Daily
Bulletin

Midnight Sun, UW's solar car, is in third place among 28 cars that will race the final leg of the American Solar Challenge today. Cars are expected to reach the finish line in Claremont, California, around midafternoon, Waterloo time. Leading in the race after 10 of its 11 days are cars from the University of Michigan and the University of Missouri at Rolla; UW's car is next, and Ontario's Queen's University is fourth.

Thoughts after some time away

And let me thank Avvey Peters and Barb Elve for putting out the Bulletin reliably each morning while I was away.

Over the past month I've been to Minneapolis (where I managed to miss the fireworks display celebrating the 150th anniversary of the University of Minnesota), I've made my first visit to Mackinac Island, and I've spent some time at my beloved Chautauqua. Highlights there included moonlight on the lake, a concert by a saxophone sextet, strawberry ice cream, and a series of talks by the exciting theologian John Dominic Crossan.

A feature of the lecture program at Chautauqua last week was a talk by Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Ellia, the central figure of the biggest scandal in American academe for a long time. He admitted in June that he had consistently lied about his past career, claiming that he had served as a paratrooper in Vietnam. In fact, during the Vietnam War he was a history instructor at the United States Military Academy. Authorities at Mount Holyoke College, where he's a history professor, are now dealing with the controversy. At Chautauqua, Ellis alluded to it only briefly, talking instead about the great men of the American revolution.

For me, all too soon, it was back to Waterloo and back to work. The campus hasn't changed too much in my absence, except for some landscaping work at the site of the co-op and career services building, where it's now clear how visitors will get a more welcoming vista as they arrive on campus.

During my absence I missed the Canada Day party. I missed the spectacular crane-raising over the CEIT construction site. I missed several days of breath-squeezing smog. I missed midterms. I missed the historic rapprochement between Canada's Anglicans (meeting at UW) and Lutherans (meeting at WLU). But I didn't miss the Sircam worm computer virus, which has so far produced at least 50 messages to clog up my e-mail. More about that in a moment.

2,500 students register through Quest

A flame-war that's sprung up in the newsgroup uw.general might give the impression that Quest is held together with chewing gum and coat-hanger wire. In fact, things are going well, says Jay Black, associate provost (information systems and technology): "We're making a large number of changes to our administrative business processes at the same time as we're going live with a huge new information system. We've successfully steered around many, many potential disasters to which other universities have been subject. We have some issues we're addressing, but so far, they have all been in the category of 'anticipated, unexpected' events, that is, we knew we would have some minor problems, but we just didn't know what. The entire extended project team has done a fantastic job and deserves a terrific round of applause."

David Mason, project manager for the Student Information Systems Project, says that at worst, there have been "some initial challenges", most of which are now fixed. Yesterday he issued a "status update" on Quest's first week:

The first two days were set aside for students to set their password and determine their enrolment appointment. Enrolment appointments began on July 18. The use of appointments is standard practice at most universities that use this kind of technology. It allows us to give students priority access based on their seniority or other criteria. We are monitoring the load and performance of the technical infrastructure and have initially decided to spread the load over several days. Future appointment scheduling strategy will take into account experiences this term. . . .

Some students have found that the 5 hour appointment period is insufficient time to complete their class selections, particularly if they need to attend class during the appointment period. In addition, we have had some service interruptions and problems with requisites that impeded the enrolment process. Therefore, if you were not able to complete class selection for Winter 2002 during your initial appointment period you will be happy to know that open appointments on Quest have been scheduled from 8:30 to 4:30 on July 26, 27, 30, 31, August 1, 2 and 3. . . . If you have successfully completed your class selection for Winter 2002, no further action is necessary.

Three technical issues have caused some confusion and delays during the first week. Firstly, large numbers of students setting passwords on the central authentication system (UWdir) at 8:00 a.m. on July 16 uncovered a software bug that had been present for a couple of years. It has been addressed.

There are also some short delays in the central authentication service, so that password changes may not be available to myQuest for up to 60 seconds. This has caused confusion for students who set their password and immediately try to logon to myQuest, only to be told that their password is incorrect. We are looking at improving performance in this area, but everyone is still advised to wait a few extra seconds after setting passwords before entering myQuest.

Another technical issue arose on Wednesday evening, when it appeared that the system was slow or unavailable. That issue was resolved by making a change to the configuration of the application server around 1:00 p.m. last Thursday. Those who were affected by the problems on Wednesday night were given a new appointment on Saturday. . . .

These issues were difficult to uncover until we could see larger loads on the system starting last week. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by these problems.

After some initial challenges, the system appears to be running much smoother. As of 3 p.m. Tuesday, 2,561 students have used the myQuest system to enroll in 9,544 courses. These students have also been enrolled by the Registrar's Office in 3120 additional courses either auto-enrolled as core courses or entered as overrides on requisites. . . .

We thank everyone for their patience during this period of transition.

