Jenny Townes


Week 2 Reading Notes

1. How the material helped
I made a list of preliminary questions and used those to direct my reading. I now know how web space is administered and protected, where computer labs are located and what materials they provide, what the computer use policy entails, etc. I didn’t know how detailed the About the Campus Web site was, I was surprised and pleased. The ITS department here seems dedicated not only to fixing problems but teaching about the network and helping people learn how to maintain their own space on the web.
I also learned about the CCI and discovered that my laptop falls woefully short in terms of processing speed, RAM and hard drive space. Windows XP will run fine on it, but I will need to buy some more RAM and possibly another hard disk in order to have optimal performance. It was good to learn this now, however, when it will be easier to fix. The AFS site was very helpful. I didn’t know how the University managed its storage or exactly how one maintains and protects their storage allotments, or even how much users were allowed to have. This page was very helpful because it gave me a preliminary view of the type of language we’ll be using in this class.

2. What I didn’t understand
I don’t understand operating systems that are not based on Windows. This is simply because I’ve used Windows almost exclusively—just a little experience with Mac.
I also don’t understand how to upload .gif and .jpg files to my web space as raw data. Again, this is because I’ve never done it and have very little experience editing in HTML.
The AFS introduction page, while helpful in most ways, was confusing in others. For instance, the entire section on ACLs and commands was hard to understand because I’ve never done anything like that before and didn’t get a chance to experiment.

3. Additional questions