Master Nerd

Well the standard report: Students have returned to the halls, and we’ve been pretty busy keeping up with the flood of new computers, viruses, issues, etc…

I would say that for the most part, we’ve done a good job – people are getting the help they need with, for the most part, a short waiting period (if any). Our only primary issue (which is a year-long issue) is our inability to contact residents after they have contacted us. Sometimes they call and we do everything over the phone we can – but can’t fix it. Either they have to run to class, or they don’t want to bring their computer in – or the issue needs to have troubleshooting done in their room… In any case, we have a list of about 7 people who we are trying to contact, but often students don’t have a phone in their room, etc…

So things are going well. At this rate, I’m relatively confident things will be quiet by the end of next week. The only Major issue we’ve had was a room in Landers. Travis and Troy found a room that was broadcasting 50-80 Mb (of a possible 100 Mb) – and was basically causing a complete DOS (Denial of Service) attack on the 120 subnet. Residents complained about this outage, and T&T disabled them Sunday night. Unfortunately this attack happened again a second time while I was attempting to figure out which computer in the room was causing the problem. This short (15 min) attack was the final episode, and we appear to have gotten them cleaned and they are back online.

So move-in for this term seems to be a success. Now we can focus on projects once again.

Well I’m back. Yup. I’ve been gone since Dec 16th. I wasn’t in Hawaii (like I was in October), nor in New York City (like I was in May) – I was at home. I spent about half of that time sick – but not in bed. I spent the other half working (not for WOU much). However, I did find some time to play, relax and do a bit of reading.

I think it’s important and healthy to spend chuncks of time away from the office now and then. I’ve been very blessed to have been able to take some fabulous trips this last year (NYC, Atlanta, Hawaii). 2005 was definitely a year for traveling and 2006 has a real chance of being similar. I’ll be gone from Jan 25-29 in CA for a Computrition conference. There are some other large trips possible this year, but I’ll keep those under wraps for now.

Traveling isn’t so bad so long as you’ve got good gear, and are prepared. Not that I love to fly, but the more I travel (for business or pleasure) the more I enjoy ‘getting out’ and seeing new things. I’m excited for the time when I get to leave the country and ‘see the world’.

Anyway, I was planning on cleaning up a LOT of stuff today as I’ve been gone for more than 15 days. However, the load today was relatively lite. My 400 emails are now only about 10, and things are definitely stable enough for me to be gone tomorrow (wednesday is my traditional day off). Anyway that’s all for now – just saying hi.

HI

Yesterday was the OUR Staff Retreat. We went to Salem, met in a nice fireside room, and discussed issues (the main one being the upcoming accreditation process). We concluded the meeting with a party, which was also fun (though relatively short).

It was interesting how the different groups evaluated different areas of the department. Some groups (mine included) seemed to rate the Housing/Dining Area quite well – perhaps it was just the categories we got, but overall we seemed to be doing well.

In a recent online survey our marks were between 5 and 6.5 (7 being top), which is a very good score. It’s always interesting to me how much of the survey data is perception (residents were the ones surveyed). We all know we do better than we were rated (on our low marks), but we are always trying to improve.

I was very appreciative to be invited and to have my opinions about Housing/Dining valued (even though I’m kind of the IT plug-in – not a standard ResLifer). It was fun, but I was very tired. Still am today after spending 3 hours hanging Christmas lights on my house last night [poorly I might add – as I probably have to do about half of them again 🙁 ].

Carpet, lovely carpet. The OUR (Office of University Residences) was re-carpeted this week. So, John and David and I moved all the office computers to temporary locations, and are moving them all back today. Seems like an easy task, but it’s been a lot of work. Even with the 3 of us, it’s relatively hard to move (and resetup) 5-7 computers in 4 hours.

Anyway, we have more moves today, which will occupy a large percentage of the day. That’s OK, but I was hoping to get more done today as it’s my last day until Jan 3! 🙂

First of all, I’d like to thank Myra Gibson, who gave a good presentation about Sexual Harassment. I see why we’ve used her in the past, and appreciated her experienced presentation and question responses.

The information presented on sexual harassment and consensual relationships was not necessarily new. I think I’ve probably browsed the policies before, but after the meeting really sat down and read through them (as we did not really cover them in the meeting – but were suggested to be familiar with them). Anyway, after reading them through – still no surprises.

Some interesting points were brought up at the meeting (as you can probably tell by now this won’t be a technical blog with coding style or newly released programs).

An example was given of a non-WOU office where a hug had incited someone to complain as it made them uncomfortable. Apparently the manager who was complained to, made a non-hugging rule (which inspired a comment about Hug-Police … very funny) for the office. This in turn, created a lot of distress and discord among the office workers who had no problem with these two people (or most anyone probably) hugging in the office.

So the original complainant complained because they felt it made the office environment uncomfortable… So what about the discomfort created by that one person for the X number of others in the office who now felt like they had to walk on eggshells out of fear that someone might feel uncomfortable about … ANYthing – and complain.

Basically the point of this blog is to ask the question “where is the line, eh?” At what point do we decide that someone could basically be offended by … well anything … and that our culture has run away with itself. Should the group of people who were offended at the first person who was offended by the hug have complained – and the manager made a no-getting-offended rule? How far do we take this?

As if I was done…

The other major point that was addressed was sexual harassment and it’s relationship to a person’s Freedom of Speech. I guess I’m not comfortable with a policy that has the power to negate the first amendment. Please understand … I’m not supporting sexual harassment or use of the english language that supports sexual harassment. But I am concerned about progessiveness. If something like sexual harassment can extinguish the power of the first amendment, what will come next? Speaking about politics? religion? pets? family? Where will we draw the line? And by the time we do, will we still be in a healthy place?

Again, I’m not contradicting anything shared, taught, or discussed at the aforementioned meeting. I’m just asking (not answering) questions that I feel are relevant…

Someone is probably asking now “How is this blog work related”? Easy, everyone is supposed to go the training at some point. So technically that makes it part of my job – and therefore a valid point of interest for blogging. I think it’s important to be able to discuss issues like this, lest we all become well-trained automata.

We must continue to think. It might make some people uncomfortable, might even offend someone (heaven forbid) – but it’s healthy. Like setting a broken bone – gotta go through the pain of re-aligning the break before it can heal. So let us not shy away from the hard stuff.