Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Breakfast: oatmeal with diced organic pear, organic cinnamon, organic nonfat milk. To work. Reported a problem logging in to the SAA Staff Portal. They had recently (?) switched their authentication for it to Active Directory but there was no indication of the change on the login screen. Additionally, I discovered that Staff Portal passwords are now limited to 15 characters whereas Active Directory passwords are not, so now that I have set my Active Directory password (which I was forced to change due to strong password requirements), I can no longer log in to the Staff Portal. (The explanation for the problem: "Our IBM DB2 database limits passwords to no more than 15 characters long.") I was offered 2 solutions. (a) Change my Active Directory password so that it is 15 characters or less. However, I can't do this today like I'd prefer since UCSF strong password requirements for Active Directory prevent you from changing your password if you've changed your password within the past 8 days; I just changed mine today. I would prefer to change it right away so that I can make my most frequently used passwords the same so that they're easier to remember. (b) They can create a new Active Directory account with a different username and password for me to use solely to access the Staff Portal. But what's the point of using existing authentication if I'm going to require a new login and password?! Followup with student IM about email account. Discovered that MyAccess failed to accept an apostrophe when changing the password. That wouldn't be a problem if the password rules page told you that apostrophes were forbidden, but it doesn't. ucsfcomm Google Group maintenance. Calendar management, furlough planning. Followup with student AP about Droid email setup. Helped student BP with an email setup problem. Followup with student FP about an email setup problem. Short lunch: couscous and corn off the cob from the cafeteria, mini pretzels. Faculty awards database meeting with Sue A, Shannon W, Susie L, and Eric D. Sue gave me a cute 2-color pen of Japanese origin; I like it. On Wed Dec 30 at 12:34 AM I was sent an email from lstraining@ucsfmedctr.org with subject "You have been assigned the course Annual Infection Control Training." I replied with, "Hi, I believe I was sent this message by mistake. Can you please confirm this?" Following this there was some back-and-forth about whether I really needed to take it, and after some time I just got fed up with it all and took the training. Turns out they had no way to accurately determine who was legally required to take the training, so they made their best guess but didn't say they were guessing, so people like me who didn't need to take the training were told they needed to take the training, even after I contacted someone in training to ask. Schedules update for Lucia. Lots of catching up on email—around 50 items in my inbox. More laptop work for student CF: reinstalled Vista from scratch, then installed Sophos, SP1, and SP2. Drivers, Microsoft Update, Roxio, basic apps, and data restore are next. Snack: an organic fuji apple. To home. Bus 66 leaving 9th and Judah at 7:10 PM turned on Pacheco instead of Quintara—oops! Dinner at home with Patrick: fried rice with vegetables and firm tofu, hot water. Pantry organization project with Patrick: we selected some items to put into our new containers, then I labeled them. Stretches. Weight training: superslow hammer curl, crunch. Stretches. Late meal: all-organic chow mein noodle soup with mushroom broth, seaweed, corn off the cob.