Viruses and Plagues

Two things this morning:

1. Just a reminder to all of you who work with the public computers to wash your hands frequently, cover your cough, don’t come in to work if you have a fever, and don’t touch your face.
2. The Conficker virus has basically gone live and is enslaving millions of computers as we speak. This means a huge uptick in Spam in your inbox. It’s probably too late to scan your computer for viruses because if you’re infected you’re hosed at this point, but I always remind people to scan for problems.

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Some updates to the TeamSpot installation

I have made some changes to the signage and equipment in the TeamSpot area in order to help answer some questions that students have raised about this service.

Can I play a DVD?

Yes, simply check out a pair of headphones (or the multi-line headphone jack and several sets of headphones for groups) and the keyboard and mouse from circulation, pop in your DVD, and enjoy.

Why is there no keyboard and mouse?

You shouldn’t need a keyboard or mouse to control the server because once you download, install and start the client on your laptop, you can use your laptop to control the server (see the instructions in the TeamSpot booklet). That said, the library recognizes that there may be times that students, staff, and faculty might want to use the station in a more “traditional” manner and a keyboard and mouse are available at the circulation desk for you to check out. Just plug them into the USB port and you’re on your way.

Who should I contact if I have a problem, complain, or need a training session?

Please contact me, Tim Bostelle, by phone (253.692.4650) or email (tbostell@u.washington.edu) for any questions regarding this equipment.

I have also updated the remote desktop configuration which means that I can manage this computer from home if there’s a problem, put a sign on the “reboot” button and encourage users to reboot the system if there are problems and am forwarding my work phone to my cell phone.

Hopefully that should catch all the problems as they fall through.  If not, let me know.

Slow Printing of PowerPoint in the library

I’ve gotten word that there’s a PowerPoint presentation on Blackboard that is printing really, really slowly. I haven’t really “gotten word” I mean to say that I’ve seen it happen. So, I did a little testing and feel like the most likely culprit is the fact that some of you are printing the document in full color.

The printers in the library aren’t capable of color so there’s no point in trying to print them full color. Instead, you should save yourself a bunch of time by printing them in good old black and white!

To do that you simply open the file in PowerPoint, click on the Office bubble in the upper left corner and click on Print.

Then, in the printing sub-menu select “Pure black and white” from the bottom drop down list. If you want to print them as handouts instead of single slides you can also select this at this point with the drop down list directly above the “Color/Grayscale” list where you just selected “pure black and white.” Then I like to change the number of slides per page to something like 3 so that I can take notes.

Anyway, that’s it, if that’s still printing slow or you have other suggestions, let me know.

Back to Business

Jeeze, I just notice that it’s been almost a month since my last LIT blog. Well, I’ve been busy! I’ve been working on the Phase 3/4 planning, ordering staff computers (which took way longer than expected because of the  local interpretation of the Governor’s directive), upgrading student computers, overseeing the Pharos Printer changeover, changing the public computers into student/1 hour logon computers, building our LAMP server and shepherding the Learning Cave project.

Yow.

See, that’s why there hasn’t been a blog!

But that’s about to change. I’m going to start using the blog to disseminate some information about some of the changes as they come out. Specifically, coming up will be a blog about the LIT Tours, the Pharos changes, the Learning Cave, the new Library web site, the new student/1 hour logon computers, and any public info about the Phase 3/4 planning that I need to tell you about.

Whew.

So, stay tuned and I’ll see you all tomorrow!

Woman Rocks out a Library?

The Distant Librarian today posted a light hearted link to a video of some lady dancing at one of the public terminals in some library somewhere.

I have to say, it’s either a fake or it’s a person with a real serious mental problem.  Either way, it’s not really that funny and I’m glad our “campers” don’t do too much of this kind of stuff.

What would we do if they did?

Wireless network problems

Last night we had two users who had problems with their wireless connection. Basically, the laptop would show a strong signal and a positive connection, the software determining the connection was shut off, firewalls were open, the systems were getting an IP address, they were able to ping out, but they were not able to route to any web addresses (including internal web addresses like http://www.washington.edu). So, I would repair the connection, clear out cookies, try a different browser, and finally, I assigned a different, static, IP address to the laptop from another laptop that had a confirmed good connection: et Viola! the machine connected just fine. And when I assigned the known bad IP address to the other laptop: et Viola! no connection.

So, I called the Network Operations Center in Seattle. And after about an hour on the phone we got one of the connections working by making an exception in the router for that IP address. I suspect a bad router at this point and have an email in to C&C to have them take a look at the problem.

For now, it looks like the wireless problems are random and rare but if you find a patron who says “I connected to the wireless network yesterday with my laptop but today it won’t let me, even though it says I’m conncetd” give me a call, I want to take a look at their computer.

I’ll do my best to keep you all up to date on any developments.

Cheers.