Respecting the Video Pit
The SCCS Video Pit is a space filled with an awesome projector, multiple consoles and lots of games, all provided free of charge for the entire Swarthmore campus and cared for by a group of volunteers.
This morning I came down to the SCCS space to find the Video Pit completely trashed. The guitars and controllers were everywhere, batteries scattered on the floor along with some fragments of potato chips and unidentified plastic things. There was a broken swivel chair lying upside down at the bottom of the pit. On the table with the games (which was also a mess of batteries, instruction manuals, and controllers) I found a paper cup with something that looked vaguely like strawberry ice cream in it (don’t know how long that was there).
I cleaned up the equipment, vacuumed the floor, and will attempt to fix the chair once I find some superglue. I don’t really understand what could have happened to leave the guitars without their shoulder straps, the mic stand without the little plastic stand piece, and the drum set without its foam sign thingie (all these pieces were not gone, but scattered around).
I know not everyone who uses the pit leaves it trashed. But it seems that every time I come down for office hours on Sunday morning, it is a mess. I am asking that whoever is leaving stuff in disarray please stop, and everyone take a little more notice of how the space looks when you leave.
I became an SCCS admin because I like to do cool stuff with computers, not because I like to clean up other people’s messes. Again, the Video Pit is a communal space provided free of charge, and it deserves a lot more respect. Clean up after yourself! Try to leave the space in a better state than you found it. If conscience isn’t motivation enough, we do have cameras! We can do better than this.
Mailing Lists Fixed (Forever)
Some of you may have noticed some…irregularities with the mailing lists of late. We’ve been in the process of switching from our old dying server to a new one, and the mailing lists were one of the last things we moved, so there have been some issues associated with that. While we were moving it, we also ran into some unexpected problems, so there were some more urgent issues with that (i.e. all the lists stopped working).
If you sent mail between about 10pm and 1am, and it hasn’t gone through yet, odds are it was lost — especially if you got an error message in reply. Now, though, all should be working — if not, let us know ASAP at staff@sccs.
We know there’ve been a lot of intermittent problems with mailing lists over the past two years or so. They were all related to that crashy server; from now on, things should run more smoothly. (Fingers crossed.)
Wordpress MU sites will be unavailable for a bit
They should be up in a few hours, with all data intact. Any questions? Email staff at sccs.
EDIT: The sites should be back up; if they aren’t please make loud noises. The plugin for user-editable themes is coming soon!
Halo 3 ODST
Due to popular request (seriously, emailing staff@sccs works!) I’ve ordered Halo 3 ODST and it should be here by Tuesday. Keep the requests coming!
We’re (Done) Hiring
UPDATE: We’re done hiring for this semester. Welcome new sysadmins, and thanks to everyone who applied!
In the next couple of weeks, we’re going to be hiring new SCCS administrators. If you like playing around with linux, web administration, photography, etc., send us an email at staff@sccs.swarthmore.edu and we’ll organize an interview. To find out more about what we do here, check out our about page.
What the Party Looked Like (or, Alex finds his SD card reader)
Our party was an unqualified success. There was pizza, there was Beatles rock band, and there were more people down here than I’ve ever seen. As proof, I offer these pictures (which were actually taken after pretty much everyone left):
What The Spaces Look Like (Or, Dougal Plays With A Camera)
One of the most comfortable couches on campus. No lie.
Those are the shiny new CS-department reject monitors, instead of the prehistoric CRTs that were three times deeper than their screen size. A little sad to see those go, but, like, not really.
Those Mac Classics, I’m sad to say, are no longer our primary user computers.
Everyone’s favorite.
We’re watching you….
XBox Live & Party
For everyone and anyone who’s ever dreamed of kicking some online ass, we’ve updated our XBox Live subscription. Come down to the media pit and take advantage of the new access. ALSO! This friday (Sept 18) at 8 we’re having a party — Rock Band, Left 4 Dead, Super Smash Bros, WarCraft, StarCraft, and anything else you want. We’ll have food and drink and lots of gaming. See you then!
Online Cygnet Updated
We know you’ve been anxious for us to update the online Cygnet for the past year; well, you can finally put your anxieties to rest, slow your anxious breathing, and get that blood pressure down a bit: the Cygnet is now up-to-date (except off-campus and abroad students, which will be added…in the near future).
Return of the Mailing Lists
As some of you have noticed, all of the mailing lists were down for a while. The problem was eventually traced to a lack of communication between the program responsible for distributing email to the lists, and another program it was relying on to filter out spam. This has been fixed, and the lists are now working again.
During the period that email was coming in to the lists but none was being sent out, an enormous queue of messages built up. After some deliberation we decided to let the server chew through them instead of throwing away all of those messages. Since, undoubtedly, many of these messages are not legitimate, this should explain any sudden spike in spam in the next few days. We are still working hard on better spam filtering. Importantly, as the server frantically distributes the tens of thousands of messages waiting in the queue, any new messages that are sent will start at the end of the line and appear not to go through. But the lists are not down — things will go through eventually. According to my calculations, the queue should be processed by Wednesday 8/19, at which point email should flow normally.
Thanks for your patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.