Hours and Availibility
I am available on campus in my office at 468 Logan 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
SAS Cellphone has had be taken in for repair. In the meantime, I have forwarded 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 started working for SAS Computing in Logan Hall during August of 2005. My direct supervisors are Al Matthews and John MacDermott. I am tasked with providing support for the faculty and staff of Logan Hall and 3619 Locust Walk. On July first 2006, I assumed the primary support role for the departments located in the building at 3619 Locust Walk. May 1 2007, I will work under the direction of Al Matthews as a member of the new "Public Computing" support group within SAS Computing. Additional duties will be to help configure and manage the classroom computers for the School of Arts & Sciences.
First Visit with the Easter Bunny
The Latest Mac...
I am proud to announce that on Monday September 10th, 2007 my wife, Marnie, gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Mackenzie Elle Watkins (Mac). Mac joined us at 4:50PM, weighing in at 7lbs 4oz and measuring 19.5" in length. Mac is doing fine, she is healthy newborn, doing newborn things (sleeping, nursing, crying).
Computing News...
New How-To - TrueCrypt ...
Learn how to secure your data on Windows 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 May 29, 2008. Test