The wired network to 2/3 of Crumb Hall has been completely off for over a week because of:

a) no power to a network closet
b) the constant yo-yoing of electricity fried the equipment
c) all of the above

Your guess is as good as mine. By my count, the “wireless network” in the Crumb library (which is CLOSED for construction, even though some people are still scheduling presentations and meetings there) is unavailable 10-20% of any given workday. I can’t fix that. I wouldn’t even if I could. It’s CLOSED. It’s “under construction”. If the workmen aren’t willing to breathe the native air, I’m sure not going hunting to find out “oh, there’s no power to the network closet… *cough* Why am I spitting up blood?”. Construction people need to turn the power off, and the college CLOSED the building so that they could! Stop going in! Stop!

From the library webpage: “Crumb Library is CLOSED this summer – beginning May 17“. It’s after May 17. CLOSED.

No services.

No networks.

No expectations.

CLOSED.

Dear College & University Information Technology Professionals,

As a monoculture, “academic” IT and “business” IT are the same. It’s our job to keep the business – the business of academia – running. It’s our job to maintain our diverse systems. It’s our job to secure the infrastructure from threats internal and external, and mitigate the risks to that infrastructure.

But we have some fundamental differences that require us to eschew the hard-edged business-only mentality, and embrace our academic environment. Yes, it’s our job to keep the business running. It’s also our job to usher and enable forward change. Far and wide, for years, I’ve consulted in environments where the entrenched IT “won’t” or “can’t” do certain things – Fairly simple things. The reasons always vary, but the point is the same: Status quo is the goal, and until someone from “above” mandates a new service, it’s not going to be considered. In too many environments, IT creates a wall to protect itself from horizontal influence. That wall must come down.

Your power users- students, faculty, and staff who have technological aptitude and interest- need a mechanism to explore. Whether its shared space on a virtual server, or an old laptop loaded up with server software, there are services that they want to play with – and you should let them.

How many of you have “development computers” in order to test things in a sandbox, without breaking production systems? How many of you installed a blog or a wiki on an “unofficial” system for quasi-professional use? These things are valuable to your power users as well.

Of course you have concerns: What about patching? Security? Exposure? Liability? Responsibility? Me too. My current hat is that of Information Security Officer: a lofty title with a loftier implication that I am “responsible” for Information Security. There are no greater concerns to me, than the protection of information assets and the systems that house them. What your power users need isn’t a production server that the Internet can poke and prod, to be storing Social Security Numbers and Credit Card Numbers: They need a sandbox that they can install various pieces of software on – blogs, wikis, knowledgebases, information management products, etc. – so they can explore, find things that work and things that don’t, look at doing existing things differently and new things entirely, so that at some point, maybe they can make an educated proposal for new production services.

Some of you may quake at the idea of a mere user proposing new services that you may have to support- Especially educated proposals that have real, undeniable information that you can’t just wave off and say “they don’t realize the support implications of this”. Why again, exactly, shouldn’t your job be outsourced to India? Oh, right, it’s because of all the value you provide.

You have the spare hardware. You can jail their sandbox off into inaccessible nether-regions of the network. You can trivially mitigate the risks to the infrastructure. You just have bring down the wall that prevents the horizontal acquisition of new technologies.

Sincerely,
Matthew Keller
Information Security Officer & Network Administrator
The State University of New York at Potsdam

So what is phishing? Essentially it’s an attempt to get information from you. You know the “I’m a poor Nigerian widow who wants to send to $1M”? That’s a type of phish. Once they get your bank account number, it will be bled dry. When you get an e-mail wanting you to click a link and “login” to your bank account, but it’s not really your bank: that’s a phish.

Spear phishing, is even more fun. It combines traditional phishing with information someone knows to be true about you. It could be your membership in a group (ala the college/church/basketweaving class you attend), it could be your birthday – Something that you, the ignorant reader, will zero in on and go “Oh, hey, this must be legit because after all they know X about me! Here’s my username, password, Social Security Number, bank account number, ATM PIN, credit card number and CVV2!”

In the last 8-10 hours I’ve heard all sorts of defensive statements about why it’s not people’s fault that they fall for these scams, but it boils down, again, to trust.

.BE SKEPTICAL.

Just because “your neighbor” allegedly sent you a greeting card, doesn’t mean they did; just because “SUNY Potsdam” sent you an e-mail asking for your username, password, and birthdate, doesn’t mean they did; just because the smiling nice lady asks me for my credit card, doesn’t mean she isn’t imprinting it; just because “the government” says something, doesn’t mean it’s true.

.BE SKEPTICAL.

Don’t live in fear of the fact that no one is trustworthy, just be skeptical and verify verify verify.

According to the State of NY, “The assessed value of your property and the assessor’s estimate of your property’s market value are listed on the tentative roll. Market value is generally defined as the price a willing buyer would pay a willing seller for a property in its present condition with neither buyer nor seller under pressure to act“. So, according to the Town assessor, I should be able to sell my house for almost $20k more than it’s actually worth. Wow. I wish they could find me a buyer because I’d vacate it tomorrow for much much less.

Matthew Keller

I was supposed to “Dell” or “Gateway” or “HP” or “Apple”. I dislike computers. A lot of people think that because I’m “good with computers” that I have some affinity for them. I don’t. A carpenter doesn’t get all excited talking about their hammer. Computers are disposable tools that enable me to do my job, or have some entertainment, or communicate some information. I can’t wait until we have neural implants that our Shadowy Overlords stick in our ears so that we don’t need computers anymore. Their obsolescence will be celebrated.

