NEWS

Changes to Temporary Space on Linux and Windows

During next Wednesday's downtime, we will be making changes to the temporary space on Linux (/temp/fivedays) and Windows (Y:, otherwise known as Public). The temporary space on Linux will be moved to /temp30days and on Windows the Y: drive will be renamed "temp30days." On both operating systems, any file created over 30 days in the past will be removed. Recall that files in these temporary directories are NOT backed up.

Some people use the Y: drive for long term storage, but this was never its intent and is not a secure way to store files. Anyone can view, change or even delete files on the Y: drive and since files on the Y: drive are not backed up, this has caused a few people major headaches. Please request a project drive if you have long term storage needs that are over the 1.5 Gb home directory quota on Windows or Linux (for a total of 3 Gb if you use your home directories on both Linux and Windows). You'll find more information on file storage and disk space in SSCC's handbook.

Files currently in Y: on Windows will be moved to Y:\OldPublic and will be deleted after 30 days. Files currently in /temp/fivedays on Linux will be moved to /temp30days and will be deleted after 30 days. /temp/fivedays will be turned into a link to /temp30days, so you won't need to change any programs that refer to it.

Welcome Caitlin Tefft to SSCC's Staff

Please welcome Caitlin Tefft to SSCC's staff. Caitlin joins us as SSCC's Instructional Support Specialist, taking the place of Ann Lewis who retired last month. Caitlin graduated from UW-Madison this past summer with a Bachelor's in Sociology and worked at DoIT's help desk for four years while pursuing her degree. In addition to her instructional support duties, Caitlin will be working SSCC's help desk and joining Andy Kraus, Charlie Maurice, and Scott Risberg in providing desktop support. Mac fans will be happy to know that Caitlin is an avid Mac user.

Reserving Computer Classroom for Spring Semester Courses

With a new SSCC employee handling instructional support, we would very much appreciate your scheduling the computer classroom for your Spring course as soon as possible. Another reason to reserve soon is because reservations are filled on a first-come-first-served basis. Contact Caitlin Tefft (ctefft@ssc.wisc.edu) to reserve. Caitlin's office is in the 4226 office suite and her phone number is 2-0862.  Visit www.ssc.wisc.edu/sscc/instruction/ for more information about the 3218 classroom and the mobile lab.

Even if you do not need to reserve the classroom or lab, you can arrange for your students to have access to SSCC's drop in labs (3218 and 4218 Social Science) and Winstat (available from anywhere with an Internet connection) for doing their homework. Caitlin can help you with this as well.

Doug Hemken (dehemken@wisc.edu), statistical computing specialist for SSCC, is available to help students with homework and class projects. You can also arrange for Doug to come to your class and provide instruction on statistical software. Doug's office is in the 4226 office suite and his phone number is 2-4327.

We also have special software in the classroom that allows you to control or interact with your students' computers. Contact Doug if you'd like to learn more about this.

Software Upgrades

The new year has brought us a wave of software upgrades. Last month we installed new versions of Dreamweaver and R on Winstat; SAS, Matlab and Dreamweaver in the labs; and SAS, SPSS and Matlab on the Linux servers. This week on Winstat we upgraded Nvivo to version 8 SP3, Endnote to version X.2.0.2, Latent Gold to v4.5, and Mplus to v5.2. Next week we'll also be upgrading SAS and SPSS on Winstat.

Tip: Fixing Stata's Windows on Winstat

There's a long-standing bug with Stata on Windows Terminal Servers that can corrupt your preferences, including the locations of the various windows. The most common symptom is that the Command window gets moved to the right side of the Stata window and becomes very narrow, which is inconvenient. But in extremely rare cases corrupted preferences can even prevent you from closing Stata.

The solution is always the same: reload the default preferences. You can do so by clicking Edit, Preferences, Manage Preferences, Load Preferences, Factory Settings. This will put Stata back to how it started out, including putting the Command window at the bottom.

If you've customized your Stata session on Winstat (moving away from that classic 1980's color scheme, for example) we suggest you save those settings so you can reload them if they get corrupted.