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.

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