Backtracking to Thursday...
It started off as a normal day. Then I went to work. (Okay, okay, that doesn't leave a lot of time for normal day). At about 11:45am or so, there was a power surge. We lost power for about a second, maybe two, but it was enough to cause craziness for the ITS Service Desk.
Fortunately the computers by the window are surge protected and were unaffected. Unfortunately, I was not sitting out there. I had to wait for the computer to reboot (at least I didn't have any Remedy tickets open at the time). So when I thought the computer was done rebooting, I took a call as I was opening the basic applications: Remedy, PH (directory server client), and Internet Explorer. Those took a really long time to load for some reason, I felt bad for my caller because s/he had to wait for me to load those before I could officially help her/him.
Then there were a lot of calls. Mostly people needing to be forced off of SIS. By the way, did I mention that it was the second day of the freshmen registration?
(Tangent to explain SIS: SIS is the system that holds student information. The system is slightly wacky in a few ways. (1)Users have to change their passwords every 90 days or else they get revoked. (2) Users have to type exit or logoff (not sure which since I don't use it) everytime they want to quit the program. They can't just click the x or anything otherwise the system thinks they are still logged in. If that happens they need a force log off.)
So because of registration, lots and lots of people accessing SIS when the power surge happened. Therefore lots and lots of people who needed to be forced off. Now, technically, anything dealing with SIS, we have to deal with the account holder. However, sometimes they have student assistants who use it too or shared accounts. So my second call after the power surge was from one person in one department. She gave me her information and then asked if she could give the user IDs of all the other people who needed to be forced off. I told her that technically I needed to speak with the account holder, but given the circumstance and the fact that a force log off doesn't change the account (like an unrevoke does), I would do it. So that took a good 5 minutes, perhaps more. And for about the hour after that, the majority of our calls were force log offs. When Ronak came in, he checked voicemail and we had eleven new messages, all of them force log offs. After about 45 minutes, Jim told us that Ops was just going to do a mass force log off. So that took care of that for the most part. I stayed at work until 5 because Jeff needed to work on some project and Dan wasn't coming in. What "scares" me about what happened is that Steve said it's going to BUSIER during fall quarter.
The majority of the calls I took were about incoming freshmen trying to get their e-mail accounts. The idiots at summer advising told them that they should do it right away. Actually, they can't until after they've registered for a class. Supposedly a day after (more on this when I move to today).
After that I went to pick up my vaccum (still in my trunk I might add) from Sears and then I came home and basically vegged for the next 3 hours. I was planning on doing my Sociology reading/studying but I was just so tired. I tried to go to sleep except I couldn't because I was too damn hot. I just can't win.
Anyway, on to today
Work started off busy. Key Server went down. Key Server is necessary to run some programs, like some Adobe ones. So had some people calling about that. Also said that there were some problems with POWER (online registration) for people off campus. Which meant that nearly every freshman registering could have been affected. Key Server got fixed, POWER didn't.
Then at about 10:50am or so, I got a call from a user who got an e-mail from admin@calpoly.edu saying her account was going to expire and to see an attachment for details. My virus alert went off but I checked her out, and she was fine so I asked her to foward it to us. I checked out the message and it was obvious-to-anyone-who-has-gotten-spammed/virussed-before that it was not legitimate. E-mail the user back saying that it wasn't legitimate, to stop attempting to open the file (which she said she was doing on the phone). Then I got another call from someone about the same message. Steve saw the message on my screen mentioned that it was familiar and then went into his meeting with Terri (big boss of the Service Desk), some other ITS people, Jeff and Joel since it was 11. This left me and Ronak to answer phones and Jim (supervisor). Then it started.
That fake e-mail got sent out to a lot of people apparently. I myself got about 8 people reporting it and 3 wondering why their account was going to expire. And that was just me. Ronak go some too, overall I think we had at least 15 calls about it. My tickets all looked the same, I abused the copy/paste fucntions ;-). Now also throw in parents/incoming students calling about activating their accounts. Oh, and before Steve went into his meeting, we learned that it is actually TWO business days after registering that an incoming student can activate their account completely. So we had some people who waited a day call who could get into the portal but not into OpenMail.
To add insult to injury as the saying goes, Ronak left at 12. Jim left at about 11:55 for lunch because the meeting seemed to be over. However, they did seem to brake up but Steve was still talking to people. As were Jeff and Joel but they weren't going to answer calls. I was by myself answering calls for a good 40-50 minutes. At some points I hung up with one person and immediately answered the next call. I had some down minutes in which I tried to write up all my calls but it wasn't until about 12:45 or so Steve joined me answering calls (where upon I let him answer so I could do some write ups) and 12:50 when I had no open tickets for 2 hours.
At that point, I grabbed something to eat, and started to cram for my Sociology test. The one that I had in 40 minutes. I got off at 1 (thank goodness) but I stayed around until either Andrew or Matt arrived so Steve wasn't by himself. (See? I'm the nice one ;-) ). As I was cramming, I realized that I was screwed because I recognized very little. Matt and Andrew got in around 1:12 or so. I let them know what was going on and then left to cram in my Sociology room. Once there I quickly went through the practice exam remembering last minute that all of those questions would be on the test. I actually got most of those right. Too bad I didn't remember which ones I got wrong or what the right answers were for them by the time I got to them on the test. Once again I was the last one there, but staying over by only by 20 minutes this time. There's this one girl in there that I don't like on principle: she came into the test late and was one of the first ones to leave. She was in my English class last quarter too. She was only in class about a third of the time and managed to pull off a B. I got the same fucking grade and put in at least twice the work. (According to her group members, one of which was roommates with one of my group members. We had a whole discussion on it instead of working one of the many times). But I'm not bitter, really.
Which Brings us to now and later
Anyway, that's all over. It's now 10:26pm (I had started this entry at 3:56pm) and I just recently got home from one of my relaxing things: Math Club movie night. There was five us for the most part. We watched Die Another Day and then not really Mission: Impossible but mostly talked during the latter.
Tomorrow night is Bridget's party. It's watching Office Space and fruit smoothies. It's because she's coming to visit and also it's her birthday on Sunday. And on Sunday I'm meeting my family in Santa Barbara to celebrate my mom's and my sister's birthdays. Which reminds me, I need to find out the details of our meeting and also ask Jessica and/or Justin to please bring my CD/DVD player. I don't want to sound rude, but I've gotten kinda excited about it. Anyway, in between all that I get to study for a Psychology test, read a Sociology artice and write a Sociology article. All due Monday. This is where time management comes in handy. Boy do I wish I had that skill ;-)