Retirement Party for Scott Risberg
Scott Risberg is retiring from SSCC in order to be a stay-at-home-Dad. Scott started at the SSCC as a student operator in 1982, but most SSCC members know Scott through his role in desktop support in more recent years.
Come help us say our goodbyes to Scott at noon on June 23rd on the patio off the 3rd floor of the Social Science building. Everyone is welcome to attend. It will be a potluck lunch with brats and all the fixin's. We request a $5 donation for the lunch. If you can bring a dish to pass, salad, chips, dessert, etc., it would be much appreciated. It is certainly not a requirement to bring something in order to attend though.
Nancy McDermott (4426) and Vicki Sekel (4402) have cards to sign and will collect contributions for lunch and a retirement gift for Scott. Since Scott loves Disney so much, we plan to give him and his family customized Disney character hats and gift money for his next annual trip to Disney World.
If you aren't around to sign the card but plan to attend the luncheon, please email Nancy McDermott so we know how many brats to buy. Also, if you plan to bring a dish, please indicate what you plan to bring.
Automated Reboots of PCs Beginning June 14
It is very important to keep your operating systems properly patched in order to keep your computer secure. We use a Microsoft Windows administration tool called SCCM to automate the distribution of Windows updates and patches to PCs throughout the Social Science building that log into the PRIMO domain. A distributed patch or update does not take effect, however, until the PC gets rebooted. We recently distributed an update to our anti-virus software, Symantec Endpoint Protection, and it failed on many PCs because there were other pending updates that were awaiting the next reboot. For this reason, we plan to start rebooting all PCs that are part of SSCC's Windows domain (PRIMO) weekly on Mondays. We will do the reboots remotely using SCCM and schedule them to take place between 3:00 and 5:00 a.m. Please note that we'd prefer that you restart your computer every night when you are done for the day.
If you will routinely be running jobs on your PC overnight during the regularly scheduled reboot, please e-mail our help desk and we will exclude your PC from the automated reboots. Instead, you will be asked to reboot your PC at another time that is convenient for you.
New Webmail Program Now Default
We have made the new Webmail program the default. If you haven't tried it yet, we think you are really going to like it. It has an interface that acts more like an email program running on your computer than a web page. For example, you can:
- Drag messages to move them
- Right-click on a message or folder to access a list of things you can do with it
- Select a message and press the Delete key to remove it (or drag it to the trash)
- Select multiple messages with Control-click on a PC or Command-click on a Mac
- Select a range of messages by first clicking the beginning of the range and then Shift-click on the end of the range
We also have a knowledge base article which explains a few things that you may find less intuitive.
We plan to remove Squirrelmail at the end of the summer. Use the "Leave Feedback" button in the upper right corner of the application to let us know what you think.
Summer Training
Our summer training is underway and the schedule is available on SSCC's training web pages. There is SAS training this week. Stata training starts next week. Wordpress, Matlab, and Nvivo training are also on the schedule. Registration is required. Be sure and register early before sessions fill!
Eviews to be Removed from Lab PCs
Eviews will be removed from the lab PCs at the end of July. This software has seen very little use over recent years and has a fairly expensive annual fee. If you were planning to use Eviews, please contact Nancy McDermott.
Tip: Securing Your PC
Malicious software or "malware" is now a profitable business and today's computers face a wide variety of threats. Our new knowledge base article will help you secure your Windows PC against some of the most common threats we're seeing in the summer of 2010.
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