Jenni, the evil techie!!

[technical.angel]

So, our active directory is a mess, our student personal shares have overun a server, and things need cleaned up. We have students who graduated in May of '05 who haven't been removed. I, being somewhat bored, and not wanting to deal with some other issues, decided I'd tackle the job.

I have 7 pages of names of people who'd graduated from 1/'05 to 5/'06. I have to disable each account, remove them from any groups their in, add ZZZ-- to their display name, then find their student folder on the server and and a ZZZ-- to that. I started this at 3:30 pm yesterday, and started it back up today. I've done 4 pages, and set aside 380MB to be cleared.

Being the evil techie that I am, I've been waiting for that first phone call of someone who had graduated, but was still using their email address.

Got the first one. Oddly enough, it wasn't one that I did yesterday, as I expected, it was the one I did about 15 minutes previously! (HAHAHA!) It's been almost a year since he graduated, why still use the account??

Bah.

:smash: :angel:

[Cia]

Did he yell at you and what was his excuse?

[technical.angel]

Oddly enough, no yelling. (I'm hoping for one though!)He just wanted to know if emails sent to his email account would bounce back. I said yes, hung up, thought better about it, found out they wouldn't, then deleted his email account, so they would! ;)

:smash: :angel:

[katie kaboom]

After i graduated from college the email addy i had at school was active for a full year. Not that i used it much anymore at that point. Lord knows i have enough email addresses as it is. I only ever used my college one to email teachers and i think i was on one mailing list. But i had a friend who graduated from the same college a few years earlier than i did, and his email addy was active for something like 3 years after graduation.:lol:

[technical.angel]

We had a great number (more than I wanted) that graduated in May of '05 that were still active. Or I should say, we HAD a great number... heh heh.

My college email was active for only a few months after graduation. Not usually the case, but they were revamping the entire network over that summer, and they decided just not to back up the graduates' emails. Sigh.. Of course, I had transferred everything off of my student drive and my email.

:smash: :angel:

[SuperDan]

My old school just recently deleted my e-mail (I think, either that or they just killed web access for the old student e-mail server since the current and recent students should all be on the new server) but their policy was as long as you log in, either on-campus or through web access at least every 6 months your student account is spared. They did clean out the home drives every May though, so unless you had semi-regular on-campus access it wasn't feasible to leave things in there.

My current school account was still active after getting kicked out of the school, taking a break of three regular semesters, and losing my password early in the break. They reset my password for me when I was on campus to register after they let me back in, and all my old data was in the e-mail box and home drive.

[BravoOrig]

I work for a cable ISP, and we use AT&T as an email provider, those email addresses don't easily get suspended or even deleted when a customer disconnects from us. I've had people come back to us, and I'm able to find their old email address still active, just have to link it to their new account. Sometimes this is a span of 1 or 2 years.

[trunks2k]

I still use my e-mail address from school and I graduated almost a year ago. I use since that's what everything I have uses. Apparently, they don't tend to deactivate accounts, so I still have an e-mail account plus an account on several other servers. I'll probably get around to changing it eventually.

[technical.angel]

Well, make sure you keep track of everything, because you never know when someone's going to decide to clean out the accounts!!! ;)

I'm now doing the super tedious task of making sure everyone that has a student account has a student drive, and there are no student drives that do not have an account attached to them. Sigh.. I can't believe I'm doing this to myself!!!!!

:smash: :angel:

[trunks2k]

Well, make sure you keep track of everything, because you never know when someone's going to decide to clean out the accounts!!! ;)


Oh yeah, I totally abuse still having an account. The school offers a bunch of free software like Microsoft office, if you have an account, which I have downloaded and saved. It also has a windows XP upgrade license that it makes available to students and faculty. The great part is that the license works on a clean, fresh install of XP. I abuse the hell out of that one.

[Imogene]

Hell, back when I was in school (a technical school, went to learn how to make video games) one of my classmates had an episode where he 'lost' all his information off the network over a semester change. He went ballistic on the new IT Coordinator, who was our classmate. Everyone (and I do mean EVERYONE) in our class was on the IT guy's side, as it was explicitly spelled out in the network use agreement that you were responsible for your own shit. You should back all your work up every semester, as they had a tendency to wipe servers every semester. Kept them from having network issues.

