Here's What's New...

New student assistant #1 is doing well, trained easily, and sufficiently dislikes her task of data entry, for which I cannot blame her. But somebody has to do it, right? That's why she gets paid the big bucks! New student helper #2 chose not to return, but sent her friend to interview for the position. Which she did, and I hired her, but she has yet to show up. Sigh. So in the meantime, I'm scanning and sorting/filing slides, along with all the other things that need to be done. The nice thing is that we have fewer and fewer slides to deal with, so I may just have assistant #2 do data entry instead of filing. What a relief to not have to train someone on the filing system again.

ITguy came over to look at my database conversion project and I think he was expecting something a little more basic. He assured me that if he couldn't do it, he'd get help from someone who could. So now there is a team of techies somewhere across campus working on my database, theoretically. He asked me when I needed it and when I told him this semester, he said "oh." Doesn't sound promising, but I will keep happy thoughts.

More later on the latest image-hosting developments, but for now, back to the grindstone.

Nugget.

Where Did Summer Go?

Classes start next Monday! That's just crazy-talk! As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to have my image database up and running (although I had no intention of populating it at this point), but I at least wanted to be able to say, "hey! look at what I did this summer!" and hit the ground running.

Well, it's close enough, I guess. Tables and fields are created, layout has been established. Just can't get those macros. I surrender! I give in for the reason I converted to Access: because I can get on-campus help. They are having an "open house" Thursday afternoon for faculty and staff to drop by for assistance or training. Thank goodness!

I will be glad to put this behind me so I can get back to the fun stuff: like training new student assistants! (just kidding!)

Back to scanning,
Nugget

Here's the Situation...

Like all VRL's, we need server space. It would be awesome if I could walk into the office one day and find the IT Fairy left me some under my mousepad. It should be simple, just call IT, say I need space, and they say OK and it will cost this much to maintain. Cool. But for some reason, it's just not that easy. I could just set up a computer in the VRL and use that as the server, and network the other computers. Nope. No peer-to-peer connections allowed. Thanks Napster. I've been told that I can buy a server, and IT'd be more than happy to work with me. Chair says nope. No money for that. So no peer-to-peer, no space, no server. And the magic solution has to come out of my measly budget. What's a VRC to do?

Think outside the box.

I've seen a few interesting options that I'm seriously considering. Amazon's got an interesting sideline going with offering to host server space with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). Windows Skydrive is another option. It's in Beta, so that kind of worries me that it won't stay around, but I think that one's free. FREE!

So I'm hoping to implement something soon, since the fall semester's coming quickly. not necessarily for faculty use yet, but to at least get something out there to show that we are indeed making progress.

I'd be curious if anyone else has considered these options--are they all you hoped and dreamed for?!

Nugget

UPDATE TO POST: I noticed that Skydrive has a limit of 5GB now, not sure if that's a recent change, but there it is nonetheless.