Minutes of Arts Computing Departmental Meeting held on February 28, 2013

• printing charges continue to be an issue
  • Keith is looking into traffic through the print servers
  • some people print directly to the Xerox, don't appear in logs
• discussion of course evaluations with Dean's office staff
  • Dean's office will handle labels
  • currently anticipating transition to take about a year to move work completely out of Arts Computing Office (ACO)
• IT Best Practices project
  • project planning meeting held recently: Dave Wallace, some Information Systems & Technology (IST) management, IT Service and Asset Management program team (Dawn, Lisa, and Tara Hillis from IST)
  • idea is to develop campus standards for 4-6 components of "ITIL lite" using a centre of excellence approach
  • changes are expected to be phased campus wide in roughly 2 years
  • project membership will include IST and federated IT staff, which could be different individuals for different aspects of the project (similar to working groups)
• Budget meeting next week: get suggestions for upcoming and future needs and opportunities to Dawn/Bob
• Barb's secondment to Arts Undergraduate Office (AUO) begins March 4
  • resumes from applicants for temporary position expected by end of the week
  • try to keep requests for assistance to a minimum
  • thanks and good luck to Barb

• Stp-StarRez email issues resolved; can move to production
• Campus Email Services Committee (CESC) report: only deliver mail addressed to @uwaterloo.ca
  • phishing attempts often come from off-campus servers masquerading as UW people
  • Connect server to break Nexus/ADS trust
  • read receipts for email to ensure it has arrived

• Consumer Relations Research directory Drupal site
  • Bob Kerton housing a directory

• 2nd Omeka site for History
  • history archive
  • Keith will set up on same server as first site (digital history course)
• ConnectUPS network module for acoups1 failing
  • this is the oldest Uninterruptible Power Source (UPS), which needs to be replaced; got it going by salvaging a battery from another UPS

• LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT installed in ECH Mac Lab: For Marcel O'Gorman's Robotics project.
• econserv update: Installed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, R, RKWard and RStudio-server. Next steps: Nexus authentication, Samba setup and testing.

​Sean

• Ubuntu 8.04 LTS support ends in April, upgraded french research, agora to go
• Arts Undergrad Office (AUO): new copier, new senior assistant, 1 machine left to convert to nexus
   

Nevil

• Working on a number of software packages to be pushed out
• contacted ACE camp regarding advanced notice for software required for this summer
• installed Eprime in PAS1098 following request from Psych. Student access to the software on the 3 workstations in PAS1080 proved insufficient for evening and weekend demand. Bill will be responsible to managing GPOs related to software availability after the end of the current term.
• created a Group policy for Psychology XP machines
• hope to have XP off all managed computers by end of August

• Modern Languages (ML) 117
  With the new scheduling system ,the booking of ML 117 will be automated.  Todd will arrange with the language instructors a suitable schedule that they will forward to Registrar's office for update to the system. Bookings for Language Lab sessions will be done in the usual way for Fall 2013 and Winter 2014 terms.  Lab requests will be based on a created lab schedule (created with input from scheduling officers).  The difference will be each department scheduling officer will then enter the lab sections into the document collection unit as forced times. The computer scheduler won't alter these.
• Visitors from China used the language labs during reading week

Earth Sciences professor Maurice Dusseault had 15 visiting scholars from Xi'An China participating in an English second language (ESL) learning session in ML 109 on Feb 22.  Leading the session was their ESL instructor Stefanie Bojarski.  All went well despite the fact few of them had functioning Nexus accounts (despite assurances from Science Computing) -- guest accounts were used.  The ESL instructor wanted a lab where voice recordings could be made and retrieved.

• co-op interviews Tues (Tim & David coming back)
• Request Tracker (RT) project: demos/TCO/report for end of Mar early Apr
• Sarah made all .PDF files accessible or changed to HTML or hid (on ACO site)
• Move to mailservices - have numbers; need to organize with IST

Coop Student updates:
Eli

• loose hardware inventory (cables, keyboards, etc.)
• wiped econ sessionals in surplus bin; one hard drive disk can't be wiped

• surplus
• old machines

• web site assistance
• helpdesk issues