Special welcome to those new to Lab

A hearty welcome to this year’s new folks at Lab! Our goal in IS is to make your first year at Lab as easy and tech pain-free as possible. Be sure to ask as many questions as you need to; in contrast to some school tech departments, we actually like people and you will not [...]

Point and Shoot Video Evolves

The much beloved Flip camera is evolving. Check out Wired Magazine’s report on this new model from Kodak.

Leopard Spotlight: Dictionary

As Joe previously posted, one of the major improvements in Leopard is the enhancement of Spotlight functionality. If you’re not familiar with it, Spotlight is a tool that can be used quickly to search for just about anything in your Mac. You activate it by clicking on the magnifying glass in the upper-right corner of [...]

Spam on the Wane

Could it be that spamming is no longer a viable business model? System Administrator John Krug reports that incoming spam (that is, spam hitting the spam filter in front of the mail server) has declined just about 50 per cent in recent weeks. What a welcome development.

IT’s a Big, Sweet Life: Vendor Relations, Part III

(…three days later)
Vendor: I’m having trouble getting a response to your concerns from the Level II people since the product is out of warranty.
Me: I don’t understand. There is nothing mechanically or electronically wrong with the products. It’s the software drivers that don’t work. Why is that a warranty issue? Does software have a warranty?
Vendor: [...]

IT’s a Big Sweet Life: Vendor Relations, Part II

(continued from post of April 7)…
Vendor (3 days later) : Oh, I see now that you actually wanted to get the problem fixed. I’ve escalated your problem to Level II since a) I really want to help, and b) you didn’t seem very happy with the Level I response.
Me: That sounds promising.
(…and now we wait…)

iPhone Apps Go Retro, Skype Also Arrives

Among the top selling applications for the iPhone is none other than the old favorite, “The Oregon Trail.”Check it out in the App Store in iTunes. The release of Skype for iPhone and iPod touch is also a big deal, allowing you to make phone calls over wi-fi networks.

So what happens during school breaks?

People often ask what goes on in IS over school breaks. During this two-week break, most IS folks took some time off, from a couple of days to a week. But we stayed busy when we were here. Among other things, we moved mail server functions to a new server, reviewed the design comps for [...]

Capital Expenditure Request deadline has passed

Thanks to all who submitted Computing Capital Requests on time. I’ll begin processing these during the break.  It takes time to select products, work with vendors on pricing, and weave capital budget approvals into the total IS budget picture. Requestors will be notified about their request’s status before the end of Spring quarter.

Lot-o-SPAM

One day last week, Wednesday, May 21, 2008, our SPAM-fighting server blocked over 100,000 SPAM messages. Go ahead, read that again. That is 100,000 in one day… 24 hours… that’s over 4,100 per hour, which is just more than 1 per second. In another light, that is also approximately 100 messages blocked per user! Could [...]