Wednesday

Saw the digial copier tech working on one of our copiers at the end of the day on Tuesday. I asked if there was something I could help him do. He said the copier had quit sending page counts. We talked about subnets, firewalls, etc and I told him i would work on it Wednesday.

On Wednesday, I brought up the web interface for the copier and started going through the settings. Everything looked okay to me on the surface. I decided to do a line-by-line analysis of the configuration. Sure enough: smtp had been disabled, thus preventing the copier from sending email to anyone.

I changed that, and everything seems to be working fine (I scanned-to-email a document to myself).

On another note: the auditor returned the findings of our disaster recovery plan, and we scored 93%! That is excellent. There were three dinged areas, each of which is easily rectified: job descriptions need to be in the plan, cross-training for critical areas of management, and a written server recovery procedure.

Thursday

Had the November area tech meeting. We covered IDEAS, MyEvent updates, new wireless in Co-op main building, iPads and bulk purchasing apps, had a vendor discussion/presentation regarding maintenance and E-Rate. This was done over CIV with a direct connection to the vendor's system.

After the meeting, several techs stayed to work on disaster recovery and/or tech plans.

I adjusted the time and timer settings for our parking lot lights. i also installed a new access point in the "attic"

Friday's plan: upgrade the active directory on my 2003 servers in order to prepare for the move to the new 2008 server. Once that is done, I plan to fire up the new server and start moving data to the new box.

10/3/11 - 10/6/11

Monday - came to office until 10:30am then went home sick.

tuesday - Genoa Central middle school and elementary school video installs. Then, went to the high school to work on two video systems there. Reconfigured main DL for 100/Full connectivity and changed IP information on the new system for virtual field trip use (or class use via V2IU connection in Little Rock).

Wednesday - Attended ACOOP training on new DRP software from state. in the afternoon, installed the portable video unit for the co-op. Went to UACCH to help with that video unit install. Hit a few glitches there, but got them ironed out. Left UACCH with installer and headed to Nevada Schools. There, we installed the new video unit.

Thursday - Spent most of the day providing tech support to Fouke for a new server application install. Also handled email correspondence regarding video issues at Bradley. Scheduled the monthly area tech meeting. Talked with several vendors. Set up an on-site visit for Prescott on Friday after a meeting I have with a wireless (wifi, not cell) vendor. Installed a new network printer in the specialists' area. Hunted down a rogue wireless access point on the network. Well, "rogue" is a bit strong. It was one that had been misconfigured and I set it to right. Explored a couple of iPad apps for tech usage, but found them lacking (sorry, the names of the apps escapes me just now). Oh yeah, had to hunt down a telephone extension issue that turned out to be an issue with the placards we use to display people's extensions - a lot of troubleshooting and wire-moving for not, it seems. Emailed to several lists - cooptc, sys_admin, etc regarding various issues and topics. Experimented with various DHCP scenarios on our server. Researched various ISA 2006 settings and scenarios, user permissions issues, etc.

9/14-9/16 2011

Wednesday - Met with the Board of Directors regarding CIPA, Internet Safety, RUS Grant CIV system installs, monthly tech meetings, Website requirements, Disaster recovery training.

After the meeting, I went to Blevins to help with various network related issues.  We also tried to hunt down a rogue wireless device, but by then school was out.  I believe the device is a 'hockey puck' portable wifi spot that someone brought and plugged in to the network.  We will try again another day.

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Thursday - Met with Jeff Madlock of Hope Schools regarding disaster recovery testing, policy, Apple Lion server and other tech-related issues.

Also met with representatives from Howard Technology regarding a touch panel control unit for our conference rooms.  They will put together a quote and get back to me.  In the meantime, I will call in 2 or 3 other vendors for quotes as well.

Had some issues in the computer lab, so I spent the bulk of the afternoon ironing those out.  For the most part, Parallels would not print.  Installed correct network printer drivers on the machines and took other measures to help keep the lab up and running.  Mostly, I disabled some software updates and changed a few settings to help make the virtual environment more stable and efficient (memory settings, full-screen options, etc)

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Friday - Spent the day in Fouke.  We installed Server 2008 on two servers, created a secondary Domain Controller, and did some troubleshooting in a lab.  We had to make a few changes to the DHCP settings, and they will need to make some more as well, as the pool has filled up.  It is amazing how many devices they have!  Talk about tech in schools!  We also took care of some other network issues (DNS, subnets, etc)

Monday and Tuesday

Monday, I spent the morning teaching Principals and Instructional Facilitators how to use their new 4th Gen iPod Touches.  They all had or created accounts and downloaded a couple free apps.  We also played with the cameras, then they were turned over to the other presenters for Classroom Walk Through training (Teachscape).

The rest of Monday was spent catching up on things left since I had taken off the entire previous week.

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Tuesday, I worked at Bradley schools.  We had several things to take care of.

First, here is a repost of an article I wrote for TechBlog:

Inadvertent Email Rules

Came across a user that was receiving intermittent emails.  Some messages would come through and others would be directed to her "Junk Mail" folder.

 

The first place I looked (In Exchange) was under "Junk Mail Settings" and I looked through her Blocked Senders list.  The only one out of the ordinary was her own email address.  I removed that from the blocked list.

 

The next place I looked was her rules.  She had several set up to direct certain messages to junk, and for the most part, these were correct.  However, there was one rule that said "Any mail sent only to me, move to the Junk Mail folder."  There was the culprit (or one, anyway).  That rule essenatially said that if anyone sent a message to her and ONLY her, it was to be tossed aside.  Since many of the messages had been sent to multiple people, she would receive those.  Direct, one-to-one communications, however, did not make it to her inbox.

 

I deleted the errant rule.  I scrolled through the other rules, and found one more that might have been causing trouble, though the exact nature escapes me now.

 

When a user says that legitimate email is going to SPAM, JUNK, DELETED ITEMS, that is a good sign that the use has a rule being enforced that he/she did not actually want happening.  A little sluething, though, and hopefully you will uncover the bullying rule (and then delete that rule!).

 

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After that, the Superintendent asked me to provide testing for their Continuity of Operations Plan.  As it turns out, the tech and I had done an 'inadvertent' test last May, in which we realized the backup we were doing was corrupt.  We had a failing test, monitored the situation and adjusted.

So, today, I ran a "loss of data" test, and the backup data was restored perfectly! Excellent!

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Next on the list, I ran the Data Doctor on the locally installed Accelerated Reader program in order to prep the data for the move to the cloud.  The district is moving their AR to the online version.  One less thing to manage and worry about.  We hit a couple snags, but eventually zipped up the data and uploaded it to their site.  Now, we just wait for the good word.

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While uploading the data, the tech and I took some RAM over to the business lab in order to install it in a couple of computers that gone awry.

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The last item on the agenda was to download and install Vexira antivirus.  They have a very cool central management system and once we figured out what we needed to do in order to get things rolling, it was actually FUN to watch the software getting pushed out to the workstations on the network.

Monday

Spent much of the time doing general daily office stuff (troubleshooting, cleaning spam filter, email, phone calls, etc).  I took several calls from a couple of techs working on their technology disaster recovery plans and continuity of operations plans.