UNIX account issue handling at SJSU

A public service announcement for SJSU Unix users
We have seen a big reduction in tickets related to locked accounts and we are no longer assuming all Unix complaints are related to locked accounts. We are including the checking of, and possible unlocking of, Unix accounts into our normal password resetting routine.

All people reporting account issues, even if they suspect the account has been locked, need to treat the incident as a password reset. We will look at the details of the account to see if the account has been locked. If it has, we then forward the ticket to the SJSU Unix system administrator. This process is followed if the account is used for Email or FTP. The first step in dealing with a possible FTP issue is to verify that the related Unix account is working!

If we reset the password ourselves, or get the password back to us from SJSU Unix system administrator, as per university security guidelines, this Help Desk can only release account passwords to the owners of the account. These are folks who own the accounts and physically come to the Help Desk and physically pick up the reset passwords with photo ID. This Help Desk does not have authority to make exceptions to this policy. I do not have the authority to change this procedure. This can only be done by UCAT (we are not UCAT.) I encourage customers to request the ticket number when they make a password reset request and to always refer to this number in subsequent contacts with us (or UCAT) on this matter. This way accidental duplicate tickets can be avoided and so will the possibility that the password could be reset twice, frustrating the client. Armed with this ticket number clients can call the Help Desk and easily check on the status of their ticket.

The process for requesting a UNIX password reset is here [Link].

Don Hayward, husband of Darla Belshe, died

Don Hayward, husband of retired SJSU Journalism professor Darla Belshe died Saturday after a battle with brain cancer [newspaper obituary link]. I met Don several times during my years working in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications. He was the voice of Spartan Football, and often he was the voice of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications as well. I remember working with him when he was narrating presentations we did for the School. He was a very nice man and I liked him.

Darla was a fantastic broadcast journalism professor who put in far more hours than she was paid for. Her students put together the university's update news television news program. She cared deeply for her students while at the same time driving them toward excellence. She had the ability to organize every detail necessary for their success and her retirement left a very big void, too big for any one person to fill. I really miss her and miss working with her. I am really sorry to hear of Don's passing and of Darla's loss of her husband.

TabletPC tool for the classroom

A great TabletPC App for higher Ed
Somebody (can I mention your name?) sent this to Scoble and he forwarded it to me. This is really a neat thing for Tablet PC folks:

Cool Tablet App You Might Not Be Aware Of
Hey Robert... http://www.dyknow.com/products/ is the products page http://www.dyknow.com/products/dyknow-onesheet.pdf is a 2 page pdf overview and this: http://www.dyknow.com/video/dyknowintro.wmv is a video about the product... this product really sounds cool to me; I'd love to have my college notes as Ink.
Name withheld pending permission

I want to look at this some more and show it to some of the TabletPC folks at SJSU.

Technorati Tags: San Jose State University, SJSU, scoble, CSU, California State University, ssloansjca

I got "naked"

My copy of Naked Conversations Came
I had preordered Naked Conversation's [Link] awhile back using a link Scoble (it seems funny to call him by his last name, but that is what folks do) recommended I follow. I pre-ordered it from Amazon and it finally came. Wow, it looks great. Sue said it doesn't look all Geeky at all. That is a compliment! Robert, [Link] you did good!

Technorati Tags: SJSU, ssloansjca, Scoble

Ken Wong

Ken Wong, a good and loyal friend
I have been spending some time looking back on pictures of old friends from years gone by at SJSU. It is amazing to look at these pictures and think about the context of who they were when you knew them when and where their lives have taken them since then. Like the others, this picture was taken 15 years ago. Ken worked for me in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications for a number of years. But, he was more than an employee. Ken was a friend. I used to say I never met a Ken I didn't like and that was one of the reasons my youngest son is named Kenneth.

Ken was there for me and helped a lot during a very hard time in my life. He was always a good friend.

My vault a pig sty?
You may get the idea from looking at this and other pictures that my old office in the vault in the now torn down Whalquist Library North was a pig sty. Yes, it is true. But it was also cool in a funky way and became a popular hang out place. I rode out the Loma Prieta Earthquake in the doorway of that vault. The walls were a foot of heavily reinforced concrete and the door was nine inches of armored steel plate. It was pretty secure!

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Citizen Journalism and News 2.0

News 2.0: "Citizen Journalism" is not journalism
There is a conversation going on by Rich Skerenta of Topix.net [link] and Om Malik [Link] about News 2.0 and what citizen journalism is. According to Skerenta:

The key to understanding what is working in "Citizen Journalism" is that they're first-person accounts. Journalists are professional observers and interpreters; they watch, and report back to the wider audience. But just like stockbrokers and travel agents, the Internet is again cutting out the intermediary.

If you followed the post by Dan Gillmor [Link] and his letter to the Bayosphere about the failure of that, you know there is some real soul searching going on about this subject. This, of course, is an important conversation for journalism educators.

Technorati Tags: SJSU, ssloansjca, J-school

Lynn Benson Johnson

Lynn Benson Johnson: Friend, Photographer, Writer, Mother, Blogger
I cannot say enough about this wonderful and dear friend. I have known her for years. She was a Photojournalism student at SJSU fifteen years ago when these photos were taken. Even though she was about 20 at the time, she was always and always will be, smart beyond her years. She and I took country western dance lessons together, how that went is one of the funniest stories of those years [Link] and we spent a lot of time together both at the university and off. She and her husband Brian are friends of Sue and I. We don't see them near enough.

Lynn and Brian have a beautiful baby boy that neither Sue nor I have yet seen. But, I feel like I know him already because his mother chronicles his life so well...

Lynn's blog is one of those not yet discovered secrets of the Internet!
Lynn is not only super smart, she is whitty and an amazingly talented writer. She is one of those writers who is both a craftsman and very creative. At San Jose State she followed up her Photojournalism degree with a Master's in English. Her style is both documentary and emotive.

Read her blog
Read her blog [Link] and she will show you how this medium can be used to give a voice to a great talent. Read her blog [Link] and see how wonderful it is to be alive and a mother raising a baby who changes every day, as we all do. Read her blog [Link] and you will see how wonderful life is and how life is an ongoing story and how every day we live is an adventure. Read her blog [Link] and you will see what Dan Millman meant when he said "there are no ordinary moments." Read her blog [Link] and you will see how lucky anybody is who can call Lynn a friend. But, no matter what you do, remember I was one of those people who said folks should read Scoble when he had 18 readers. For very different and equally valid reasons I am now telling you about Lynn and saying, read her blog [Link].

Technorati Tags: San Jose State University, SJSU, ssloansjca, Lynn Benson Johnson

Blogger blocks

I saw this on Sam Smith's blog. [Link] There is other cool stuff there too. It is fun to follow links of people who comment on my blog. Here is what he said about himself on the comment:

I'm evangelising about emerging technology (with some limited success) to the guys at the University of Birmingham (UK), so to a fellow mac user, evangelist and spontaneous snapper, hello and keep up the good work.

That is not an easy mission, even here in the city that bills itself as the metropolitan capital of Silicon Valley.

Technorati Tags: San Jose State University, San Jose, SJSU, CSU, California State University, ssloansjca, San Jose

Julia Evans, SJSU student and blogger

Here is a blog by Julia Evans, an SJSU Library and Information Science Grad Student [Link.] Check it out! She is blogging about her studies and SJSU.

Is Mac OS less secure than Windows?

According to this story on ZD Net Australia [Link] Mac OS X has a number of security flaws that could, should Apple's market share continue to improve, render Mac OS X less secure and more vulnerable to "hacking" than Windows.