Food for thought

Wise words: "The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today."
-- Elbert Hubbard

Working the better way

We all know the core of ASR's mission is to make a positive difference in students' lives. But have you taken the time to also brush up on our vision and values? Or our customer service philosophy? They're equally as important! You can read all about them in the ASR employee handbook.

Beware of phishing

Phishing is a serious security problem that you should be aware of. If you're not already familiar, phishing is the practice of using fraudulent emails and copies of legitimate websites to obtain financial data from computer users for purposes of identity theft. U of M Information Security has established a phishing examples blog listing examples of phishing targeting the University community. Of particular importance are phishing schemes that exist to compromise accounts in order to target individual PeopleSoft self-service options.

Coffey Hall power outage

On Saturday, Aug. 10, an entire building electrical outage will occur in Coffey Hall. A new fire pump will be installed as part of the building fire sprinkler project. The outage is expected to last from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Checking Gmail space

If you're wondering how much Gmail storage you have left in your account, take a look at the bottom left corner of your inbox screen. Google provides information on how much data storage you're using. For University accounts, it's typically noted as xx GB (xx%) of 30 GB used. You can use this to determine whether you need to free up some space in your account. Click here for more information about storage limits. (Thanks to Jeremy Todd in OCM for sharing this helpful tip.)

Businessweek shout out to Carlson School

Businessweek.com recently ran an article about the Carlson School of Management's efforts to recruit veterans for its MBA program. (Thanks to Kess Knight in ASR communications for sharing this cool article.)

More than vs. over

This is a tough grammar rule, because, well, folks are on both sides of the fence about it. When do you use "more than" instead of "over" to mean "in excess of"? For a long time, American journalists argued that "more than" should always be used before a numeral. For example, "There are more than 100 people in line." The consent now is to use whichever sounds better in the sentence. Here's an obvious example: "There was over one suggestion for how to fix the problem." That sounds sort of silly, doesn't it? "There was more than one suggestion for how to fix the problem" sounds a lot better. So, though "more than" is typically used in front of a number, when in doubt, choose whichever you prefer. How's that for rule bending?