Monthly Archives: August 2007

When is email coming back? Your guess as good as ICT’s

Posted on August 22, 2007 by | 22 Comments

Here’s the update posted to ICT’s web site at 1 pm today, emphasis mine:

The data move process is continuing. We will update this site as soon as the system is restored and available.

We are well beyond the time frame that all information available to us indicated would be required to complete this work. Obviously, that information was inaccurate. At this point, because all indicators of timing have proven inaccurate, we are unable to predict how much longer this process is going to take. Should this situation change or more reliable information become available, we will update this notice.

We understand your frustration with the this ongoing and extended outage. We continue to work on the data move and eventual system restoration.

Nice….

I was tempted to start a guessing pool, but that sort of thing is fun with a joyous event– you know, guessing when a baby is going to be born or how much it will weigh or something. Guessing when this screw-up would be over seems a little morbid to me.

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Posted in EMU Technology

Is email going up this morning or not?

Posted on August 22, 2007 by | 43 Comments

Sadly, I’ve won a small bet — relying on my EMU IT Friend, I expressed doubts that the system would be up today at all. Colleague said that it most certainly would be up by the time he got up to check email around 7am. “Why won’t it be up, they said it’ll be up?” It’s 7:27 and it’s not up. OK with me if they need a couple more hours, but…

Will it be up by 11:59am today, or will ICT miss this promised return of services as well? I don’t know, but my IT Friend would like space here for commenting on this. So the space is here now…. And I hope IT Friend is wrong, and that that the system is both fixed and no important emails nor any opportnities for EMU have been lost forever due to the system’s crash born untimely responses/untimely or nonexistent receipt of communications. I know lots of work for hundreds of people have piled up, but i hope the lost opportunities are minimal.

Can anyone can find evidence of another university comparable in size and reources to EMU that, in the last 5 years, has had a campus wide crash of its email system lasting for 5 days or more? Not counting schools affected by Katrina or natural disasters, just ones whose system’s crashed unexpectedly due to internal problems?

A modest prediction: The custom of some ICT people to call email a mere “convinence” will not outlast this week.

Here’s hoping that the sytem is up, and that the necessary lessons are learned.

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Posted in Academics, EMU Technology

Great Google-y Moogle-y! Caveat Emptor?

Posted on August 21, 2007 by | 13 Comments

I’ve been talking to some of my resource people on campus, and they brought up some important cautionary tales regarding (specifically) gmail accounts. If I had any kind of reliable memory, I’d sure be posting them here for all to see. But a combination of being nearly double-nickels (Devil’s Night), and fentanyl and codeine for the ruptured L5/S1 disc makes me cautious about relaying HIPAA, FERPA, FOIA, and other acro-babble related information.

The issues brought up have made me decide that once EMU mail returns, I’ll still use it as my primary mail. I have local mail folders on my work machine, blah-blah-blah, so I don’t have the same concerns as others who have apparently adopted the Blanche DuBois method of achieving Potemkin techno-autonomy.

I invite the technical resource folks who have been so kind in educating me to pretty-please bring those considerations to the comments area (yeah, Fez Prime! This includes you!). If you’d rather, feel free to e-mail me your info. I’m knagel at EMU (I set the mail forward at 4:40 on Friday) or the eponymous kirknagel at gmail. I shall post it here for you.

BTW, I wonder how well the Google docs, etc. would have served us while Merit was having its issues…

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Posted in Uncategorized

Still no mail.emich.edu; a few ideas for planning ahead next time

Posted on August 21, 2007 by | 9 Comments

Of course, no news is no news on the email front. The announcement on ICT’s Announcement page today is literally a “cut n’ paste” job of their announcement from yesterday. In the AA News today is this story, “EMU loses campus e-mail since Friday,” which really isn’t news to anyone here.

While waiting for things to get fixed, especially as the teaching-types amongst us are putting together courses for the fall, I thought I’d start a discussion here about what to do to minimize these kinds of problems in the future. In other words, beyond getting an alternative email account (which I hope most see as a no-brainer at this stage), what can teachers and students do to interact electronically in productive ways?
Continue reading →

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Posted in EMU Technology

Technical explanation of the Merit outage

Posted on August 21, 2007 by | 4 Comments

First of all, not to confuse everyone, this explanation is concerning the loss of Internet access on Aug 16th, 17th, and the morning of August 21st. This is *not* related to the e-mail issues. The basic point I’m making is here is a good example of how you explain a bad problem and show what you’re doing to fix it.

This is a pretty long, somewhat technical explanation of the problem for those who are interested. I am not in any way connected with Merit networks. This is a pretty long summary of the information received via various sources, but mostly the webcast Merit held.  It is a bit technical!

Continue reading →

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Posted in Uncategorized

“Diamonds in the D” returning to EMU stage

Posted on August 21, 2007 by | 8 Comments

If you weren’t one of the lucky ones who saw the wonderful, entirely EMU home-grown musical about baseball and life, “Diamonds in the D”, when it was first performed in the spring, you have another chance. It’s being restaged September 6-8. It is a terrific show, appealing even for those (like me) not too terribly found of musicals, and you need not be into team sports to find meaning and entertainment in this show. It’s about baseball, and as pointyheaded fans of that game say, baseball is about life. But you don’t have to believe any of that baseball ideology stuff to love this musical, and if you can’t tell baseball from hockey, you’ll still love the show.

