Survey

How much of your annual $800 STAP funds have you used so far?

All of it
More than half
Less than half
None

Results from last issue's survey question: If you use alternate transportation in your daily commute, do you use:

There were 26 responses: 9 take the train/bus, 10 ride their bikes, 2 walk,
and 5 carpool.

Staff Profile

Russ Allbery

Russ Allbery came to Stanford as a student in 1993. He started working for IT Services (née ITSS) after receiving his M.S. in 1997.

How would you describe your current job responsibilities?

I'm the technical lead for the infrastructure side of the Unix Systems group. What that means is that I do architecture design, set policy, work on projects, and solve hard problems around all of the campus computing infrastructure that runs on Unix, including Kerberos, WebAuth, AFS, email, and many other services. I'm also the lead campus Kerberos developer and administrator, our liaison to the rest of the AFS community, and the developer for much of the infrastructure we run in-house.

Which aspects of your job do you enjoy the most?

I think there are two that stand out. First, Stanford in general and my group in particular is an amazing, positive, exciting work environment. We have a team of smart, technically-savvy people who all want to do the right thing and who care about the University and the bigger picture and aren't just collecting a paycheck. It's wonderful to work for an organization where dollars aren't the be-all and end-all of everything.

Second, and related, Stanford gives back to the community rather than just consuming and lets its staff be part of that. I've been able to contribute back to the free software community many of the tools and documentation that I've developed and have been able to participate in major free software projects as part of my job here, without the constant distraction of NDAs, contracts, and distrustful secrecy. When I write something useful, Stanford lets me share it far and wide and help other people solve the same problem rather than locking it up in a box as a trade secret.

What did you do before you came to Stanford?

Before I came to Stanford, I graduated from Yuba Community College, which despite being in a depressed area and carrying the load of remedial education from suffering high schools has a fantastic math and science faculty who I remain in touch with to this day. I transferred to Stanford as a junior, got my undergraduate and graduate degrees here in CS, and went to work for Distributed Systems Operations immediately thereafter. Apart from a few summer and consulting jobs (most interestingly doing external tech support for SGI), my entire career has been at Stanford.

What do you like to do when you're not at work?

I'm actively involved in the free software community and wear a lot of hats there (Debian developer, OpenAFS gatekeeper, INN lead developer, Usenet and NNTP standardization participant, maintainer of a variety of software packages), and that takes up quite a bit of time outside work. Apart from that, I love to walk (quickly), play volleyball and table tennis, and read, mostly science fiction and fantasy but other things as well. I write reviews of most of the books that I read and am always glad to talk about interesting books. I also spend usually a few hours a night doing a combination of fiction writing and free-form role playing as part of a group that's been working together for about ten years now.

What is your favorite movie, book, song?

I don't watch that many movies and don't tend to have persistent favorites. The best one I've seen recently was Serenity, although I thought the Firefly series itself was better.

For books, the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons and anything by Guy Gavriel Kay probably top the list, although there are so many to choose from. Geoff Ryman's Air is the best book I've read recently.

I don't have many specific favorite songs, just a taste for enough bad popular 1980s and 1990s music that I fail to meet quality music appreciation standards in almost any discussion.

Staff Happenings

Comings and Goings

Bill Heiser has recently accepted the role of Program Manager for the Disaster Recovery project. Bill has done a great job leading prior projects, including Change Management and Enterprise Monitoring. Bill is now in the process of transitioning into this new role, and he is working closely with Steve Jung, Steve Loving, and John Freshwaters as well as various clients and vendors to successfully complete the project.

Kathy Lucas has recently accepted the position of Sr. Systems Analyst within the Shared Application Services team. Kathy will continue to be closely involved with the Pinnacle team and will serve as a business analyst and product manager for various other applications including time-tracking, Remedy, etc. Kathy will also collaborate with workgroup managers in identifying and reporting key metrics.

Please join me in welcoming Kathy and Bill into their new roles.

