![[University of Waterloo]](/goldbar.gif)
| Yesterday |
Thursday, August 21, 2003
|
Editor: Chris Redmond credmond@uwaterloo.ca |
![[Faith Hill album Breathe]](http://www.countrystars.com/artists/media/fhillbreathe.jpg)
But UW is coping so far without air conditioning, and if we get through today, we're home free, says safety director Kevin Stewart: "The weather forecast indicates that today will be the peak of the current heat wave. The Ontario Ministry of Environment predicts poor air conditions (smog advisory) today, which should improve Friday.
"Although the cooling of air in buildings has been cut back, the return air to campus buildings is filtered and the air quality remains basically unaffected (other than temperature) by the electricity reductions.
"If you have a concern about the smog advisory, discuss it with your supervisor. For guidance on health precautions contact Linda Brogden, UW's Occupational Health Nurse, at ext. 6264."
Plant operations says UW power consumption went up to 6.9 megawatts at one point yesterday -- when the temperature got up to 31 Celsius -- but was down to 6.3 megs later in the afternoon. That's well below half the 13 megawatts that UW uses on a typical business day.
Incidentally, the church colleges ("the university colleges and federated university") are also working to reduce hydro consumption, although they're not powered from the UW central plant. Kourtney Parker of Renison College reports that "The lights are dimmed and, in my case, off. The fact that many offices have large windows does help with light and with the fresh air. There are people on holidays so that makes it easy to conserve energy."
As for St. Paul's United College, it was cut off from the world yesterday, thanks to a delay in reconnecting a cable that had to be moved for the current construction project. Someone from Needles Hall made a trip over to St. Paul's to see what was going on, and found that folks were at work, but incommunicado. And warm.
They're taking up residence in the Centre for Environmental and Information Technologies, which is gradually coming into use over the next few weeks.
![[Bones on the wall]](http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/earth/museum/dinos/para9.gif)
Parasaurolophus in its current habitat |
The workers will "take down the dinosaurs and then rebuild them in the new space and repair any broken parts and give the casts a paint job," Russell said. "The dinosaurs arrived March 18, 1982, and have amazed many local youngsters for over 21 years who have visited the museum with school and daycare groups," he added. The other museum displays will gradually move to the new space on the ground floor of the building.
The building is to open officially in late October, but some labs are already in operation, and classes are scheduled in the lecture theatre for the fall term.
"Note that firewalls are a component of security practices, but a firewall on its own might not have spared UW from the recent attacks, as suggested in the Daily Bulletin. If an infected laptop were brought from home, and plugged in in an office, it would proceed to infect all computers on its side of the firewall. Depending on the location of the firewall, that could mean all UW computers could be attacked from any single infected UW computer.
"Civil Engineering has already implemented a firewall for it's staff and faculty computers, and that kept their computers safe from the recent attacks, since nobody internal to Civil Engineering brought in an infected laptop.
"Like Civil Engineering, the firewall services offered by Engineering Computing are also implemented on the subnet boundary, so each subnet (up to 256 computers) is isolated from attack from others, when activated.
"Firewalls can serve to limit the spread of an attack, but other measures, such as applying operating system patches, using anti virus software, and following safe computing practices are also required."
![[Guitarist in red shorts]](/images/2003/0821busker1.gif)
Street people are hereWaterloo's annual Busker Carnival gets going today, with performances on the streets of "Uptown" Waterloo. The buskers will be in action tonight, following 6:30 p.m. opening ceremonies on King Street; Friday from noon until 11 p.m.; Saturday from noon to 10:30, followed by an "adult show" at 11:30; and Sunday from noon to 4:00. |
This week's positions available list from the human resources department is a short one, with exactly one job listed: "Web Course Instructional Designer" in the distance and continuing education office. Details are available online.
Here's a reminder that the student awards office is closed today, reopening tomorrow for usual service. (The office, on the second floor of Needles Hall, also sends word that it will be closed at noontime -- 12:00 to 1:00 -- every day next week, because of a staff shortage.)
Something called "PearlQuiz Author" will be shown off in a session at 11:00 this morning in Dana Porter Library room 329. PearlQuiz Author, produced by Web Pearls Inc. of Waterloo, is "an online educational program that allows for the creation of web-based quiz and course modules with several options. The niche for this product is its ability to call live math calculations from a couple of different sources and the administration abilities for gathering and comparing marks. However, it was designed for both academic and corporate training and educational initiatives."
Then this afternoon, also in Library 329 (otherwise known as the Flex Lab), there's a series of presentations from people in the Centre for Learning and Teaching Through Technology (otherwise known as LT3). "LT3's students, co-op students, and similar team members will be presenting their finished work in areas as diverse as learning object creation, evaluation, and UWONE online course management systems, etc. Please join us to hear the details of this multi-faceted presentations." The event runs from 1 to 3 p.m.
CAR