Classmate was still ballistic, cause he hadn't been warned to get his stuff off the network. ...and he wants to go into a line of work where computer knowledge is a must... Yes, that sounds like a great thing to tell your employer. "No one told me my computer was going to contract a virus and erase all the work I've done for the video game!" *BOOT!*

At least he was better than the classmate we got saddled with two semesters before graduation who everyone hated, because he wouldn't do anything.

[Geek King]

At least he was better than the classmate we got saddled with two semesters before graduation who everyone hated, because he wouldn't do anything.

Arg...I have a worse one. I was in a 300-level programming class where we were given a "black box" program to write as a group. To those who want to know, a black box program is one where you are given the inputs and expected outputs, then told to go write a program that will work in the middle without knowing how the program as a whole will work. Our group had a guy who just could not keep himself from adding outputs to his section. He kept saying, "Well, they'll need it later. It should be part of the output even if it isn't in the design documents." Fortunately, the rest of us in the group went to the professor and he realized we were about to kill him rather than have him foul up our grade by doing something that we had been told would be an instant flunking. We ended up nailing the project, but it took an entire weekend (two weeks before finals!!) to re-write the old partner's code. :cry:

[Naaman]

Geek King, if you haven't already seen it I'd recommend The Daily WTF (http://worsethanfailure.com/Default.aspx) for a healthy dose of coding "issues" ;)

[Geek King]

Heh, cute, especially the on about the "C Pyramids"

You should see the end of a LISP program. They can literally look like this:

))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
)))))))))))))))))))))
))))))))))
)))))))))
)))))))
))))
)))
))
)

...and that is a short one. :lol:

[Depot Denizen]

My school allows students to retain their account for one year after graduation. After that time, it will automatically be deactivated and deleted. We still get calls from students bitching about how they can't get their "very important" emails anymore. You've had a year to change your email addy!

Students have a network space that you can cram about a gig of shit into. Scratch and backup space is available too. The guy in charge of it will lock access to the network space if he thinks you are running a fileserver from it (found that out by accident when I was backing up some data from a client when I worked in the Clinic). They are responsible for maintaining it, but we do have a restore function through Unix to reclaim deleted stuff, and for emails too.

Business School students pay a fee for Office and XP. and once they graduate, they can buy Office 2003 Professional and XP Professional for $20 each through the school. We have a Work-At-Home license for faculty/staff where they can get licences for $15 each. But they can't pay with a departmental credit card. *laugh*

[technical.angel]

Got a fun one the other day. Graduate calling, saying he needed to get into his email account. AAFH the second told him we'd enable it for 24 hours, then it would be disabled again. Then she sent me an email with the information to re-enable him. Well, his email account had already been deleted. It was done before I had disabled the accounts. I shrugged, re-enabled his account, and went on my merry way.

THE NEXT WEEK, he calls back saying that we re-enabled his account, but it wouldn't let him into his email account, and he needed to get something out for his boss.

Opps!

[LostMyMind]

Unbelievable, how some people think someone elses computer will hold their things forever.

[Bliss]

saddly I was one of these persons, and i had a big loss because of that. but the only one I blame is myself and my stupidity. trouble is I neglected my yahoo for a while, and they closed and cleaned.... reopening was very very easy, but the problem is I had a special treasured folder in there where I saved all the emails I had from mom before she died. And I lost all of these.

It is MY fault for not backuping such a precious load to my drives, and 200 DVDs around the country, but it is still painful, they where a reminder of her for me.

[technical.angel]

Well, Bliss that is kinda different, but still horrible nonetheless. {{hugs!}}

Of course, I picked an email account I NEVER use as the account connected to my DSL, which means it'll never close due to inactivity.

[Mr. Crow]

At my old college, the IT guys would have to force us at gun point to even use the campus e-mail. They even demanded that e-mails to professors be done over the network. Everyone who didn't enjoy cramming sharp things under their fingernails stuck to outside e-mail accounts.

They got back at us as the only way to get grades at the end of semesters is to fill out a class evaluation. And this led to many long lines of students having to get a hold of their student IDs and account passwords.