Category Archives: EMU Technology

“Batten down the hatches”

Posted on October 26, 2010 by | 1 Comment

This in from Geoff “Geoff” Larcom:

The National Weather Service is advising that a “high wind event” will likely occur today from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.  During a high wind event, DTE is likely to experience problems. For EMU, this translates to the potential for electrical blinks or even loss of DTE power.

The Heating Plant electrical generator can only protect about 50% of campus from loss of power. It does provide a dampening effect to the blinks. However, Physical Plant advises computer users to take precautions to save data often in order to avoid loss of material. The University does have two DTE power feeds with automatic transfer between the two feeds, so it is expected the any loss of power would be brief.

Specifically –  A HIGH WIND WARNING is defined as “an expected wind event with sustained winds of 40 mph and gusting winds near 60 mph.  The potential exists for southwesterly wind gusts in excess of 60 mph immediately along and behind the cold front that will pass through the area.

I wonder which 50% the campus generator protects…..

Well, computer users, save often.

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Posted in Buildings and Grounds, EMU Events, EMU Technology

I suspect the IT Labor Day picnic has been disrupted

Posted on September 5, 2010 by | 2 Comments

September 6 Update: The latest sent around by Walter Kraft on this:

As we reported yesterday, an investigation is underway into a breach of security in an EMU server that controls my.emich passwords and Banner Self-Service PIN codes for students and employees.  The area that was compromised did not contain social security numbers or birth dates, or personal banking information.  It does contain login information, though, that could allow access to employees self-service information, including direct deposit information.  We consider this unlikely given the complexity of the area breached and the manual process required to access this data, however we are issuing this advisory as a precaution given the possibility.  Employees with direct deposit are advised to monitor their accounts for unusual activity.  If unusual activity is discovered, please contact your bank immediately, as well as IT staff.

As of this morning, there are no reports of unexpected user issues.  IT is continuing to investigate the situation.  EMU DPS also has been notified and has opened an investigation in the event that criminal activity is uncovered.  The IT Help Desk staff and IT system administrators will continue to monitor system access logs and report any unusual activity to the IT security team.  If you have any questions or suspect unusual activity, please contact the Help Desk at helpdesk@emich.edu or at 734-487-2120.  IT has brought in several additional staff today in order to respond to phone calls and questions.  Phone calls will be taken from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. today, with staff continuing to monitor email inquiries through the evening.  The IT staff will continue to work through the holiday weekend on this issue, and will provide further updates as necessary.

I’ve noticed nothing odd yet….

A little ominous:

First, I (along with everyone else at EMU, I presume) received this email from VP for communications Walter Kraft:

An investigation is underway into a breach of security in an EMU server that controls my.emich passwords and Banner Self-Service PIN codes for students and employees.  The breach occurred Friday at about 11:30 p.m.  System irregularities were initially discovered yesterday by IT staff.  Further investigation today revealed a security breach.  The area that was compromised did not contain social security numbers or birth dates.  It is possible that banking information for employees with direct deposit could be accessed in the area involved.  We consider this unlikely given the complexity of the area breached, however we are issuing this advisory given the possibility.  We understand and appreciate that this is a serious matter.  IT is continuing to investigate the situation and has enlisted an external data breach consultant to assist with the diagnosis and remediation of the security issue.  EMU DPS also has been notified and is opening an investigation in the event that criminal activity is uncovered.  The IT Help Desk staff and IT system administrators will continue to monitor system access logs and report any unusual activity to the IT security team.  At this point, there are no reports of unexpected user issues.  If you have any questions or suspect unusual activity, please contact the Help Desk at helpdesk@emich.edu.  The IT staff will continue to work through the holiday weekend on this issue.

Shortly after I received that message (6:06 PM on September 5), EMU’s Emu Eaglemail went dead.  Hmmmm…..

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Posted in Administrator Life, EMU Technology, Faculty Life, Staff Life, Student Life

Is anyone else’s EMU Email wonky right now?

Posted on September 2, 2010 by | 19 Comments

Maybe it’s just me, but my EmuMail (aka Eaglemail) is working a little weird for me right now. It says I’ve got 23 unread messages in my inbox (I see none) and that I have 311 draft messages (waa???) Anyone else getting anything odd like that?

As far as I can tell the email still works; it’s just a little schizo.

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Posted in EMU Technology

Are college students shifting to the Mac?

Posted on August 5, 2010 by | 2 Comments

This is a bit of a tangent I suppose, though it might be interesting here, especially for the “IT” inclined.  According to this AP article that is about downgrading Microsoft stock, Apple is taking a heavy bite out of the traditional dominance of Windows.  Here’s the relevant quote for here, with the line about students:

Increasingly, companies are giving their employees a choice to either use Microsoft Windows PCs or Apple Inc.’s Macs, the analyst said. And, increasingly, employees are choosing Mac over Windows. To boot, Chowdhry said 70 percent of college freshman are entering school with Macs, up about 10 percent to 15 percent from a year ago.

