Minutes of the Arts Computing Departmental Meeting held on February 14, 2013

Present:  R. Park, D. Keenan, K. McGowan, S. Paterson, N. Bromley, G. Fuentes, T. Marshall Taylor, S. Speers, B. Yantha
Coop Students-E. Slaughter, S. Cook, E. Scott
Dawn
  • staffing notes
    Barb will be on a secondment until the end of June 2014.  A job advertisement will hopefully be posted next week to replace her via a secondment or from contract/external applicants. 
  • Computing Technology and Services Committee (CTSC) updates
    • Active Directory (AD) governance (presentation by Colin Bell): change and service management controls are being put in place; each faculty will get representation on management group; goal to have only Information Systems & Technology (IST) staff as full domain admins by April 30; Nevil will follow up at coming Waterlo Nexus Advisory Group (WNAG)
    • recent test of emergency system showed some flaws with the system; working on plans to move to a one-button system, requiring less manual intervention
    • EngComp rolling out mobile course rating app; earlier tests indicated response rate declined from 40% to 20% going from a paper-based to an electronic system
  • mass communication project recommendations:
  1. Use our current email tools that we have in place now.
  2. Initiate a project to clean up the data in Peoplesoft, specifically faculty and staff data, so that email lists are accurate and easily selected for University needs (HR, IST).
  3. Complete audit with Return Path and implement. This will help to ensure that official email from the University of Waterloo is not blacklisted or sent to junkmail. (IST) - Keith asked: will Faculty communications be allowed to use this server? -- Dawn to follow up with Bob Hicks
  4. Complete front-end email application so that emails are formatted properly. The application needs to pass security check (CPA, IST)
  5. Finish documenting University of Waterloo mass email policies and procedures and publish on web (CPA)
  6. Investigate Canada’s anti-spam legislation, and communicate the implications to the campus. The option to opt-out will soon be a requirement. (Secretariat).
  7. Provide direction and training in social media (Social Media Working Group, CPA).
Barb
  • Staff Rollover
    Barb reported that 10 staff members are eligible for replacement computers this year.  Documentation has been posted to the Sharepoint site.
Keith
Econ research server installed in rack, econserv name registered
Uninterruptible Power Source (UPS) failure update, review of UPS in Psychology-Anthropology-Sociology PAS 1099a
new plugin for Omeka
Guillermo
  • Windows 7 stopped displaying non english characters in file and folder names for Tao Chen.
    To fix the problem:
    Delete the file C:\Windows\System32\FNTCACHE.DAT and restart your Windows 7.
  • Stellar Phoenix Macintosh Data Recovery V5.0.0.8-EN-Tech License:
    Arts Computing Office (ACO) now has the Tech License for this software which allows to use it in any number of Macs.
  • East Campus Hall (ECH) Lab updates:
    • Student files recovered: Used Stellar Phoenix Macintosh Data Recovery software to restore most of the missing files for three students.
    • feml-imac14 fixed: Re-imaging this lab machine fixed the issues it was having. No need to replace hard drive this time.
    • Printing issues: One of the print queues in artsprint was pointing to an old ip address. Updating it and reloading the config fixed the problem.
  • Problems with Calibri and printing on Windows XP PCs: Robin Atchison still having this intermittent problem. Her Windows XP machine will be shortly replace as part of the upcoming rollover program.
  • Psychology: Dreamweaver setup to force read-only file permissions. This setup stops Dreamweaver from updating a file without having to delete it first to then recreate it. Removing the Read-only setting made Dreamweaver behave as usual.
  • Moving Macs from Artsfaculty to Nexus: working on how to automate moving the Macs from Artfaculty to Nexus domain.
Sean
  • Watarts outage
    Watarts was down for 12 hours due to spammers hitting it with a Psych prof removed CGI.
  • Wordpress updates, rails updates
  • Winter 2013 evals, Renison no longer doing separate Social Work (SWREN) run
  • Anti-Colonial Project website, simpsonj, wordpress
  • Personal web pages and accessibility pages
Nevil
  • Department Migration started for Sociology, History, Economics
  • Meeting Jan 30 with Colin to discuss Accounting migration to Nexus went well though no further action.
  • Econ issue with Miktex, WinEdt and another similar package, .PDF files are not getting created properly with Miktex, reinstall semi works for a version of winedt but not the other two
  • \\filed\arts$ share created
  • Renison migration to Nexus is expected to be completed soon
  • Calibri font issue with missing characters  is only happening on XPmachines and with certain characters combinations .  New test phrase is “stuff paint on font trail”
Scott
  • Windows XP upgrade and moved
Todd
  • Recording Sound Problem Addressed for Modern Languages (ML) 101B
    ML 101B is a meeting room equipped with cameras and microphones.  The output of these can be directed to ML 117 (viewed using the installed projector-and listened to on the installed speakers). Output from the meeting room can also be directed to ML 101A (control room) that is equipped with audio-visual components including a digitizing 'capture' device.  The sound quality of recordings made with the capture device had been an issue for some time. Todd traced the problem to a bad input connection at the back of one of the components-by relieving the tugging on this connection he was able to improve the sound quality of the recording.
  • Old ML 117 Computer Removed
    An old and unused computer system was taken out of ML 117 with the help of ACO co-ops.
  • Lab Requests for Fall 2013 due in soon
    Lab requests for the Fall 2013 school term are now being received.
  • Two problematic computer systems (one in ML 109. one in ML 113) are now repaired and back in service.

Coop students update:
Eli

  • Installing computer systems
  • surplus
  • PAS1237 computer update
Elizabeth
  • working on Sociology website

Sarah

  • surplus 
Other Business:
No other business was discussed.
Birthday: January: Todd February: Guillermo, Doug
Friday, February 22 was chosen as the day to have the Birthday lunch.