SJSU Help Desk is Closed

Due to the end of the term and campus closure we are closed. We reopen on Monday, December 27, 2010 at 8 a.m. The photo is of the College of Engineering Graduation where many of our staff graduated.

Ram's Last Day

Today is a day of many celebrations at the help desk. It is both happy and sad as today is Ram Kumar Rama Roo's last day. Ram has been at the help desk for three years and is our senior student lead. He will be missed!

We had a help desk celebration to celebrate that, several staff birthdays and the end of the semester. (Click on the above photo if you would like to see it larger.)

Wonderful Help Desk Party

On Saturday March 21 we had a help desk party at Saby Thai in San Jose. Ruchi Binjola and others at the help desk put together an excellent party for help desk and former help desk staff. We celebrated the recent marriages of several of our help desk couples. It was a great party!

[Click here to see more photos]

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Ruchi's birthday at the help desk

Ruchi Binjola's birthday was a cause of celebration at our help desk. We have a great staff almost all of whom are thousands of miles from home. So, we try to create a small bit of home here at the help desk.

Ruchi is an important person on our staff.

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Help Desk Graduates

Gnanaprakash Pitchika "Prakash" Venkateswarlu and Dhiwakar Mani are two of the help desk staffers who graduated this Fall. Saturday I went to the College of Engineering graduation to celebrate with the graduates. We are loosing 12 of 24 student staff members.

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Busy, busy, busy

It's insane busy at SJSU

Yesterday I worked 11 hours straight. It is crazy busy at the help desk. It is RUSH in more ways than one. Tomorrow is my first class.

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Interested in working at the help desk?

SJSU Student Assistant Applications Being Accepted
To apply for work at our help desk please bring a copy of your resume to the help desk, located in CH102 on the first floor of Clark Hall, and fill out an application as well as a cover sheet for employment. Your resume should be stapled with your cover sheet, application and all should be submitted together.

On your application be sure to note any work experience you may have involving customer service, software applications and/or computer support. Be sure you have your Tower Card Number on your application if you have one.

Help Desk end of Summer Lunch

Summer is ending at SJSU

This time next week school will be in session. To celebrate the end of the summer the help desk staff went to lunch on Saturday with Sue and I. We went to Silk Road, which is a nice Indian Restaurant in downtown San Jose. It was a lot of fun.

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India Independence Day

It is India Indepence day
Today is the 61st anniversary of the independence of India from Britan. Last year we celebrated the 60th anniversary at the Help Desk by wearing Indian clothing and had a big lunch of Indian food. This was great fun!

[More Pictures Here on Flickr]

How we use Google Docs

Tech Tips: Google Docs and the Help Desk

About Google Docs
According to Wikipedia, "Google Docs is a free, Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation application offered by Google. It allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating in real-time with other users. Google Docs combines the features of two services, Writely and Spreadsheets, which were merged into a single product on October 10, 2006. A third product for presentations, incorporating technology designed by Tonic Systems, was released on September 17, 2007."

Google Apps @ SJSU
According to a Web page maintained by the SJSU Web Services team (at the time of this writing), "San Jose State University is in the early stages of using Google Apps Education Edition. Currently only faculty and staff are given access. We hope to include students at a later time, when technical challenges around associating student email addresses with Google Apps is resolved." Currently this is being called, "Google Apps @ SJSU".

Known Issues
There are issues using Google Docs if you are intending on inviting university employees into collaboration with people with non-sjsu.edu e-mail accounts. A person with an sjsu.edu e-mail account cannot be invited into collaboration using Google's own brand of Google Docs. We have found, at the help desk, that the best bet is for all parties involved in collaboration to have e-mail accounts that are not in the sjsu.edu domain. We have found, Gmail accounts work best. If you have an sjsu.edu e-mail address and you try to access Google's own Google Docs after being invited by a person not from an sjsu.edu account, you will be forced into an SJSUOne authentication. Even then, you will not be able to get to the document you have been invited to edit. The best bet is to stay off the reservation, for now!