Hi; how are you? Virus here

The current virus surfaced last week. Like most of the recent infections on the Internet, it operates through the Microsoft Outlook e-mail program. Like most such viruses, it sends copies of itself to addresses lifted from the Outlook address book. "Hi! How are you?" it begins. "I send you this file in order to have your advice." But this time there's a new twist: the attachment that's mailed out is a random file from the user's hard drive. That offers the potential for personal embarrassment or, in an industry setting, a leak of confidential information.

Virus background Sensible Security Solutions Geek.com ZDNet FTMarketWatch

Kohli said yesterday that she's received many copies of the virus herself and is kept busy deleting them. But more seriously, the central computers that act as mail servers for the university are getting clogged with thousands of virus messages, she said. In addition, many people on campus keep their local inbox on a network server. A Norton anti-virus program runs on those servers and is supposed to "quarantine" viruses as they arrive and are opened. However, with so many viruses arriving, the servers could run out of space for stashing the quarantined files. If the flood keeps coming, there's a real possibility of a server just crashing, Kohli warned.

Her advice for individual users is the same as always: the one way to avoid getting your machine infected by a virus is not to open suspicious attachments that come by e-mail. "When you receive e-mail with an attachment and it has an extension of .exe or .vbs, please do not open it.

"We are finding, however, that many of the viruses now circulating are of type '.doc.com' with an attempt to make people think this is a Word file. There are other file extensions being used as well. The best thing to do is not to open any attachment. If it came from someone you know, send them an e-mail asking if they intended to send you an attachment. And finally, please make sure your virus protection is up to date."

Positions available Staff jobs in this week's Positions Available list from the human resources department: Secretary, school of architecture, grade USG 3 Development officer, annual fund, office of development and alumni affairs, grade USG 10 Executive researcher/assistant, Federation of Students, grade USG 6 Chemical technician, earth sciences, grade USG 5 Administrative secretary, co-operative education and career services, grade USG 4 School information coordinator, school of planning, grade USG 4 Computer support specialist, plant operations, grade USG 7/8 Library assistant, library, grade USG 6 Assistant to staff supervisor, housing and residences, UW Place, grade USG 4 Cleaning services staff/housekeeper, housing and residences, Villages Cleaning services staff/janitor, housing and residences, Villages Professional program graduate secretary, school of accountancy, grade USG 4 Operations assistant, co-operative education and career services, grade USG 4 Temporary position: food services assistants, Conrad Grebel College Building serviceperson II, upholsterer, plant operations Fuller information about the jobs is available on the human resources web site.

And a little of this and that

Six students registered in the Certificate in University Teaching program will present the results of their research work this morning, in a session that runs from 9:30 to noon in Math and Computer room 5158. Presenters include Adrienne Eastwood, on "Undergraduates' Perceptions and Expectations of Higher Education: Implications for Teaching", and Sabile Fityani-Trimm, on "The Effectiveness of Groupwork for Chemical Engineering Education". Everyone is invited to attend. A second session of papers will be presented August 8 at the same place and time.

A student recital -- details unknown, at least to me -- is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. today in the chapel at Conrad Grebel College.

PhD student Khairiyah Mohd-Yusof, of the department of chemical engineering, will defend his thesis this morning at 10:00 (Engineering II room 3324). Thesis title: "Development, Analysis and Comparison of Connectionist Models for Real Time Optimization". (Usually these notices of thesis oral defences appear in the Gazette, but there are no more Gazette issues this summer -- so watch for more PhD orals to be listed in the Bulletin in the next few days.)

The student awards office will be closed all day today, reopening tomorrow.

Tomorrow brings Customer Appreciation Day at the UW Shop, bookstore and Techworx outlet in South Campus Hall, with 25 per cent off the prices of "regular-priced merchandise" and general books. The stores will be open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Also tomorrow: open house as the Shad Valley program comes to an end for this year. The young people who have spent the past month as UW-based Shads will show off what they've done and created. The open house will run from 1:30 to 4:00 tomorrow at Conrad Grebel College, with "variety night" to follow at 8 p.m.

It isn't exactly hockey season, but here's news from the athletics department: "Ex-Warrior forward Sean Fitzgerald has signed a one-year contract with the Asheville Smoke of the United Hockey League. Asheville is located in North Carolina. Sean spent the past four years at Waterloo and was a leader both on and off the ice for the Warriors. Says Fitzgerald: 'I am extremely excited about this move up into the professional hockey world. After four years of university I am ready for the next step in my career. This is going to be a very exciting season for me.'"

And a Bulletin reader kindly sends this note: "Neil Arya, who works as a physician at health services a couple of days a week, recently addressed the UN session on small arms on behalf of Physicians for Global Justice. In his address he noted that while it was sensible for the session to focus on the problem of small arms in those parts of the world where armed conflicts are going on, there are important public health worries that attend the availability of such weapons even in societies which are economically advanced and at peace."

CAR

Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
credmond@uwaterloo.ca | (519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
| Yesterday's Bulletin
Copyright © 2001 University of Waterloo