10/22/2002

TML sick call - Tom Rowland, Mayor of Cleveland and President of TML is at home recovering from a follow-up operation to the one he had last year.

Margaret Pearson, alderman and former Mayor in Sparta, and member of the TML board of directors is in a nursing home in Sparta recovering from a broken hip. Margaret was one of most active members of the TML door prize committee last June.

TML sad news - Many of us know Cindy Avans who worked as a lobbyist with TML for the last two years. Her family was struck by tragedy this week as her 20 year old, recently married brother was killed in a automobile accident.

UT computer rules updated - This is a long item, but it's important that you know about it. The university has updated the Information Technology Resources (#135) policy to include discussions on user privacy, e-commerce, e-mail and examples of unacceptable e-mail use, virus protection, passwords, prohibited activities such as hacking, and personal use of the University's IT resources. Also, the policy informs employees of the restrictions imposed by Tennessee's Little Hatch Act, which prohibits the use of University resources on behalf of candidates for political office.

Included in this policy is the newly adopted Information Technology Policy which puts some responsibilities for passing viruses & spam as well as password protection back to the computer user. To ensure compliance with the virus portion of the policy, computers users that are not located in Knoxville or Nashville should update their computer virus definition files weekly. To do so, right click on the Norton anti-virus shield in the lower right hand corner of the screen. Open Norton Antivirus. Click on the Live Update button. On occasion, the computer will need to reboot after the update. Knoxville & Nashville users are hooked to a Norton anti-virus server that automatically updates the virus definitions.

For spam, please think twice before passing along something you receive. Sending something to a few people you know they will enjoy is not the same as sending a blast e-mail to all staff.

To prepare for the password guidelines, please make sure your password is not a word that is available in a dictionary. The best passwords are composed of the first letter of each word of a sentence. (As an example: HAW2MTAS is our password for new accounts. It stands for Hi and welcome to MTAS.) A minimum password length should be 8 characters for better security. Changing your passwords now will help make this transition smoother.

If you have any questions or need assistance with changing your Novell and Notes passwords, please let Lisa or John E. know. Here are the links to the new policies:
Information Technology Resources policy:
http://www.tennessee.edu/policy page down to policy #135
Information Technology Policy; user responsibilities:
http://oit.utk.edu/itp/compliance.html This repeats some of policy #135, but it's easier to understand.

MTAS Retreat - We all owe a big thanks to Pat, Sally, and Armintha for the unique and fun "Survival" session at the MTAS retreat. It was a successful, although short, retreat and I think I can now announce that the planning committee was me, Nancy, Ron, and Rex.