Help Desk Google Docs Work Flow
At the university help desk we use Google Docs extensively for preparation of documentation. This way teams can collaborate on our documentation easily. Because we invite students to collaborate on our documentation we are using the Google's own version of Google Docs. Our work around has been to ask our help desk entire staff to get Google Gmail accounts and to issue invitations to the Google Gmail account for the users we wish to invite to collaborate on the document. We may, as an option, invite them via a seperate e-mail to their sjsu.edu or other e-mail address telling them, "please check your Gmail e-mail account for an invitation to collaborate on a Google Doc."

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Food for help desk party

Today we are having a help desk potluck. I have never cooked a vegetarian dish before. Most of the staff are from India and most do not eat meat. I only have a crockpot slow cooker to cook in so this is what I made:

Steve's Vegan Vegetarian Chili

Colorful, tasty, satisfying, guaranteed to please starving help desk staff. Serves 4 - 6, Can be doubled to feed a herd! This vegetarian chili is a great vegan meal by itself, or with salad and cornbread (or naan,) or make it vegetarian with parmesan or ricotta cheese, or sour cream.

Ingredients:

• 2 cans kidney bean, drained and rinsed + 4 cups water
• 16 ounces Vegetable Broth (with 16 more in reserve)
  
• 1 cup bulgar (or cracked wheat)
  
• 1/4 cup tomato paste
  
• 1/2 red pepper, diced
  
• 1/2 green pepper, diced
  
• 1 medium carrot, diced
  
• 2 stalks celery, chopped small
  
• 1 cup fresh or frozen corn kernels, or canned, drained and rinsed
  
• 1 pinch cayenne pepper or 1 jalapeno pepper, halved and seeded
  
• 2 thin slices fresh ginger, peeled, or 1/2 tsp dried, or a chunk of dried ginger candy cut into slices with sugar washed off.
  
• 1 clove garlic, minced (or 1 tsp crushed jarred garlic)
  
• 1 bay leaf
  
• 1/2 cinnamon stick
  
• 3 Tblsp olive oil
  
• 1 tsp each: paprika, gr. cumin, coriander, fennel
  
• 1 tsp salt (optional)
  
• 1/4 c. minced parsley
  
• 1 Tblsp soy sauce (optional)

Chili Directions:

1. Preheat saute pan or frying pan on medium
2. Prep veggies, including garlic, if you're using it
3. Saute veggies in oil 5 minutes
4. Add remaining spices, saute another two minutes
5. After sauteing the veggies, transfer everything to the cooker. Add minced parsley. Cover and simmer on low at least 2 hours. Add soy sauce to taste. Add broth held in reserve as needed to keep desired balance of liquid and solids. Bulgar absorbs broth as it cooks and more evaporates away. Remove cinnamon stick and bay leaves when served.
   

Work Family

Loosing some great students and friends
The best part of the job is the students. The worst part is when they leave. Really great students become a part of your lives. They become like family. That is the way I feel about some of the students in Journalism and Mass Communications where I teach and about many of the students at the San Jose State Help Desk where I work days. Some of the best students are graduating this winter; wonderful folks like Ross Bytheway, Rohan Saxena, Jimit Raval and especially Pranav Patel and Aditi Sinha. Aditi and Pranav are such great young people. They have been real hard workers and we owe so much to them regarding the success of the Academic Success Center stage area in Clark Hall. They really put their heart into the help desk and have made San Jose State University a better university. So many students, faculty and staff have been more successful in their academic pursuits because of the hard work, passion and dedication of Aditi and Pranav. They have made a real difference in my life. They are great people. I am proud to have worked with them and am lucky to know them. People don't get much better than these two.

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Help Desk Holiday 2007

Help Desk Holiday 2007
On December 8, 2007 we had our big help desk holiday party! It was a great event, organized by the help desk staff themselves. Colin even showed up as did several other former help desk staffers.

I think everybody had a great time.

[Click to See More Photos Here]

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Aditi's Birthday

Happy Birthday Aditi
Aditi Sinha is one of our senior student assistant leads at the help desk. She has been at the help desk for a long time and soon she will be graduating. Aditi is from India. She is smart, dedicated and committed to the help desk and the folks who work there. She almost always has a smile and makes us all feel like family. She is a natural leader and an inspiration. She is one of the nicest students I have known in my over twenty-three years at the university and when she graduates it will be a big loss for us and our university. We are really going to miss her.

