Forwarded message: >From vanhoose Tue Oct 5 11:20:38 1993 Date: Tue, 5 Oct 93 11:20:37 -0400 From: Todd E. Van Hoosear <vanhoose> To: todd Subject: Union Weekly Reports X-Status:Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 09:30 EDT To: todd@cl-next4.cl.msu.edu From: "Todd.VanHoosear" <13501TEV@msu.edu> Subject: Weekly Reports
----------( Forwarded letter 1 follows )---------------------------------------- Date: Monday, 18 May 1992 9:33am ET To: Marilyn.Everingham, David.Olmstead, Christa.Rennells, Chris.Slabbekoorn, Sandeep.Dhameja, John.Cassidy, Terry.Ziemniak, Richard.Hibner From: Todd.VanHoosear Subject: Weekly Reports
I just wanted to answer a somewhat humerous but definitely insightful weekly report. John summed up pretty well what have been most of our experiences with the Union. Perhaps we can use these suggestions to figure out what we need to concentrate on at the Union. Almost all of these issues can be dealt with effectively in one way or another. Here's a summation of what we can learn to help better ourselves, based on some of John's observations:
1. MS-WORD: Margins, drawing lines (with Format Paragraph), importing and exporting files (MS-WORD 5.0, MacWrite).
2. DIPLOMACY: How to politely tell a student that they have completely screwed up a document and need to correct it line by line (my personal favorite).
3. WORD PERFECT: The block command, reveal codes.
4. DIPLOMACY (again): How to be sensitive when a student loses an entire document because they hadn't saved it once in the two hours they were in the lab (another personal favorite).
The second and fourth issues can both be eliminated if we start reinforcing certain computing basics in the labs. That is what I am attempting to do in the documentation that I am creating for the microlabs. In the meantime, you can do your best to help the situation by verbally reminding users to save their files regularly and to use their own disks.
In regards to the Mac server icons not appearing: This is a common problem in the labs. People can come in and close the connection (by moving the icon to the trash). If you do not see an icon, here's what you can do:
TOP TEN THINGS YOU CAN DO WHEN YOU DON'T SEE THE MAC FILE SERVER ICON:
10. Keep sending the users to different computers until they give up and decide to go home.
9. Tell the user that, due to certain fluctuations in sun spot activity, our up-link with the Internet satellite system is temporarily down.
8. Keep giving the user different system disks until SOMETHING works.
7. Look knowledgeable but confused and say: "Wow, In the __ months that I've been working here, I've NEVER seen any network problems in our Microlabs!" Try not to laugh.
6. Tell the user to call someone over at the Computer Center (I'm not encouraging this by any means! - Todd).
5. Pretent there are some problems with the printers (this shouldn't be too difficult) and that you are hard at work trying to fix them. See if the user asks a monitor for help. See if the monitor bounces the question back on you (or another consultant).
4. Tell the user to go to a REAL computer lab.
3. Tell the user that the Macintosh computer is THE easiest computer to learn how to use in the entire world, snicker a bit, and slap a manual in their hands (don't forget to keep track of it, though).
2. (SERIOUSLY) If the system loads properly and you get to the finder and there is no file server icon: Go to the Chooser, click on the Apple Share icon, click on the CL Microlabs Apple Talk Zone, double- click on the appropriate server. You'll get a dialog box prompting you for the password. If there are dots where the password should be, then just click OK. If there are no dots, then someone has removed the password. Chris Beecher, the lead monitor, will set a Mac up this week for consultants to use to recopy the necessary system files back onto that system disk. We can use this computer to reinstall the software that has the preset password. Anyway, after you click okay, make sure that the file server is set up to open with user name AND password. However, if there is no icon, you problem may require a different solution.
1. (SERIOUSLY) Go to the control panel, go to the network icon, and make sure that the Mac is configured for ETHER TALK, and NOT built-in. Then, go to MacTCP and make sure that it is set to ETHERNET. Then try step 2 again.
Good luck!
:) Todd (: