Hours and Availibility
I am available on campus in my office at 468 Claudia Cohen Hall, Monday through Friday during the hours of 9:00AM - 5:00PM.
- Telephone: 215-898-0065 (Please leave your name and telephone # with all short messages)
- E-Mail: jasonrw (at) ccat.sas.upenn.edu
During work hours, I forward calls placed to my office phone, to my personal cellphone. If one were to call my office, my personal cellphone would ring. I never go anywhere without my personal cellphone... I love my iPhone, despite it's abhorrent battery capacity.
Pictures with Santa 2008
MCTS: Windows Vista Operating System...
I have recently earned a new certification "MCTS" from Microsoft by passing exam 70-620 "Configuring Microsoft Windows Vista Client". Passing exams from Microsoft and other IT vendors is a regular part of keeping my IT credentials fresh and standard to the industry. Future plans include upgrading my MCSA and MCSE certifications for Windows Server 2008.
Computing News...
Spam Shield...
SAS Computing has commissioned an appliance to act as a filter for SPAM destined for SAS user inboxes. The system stated out as an opt-in only service, but went "live" for all facstaff users on 13 November, 2008. Spam Assassin, the previous anti-spam technology, was retired at that time. More information on Spam Shield can be found at:
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/computing/help/spamshield
New Printer for the 237 Lab...
November 1, 2008: A new HP LaserJet 4015dx was installed in the Cohen Hall 237 lab. The new device replaced the tried LaserJet 4200dtn. A new host name and IP address was assigned to the new printer to ease the transition between the two devices. The device is available for use by the faculty & staff of the Classical Studies, Religious Studies, History & Sociology of Science, and Philosophy departments in Claudia Cohen Hall. Printing from computers outside of the lab is permitted, but must be set up manually. Neither Windows XP or Vista or Mac OS X has the driver software for the printer preinstalled with the operating system. The drivers can be downloaded from HP's web-site, but the download is large and time consuming, even at University WAN speeds. I would be happy to help anyone configure a connection to the printer from their laptop or office computer.
How-To: TrueCrypt ...
Learn how to secure your data on Windows, Mac and Linux computers by using the free, open-source program TrueCrypt. Data security and privacy is an essential consideration for all users
Mac OS X 10.5 'Leopard' ...
On October 26, 2007 Apple released the latest version of it's Mac OS X operating system, '10.5 Leopard'. Leopard brings new features to Mac OS, and is the first new version of OS X since Apple switched to the Intel platform. Among the new features included with Leopard is 'Time Machine', an image-based backup utility, and 'Spaces', an integrated multiple desktop system. These eatures are new to Mac OS X and not new to computing in general. Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista implements Time Machine in the form of 'Shadow Copies' and every window manager/desktop environment for BSD/Linux/Unix ships with a multiple desktop feature. Nice as these features are, they do not represent a compelling reason to upgrade an existing Mac to Leopard. Allocations Macs should not be upgraded in any way, doing so could cause complications in the normal support protocol. Like the Windows world, the latest is not the greatest, an operating system upgrade is a major change to the system. Many things could be negatively affected by an OS upgrade, ask the Windows XP users whom upgraded to Windows Vista. Windows jokes aside, please do not upgrade your allocations Mac to OS X 10.5. Personal and research-funded Macs fall at the descretion of the owning user. I can give best effort support to Leopard, as I have not much time with the OS myself. My SASC iBook will not handle Leopard, my personal MacBook Pro works fine with OS X 10.4 'Tiger', and my office Mac purrs along just fine with OS X 10.3 'Panther'. The largest bug I have noticed thus far with Leopard is it's lack of cohesion with the SASC 'AirSAS' wireless network. If the need to upgrade to Leopard is over-powering, use the 'Archive and Install' method of upgrading. I would not even bother trying to install Leopard on a non-Intel Mac. PPC-based Macs crawl along with Leopard installed, I tried for a day before it drove me crazy...
IP Telephone - ISC Networking and SAS Computing has given me one of the new Cisco IP phones for use in my office. This type of telephone uses the same data connections that e-mail and Internet traffic use. IP Telephony, as it is called, is the way voice communication will handled in the future. Two really great features of this phone system is e-mail-delivered voicemail and call forwarding. If any faculty or staff member leaves a voice mail at my phone, it is sent as an e-mail attachment to my SASC FacStaff account. I can also forward all calls placed to my office phone to any phone I choose. This means I am accessible anywhere to anyone, during normal business hours and my supported clients need only to know one telephone number, 215-898-0065. While at work, I have my office phone forwarded to my Penn cell phone.
Penn Toolbar - The folks over at the Penn Library labs created a Penn-centric toolbar for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Similar to the functionality that the Google toolbar may provide, the Penn toolbar gives quick access to University web-sites and resources.
Download and try it!
Windows Vista comes to Logan Hall - The Logan Hall 237 lab will host the first computers to Windows Vista. Four new Dell Optiplex 745 computers will replace the existing Optiplex GX-240s and Windows XP. The decision to proceed with Vista over Windows XP came from numerous tests performed with Vista in the SAS environment. I have been using Windows Vista in it's beta forms and release versions since August, 2006. Additionally, the new computers will also be equipped with Office 2007 Professional, 2 Gigabytes of RAM, 160 Gigabyte hard drives, CD/DVD creation tools, and (my favorite) front-accessible USB ports on the tower and LCD screens.
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) for Logan Hall and 3619 Locust Walk laptops. The AirSAS wireless network relies on a technology called DHCP to automatically provide IP addresses to client computers. I plan to adapt this same technology to the "wired" clients as well. Traditionally, IP address on PennNet are statically assigned. Each IP addresses is paired with the client computer. DHCP only pairs the client with an IP address for as long as it is needed and releases it for use elsewhere when no longer needed. DHCP is much more flexible in configuration, allowing the user to simply plug in a cable and obtain an IP address. Desktop computers will not have their addressing scheme modified. Static IP addresses make remote management much easier than DHCP assigned addresses. All laptops sold today are equipped with wireless networking. The need for users to rely on cabled network connections will become less apparent as time goes on.
This page was last modified on November 25, 2008.