How to reset your SJSUOne password

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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.

My recommended logo for SJSU iSupport

To my knowledge there was no migration plan for the migration from the legacy issue ticketing system at SJSU (named GWI) to the new system (named iSupport.) Around 30 people have been made full system administrators of iSupport at SJSU. (I do not know the exact number.)

Nobody owns it. There are no rules written down. A whole lot of people can do anything they want to anybody else using iSupport. It is "figure it out as you go." I can't think of a better word for this situation than Anarchy. Thus, the recommended logo.

It's President Qayoumi for SJSU

According to an announcement sent to the campus community:

The California State University Board of Trustees today named Mohammad Qayoumi, president of California State University, East Bay, as president of San José State University.

“I am honored and humbled to be selected and to accept the challenge of leading San José State University in the years ahead," said Qayoumi. "The tremendous opportunities and boundless possibilities of SJSU will only be limited by our imagination. I look forward to working with the talented students to ensure they have a rich and rewarding college experience and to prepare them for future success."

Qayoumi was one of three finalists for the position who spent last week visiting the campus. Qayoumi will assume the San José presidency in the summer, and succeeds interim President Don Kassing who retired in 2008, and returned last September to serve in an interim capacity until a new president is selected. The Board of Trustees will set Qayoumi's compensation during its May board meeting.

“Dr. Qayoumi's proven leadership abilities, commitment to students and administrative experience will be a tremendous asset to the campus and the community," said CSU Trustee Debra Farar, chair of the presidential search committee. "His energy, innovation, progressive vision and ability to connect with students provide a strong foundation to lead San José State moving forward."

Qayoumi has served as president of Cal State East Bay since 2006. He came to Cal State East Bay from Cal State Northridge, where he served as vice president for administration and finance and chief financial officer from 2000 until 2006, and was also a tenured professor of engineering management. Previously, Qayoumi served as vice chancellor for administration at San José; director of utilities and engineering services, director of technical services, and staff engineer, University of Cincinnati, Ohio. In addition, Qayoumi served as an engineer on a variety of projects in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Qayoumi holds a B.S. in electrical engineering, American University of Beirut. He holds four degrees from the University of Cincinnati: a Master of Science in nuclear engineering, a Master of Science in electrical and computer engineering, and MBA, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering.

This will be interesting.

Commentary: SJSU + iSupport = FAIL

A recipe:
How do you take something that could have been good and make it fail? Start by not planning, then make a huge number of people administrators, then over sell it, and finally under resource it. Yup, that'll do it every time!

REVISED UPDATE:
Reportedly SJSU only bought 30 seats for iSupport, our new enterprise wide ticketing system.

Yup, 30. This morning there were 34 people in a class to learn how to use it. So, that class locked out every other IT tech at SJSU who was trying to get real work done on campus. Nobody could get into the system today until noon!

According to one source, "they" (who shall remain nameless) called up the vendor and got a temporary unlimited user license for the campus and after noon today (Friday) folks were able to get on the system. According to one source, the timeout on the logins which had started at 60 minutes and which had been extended, then reduced back to 60 minutes was yet again reduced to thirty minutes. Also, reportedly, the license count has now been more than tripled.

Now "they" are going to look at system usage so "they" can see how many licenses we actually need, to be able to do what we need to do.

I guess a light bulb went off somewhere...

Meanwhile, one (other) frustrated SJSU tech said to me on Friday, "it sounds like somebody needs to take a project management class." Sounds like a great idea to me.

Lack of IT planning at SJSU?

This is the result of encouraging people to use a new ticket system at SJSU without buying enough licenses to accommodate the people using it.

Mackerel scales and Tower Hall

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Mackerel scales and mare's tails, make lofty ships carry low sails." On Tuesday March 1, 2011 Altocumulus clouds floated over Tower Hall at SJSU ahead of an approaching weather front.

The year end at SJSU

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The year ended quietly at SJSU. The campus was open for three days between Christmas and New Years and a few of us, myself included, worked. It was a day of updating our Web site and knowledge base, tasks that are hard to do when we have customers.

I took a walk across campus and enjoyed the rare solitude. That was nice.

We reopen Monday, January 3, 2011 at 8 a.m.

Huge SJSU security hole remains open

I have just returned from being on workers compensation for almost three months and am surprised (putting it mildly) to learn the security hole that gives student assistants access to the e-mail of every student, counselor, faculty, staff and administrator at SJSU is apparently still open. I posted about this in early August and have spoken to management, and been speaking to management, about this since issue since about March.

Why is hole still open? [See related post]

I have moved my SJSU Twitter Feed

My train feed as seen on an iPad using Flipboard, delivered via Twitter, click on picture to see related Twitter feed.

In the past I used the following Twitter feed for passing along news related to SJSU:

http://twitter.com/stevesloan

Well, that has changed. With tools like Flipboard (for the iPad) now being available, I am now seeing and using Twitter in a whole new way. To quote Flipboard, "Flipboard is a fast, beautiful way to flip through the news, photos and updates your friends are sharing on Facebook and Twitter."

Scoble has a great post about Flipboard. I am passionate about my work at SJSU. But, I am especially passionate about trains! After speaking to Scoble, I realized, using Twitter, I could launch my own personal train picture magazine.