- John Freshwaters
Shared Application Services

The following people have joined Information Technology Services. Welcome!

  • Donna Cummings (Joyce Dickerson, Project Management Office)
  • Kevin Szady (Joyce Dickerson, Project Management Office)
  • Kathryn Osawa (Joyce Dickerson, Project Management Office)
  • Kathy Baker (Joyce Dickerson, Project Management Office)
  • John Robertson (Steven Swinkels, Shared Application Services)

its in bits welcomes more detailed employee news submissions from all staff. Please submit to itsinbits-submissions@lists.stanford.edu

Technology Training Courses

Seats are still available for the following IT Services Technology Training class the week of May 15:

  • Access Level 1 (ITS-1711), Monday, May 15, 9:00–4:00, $275
  • FileMaker Pro Level 2 (ITS-1803), Monday, May 15, 9:00–4:00, $275
  • Using Technology to Manage the Ever-Increasing Workload at Stanford (ITS-0801), Monday, May 15, 1:30–4:30, $150
  • Excel Charting from A–Z (ITS-1130), Tuesday, May 16, 9:00–4:00, $275
  • Explore techport.stanford.edu Open Lab (ITS-0601), Wednesday, May 17, 9:00–12:00, free
  • Access Level 2 (ITS-1712), Thursday, May 18, 9:00–4:00, $275
  • IT Services Site Training (ITS-8301), Thursday, May 18, 1:00–4:30, free
  • Excel Level 3 (ITS-1125), Friday, May 19, 9:00–4:00, $275
If you are interested in signing up for a course, please register by Monday, May 8. Classes with low enrollments may be cancelled one week in advance.

More information on courses, registration, and training is available at the Technology Training Services site.

- Phyllis Olrich
Client Support; Technology Training Services

IT Employment Opportunities

There were two additions to the IT Services job requisition postings for this edition.

Req.#010355—Computer Information System Analyst, 100% FTE continuing position, Range 4P2, Maria Maravilla, Manager.

Req.#010356—Computer Information System Analyst, 100% FTE continuing position, Range 4P2, Maria Maravilla, Manager.

Provides standard contract desktop and local area network support and analysis to university departments. The CISA serves as a technical expert regarding all aspects of desktop computer support. This position is responsible for responding to customer calls, troubleshooting, resolving problems, and answering questions related to network connectivity, software, and hardware.

To view the complete listings or to apply for a position, visit the StanfordJobs web site at: jobs.stanford.edu.

There are other open Information Technology positions at Stanford. To see what other opportunities exist on campus, link to the full list of open positions from: itss.stanford.edu/staff/itssjobs.html

Quote of the Week

"In any organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone."

- John Kenneth Galbraith

News

A Note from Bill

Last Thursday, President Hennessy gave his annual speech to the Academic Council. While he focused on interdisciplinary studies in the Arts, he also stressed the interdisciplinary nature of most research and teaching going forward. This new era of research and teaching is largely collaborative and presents a unique series of challenges to Stanford and IT Services.

Across the University, the schools are largely independent, as they are at most of the large, prestigious research universities. Over the years, most have acted independently to perform exceptional research and teaching. However, as the evolution of research moves into ever more interdisciplinary areas, the ability to independently do meaningful work in silos diminishes. In the twenty-first century, knowledge and human understanding will be advanced through collaborative efforts.

Stanford has identified four major collaborative arenas for research. The first is biomedical sciences and human health; the second is energy and the environment; third is international relations and world peace; and the fourth is the arts—not only as an integrative paradigm for increasing human understanding, but also as a creative catalyst for research and teaching across all of the other disciplines.

IT Services is in an analogous position to the University. It has historical workgroups and organizations that have functioned independently, much as the schools have in the past. However, as technology advances and services become more complex, these independent silos become harder to maintain. We now have interdependent offerings that include, for example, net-to-jack/switch and involve Communications, Networking, CRC, and others. Our clients need services that work together, and this trend towards integrated services will become even more pronounced over the next three years.