I dislike, even more, brands. This person wouldn’t bother asking me what brand claw-hammer I have, or refrigerator, or probably even my car (although THOSE wars exist, so I hear, too). Yet in todays world of surfing YouTube on your iMac while drinking Starbucks Lattes on an AirPort Extreme wireless network listening to your iPod … oops is that your iPhone ringing? – Brand is all most people ask about. Heaven forbid we watch on-line videos on our computer while drinking coffee over wireless listing to our music player… hmmm, is that your phone ringing?

My computer, built from commodity off-the-shelf parts just like everyone else’s, can run all the same software of any branded computer. It can run the MacOS, or DellOS or GatewayOS. It may even be one of those. But maybe it isn’t. And it doesn’t matter. A computer is a TOOL. A TOOL. Its function is to do something. Who blessed it is irrelevant: Whether Mike Dell or Steve Jobs or Bob Gateway waved their Holy Hands over my computer does not change it. It is a TOOL.

My hammer was bought at the Dollar Store 7-10 years ago. If I need a new one, I’m going to buy the cheapest I can find with a forged head. That’s all I care about: forged head.

My fridge came with my house when I bought it. I think it is Sears brand (Kenmore?). If I need a new one, I’m going to buy the largest I can for the least amount of money (picture the supply-demand graph from High School economics, and circle the intersection). That’s all I care about: Capacity for cost.

My car is a Dodge. When I need a new one I’m going to buy the cheapest car that has a 6-cylinder engine and best fuel economy.. oh, and anti-lock brakes and a moon-roof… and an automatic transmission. That’s it. That’s all I care about.

When people ask me if they should buy a brandX vs. brandY computer, I generally tell them “whatever makes you feel better”, weighted with any positive or negative experiences they’ve had with either X or Y.

Stop caring about brands. Stop caring about the logo. Stop caring about your illusion of cool.

Start caring about features you need or want. Start caring about value.

Unhook yourself from the Flashy Overlords of Marketing and Hipness.

(Yes, this applies to Music Players, Cell Phones, TVs, DVRs, etc. etc. as well. Rob, thanks for sending me over the deep end. )

UPDATE: Of course, if you’ve had three HP laptops and they’ve met or exceeded your needs/wants you should give them bonus points. Of course, if you’ve had to send your MacBook back three times in two years (thanks, Dave) you should rate them down. As I said a few paragraphs ago, “weighted with any positive or negative experiences they’ve had with either X or Y” – I’m not advocating ditching experience: only ditching fervor and flash.

Sick days: USE THEM FOR ALL OF US.

Most people who know me, simply know not to talk about online auctions with me. I just “don’t get it”.

So tonight, during an exceedingly rare TV-watching occurance, I was affronted with a commercial that has made all of this very clear to me… and has also caused me to question the heinousness of genocide.

The commercial has a group of adults riding bikes and wearing hideous bike helmets (redundant, I know). Some of them have what appear to be “hunting dogs”. All are riding through the woods. Every few seconds this ugly metal lunch box pops out of the brush and everyone rushes for it, only to see it elsewhere. Finally, at the end, one woman launches off of her bike and grabs the lunch box before it can go anywhere, holding it high while everyone else looks at her longingly. The commercial ends with the statement “It’s better when you win it” along with the eBay logo.

So it’s very clear now. Humans are stupid, gullible, idiots who believe that because someone ELSE wanted the same thing they wanted, it has MORE value than it would if they were the only one. It’s not about the THING, it’s about acquiring something someone else wants.

So yeah, I’m still disgusted. I still think people like this need to think – just for 2 minutes – about what’s going on. I still “don’t get it”.

May, June, July, August.

It would’ve been nice to get the request in May.

But people don’t understand this. So every year we brace for it. The onslaught of the last minute requests that need to be honored so that the college can appear like it functions.

There is definitely a group of proactive people who don’t fall into this category. There are those that offer cookies and chocolate as incentives to lessen the impact. But there are a staggering number of belligerent egos who insist that they are the most important thing I could be dealing with right now, and are guffawed when I inform them to the contrary.

The diagram to the right is how I set my priorities. Yes, I set my own priorities. The person on the phone doesn’t set them for me, neither does my chain of command. I’ll let that sink in for a minute. Calling my boss will not get you faster service. Nor will calling his boss. Or his boss. It’s true. With the exception of the President, I have never – nor do I expect to ever – been told to expedite an individual’s problem. Why? Because my chain of command agrees 100% with my priorities, and understand why I do things the way I do them.

A lot of the “things” I’m responsible for impacts large swaths of people – thousands. While I have had faculty who can’t make something bold in MS Word claim that their problem impacts “all students” and therefore should be higher on my list of things to work on, in reality it only impacts the students who would be getting their unboldeded syllabi – Nay, only those who would’ve read it to begin with. This is, shockingly to some, less important to me, than the fact that a computer classroom w/ 30 seats has no network access, or that the e-mail system that serves all of campus needs some TLC.

It has always been shocking to me that anyone, after having received an explanation of Matt’s Inverse Pyramid of Importance, would even pause at my statement of “I’m not going to be looking into your bolding problem immediately”: But alas, here we are, over the hump and almost done with Hell Week 2007.

Your lack of planning is not my crisis.