I was teaching in G213 this morning and got to see this first hand!
Our server restarted itself – at this point we don’t know why, but are looking into it. When it did that, everyone lost their connections. I am very sorry that this happened and for the disruption that it caused.
While there are ways to rebuild the connection, I don’t have time to type them right now (another class is coming in)
Tryon’s ‘best practices’
Whenever a student opens up a new document that they care about, they should save it in the location where they need to save it. This makes the ‘connection’ and ensures that the connection works. If it doesn’t, the student finds out early, before a great deal of work is done.
Then, save every five minutes or so. I use the keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl-S Dell, Open Apple-S Mac) so that if something happens, you only lose 5 minutes of work.
I have tried to do this in my own computer life since Hector was a pup, because I don’t like to type anything more than once. :)
And if something major happens in the force and my computer isn’t working or connecting properly, I shut it down (holding the power button down if all else fails), take a deep breath and think good karma thoughts, and then restart the computer. (If I think the computer is ok, I might only log off and log back on.)
Pete