Computer lab fun

[IT Grunt]

One of the things that would piss me off to no end is people who would waste paper mercilessly and tie up the printers while I was waiting for a print of my current assignment.

I remember this vividly. There were signs all over the lab that said that printing ONE copy of your report was acceptable, but if you needed multiple copies, the library's copy facilities were available. There was one time this girl was going to print /40/ copies of a 20 page paper, for reasons unknown. I called her on it, but another person in the lab said I was being 'obnoxious' as I tried to tactfully convince her otherwise without coming right out and saying 'Go to the library.'

[Captain Kidd]

I haven't had to kick anybody off for porn or playing games. Guess I should have for the latter, but we have a second lab downstairs (math lab rather than computer science lab) that is our overflow redirect.

Plus the upstairs lab has additional rooms with 40 or so computers each that are usable if there's not a class lab going on. Even then most of the GAs running the labs are cool with somebody coming in and using a back-row computer if they keep quite. Although I've seen more than one person, usually a freshman, "escaping" from one of those rooms with a very irate GA on their tail.

Paper usage is getting to be a big problem. The library is going $40,000 or more over each year on their paper/toner budget. They're trying an educational approach to cut back on the usage, but I fear that a more draconian approach is going to be required. Like limiting how many "free" pages a person gets before charging a per-page fee. That or student tech access fees are going to go up yet again.

HawaiianShirts, how I sometimes wish we were like you. Some classes take their tests online. Some of them are hosted on our university's servers, others are third-party. Either way, I can do nothing if the server goes belly-up! I feel their pain, but sorry, dude, I can only give you an apologetic look. If it's the intranet, I'll let them call up the IT helpdesk (actually I'll call the IT helpdesk and then handover the phone to the student at some point if it can be resolved). If it's a third-party test, yeah sorry, you're SOL. I'll give them my name and tell them that I'll vouch to their professor that I saw the 404 error. Beyond that, well I've got a roll of paper towels if they need to dry their eyes, but crying ain't gonna give me super haXor power to hack into the remote site and fix their problem.

[Dave1982]

Not exactly on-topic, but close. One thing about the computer labs at my university that pissed me off was that they did not allow you to use them for programming. At all.

It was quite literally the case that the School of Business classrooms had individual stations for each student, where the monitor was actually below the desk and shined up through a glass top at an angle (so that if you looked down, just past the keyboard tray you'd see what you were doing) which left the desktop free for books, papers, and other work. The setups were terrific. But they were NOT to be used for programming. And yet, there were programming classes held there. So what do they do?

They force you to bring your own laptop, which HAD to run XP Pro SP1 and nothing else (this was before SP2 came out), give you the software to install on it, and you could not use the supplied PC at all. I know of at least two people who were forced to spend money on a laptop just for that one class. I myself had to drop the class and take it later because I had a PowerBook (a Mac). And no other classes even held there even had use for the PCs! So all those computers ended up being used for was "surreptitiously" going online during class. I ended up making an arrangement with my roommate to borrow his Dell laptop to use during this class. It worked out because he would be off at another class at the same time, and if I got back late or he got back early, he had permission to use my laptop to go online or whatever.

Total waste of tuition dollars and an utterly retarded policy. To this day I don't get it.

[AmericanZero8503]

My family owned the Dot-Matrix printer that had a continuous ream of paper. They bought a huge box of it and when we updated to an inkjet we had to sit there and tear the edges off the paper and separate it...that was a blasty.

(At my 'real' job, not the customer service one)
Since I'm more 'technically literate' than other people who work at the company...our engineer usually talks to me and tells me about the technical f*ck ups of others. The other day the entire sales department was jumping his case over the laser printers not working. The problem...the damned things weren't turned on. And everyone laughs when the first question tech support asks "Is the device turned on?"

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

Not exactly on-topic, but close. One thing about the computer labs at my university that pissed me off was that they did not allow you to use them for programming. At all.
t back early, he had permission to use my laptop to go online or whatever.

Total waste of tuition dollars and an utterly retarded policy. To this day I don't get it.

You should have gone to my college Dave, we had labs exclusively for programming and similar students that could not be accessed without a KEYCARD given to students in those programs. It was brilliant.

On the other topic, We got a 500 page per semester printing limit and if you went over that you paid through the NOSE (I think it was $1/page or something crazy) but damn it worked. well.

[Captain Kidd]

Unfortunately, our printers aren't on any one central print server. And our student logins aren't really much more than a boolean query to see if they're a legitimate student. It'd require a massive infrastructure redo.

[Geek King]

Due to a particularly irritating band on campus, we implemented a punchcard system where you could get 50 pages for $3, or pay $.10 each. Mainly because these guys would come in and try to print of 300 copies of their poster to hang up around town. On a HP Laserjet 4. It would eat up half the printing capacity of the lab for hours.