« January 2006 | Main | March 2006 »
February 28, 2006
Website Open Meeting
We had our first of 2 open meetings / powerpoint presentation for faculty/staff/students to come in and find out how this would effect them. We were also looking for input on how we could make this transition as seamless as possible.
We had about 5 people show up. I was a little dissapointed. UCS got blasted about how we handled the migration last year. Major points of the blast were, poor communication, too fast, why is this being done? All those questions plus more were answered in the website update open meeting Monday; yet not too many people seemed to care. We'll see after this whole thing is completed how bad we get blasted.
Although the numbers were small, we did have a couple of suggestions. So far before the final cutover we've been asked to give 3 days notice, and do the final data copy on a Fri. evening.
So we've taken that into account, and will probably proceed under those terms. We'll see what happens on Thursday's meeting though.
Posted by knabet at 09:10 AM | Comments (0)
February 23, 2006
Calendar
Communications Express seems to be limping along nicely except the calendar portion.
Please go to http://sundown.wou.edu:82 to use that calendar client if you are sick of the bug filled comms express
Posted by knabet at 02:54 PM | Comments (0)
Palm Sync
You would think in todays day and age syncing calendar/contacts etc.. between an enterprise class mail/calendar server and a handheld device would be a fundamental thing at this point. You would _think_ it would work flawlessly.
You'd be wrong. It doesn't work, it sucks, and I wish handheld devices had never been invented, or the person with the bright idea to try and Sync 2 calendars would be shot.
Posted by knabet at 09:23 AM | Comments (0)
February 22, 2006
AIC Meeting
We ( a couple of us from UCS ) met with AIC yesterday about many items. I gave a quick run-down of the website update process, where we are, where we'd like to be etc.. Essentially we got a blessing from AIC on our process.
Posted by knabet at 08:18 AM | Comments (0)
February 21, 2006
Drive Mappings
During the update process we will create a new drive mapping for those who edit the website. we'll call it an x: drive on the pc side, and \\sundown\website$ on the mac side.
This will give the users the ability to test their access to the WOU website for editing.
Posted by knabet at 01:11 PM | Comments (0)
Webserver update.... UPDATE
Step 1 in the process of updating the webserver was to copy the data and see what broke.
So far we haven't seen any problems. The process to copy the files took about 15hrs to complete. ( We have lots of web files )
So far so good!!!
Step 2 in the process was insuring the many shortcuts would work.
For example http://www3.wou.edu/spam-manager would work the same as http://www.wou.edu/spam-manager
So far so good!!!
Posted by knabet at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)
Webserver Update
Because one of our nodes in the cluster took a dive this weekend, we've pushed the update of the webserver up in the priority list. This process is going to be relatively easy, other than the permissions.
We know from a technical standpoint, we can migrate the entire website, and the public would not see a single blimp on the radar. The biggest issue at hand is setting up permissions for those who edit.
The types of permissions we use are different, moving from one server to another adds complexity, and the number of "editors" is quite large.
UCS is sending out an email asking for help with this process. Please help us now, and don't complain about your lack of editing capabilities if you don't.
Posted by knabet at 09:35 AM | Comments (0)
February 20, 2006
Communications Express
Communications Express, our lovely mail client is continuing its wonderful flakouts.
To put it mildly I'm working very hard to figure out these latest bugs we've been experiencing.
I'm also open to hearing alternatives. I have a couple in mind, but that would take the fun out of hearing what you all have to say.
Posted by knabet at 08:18 AM | Comments (0)
February 17, 2006
Trust me when I say this.
Any changes we make to the system are fully tested prior to the change being implemented in production.
Any changes we make to the system is done to increase the usability by the user, or the reliability of the system. Not once in my career have I made a change just for the fun of it.
Posted by knabet at 11:18 PM | Comments (0)
February 16, 2006
OSU Roadshow
OSU came up and presented some information to us today. I really got a lot out of it.
They talked about OpenSource, Web Best Practices, and Network infrastructure.
One of the things I was able to take away from it was that here at WOU we're actually doing pretty good. We're well on our way down the identity management road, which is a huge step in the correct direction.
It would be great if we ( UCS ) was able to acquire additional resources to do some of the things OSU has done. For example, they have essentially 2 FTE dedicated to managing web servers, and the web server software. Its true that they have a much larger web presence, but the reality is the number of pages doesn't really change the complexity of the web server deployment.
This is just one example. There were many more that I won't bore you with.
Posted by knabet at 08:51 PM | Comments (0)
February 13, 2006
Ubuntu
If anyone out there is looking to get away from windows. Or simply get into open source applications. There is a great Linux Distribution out there called Ubuntu. I have it installed on my laptop, and desktop. I usually don't have very good luck getting linux distributions installed in my laptop, but this one went flawlessly. Ubunutu came out of Debian; and is packed full of great useful applications.
The only downside about it, is that lots of mainstream linux apps are written more for RedHat/Fedora and it can be a little tough to find compatible apps.
Enjoy!!
Posted by knabet at 09:03 AM | Comments (0)
February 06, 2006
Sun Engineering Meeting
Last week I made a trip up to Portland to a free Sun seminar. The intended audience was Education, faculty/staff/students.
There ended up being about 6 sun employees and then at least a representative from WOU,PSU, and OSU. We were given the opportunity to talk about the latest news of the Solaris Enterprise System, ask questions about the architecture of the new hardware, as well as plan future meetings. This was a great experience. A small group of people, but OSU and PSU both speak volumes. ( they're large customers ) Especially OSU!! I was asking for clarification on certain items, and the sales folks started to balk, but as soon as OSU had the same concerns; mine were completely validated.
They're planning on having at least 1 more of these next month. Specifically speaking about our support contracts. Should be interesting to see how they all work out.
Posted by knabet at 02:42 PM | Comments (0)