Indeed, “Diamonds in the D” has more heart and spirit and fine writing and good acting and singing and humor and drama than lots of Broadway musicals. It’s that damn good, I swear. And it’ll make you laugh, lots of laughs, and you’ll learn something about Detroit and its team, the Tigers, and it may touch your heart.

And you’ll get to eat popcorn, too, for free, while in the theater, and you might even win a signed baseball (my son did, by Tiger great Al Kaline). It’s a sure winner. And the Tigers win every night, with the help of the audience (would that the same were true this month in Comerica park!).

First weekend of the semester, and EMU has an event that is sure to be entertaining, artistically accomplished, and funny. What could be better?

Get your tickets at the EMU Box office, 487-2282. $15 regular tickets, $12 for students, $6 for kids under 12.

All praise to the EMU Theater for bringing this production back, and to all the actors, producers, the set designers and builders, costume makers, the director, the musicians, and Prof. Jeff Duncan for writing the musical itself.

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Posted in Academics, College Fun, EMU Events, Student Life

How does a university run without e-mail?

Posted on August 20, 2007 by | 49 Comments

We are in the Ann Arbor News yet again. I haven’t read all of the latest comments (quite a many) so I wasn’t sure where to put this latest article except in a brand new spot. The answer to the question in the title seems to be that a university simply can’t run without email, or at least emich email. I feel for all the IT people out there working on this problem. We are all relying on you to get the university back on track.

How does a university run without e-mail?

Posted by Staff Reporter Liz Cobbs August 20, 2007 19:18PM

Eastern Michigan University’s campus e-mail system has been down since late Friday afternoon and is not expected to be restored until Wednesday morning. …

Jenkins said staff worked on the e-mail system last Thursday night but did not resolve the problem. On Friday, the system stayed on for 10 to 15 minutes at a time all day. So, it was taken off line at 5 p.m., Jenkins said.

“It’s taking an extreme amount of time because it’s so degraded,” Jenkins said. “For sure, it’s caused a huge inconvenience for faculty, staff and students.” …

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Posted in EMU Technology, Uncategorized

Moderated comments mode on; a few thoughts on email, too

Posted on August 20, 2007 by | 4 Comments

Per my promise to ETB, I’ve turned on the “moderated comments” mode, and I suspect I’ll leave it on for a while. Or at least until the email thing is resolved, which, of course, could indeed be a while.
Continue reading →

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Posted in EMUtalk.org News

Everyone! Deep cleansing breaths…

Posted on August 20, 2007 by | 16 Comments

Just about everyone posting and commenting about the e-mail outtage are victims, not perpetrators. Taking out the anger and frustration on each other does none of us any good.

The front-line ICT folk in the best of times are overworked and under-appreciated. The “get back to work” attitude is incredibly demeaning to these people who, for the most part, pour their hearts and souls into their work.

THEY ARE NOT THE CAUSE! Their bosses caused this. Demand answers and accountability from their bosses, not them.

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Posted in Uncategorized

EMU Email and the six day weekend

Posted on August 20, 2007 by | 43 Comments

Remember how we were told we’d be up and running with email after the weekend? Here’s a quote right from EMU’s homepage:

EMU community: E-mail update

ICT continues to work to restore the campus e-mail system. Please view this web site for updates. We expect the system to be available by Wednesday morning.
E-mail is the only system affected. Class registration is open. Please contact other offices as follows:
Financial Aid: emu.finaid@gmail.com

That this situation is completely unacceptable probably goes without saying. But I do have a couple of thoughts:

  • What am I supposed to do when they turn this thing back on? I typically get between 50 and 100 email messages a day at my emich account address, and not being able to get at this mail for close to a week means that I’m likely to have 500 messages in my inbox. I’m sure others will be in a similar situation. Isn’t that going to push a lot of folks over their measly 20 MB quota?
  • I find it interesting how EMU’s financial aid office is using gmail now, as is ICT Director of Networks and Systems, Rocky Jenkins.
  • I shudder to imagine how many student and professional inquiries are being bounced back to those people right now. What a way for EMU and my program specifically to send a positive message…
  • Late Tuesday?! Are you freakin’ kidding me?!

So, to get your Google mail: Go to http://gmail.com and follow the instructions.

Personally, I think the other free service I would recommend is Yahoo; to sign up for that, go to yahoo.com, click on the mail icon on the front page, and follow the instructions. I never recommend Hotmail to folks because I think it has too many different problems, but that’s an option too, I suppose.

Update #1:
I don’t know about anyone else, but I just now (9:20 am on Monday, August 20) got a batch of emich email. So maybe things are going to be trickling in of and on through Wednesday. That’d be a heck of a lot better than nothing at all.

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Posted in Buildings and Grounds, EMU Technology