Technical Issues archives

Due to some unannounced (to me, anyway) changes to the mail servers we use to send you important things like Learning Labs posting notifications and password reset help, we’ve been able to send you messages for the better part of the last few days (I’m not even sure when this started; my logs tell me nothing useful). I’ve rerouted mail to go through a different server. The problem is this is the server that AOL hates and won’t un-blacklist.

I’m going to try to find a better workaround. In the meantime:

• If you’re expecting a confirmation e-mail from the Learning Labs and you’re not getting it, e-mail me at help@stratepedia.org and I’ll confirm your account by hand.
• If you’re expecting a password reset code or Depot migration code and not getting it, e-mail me from the account you used to register and I’ll help you move forward.
• If you’re expecting notifications in the Learning Labs and not getting them, you’re probably just going to have to tie a string around your finger to check the group’s web page on a semi-regular basis. Sorry I can’t give you a better suggestion than that at the moment.

You could also try another e-mail account–for example, messages are arriving correctly to my ku.edu and mac.com accounts. If you’re on AOL and have an alternate, you might give that a try.

I’ll be doing some maintenance on the Learning Labs later this evening, around 10:00 Central Time. The site will be unavailable for approximately 30 minutes.

Update 10:35 PM: Everything’s updated and looks normal, as far as I can tell. Let me know if something looks awry.

KU’s IT people are going to be working on the campus network on Sunday the 30th. This will affect everything on Stratepedia. If something goes south we’ll do our best to let you know on our Twitter account.

NETWORK UPGRADE

WHEN: Sunday, December 30th from 12:01 a.m. to 12:00 noon (12 hours)

IMPACT: Off-campus access to all KU technology services (web pages,
email, Kyou portal, Blackboard, etc.) will be unavailable. On campus
access to the Internet and KU technology services will likely be
unavailable also.

IMPORTANCE: This is part of a major network project that will double the
campus’ capacity to handle incoming internet traffic, as well as enhance
the reliability of network security systems to protect KU’s data assets.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Mark, our new programmer, and I have finished some of the changes to Dossier people have been anticipating for awhile–namely, some different options to visualize data from an assessment. We’ll be moving these to the server sometime tomorrow morning evening. Dossier will be unavailable for roughly 30 minutes during this time.The new visualization allows you to toggle each question between a table view of data and a pretty bar chart. Down the road we’ll add other visual options.Mark is now working on the much-anticipated data import feature–stay tuned!

I am in the process of transferring the stratepedia.org domain to a new registrar. I’m down to the final step and plan to finalize the transfer beginning Friday evening. I won’t bore you with the details, but am telling you because it could lead to some downtime over the weekend on everything on Stratepedia. The last time I had to do this things went pretty smoothly, though.

I’m taking the calendar offline briefly this evening to install some requested updates. It will take roughly 45 minutes to complete–the calendar will be unavailable during that time but none of the existing data will be lost.

Update 5:24 PM EDT: Updates in place. Everything looks fine. Let me know if you have problems with the system.

Due to potentially nasty weather in Lawrence tonight, the downtime I mentioned previously has been postponed to Thursday, May 24 beginning at 5:30 PM. They promise to have things wrapped up by 2:00 AM the following Friday.

Sorry folks, we’re going to have another stretch of downtime next week. Everything at Stratepedia, as well as XtremeReading.org and clc.kucrl.org, will be affected. Note that the times below are central daylight times, though this will probably affect those of you on the west coast the most.

This outage is scheduled for Wednesday, May 23, 2007, to start at 5:30 p.m., and is to be completed no later than Thursday, May 24, 2007 at 2:00 a.m. During the outage the emergency generators at Carruth O’Leary Hall and Joseph R. Pearson Hall will provide power for emergency lights and other connected life safety equipment.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

RSS feeds are a handy way to get articles from your favorite blogs and news sites sent directly to you–no more hopping from site to site to see if there’s any new content. I could go further, but a really nice description has been written up by Stephanie Quilao in her own blog–see How to Explain RSS the Oprah Way. Or, if you’re more of an audiovisual learner, check out Lee LeFever’s RSS in Plain English.

So fire up your feed reader and subscribe to these handy Stratepedia RSS feeds:

• Stratepedia Blog (this site)
• Learning Labs Site News

More to come!

I’ve been given the following information, which unfortunately will affect everything on our servers. This is out of my control, and I apologize in advance for any inconveniences it causes.

Due to the construction near the stadium the voice (copper) and data (fiber optic) lines will be cut and then restored. The work will take place over the weekend of April 13-16 beginning on Friday evening 10PM and restored Monday 8AM. This is not an electrical power outage, only voice and data. All communications with the Joseph R. Pearson building will be severed during this period. It’s likely the data will be restored sooner than the voice service. However, weather and other contingencies may affect the completion time.