In order to be successful, we need to find ways to communicate better across our workgroups and organizations. We also need to find new ways to be more creative. Our challenge is to look for improvements that allow us to spend less of our time and resources on “keeping IT running” and contribute in new and collaborative ways to supporting the key mission of Stanford. We need to help faculty, students, and staff leverage their time so that they can bring to life the vision that President Hennessy has laid out for us. Each day we need to think: how can we help the entire community of Stanford achieve ever more excellence in all that it does?

The first step is to know what our clients need to do. That means listening more closely. Then, we need to constantly ask: how can we challenge IT Services and ourselves to be a creative catalyst in this new vision of Stanford?

- Bill Clebsch
IT Services

Usability: Three Things To Help You Get Started

Lately, there's been a lot of talk in IT Services about usability. As the "user interface guy" in the Project Management Office, this strikes me as a good thing. Teams in IT Services are focusing more than ever on the user experience of their products and services.

Usability testing is often the only way for us to know if our products and services are easy enough for our clients to use. If you've thought about running a usability test for your product, here are three things to consider:

1. Write a test plan beforehand. This will help you identify the areas of your product that you think will be most problematic for your users. Usability tests can quickly go down an unexpected path when users begin to focus on an area of the product that you're not interested in testing. Knowing what you want to test beforehand will help you avoid this situation and help you get the most bang for your usability testing buck.

2. Find a good usability test moderator. The moderator is the person who sits next to the user during the test. (S)he is responsible for explaining the process, making the user feel comfortable, and guiding them through the test plan. The quality of your moderator's skills will have a huge impact on the quality of your test results.

One particularly important skill is knowing how to guide the user without asking leading questions. Even if you can't find an experienced moderator, don't let that stop you from running your test. Consider doing it yourself. A little practice goes a long way, so run through the test plan with your team members. Remember, it doesn't have to be perfect the first time. Some tests results are better than none.

3. After your tests, write an explanation of the results. Don't let all of your hard work go to waste. Sharing test results with your team is the best way to ensure that the usability issues you uncover will be resolved. Your Project Manager remembered to schedule time to make changes after the usability tests, right? Your test results will also be useful for people outside of your team. The results from usability tests are often a good indicator of what areas of your product or service will require the most support. Consider discussing the test results during a presentation or share the results with the managers in Help Desk Services. The more IT Services knows about the usability of your product or service, the better prepared we'll be to deliver the best user experience possible. Better user experiences equal higher client satisfaction.

Brad Lauster works in the Integration and User Experience group, part of the Project Management Office. He is available to answer all your questions about usability testing, interaction, and user interface design.

- Brad Lauster
Client Support; Project Management Office

Access to Sweet Hall Computers Goes Remote

After nearly 20 years of occupancy of the second floor of Sweet Hall, IT services will be changing the way students and the Stanford community can access the cluster machines.

I'm told that in the mid-1980s, the initial set of systems on the second floor were CRT terminals connected serially to the DEC timesharing system (LOTS—the Low Overhead Timesharing System). That was the primary resource for Academic Computing at that time. Today, the most current systems in Sweet are dual processor, high-end Dell Workstations with 4GB of RAM. That's quite a long way from those original systems!

This evolutionary growth isn't going to stop now. IT Services will deploy new high-end servers in the basement machine room of Sweet Hall to continue to offer the Sweet Hall Cluster services in the way most of those systems are now being accessed: via remote login sessions. These new servers will be deployed on new gigabit switches in early summer and will be ready for Fall Quarter use.

While walk-up access to systems in Sweet Hall will no longer be available, students and others will still have walk-up access in a facility in the School of Engineering, which is in the planning phase. It will likely be smaller than the second floor of Sweet, but the majority of the newest systems will find a new home in the School of Engineering later this summer.

If you have questions or comments about this change, feel free to send an email to sweetcluster@lists.stanford.edu The Sweet Hall Cluster web site also contains more information.