Now, I found this article on the fantastic blog Daring Fireball, and as John Gruber wonders, I have no idea what these statistics are based on.  But I will tell you this: in my own teaching, I see more and more students showing up with Macs and/or with “Mac savviness,” meaning that I rarely get students who encounter Apple computers in a lab who complain about that anymore.  Furthermore, I don’t know anyone– faculty, staff, student, “real person,” etc.– who ever switched from Apple back to Windows, at least switched back voluntarily.

It’ll be interesting to see what first year students show up with at EMU this fall, and it will also be interesting to see what our own DoIT! folks think, since they tend to be a “Boo Mac, Yea Windoze” sort of lot.

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Posted in College Fun, EMU Technology, In the media..., Student Life

EMU rolls out new web site– thoughts?

Posted on July 25, 2010 by | 4 Comments

I don’t know when this happened because I don’t often have a reason to visit EMU’s homepage, but it looks like they’ve rolled out a new site.  My 2 minute poke around impressions are positive.  I don’t like the front page Flash animation for all kinds of different reasons, but I do like that users can chose their own color scheme, a feature I wouldn’t mind adding to EMUTalk.org  And I’m not sure about this, but it appears that the site might finally be powered by some kind of content management system instead of being static web pages.

Anyway, what do folks think?

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Posted in EMU Images, EMU Technology

my.emich: Does it work for you? And which browser?

Posted on July 22, 2010 by | Leave a comment

In the spirit of doing a little usability trouble-shooting for DoIT! today:  how is my.emich working for you?

This morning, I commented that my.emich was still not working for me, which is something that I chalked up to the system update still not being completed.  Then I got an email from one of the IT folks asking me to call for assistance, which suggested that they think it’s back up.

As I often do with web sites that don’t work the way I think they should, I decided to try a different browser.  I’m a Mac person, but my default browser is Firefox, which– and this is probably the problem– I just updated to version 3.6.7.  Anyway, instead of Firefox, I tried Safari, and my.emich popped right up.  And then, just for the heck of it, I tried Chrome, and that worked too.

Mind you, I haven’t had time to poke around my.emich yet, so there may be some glitches still with either Safari and/or Chrome.  But at least for me, the problem is probably not DoIT! but rather my updated browser.  Which is kind of a problem for DoIT! and SunGard because you wouldn’t think a Firefox update would completely disable my.emich

Anyway, has anyone else out there experienced similar problems?  Tried a different browser yet?

Update:

I did get a helpful email from the IT folks on this yesterday (Thursday, July 22).  It said in part:

There is a known issue with cookie handling between Luminis 4 and Firefox which results in that “session expired” loop in some cases.  Sungard has opened a defect in response to our reporting of the issue.  The temporary workaround is to enable private browsing, available from the tools menu in Firefox.  The IT Help Desk has been made aware of the issue and the workaround.

FWIW.  The easier workaround for me was to just open my.emich in a different browser– Safari or Chrome in my case.

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Posted in EMU Technology, Staff Life

I’m sure glad I don’t use my.emich for anything…

Posted on July 21, 2010 by | 3 Comments

This is because my.emich has essentially been off/out of service since Saturday or so.  I suspect for most people, this is not a “deal breaker,” because you can still access email via mail.emich.edu, and many (most?) people teaching who use some kind of technology to support their classes don’t use my.emich.edu  But if you do, the solutions seem pretty bad, as you can see after the “continued” part.

Two other things I’ll point out to DoIT! or anyone else:

  • When you are teaching a 7.5 week term, some sort of “mission critical” system being off from the weekend through Wednesday is a lot.  As I tell my students again and again, the spring/summer terms are not half as long, they are twice as fast, which means losing three or four days in the summer term is like losing a six or eight during the fall or winter terms.
  • This is the sort of reason why I rely as much as possible on systems not hosted at EMU, like emuonline or my own WordPress installations.  This is not to say that everyone could/should teach with WordPress, but it is why I’m all for “outsourcing” systems.  emuonline has been pretty rock-solid, IMO, and while Zimbra has had a few problems, it’s a ton more reliable for email, calendars, etc. than the old EMU hosted email ever was.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Administrator Life, EMU Technology, Faculty Life

EMU changes name to SunGard University

Posted on July 19, 2010 by | Leave a comment

No, not really.  But when I go to “my.emich,” I see I am being welcomed to “My SunGard University.”  I guess whatever latest update to the system isn’t quite working yet….

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Posted in EMU Technology

What’s up with EMU email?

Posted on May 3, 2010 by | 8 Comments

I can’t get my EmuMail to work, and it’s been that way all morning.  What the heck?  Is Pray-Harrold construction to blame?

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Posted in Buildings and Grounds, EMU Technology

Of course, one solution is to get a Mac….

Posted on April 21, 2010 by | Leave a comment

This just in from Ward Mullens about a computer virus going around campus:

The EMU Division of Information Technology is currently working to resolve a computer issue affecting faculty and staff computers. The problem is being caused by a corrupted anti-virus file that makes it appear that your computer is infected with a virus. Currently, student computer labs and Apple computer users are NOT affected by this issue. Windows computers are not at risk of losing data. Please let Windows users know what is occurring and that information technology is working quickly to resolve the issue. If you are having an issue with your computer, please call the Help Desk at 487.2120. Updates will be provided as information becomes available.

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Posted in EMU Technology