Minutes of the Arts Computing Department meeting held on August 11, 2016
Present: S. Hartung, K. McGowan, H. Balagtas, S. Speers, S. Paterson, J. Schildroth, L. Tomalty, T. Marshall-Taylor, C. Wallace
Co-ops: D. Kingsley, I. Zinck, J. Hillo
Regrets: D. Keenan, R. Park, N. Bromley
- Sherry
- Worked on processing course evaluations to send for scanning.
- All computers for Faculty Rollover and seven new Faculty have arrived. One RT to do yet for a late Faculty Rollover not originally on list.
- Received information on one additional new Faculty, but need to look into a few things before ordering computer.
- Work to determine departments’ Sessional computer needs will be next.
- David
- Newsletter articles have been completed and are published on the ACO website.
- Nearing the end of the rollover work, with two to finish. Just assigned two new faculty computers.
- Working on take home machines.
- Ian
- Have two remaining Faculty Rollovers to work for faculty currently away from campus. Have been assigned three new Faculty computers.
- Working on three take home machines.
- Getting various jobs ready to show Jackson during his job shadow on Friday, August 12th. Was able to schedule a set up for a rollover on Ethan’s job shadow on Thursday, August 18th.
- Monitor for AL thin clients failed, so it has been replaced.
- Debbie Dietrich has had some computer issues with slowness, but unable to see the problem when visiting her office. Have trained Debbie on SnipIt tool so she can gather information when it happens to help in troubleshooting problem.
- Janine
- Working on moving website to responsive web with Lisa.
- Starting work on reorganization of ACO SharePoint site. Pass along suggestions.
- Preparing for Murielle’s shadow day on Monday, August 15th.
- Evaluate documentation has been completed. Catherine is on vacation, so waiting to meet next week to finish up before end of term.
- One remaining bulletin board to complete with Ian’s help. Tim is still out of stock, so Murielle may have to put the trim during next term.
- Keith
- The power distribution unit in our machine room tripped its main circuit breaker and shut down after, what we suspect was a shorted power supply in one of the Psychology systems recently moved to the machine room. Most the UPS’s in the room had been moved to other power sources in the room prior to this failure but a number of systems failed after their UPS batteries were drained. The network switch and other critical systems were connected to working UPSs and brought back up as soon as possible. We discovered the shorted power Psych power supply when we attempted to connect it to one of the other UPSs in the room and it triggered a trip of that UPS (which brought down another rack of servers). The three Psychology systems were then isolated to their own UPSs and separated from ACO systems. I replaced a failed fan in the PDU unit while it was down and an electrician checked the fuses and reset the breaker and the PDU came back up fine. I’ll need to re-balance the power loads on the UPSs.
- The fourth Psychology server has been relocated to the ACO machine room, completing one of the audit requirements.
- Looking into Nexus workstation access to alumni (non-current students) after it came to light that a 2012 alumni was still logging in to one of our systems.
- Awaiting an external hard drive from Psychology in order to do a save of Geoff Fong’s failed hard drive before repair work can be done.
- A call for papers for the next WatITis has gone out. Talks can be a 45 minute session or a 10 to 15 minute rapid fire talk. If you’d like to present a project or paper you can send an abstract to Keith.
- History’s colour printer has been failing over the past few years, but it has now come to end of life.
- Herbert
- Hongying Wang (POLSCI) had asked for a laptop during Faculty Rollover, but found the screen too small. An external 21.5” monitor was deployed. Next Faculty Rollover period she wants to get a desktop instead.
- Eric Helleiner (POLSCI) was having issues with his personal laptop crashing so Spotify and SEP was removed. Laptop is not under Munki.
- Worked with Keith in resolving issue with grad student who couldn't login into Econ grad lab.
- Set up printer for Economics grad lab. The grad students will be providing supplies.
- Continuing work on the CALMS project.
- Sean
- Course Evaluations processed for Renison and Arts.
- Firefox, Chrome and Acrobat 2015 have been updated for Macs.
- Created server backup Excel file for Disaster Recovery planning, so we know who/what is backed up and to where.
- PAS lab login has been restricted to active staff, faculty and students. Scott pushed out configuration to PCs, and I did so for Macs.
- Removed over 500 local account caches that are older than one year on the PAS Macs.
- 100 GB quotas have been enabled on cygnus2 home folders. There has been problems with quotas when Dropbox and OneDrive are added to N drive.
- Jameson
- LearnLock was used in three exams over the last two weeks. It was mostly successful in its use, but further testing is needed for it to be more reliable. Some problems getting it to work were experienced in HH 280 and PAS 1237. Will work with Nevil upon his return to correct the issues.
- Anne Dagg's laptop is mostly done, but is now pending her return to campus to complete the setup.
- Have been working on imaging a computer in the Games Institute.
- A GI-IT queue has been created in RT to allow tracking of IT work done in the Games Institute.
- Started to schedule SCCM deployments for updated common applications. Four applications were inadvertently scheduled for August 9th instead of August 15th.
- Krista Fiolleau's replacement hard drive came in. Worked with her to get her laptop to swap the drives. She needs it back by Friday, August 12th. Set up her old desktop to be used in the meantime. Trying to install Windows on the replacement drive has failed multiple times so there appears to be a hardware issue. We have reached out to Dell for another replacement/solution.
- Scott
- Updated iTunes, GAMS, TexMaker and Skype updated. Everything is running correctly, however did find a discrepancy in compliance of the deployments not showing accurate information.
- Common Apps to be updated on August 15th.
- Google Chrome updated early and had many failures. Re-deploying fixed those
- There was a possible DNS cache issue causing artsmercury slowness. It was also rebooted at Manfred’s request.
- Prepping for end of term with the co-ops.
- Jackson Brown will be job shadowing on Friday, August 12th. He is a Computing Assistant. Ethan Tam is the other Computing Assistant and will be job shadowing on Thursday, August 18th. Murielle Mambo is the Technical Writer, and will be job shadowing on Monday, August 15th.
- Working with Herbert to go over Jackson’s paper work and work necessary for on boarding while away.
- Lisa
- Will be away September 6th for two weeks.
- Working with Janine on getting ACO’s responsive web pilot ready to go live for Tuesday, August 16th. Things are going well with only minor fixes. Due diligence being done to ensure links work. Until the responsive website is live, no changes or updates can be made to either the live or pilot sites.
- Great newsletter feedback has been received. Thank you to David, Ian and Janine for all their work on the articles.
- Working on ACO SharePoint reorganization with Janine. Any suggestions are welcome.
- Wondering who should have admin access for support for Arts Faculty departments’ SharePoint sites. For short term, Primary and Backup Departmental Support Contacts as well as Sean and Lisa, is a logical choice.
- Todd
- Receiving more Renison English Language Centre bookings. One for early September and another for mid August. The August session has asked to book ML 110 which doesn’t usually get booked, so looking into if another room is suitable.
- Starting to hear from departments regarding TA’s for the Fall term.