- Phil Reese
Client Support; Account Management

Survivorman Series

What would you do with no shelter, no food, no tools, and no fresh water?  You are alone in the wild, after an earthquake or a plane crash, for seven days with only your wits and endurance to sustain you.

Join the IT Services/Administrative Systems Emergency Response (ER) team for a brown bag lunch and viewing of the acclaimed Discovery Channel Survivorman series every second and fourth Monday of the month in the Forsythe Hall conference room (F-246). We will follow the presentation with a discussion and the twice-monthly planning meetings of our disaster emergency response units.

Each episode finds Survivorman Les Stroud abandoned in a remote location.  He carries little more than the clothes on his back and his cameras. Les must survive for a week without supplies and he has to film everything himself, lugging over fifty pounds of camera equipment the entire time. The Costa Rican rainforest, Arctic ice-flows, Georgian swamp, and the high Sonora desert are a few of the locales where Les has to overcome seemingly impossible obstacles.

The Survivorman series promotes simple survival skills and extraordinary outside-the-box thinking. The ER team has obtained a DVD copy of the entire first season of this series.

The first four showings for May and June will occur on:

  • May 8, 12:05 p.m., Forsythe 246; ER team meeting at 1:00 p.m.
  • May 22, 12:05 p.m., Forsythe 246; ER team meeting at 1:00 p.m.
  • June 12, 12:05 p.m., Forsythe 246; ER team meeting at 1:00 p.m.
  • June 26, 12:05 p.m., Forsythe 246; ER team meeting at 1:00 p.m.

Join us for a brown bag lunch, watch Les Stroud's remarkable survival adventures, and meet the members of your ITS/AS Emergency Response team. Find out about our disaster training and survival preparations.

- Tom Prussing
ITS/AS Emergency Response Team Leader

WebEx Changes

IT Services staff have been using WebEx software for a number of years to aid in providing technical support to our clients. IT Services have also allowed other campus users to utilize WebEx products under the terms of our agreement with WebEx.

Because of changing user needs and to meet client demand (especially faculty interested in collaborating with colleagues at other institutions or with distant students) for a more favorable pricing structure, Client Support has been working with WebEx to change our usage model from a "per minute" model to a "flat rate" model. Negotiations have concluded and the requisite paperwork is being processed by Procurement. We hope to have the new pricing model in place during the first week of May.

Rather than paying $0.26/minute to use the WebEx products (Support Center and Meeting Center are the two most commonly used), we have negotiated a flat rate of less than $40/month per named host. This will allow any "named host" (a fixed license assigned to those who "host" or initiate each meeting or support event), to use any of the aforementioned products with as many individuals as desired, for a flat rate of less that $40/month, with a six month commitment.

The price differential quickly becomes apparent: under the per-minute pricing model, a collaborative meeting using Meeting Center that involved one host and ten participants for one hour would cost $171.60 (eleven participants x 60 minutes x $0.26/minute). Under the new model, after paying the $240 for the entire six-month period, you could have as many Meeting Center sessions as you wanted, with as many colleagues as you wanted, for as long as you wanted. One 90-minute meeting with ten participants more than breaks even for the entire six month period.

Upon the conclusion of the contract modification, IT Services will be increasing marketing efforts about WebEx products and their availability on campus. We have a demonstration/Q&A session with WebEx staff scheduled for May 12 in Turing Auditorium to demonstrate the functionality and explain how to order this subscription service.

Sincere thanks to our Software Licensing team for all their help in negotiating and processing these imminent changes.

- Chris Lundin
Client Support; Help Desk Services

Update on the Receding Forest

Back in the January 11 issue of its in bits, I wrote that the next round of changes in the forest buildings, Birch and Acacia in particular, would happen in early summer. Plans, as they are wont to do, have changed. As always, there is a domino effect that controls the schedule.

