Our "Computing Support" (EMWIDL) did some server maintenance last night and lo! this morning the home servers for staff and students are broken ... no login, no email, just web access (yay!) So, does anyone else think that the end of term, when all the years' results are being compiled and serious research is being attempted, is not the best time of year to be doing maintenance that might result in almost total system failure?! Hmmm...
Update: It turns out that the problems were an unfortunate concatenation of circumstances -- faulty network cabling (supposedly "tested" post-install) and a surprising number of dead "backup" switches! All-in-all the support people did well fixing the problems in less than 4 hours ;-)
[To the tune of the "Hornpipe" / "Drunken sailor"]

What shall we do with a working system?

What shall we do with a happy network?

What shall we do to support the users

... early in the morning?

 

Move the filesystems:

No-one'll notice!

Shift around the servers:

Nothing'll happen!

Plug in the fibre:

Nothing's working!

... early in the morning.

 

Oh look, the network's crashing!

Oh dear, the server's dying!

Oh no, I'm out of cables!

... early in the morning!

 

Now, what shall we do with a broken network?

What shall we do with crashing servers?

What shall we do with locked-out users?

... early in the morning.

 

Fix it bloody quick before the staff go mental!

Mend it really fast before meltdown happens!

Sort it out now or they'll send in the heavies

... early in the morning.

 

Ah well, there's no come-back!

Oh good, no-one's responsible!

Ha ha! Management don't care!

... because the buck never stops!

Frustrated ;->

Today's Garfield on Yahoo! seemed appropriate:

A new low in student respect & intelligence: via our digital submission tool a file was submitted last night 5 days after the initial deadline. 20% per day penalty was advertised, so why bother?! The file was submitted by a certain student (let's call him "Dumbo") with a typed description labeling the file as having come from him. However the file itself was named with a different student's ID number (for the sake of argument, call him "Mother"). The file contains Mother's work and is identical to the file that Mother submitted 2 weeks ago! So the questions that immediately come to mind are:

1. Is Dumbo taking the piss?
2. Or is Dumbo so worryingly stupid that he thinks this is a good way to get some easy marks?!
3. And, how did Dumbo get hold of Mother's work? I seriously doubt that Dumbo's bright enough to hack into our system but dumb enough not to rename the file!

It makes one want to ask Dumbo very politely to cross the road in front of busy traffic, just to see if he will...

Shock! Horror! Final year student plagiarises dissertation ... no, it's not a just another Sun headline, it's real and we found the plagiarised work today (following a quick Google search.) Now to find that heavy book... Ready, aim, fire:- welcome to your academic misconduct tribunal!

Update: Not one, not two, but three plagiarised projects this year -- one swiped wholesale from the Internet <sigh>

Yesterday: Started with me upgrading the memory on a Sun server (why me? because I'm the only one in the School willing to do it and IT support don't), running around like a BAF to check on the 3 postgrads running my computer-assessed in-class tests for 200 students and shepherding our School seminar speaker from another institution (again, why me? not quick enough at stepping backwards in the intial line-up!) Insufficient coffee, many students giving increasingly pathetic excuses about why they missed their tests meant it was a crap day. Excuses:

• Dead uncle
• Dead family friend
• Car broken down on the way in (two incidents thereof)
• Sprained ankle playing football the day before
• Surgery -- signed-off for 2 weeks
• Flu
• Court appearance (another two incidents ... worrying!)
• Car accident
• Mental health
• Nose bleeds (seriously! Signed-off and everything!!)