The True Cost of Vacation, and other Musings

Sometimes going on vacation costs a lot more than just what you shell out.

In my case, it's coming back that tells the tale. No matter how much I prepare to be absent, inevitably there are a slew of last minute (or after last-minute) questions and problems that need to be addressed.

This week, my first back after 2 weeks in Australia, I've been absolutely buried. Even before the jet lag dissipated, problems with email delivery to roanoke.edu addresses on the national committee distribution lists sprung up. I've contacted the Roanoke College helpdesk to try to obtain their assistance with this. In the meantime, if you're sending mail to any of our email lists (mubetapsi.org addreses with a "-l" in the name), be sure to also CC the Omicron folks. You can find a listing of reps and aliases on the intranet at http://intranet.mubetapsi.org/aliases.php.

The new public relations campaign for that alias list has also resulted in a number of alias update requests. I'm happy to receive these and implement them. It sure beats waiting for an address list! And speaking of address lists, I'm currently testing a system to allow MAL's better access to updating the actives list for their Chapter. The completed system should allow us to keep the intranet profiles up to date with respect to Chapter activity, while also providing one-click submission of address lists to the NS. This should be ready in the next few weeks.

In other news, I've uncovered a couple of big bugs in the user profiles this week, with the help of a faithful helpdesk user. The first involves users not being able to manage subscriptions for their email addresses -- the fix for this one has been written and will be implemented soon. The second involves captions for uploaded images not being stored. I'm still working on that one, but hope to have a fix soon.

The helpdesk remains the ideal resource for bringing problems such as these to my attention. That said, it also helps to CHECK BACK periodically for updates to your ticket. Sometimes the automated email about updates doesn't get sent for whatever reason, or it gets sent and missed. There are several tickets open right now that are waiting on feedback from the requestor. Please, if you have a ticket open, take a peek and see where it stands.

One thing upon which you can be sure: Unlike the airlines, when you get your ticket from me, I won't lose your luggage.