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SJSU Earthquake Update

Earthquake Update
According to reports from folks who were there the Academic Success Center in Clark Hall really rocked and rolled last night. According one employee, "the lights swayed a lot and it was very loud. It was pretty frightening."

The quake happened after I left. Reportedly they evacuated immediately and the center remained closed for the night. We opened this morning on time, I was there before 7:30am and I saw no damage except for a few books that had fallen off my desk (totally understandable if you have seen my desk!)

A lot more books fell in the combined city and university King Library. They were closed for most of the morning and that caused us to be swamped in Clark Hall (the old SJSU Library.) Their university library clients who normally go their to use their computer labs ended up coming to us to use the computers in the Academic Success Center in Clark. Of course, we were lucky, it could have been way worse!

So, what can you do about it?
Sign Up For CERT training, be prepared!
Disaster Preparedness Training from Spencer Wong, of University Police. He sent this BE (Before Earthquake):

This is a message for those who have already signed up for the class and people who are still debating on whether to attend.

Once again, the training is on Nov. 2nd, 9th, and 16th from 8:30-4:00p.m on the first two days and 9:00-2:00 on the last day totaling approximately 20 hours of training. The schedule breakdown is as follows:

• Nov. 2nd
  • Introduction to CERT
  • Emergency Preparedness
  • Team Building
  • CERT Organization
  • Scene Size Up
  • Terrorism
  • Fire Suppression
• Nov. 9th
  • Disaster Psychology
  • Disaster Medical Operations I & II
  • Lifts and Carries
  • Evacu Trac
• Nov. 16th
  • Search and Rescue
  • Search Maze
  • Final Exercise

If you are making up a section because of an incomplete, please show up to the training on the designated date. Dress code: whatever you are comfortable wearing.

Meeting Place: UPD 214. Please meet in the lobby! There will be signage to direct you. If you have not signed up yet, we welcome walk-ins, but I much prefer to have a list of approximately how many people so I can prepare the copies/handouts.

There is still time brother!
Find out how to prepare for the big one, Email Spencer Wong and get trained! Oh, by the way, Happy Halloween.

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SPSS Codes are In at Help Desk

We have the new codes for SPSS for the PC and Mac. We do not yet have the new Version of SPSS, SPSS 16, that is reportedly PC Vista and Intel Mac compatible, but we expect to have that in early to mid-October.

Please contact the SJSU help desk and include your tower card number so we can validate your SJSU affiliation. The help desk can be reached by phone at (408) 924-2377 or via Email at helpdesk@sjsu.edu.

End of Summer Party

End of Summer Help Desk Party
On Friday, August 17, we had a big end of the summer party in Clark Hall for all the Help Desk staff. It was great fun. Sue joined us. We had a lot of yummy Indian food and shared a lot of laughter.

[More Photos on Flickr]

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India Independence day

It is India Indepence day
Today is the 60th anniversary of the independence of India from Britan. We celebrated at the Help Desk by wearing Indian clothing and had a big lunch of Indian food. This was great fun!

[More Pictures Here on Flickr]

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We are training

Training Time
With the coming semester we have been putting a huge emphisis on training. Here student lead Aditi Sinha speaks to the student staff at the San Jose State University help desk.

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EnACT/ATI Summer Institute is here but I am not there

EnACT/ATI Summer Institute at SJSU
Funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education, the mission of EnACT (Ensuring Access through Collaboration and Technology) is to support students with disabilities within the California State University in attaining their postsecondary educational goals. The EnACT/ATI Summer Institute is being held at San Jose State University. It started Monday, July 9 to Thursday, July 12. This morning I had breakfast with Abbe Altman of the CSU Center for Distributed Learning and a number of other folks from CSU campuses throughout the state. I really wish I could be at EnACT/ATI Summer Institute since it is so close, but I cannot as we are in the middle of an important search for a staff member to fill a vacancy at our help desk. I expect we will be hit with requests for services from faculty, staff and students for support in making their instructional materials accessible. The information being taught in the sessions at the conference would be very helpful in accomplishing that. The moral of the story, we need to find a way to record these sessions and make this information available for people who cannot attend the sessions. My suggestion, a podcast, perhaps something based a The Podcast Academy model.

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