When the official password format fails!

Steve Sloan’s Recommended (Unofficial) SJSUOne Password Format Suggestion. These are not requirements, only my personal suggestions. If you have a current SJSUOne account, and the official SJSUOne Password Format fails, this works. Please do not tell anybody I (or anybody) said these suggestions were requirements. It is suggested by me that your SJSUOne password have the following attributes:

• From eight to eleven characters
• No spaces
• One upper case letter minimum
• One lower case letter minimum
• One number minimum
• Just one (and only one) exclamation mark (do not use any other so-called "special" characters)

Example: 1Porcupine!

Why? My best guess as to why this may make a difference is that you are trying to get a Linux server (Google) to work with a password from a Microsoft Active Directory Domain Controller (SJSUOne). This is not official; it is a suggestion, but it usually works.

No, you cannot reuse your old password. Just forget that idea.

About Yesterday's IT Service Interruption at SJSU

The following was sent to the SJSU IT community:

All services have been restored. Access to www.sjsu.edu was restored around 3:20pm. The rest of the services including SSO were restored successfully and tested around 5pm. The issue was related to firewall policies pushed out to our server farm firewall cluster around 12:35pm this afternoon (Potential bug on the management system). This caused several services to stop working. This included access from external and some of our internal networks to www.sjsu.edu, applications that required SSO access and access to a couple of our monitoring systems. Again, access has been restored to all services.

We continue to investigate for a root cause. Over the last couple weeks we have been working with our firewall vendor on a suspected bug that may cause additional information to be pushed out/changed to the policies. As soon as we have an update we will provide one to this distribution list. In the meantime, please let us know if you see any issues with access to the above services from on/off campus.

Again, our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused

Regards,
Jaime (Sanchez)

We received over 40 phone calls and walkups at the ITSS Help Desk during this period, about ten percent of what we would experience had the semester already started.

Oracle gives OpenOffice.org to Apache

According to a June 1 post on ZD Net by David Meyer, "Oracle has ceded control of the OpenOffice.org code base to the Apache Software Foundation Incubator project." This opens up some interesting possibilities for universities and others looking to reduce their dependence on proprietary software. According to Meyer:

OpenOffice.org is the most popular free productivity suite, and a major rival to Microsoft Office. The software giant said it was 'donating' the open-source code so as to "demonstrate its commitment to the developer and open source communities".

If folks look at OpenOffice.org they may find it offers all the features they need without having to deal with licensing fees and complex activation schemes.

Yet another SJSU Phishing Scam

Please be aware of this latest phishing attempt (below). Any e-mail asking for your e-mail password and username are scams. Victor Van Leer of SJSU's University Technology Services has sent out the following:

Q. What can I do if I receive a scam message?
A. If you receive a scam message, please do the following to help stop the scam: Press the down arrow next to the "Reply" button. Click "Report Phishing" This action will move the message to your spam folder, block further attempts and alert the Google anti-phishing team to act on this phishing attempt.

A sample of the latest scam message is included below. It is a scam. Users should not reply to it and they should click "Report Phishing" if they receive the phishing scam email.

Below is a sample of the latest scam message:
Note: This message is a scam.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: (ITSS) Help Desk
Date: Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 8:18 AM
Subject: 2011 Webmail Upgrade to prevent Account Being Disabbled
To: (deleted)


Attention San José State University email user!

This message is from Information Technology Services, San José State University to all its email Users.We are upgrading to a new email version to help increase the storage megabyte and are therefore deleting all unused email account.

Also be informed of the serious technical difficulty at hand. Our Webmail Database that records your webmail data and profile has just been contrasted by a serious circulating internet virus. As a result we are upgrading to a new email version to help increase the storage megabit and are therefore deleting all unused email account as a result of the nonexistence of users.

To confirm the your account is currently in use and to integrate the recent maintenance carried out in e-mail system and also help in resetting your space in our database and erase the virus circulation in our webmail . reply back with the information as required below;

Username:...
Email:.......
Password: ...
Re confirm Password:....
Date of Birth:....


Warning! Webmail owner that refuses to update their account by providing the requested details above after reading this mail will loose his / her account permanently.

Account Alert Code: X3XX00178SU Thank you for using San José State University®

University Help Desk


A unit of Academic Technology
Clark Hall, Room 102
San José State University
One Washington Square
San José, CA 95192-0026


San José State University - Home of the Spartans
One Washington Square - San José, California USA, 95192
408-924-1000

Please remember, we do not ever ask for passwords via e-mail!

Bike riding on campus, still

Bike riding in buildings
On April 18, 2008 I took the photo above of an SJSU faculty member to see the rest of the story on this; see this post on my union blog.
Technorati Tags: San Jose State University, SJSU, Campus Life, bicycling, CSU, California State University, San Jose, ssloansjca

What our Lotus Domino Server meant to say this morning

Our soon to be unplugged Lotus Domino server sent a message to each faculty and staff employee at SJSU this morning that said:

This account has been scheduled for termination after [future date].

Later our University Technology Services team sent a message to techs at SJSU this morning that said:

These deletion notices may be disregarded. They were sent by a legacy email support system that is failing. The condition that triggered these deliveries has been cleared and the agent that sends the notifications has been disabled.

What the Domino server really meant to say was:

I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you.

Opinion: Embrace your whiners

I am a liberal, a democrat and a union steward.
So, you can imagine; I have been called a whiner many, many times. I consider it a compliment. That's a big reason I blog. Blogs can be great places to whine.
Many people are afraid of confrontation. They will remain silent even when they see problems. In my opinion a strong organization is one that confronts problems. But, how does an organization know it has a problem? It embraces its whiners.
The whiners are your canaries in the coal mine, your first line of alert. So, if you call me a whiner don't be surprised if I say, "why thank you."
Organizations who recognize the value of whiners and provide them with a venue; have a lot to gain. Even if the whiners are only right ten percent of the time, you want to know that ten percent! Those who don't, risk finding much harsher critics; their customers.

On the Federal Budget Mess of 2011

Politics - I have an opinion blog where I post my opinions on many things including politics. You can post comments there as well. If you really want to read my personal political opinion, it is here!
If you disagree and get steamed, remember by clicking on this link you have chosen to read my opinion!

Opinion: Criticism is good

In my opinion no matter what kind of organization it is, a university, another type of organization or a nation; criticism is a good thing. It means people care. Care should to be taken by critics to criticize the process, not the person. Critics and leaders should try to check their egos at the door. Everyone is entitled to an opinion and are entitled to voice their opinion. Critics and leaders are advised to not imply malice without very, very strong evidence. Leaders in an organization that is the subject of criticism should not take criticism personal. It is not personal and it does not mean your efforts are not appreciated. All criticism means is that somebody thinks something should be different. Hey, the critic may be wrong! But, at least give the idea some consideration. At least the critic cares enough to voice an opinion. That is a good thing. Sometimes, I know rarely, it is possible the critic may be right. A little thick skin is recommended for all involved. Today's critic may be tomorrows leader, or not.

Mammoth Microsoft Patch Coming

According to a post by Gregg Keizer of Computerworld on April 7 the patches to be released on Tuesday April 12 will tie Microsoft's record for the number of posts. Keizer said:

Microsoft today said it will patch a record 64 vulnerabilities in Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, Windows graphics framework, and other software next week, and tie a December 2010 record for the number of security updates it issues.

SJSU Windows system administrators and others with computers running Windows should be aware this is coming.