I am using Twitter as the conduit for my photo stream. This is very cool! So I decided that I wanted my name to be address of this train photo magazine. So, I have moved my SJSU related Twitter feed. My SJSU feed is here:

http://twitter.com/sloansjsu

I hope this does not cause confusion. I will continue posting news related to San Jose State University. I will just be doing it from this new Twitter account. You are invited to subscribe, or stay subscribed, to my Train picture feed and subscribe to the new SJSU Twitter feed.

Oh, and do check out Flipboard. It rocks, and is a great example of why I think the iPad is so cool!

My Fall at SJSU

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At 10:15 a.m. Tuesday August 24, 2010, I was attending the Welcome Convocation on the Tower Lawn at San Jose State. It was a very hot day and the actual convocation was being given on the lawn between the library and Washington Square Hall. I wanted to hear SJSU President Don Kassing speak because I had missed his speech on Monday due to needs at the Help Desk. I was walking on the lawn and suddenly I fell, twisting my foot underneath me.

There was a hole in the lawn that grass had grown up into. I did not see the hole.

It hurt and I thought I had sprained it. Sprained it badly. I attended the speech limping along. But, it hurt; badly! I limped back to the help desk and reported the injury to my supervisor. He called one of our staff who had a cart. They wheeled me over to the health center where they x-rayed me and said I had a Jones Fracture and an Avulsion fracture.

Information about that is here, and here, and here.

They were not able to give me pain medication as the university pharmacy was closed due to our recent layoffs. I was sent to the university's worker's comp provider where I waited for what seemed like forever. Finally we were seen and I was given some medication and referred to see the podiatrist (who comes in Thursday.)

Research on this has indicates this will be awhile. According to one source, "You won't be able to put weight on the leg, and will not be able to move the foot for several weeks, usually 6-8."

This is my new reality!

And the Old Cafeteria (and pub) comes down

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The demolition of the Old Cafeteria building is proceeding. I remember when the area where this truck is sitting was "The Pub." When Jack Elway was football coach at SJSU you would often see him here with players relaxing and drinking. I remember one time when his son John Elway was here with them. John was playing for Stanford at the time.

After the pub it was the Market Cafe, kind of like a Peet's Coffee. We went there many times in the morning.

There was a lot of parties, dinners and awards ceremonies in the University Room here. Many happy memories.

SJSU systems problems on Aug. 9, 2010

UPDATE: Systems seem to be working normally as of 8:55 a.m.

As of about 8:30 a.m. there is an SJSU systems outage affecting multiple systems and we do not know when these systems will return to normal. Affected systems include:

• SJSU Lotus Notes E-Mail
• SJSUOne portal for changing SJSUOne passwords
• SJSU Google Provided Gmail.
• SJSUOne authentication based services for authenticating other services.

Systems that were working last time we checked include:

• MySJSU
• SJSUOne based wireless authentication
• Legacy UNIX authentication
  

At this time we do not have information regarding the cause or the time of return to service of these services. It is possible some services may be restored intermittently. Full stability of services can not be assured at this time.

Systems can be returned to full or partial functionality without notice, so the best advice is to keep checking.

UPDATE: Systems seem to be working normally as of 8:55 a.m.

Invitation to participate in Web site survey

Fred Najjar, SJSU's VP of University advancement, sent an e-mail invitation to the campus community to participate in a survey. Najjar said:

You are invited to share your opinions about the SJSU.edu website in a brief, 12-question survey. This survey should take approximately five minutes to complete and will provide valuable insight as Public Affairs looks for ways to improve the university’s website.

[Link to Survey]

We welcome feedback from the entire SJSU community, and encourage you to also take part in future focus groups and/or interviews by providing your email address when you complete the online survey.

Thank you in advance for your help improving sjsu.edu.

SJSU Public Affairs

If you are a member of the campus community you are invited to participate.

SJSU employees will not get minimum wage

SJSU President Jon Whitmore sent an e-mail to all SJSU employees today that said:

In response to Governor Schwarzenegger's directive to cut the pay of state workers to the federal minimum wage until a budget is passed, the California State University announced on July 2 that CSU employees will continue to receive their regular compensation.

From the CSU press release:

"We want to let CSU employees know that we have received confirmation from the State Controller's office that our employees' compensation is not impacted by this order," said CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed. "Employees will receive their regular paychecks and can expect their normal compensation." The CSU intends to pay its employees with alternative revenue sources other than state general funds if it becomes necessary.

Gov. Schwarzenegger has announced an order to cut the pay of about 200,000 state workers to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour until a budget is signed. Payroll decisions for the first month of the fiscal year, which began on July 1, do not need to be made until July 20.

A new Indian place near SJSU

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Just found out about this place near SJSU. I have not yet tried it, but hope to next week. It is at 322 E. Santa Clara St. (near 7th.).

SJSU sign FUBAR

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The high tech directory at the entrance to Clark Hall at SJSU is Fubar.

Don Kassing Returning

According to a reliable source former SJSU President Don Kassing is returning to SJSU to serve as the "new" interim SJSU President.

SJSU Layoff Negotiations Continue

I am in Human Resources with the other members of the negotiating team negotiating with university representatives over the impact of layoffs at San Jose State University. Today follows last week's two days of negotiations. If you are a university staff employee and you want to see bargaining in real life, come to the third floor of the HR/UPD building in front of the Seventh Street Garage.