The first domino in this chain will actually be the second floor of Sweet Hall, where the cluster of Unix systems will move to the basement. Once the floor is clear, the Design Institute, now housed in Birch, will move there. This is the second domino, and is likely to fall in late summer, possibly September. Once Birch is open, remodeling will commence to set part of it up for the Help Desk now in Acacia, and the remainder of the area as offices. This should be completed in early December, in time for the Acacia staff, along with some staff now in Laurel, to move to Birch. 

All of this work will be in preparation for a major construction project to build a cooling tower addition to the Cardinal Cogen plant. That project will commence in early 2007 and will result in the demolition of Acacia. The general contractor and some of his staff will use a few of the offices in Laurel, which will otherwise be almost uninhabitable due to the noise from the construction. The cooling tower project is scheduled to be completed in January of 2008.

And if you are wondering whether the cooling tower will affect the amount of parking in the lot between Acacia and Pine, the answer is most definitely yes; though how much remains to be seen. Stay tuned.

- Tom Goodrich
Client Support; Help Desk Services

If it's the Third Wednesday...

...it must be TIPS. For almost two decades, TIPS, the Team to Improve Productivity at Stanford, has met on the third Wednesday of the month. Originally begun to enable school and departmental staff to participate in the design and implementation of computer systems development, TIPS has become "the place to go" for a wide range of information of interest to administrative staff across the University. With coordination provided by IT Services, TIPS is often a target destination for those seeking input and participation in projects involving Stanford policies, systems, applications, interfaces, and workflow changes.

This year, a number of technology-related topics were presented at TIPS:

The February agenda included presentations on the Payment Card Industry and Customer Information Security Program (PCI–CISP) that is critical to Stanford's eCommerce efforts. A second topic at that meeting was Stanford's information security policy with special focus on the newly revised Administrative Guide memos relating to computing.

In March, IT Services provided information about our new IT Services Order Management site, the IT Self Help site, and Software Licensing's new Software at Stanford portal.

After opening the year in September, the Oracle Financials Team returned for an update in April with special focus on the new iOU reimbursements system. The agenda also included a PCard Update, the Oracle iProcurement (11.5.10) Upgrade, Oracle Reporting, and the Financial Training Curriculum.

Notes and handouts from these meetings are available at the TIPS web site.

This month's guests will be from the Vice Provost for Student Affairs Office with a special visit from Greg Boardman, the new Vice Provost for Student Affairs. The meeting will be Wednesday, May 17, in Hartley Conference Room, Green Earth Sciences Building. There will be informal networking over coffee and refreshments from 8:00 to 8:30 a.m. with the formal program running from 8:30 to 10:00 a.m.

IT Services staff should feel free to attend any TIPS meeting or to contact the coordinator about a topic they'd like to present to TIPS. TIPS meetings are open to anyone who wants to attend, and all are encouraged to subscribe to tips-all@lists.

- Jane Marcus
TIPS Coordinator; Process and Account Management

Holidays in April?

No, but I recently discovered some previously unreleased pictures from the 2005 ITSS Holiday Party hiding in my camera. Take a look and relive some memories of a holiday past.

- Cholada Chenhansa
Finance and Administration

Bush Swarmed at Spruce Hall

Surprise campus visit draws staff protest

Thousands gathered as the Queen Bee made a surprise visit outside Spruce Hall in late April. Startled residents called the authorities. "We knew something was in the air;" one said "the campus was abuzz for days."

The unruly mob was hauled away by the Stanford beekeeper and later released.

- The Editors

About its in bits

A regular summary of IT business, news about personnel, and pointers to other information of interest to IT Services staff. Coordinated, compiled, and published by the Communication Strategy and Standards Team. its in bits is published on the first and third Wednesday of the month.

Submissions are due by Noon on the Friday before the scheduled issue, to itsinbits-submissions@lists.stanford.edu for consideration. its in bits is distributed via email to its-all-staff@lists.stanford.edu and the new subscription list itsinbits-subscribers@lists.stanford.edu. People outside of IT Services can self-subscribe via majordomo.

The next its in bits will be published on Wednesday, May 17, 2006