How to waste faculty time, UNL edition

One of the biggest destroyers of productivity at the University of Lincoln has to be their crappy, no-good, incompetently designed web site.

I think the problem is the University of Nebraska has been hacked so many times, they decided that the best solution was to make it virtually impossible for anyone to get access.

I have a password algorithm. It generates strong passwords. Trouble is, while it can accommodate occasional forced changes of passwords, it can't handle them every 6 months. But UNL makes us change them with that frequency. So I called up the IT manager, a few weeks ago, and told him there was good data indicating forcing people to change passwords frequently is less secure, because people can't remember the password and write it down.

Aha, he said, but we're beta-testing two factor authentication. Would you like to be one of the testers.

Sure, i said, like a damn fool

So I changed my password and signed up. A few weeks ago, I tried it out. I couldn't get in. I called the health desk, who told me I had been locked out. I tried again. The browser froze. I called them back again. What browser are you using, they asked. Safari, I said. Oh, it doesn't work on Safari.

It doesn't work on the default Mac browser, used on maybe half of all campus computers, I said, incredulously.

No, you have to use Chrome.

OK, I told her their stupid system had just wasted 2 hours of my time. They didn't seem impressed.

So today I tried to get back on. The password my browser had stored wasn't correct. So I changed my password, and this time, wrote it down. Screw their security. Then I tried to get on, forgetting the Chrome thing. It accepted my password and froze.

After I stared puzzled at this for a few minutes, I remembered about Chrome. So I logged on again, via Chrome and the two-factor thang.

Then I got to the benefits page. The first email I'd gotten said

Access the HRA survey directly through the Firefly website.

I couldn't find it. I sent them an email, and in the interim decided I'd do the rest of the benefits enrollment. Once I'd gotten in, it told me to do the Health Risk Assessment. AAARGH! So I lied about my race :-). Actually, I told the strict truth. My 23 and Me report says my ancestry is 99% NW Europe and 1% East Asia. Looks like mixed race to me!

I had to change my address again, evne though I'd changed it before, because firefly still remembers the address where we lived 2 years ago.

And finally, after wasting yet about 1 ½ hours, I was done. Until next year.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Fortenberry slaves: a prelude

Image
Toiling in the mid-morning sun, in a hot, muddy cotton field in Copiah County, in the south of Mississippi, three young African American men, brothers, aged 18, 20 and 22, hoed the rows. It was late June, 1860, and so the men were slaves. The ground was wet from yesterday’s rain, the air heavy, and the men were anxious to finish their work before the clouds gathering on the western horizon flooded the fields with another summer cloudburst. Inside the plantation house, unbeknownst to them, they were being enumerated . James R Fortenberry, the slave-holder, a man of about 35, was listing their important personal details to Elijah Peyton, Assistant Marshall. These details were three; age, gender, and race. The race was officially ‘mulatto’; at that time, and in that place, mulattos were usually the sons or daughters of a black woman raped by a white slave-holder. They had no names, as far as the United States Government was concerned. Instead they would be listed, in Peyton’s elegant,
Read more

The members of Turning Point USA at UNL.

 Turning Point USA love lists. They have a long-standing list of faculty who have not hewn to the conservative way, either by writing stuff unfavorable to Donald Trump, or teaching things conservatives don't want to hear. So, in the spirit of listing and transparency, these are their current members at UNL.  This group funded some of the terrorists who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.  Alexander Burkhard Andrew Shelburn Benjamin Terry (their faculty advisor, from the College of Engineering) Carson Scott Christian Simmons Christine Stulken Christine Discenza Dan Mathews Dawson Coudriet Dominic Naughtin Eleanor Kenkel Ethan Nelson Faith Santana Garrett Cantrell Grant Carstens Hayley Brakefield Izzy Rosegrant Jack O'Dell Jackson Towne Jacob Benton Jordan Minderman Josie Dostal Kaitlyn Nein Kevin Coffey Kiara Kearney Kirby Hughes Madison Talbert Matthew Berringer Nancy Nguyen Ryan Barragan Sam Gilbert Sarah Pagano Sierra Schroeder Sofia Heggem Taylor Tunnison William Beck
Read more

Dan Whitney, aka Larry the Cable Guy, a short biography

Image
I have known of Dan Whitney, Larry the Cable Guy , longer than most people have. In the car on the way into work at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, we used to listen to one of the usual mostly-talk rock radio shows. Larry would quite regularly call in. His accent fascinated me. Probably because I’ve lived in so many places, I like to try to place accents. Larry the Cable Git's accent was vaguely southern, or was meant to be southern, but I couldn’t place it anywhere in particular in the South. In any case, he’d distorted it so much you could make out only half of what he was saying.  What he was saying was mumbled, consciously transgressive hate.  Later on, I discovered he was was born and grew up in Pawnee City Nebraska, until his preacher daddy hauled him down to Florida. It’s a long story… (1) Daddy issues Daniel Lawrence Whitney, better known by his stage name and character Larry the Cable Guy, was born on February 17, 1963 in Pawnee City, Nebraska, to the Reverend Thoma
Read more