Tag: information


  • A statement by a faculty member to the effect of, “There isn’t anything our IT people can do to resolve this problem. The web application is overloaded,” puts the people running the application on the defensive. The problem turned out to be resolved with changes to the local browser environment (remove all the installs of…

  • The email was an innocuous “Ooh, shiney!” message. RSS feeds are now available for a status site. However, one thing concerned me…. RSS is a relatively new and easy way to distribute content and information via the Internet. I personally have been aware of RSS since 2002. However, as I am a relatively late adopter…

  • Work for OIIT! Become our 4th DBA / technical support person for our team. Located in Athens, GA (college town, UGA football) $, benefits, generous leave, rare snow we love open source PDF of GeorgiaVIEW DBA position Check out the PDF (right) for more information. Sorry for the convoluted route to the application… Click this…

  • I just noticed an item in Behind the Blackboard for “Direct Help”. This seems to be a way Blackboard is attempting to help students and parents find assistance by directing them to institutions. I probably missed the propaganda about this initiative. Though I do understand the problem and why it ought to be solved. People…

  • A student wants Blackboard Vista to not reveal his or her last name. The student has already gone to the Registrar and gotten a confidentiality flag placed on the record. As I understand it, this flag in Banner is a FERPA protection to prevent the record from being provided to parties external to the university.…

  • Search

    Information is only valuable when found. It is great someone took notes during the conference call, but four months later, when I do not recall the date of the meeting or who sent the notes, I’ll rely on my computer searching for it. Thunderbird returns pretty quickly when it searches subjects only. So I will…

  • The point of this is not directed towards anything or anyone specific other than myself. While I do use the example of IT, it is purely a generic metaphor. Probably I have spent too much time in IT and not enough diversifying my experience. With infinite time, manpower, or money, then we could pull off…

  • A ticket our Blackboard technical support manager marked as really urgent was picked up by another technical support person who left a note about calling me. Except, the familiar phone number called wasn’t my office number or even my cell number. Nope, it is the office number at my previous job. Yup. I have not…

  • Kentucky’s Bill HB775 would require those operating web sites or blogs or message boards in the state to enforce a policy to collect legal names, postal addresses, and email addresses to use the service. The legal name would, of course, be posted on the web site. Should the poster cross someone else, then the operators…