we are able to
put our own custom informational messages on the /email page when the
e-mail system is down (e.g. "Down at 8:30 PM for reboot, up by 9:00").
On the /email page we will be able to explain why something is down and
when it will be back up. So please continue to use the /email page when
you suspect an e-mail problem.
This is the first version of the "Systems Status" page. It is by no
means comprehensive. Its purpose is to provide you with clear and
up-to-date information. If there is something on there you'd like to see
or see differently, please send Ted Fines, fines@macalester.edu, an
e-mail. [Bulletin, also 12/6]
12/02/05, Calling 911?
You don't plan on calling 911, but if the need arises, please use a
campus (land line) phone if at all possible. By using the campus phones,
the 911 dispatcher will have your exact location (street address,
building and room). Your cell phone does not transmit that information
to the dispatcher and you may not know the exact street address of your
location. You may not even be directed to a St. Paul dispatcher when
using a cell phone. So in the circumstance of a 911 call, using a land
line phone will save time, confusion and possibly much more. [Bulletin, also 12/6]
12/02/05, Get Connected CD Wins Honors
Congratulations to Bonnie Alexander and Jacob Dorer, who once again
collaborated to create the 2005 edition of CIT's 'Get Connected' CD-ROM!
They won second place honors at this year's Association of Computing
Machinery SIGUCCS conference, in the 'Software CD' category. SIGUCCS is
the ACM's Special Interest Group on University and College Computing
Services and is the largest professional computing support organization
in higher education. The competition was fierce, and Macalester's team
beat out rivals from all over the country, finishing second only to the
University of Pennsylvania. This is the second time 'Get Connected' has
won this award, having also captured it in 1999 (the first year we
produced it). [Bulletin, also 11/29]
12/01/05, Internet Down, Up
The Internet connection was down all this morning, but is back up again.
We were on the phone with Cisco, and had a Cisco-trained engineer on
site looking at the problem. There was and still is something wrong
with our Cisco 7200 Internet router. Yeah, well, DUH. We don't know
whether the problem is hardware or software, so we'll first update its
software. If that doesn't work, then we'll replace it or some if its
components. The software update will mean some more downtime for the
Internet, so we'll schedule it during off-peak hours and send out an
announcement about when it will be happening. [Notification-L]
12/01/05, Internet Connection Down
As you've probably noticed, Macalester's Internet connection connection
has been down since last night, Wednesday, November 30. This is
apparently being caused by a problem with our packet-shaper, which
controls incoming and outgoing Internet traffic. This problem makes it
impossible to connect to computers or see Websites outside of
Macalester. It also is preventing us from receiving e-mail from
off-campus. These e-mail messages are being queued and will be delivered
when the connection is restored. Our network staff has been working on
the problem with our vendor since last night and will have the problem
resolved as soon as possible. [Notification-L, also targeted broadcast voicemail]
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