Feb. 13 was an extraordinary day at ResNet for student workers Chris Adams, April Patriarca and Anthony Pinson.
It started out as a normal Friday. Chris was in the back making a bag of popcorn, April was on the phone helping someone and Anthony was talking to William Arnett, who had brought his computer in to be fixed while he waited. Then it happened.
“I was just talking to him (Arnett) and he was filling out his form,” Anthony said. “And he just started stuttering and fell over.”
As it was later determined, Arnett was entering cardiac arrest.
Anthony told April to call 911 and began trying to wake Arnett up while Chris went in search of more help.
“That was a scary day,” April said. “I was on the phone, then [Anthony] was like, ‘call 911’ and I was like, ‘sorry, I have to call you back.’ I don’t remember if I ever called him back.”

Ruth Thornhill, a student who was in the Combs computer lab next to ResNet’s offices, administered CPR to Arnett while they waited on paramedics to arrive.
Thanks to the three student workers’ quick reactions, help arrived in approximately five minutes, and Arnett survived.
As a result of their actions, April, Chris and Anthony were nominated for and won EKU’s Student Worker of the Year award.
Their supervisor, ResNet Coordinator Lisa Moore, nominated them for the award.
“It is rare that such life-threatening events occur in our offices,” Moore wrote in her nomination. “But it was a real satisfaction to know that teamwork, fast thinking, and empathy for others prevailed.”
The three said they were surprised at the nomination and were unsure who had entered them at first.
“We weren’t really looking for anything, we were just doing our job,” April said.

Laptop computers are great, until they get a couple years old and all of a sudden you have to hop from power outlet to power outlet because your battery only holds a few minutes of charge.

While all laptop batteries have a limited lifespan and will eventually die, there are ways to make sure you get the most out of your battery.
Many people don’t realize how much multi-tasking their laptop is doing every moment it’s awake. At any given moment your laptop could be simultaneously loading a Web page, checking for software updates, powering your external mouse, talking to your Bluetooth cell phone, playing music in iTunes, running an instant messenger or ticker service in the background, and much more.

We tend to think of laptops as being “on” or “off,” because that’s how desktop computers function. But it’s better to think of laptops as being on a sliding scale of power drainage.
When your laptop is shut down, it’s using a very small amount of power.
When you turn it on, it starts pulling power from the battery to run the processor and operating system, and power the display. When you open an application, your laptop pulls more power from the battery. When you plug in a peripheral like a mouse or a USB-powered hard drive, your laptop takes even more power from your battery to run those items. Powering speakers and wireless cards also uses power from your battery.
And so, while your laptop may last for four hours while you’re typing in Word, it may only last for 45 minutes when you start streaming video through your wireless Internet connection.
Since laptop batteries all have a limited number of charge cycles, it makes sense to turn off power-draining features when you’re not using them. For example, if you can do what you need to with the display half as bright as usual, you will lengthen the amount of time your current charge lasts.
If you can make the display half as bright as usual on a regular basis, you’ll increase the average length of each charge cycle and therefore the total lifetime of your battery.

Check out these eight ways to make the most of your laptop battery:

1. Dim the display as far as you can comfortably. Many laptops have display brightness controls right on the keyboard for your convenience.
2. Turn off Bluetooth and wireless cards when you’re not using them. Even when wireless cards aren’t connected to a network they still sap power from your battery.
3. Unplug peripherals. Copy files from your external hard drive onto your laptop and work on them there so your battery isn’t powering two hard drives. Use your trackpad instead of an external mouse.
4. Avoid powering your laptop speakers by listening to music on an Mp3 player instead.
5. Use your laptop’s energy saving settings to reduce processor speed and automatically dim the display. If you can’t find these settings, check your user manual or call (859) 622-3000.
6. Keep only one or two applications open at a time. This keeps your processor from working overtime to manage multiple tasks.
7. Set your display to dim or turn off after only a few minutes of inactivity, and set your laptop to go to sleep shortly thereafter. This also prevents you from losing all your battery power if you leave your laptop open and forget about it.
8. Avoid using background applications like news tickers and e-mail checkers, since these require processing power, and could even slow down the main applications you’re trying to use. On Macs, avoid using dashboard applications like weather and news widgets that continually use processor power.

Eastern e-mail accounts regularly receive spam and scam e-mails. Many of these can look very official, but you have to be careful. If an e-mail ever requests that you reply with your username, password or any other sensitive personal information, it is definitely a scam e-mail, which you should delete immediately. EKU will never ask you to send your username or password. If you do respond to an e-mail asking for your username and password, Information Technology will have to temporarily disable your account so it can’t be used to send spam e-mails.

Question 1:
You receive an e-mail from Information Technology telling you your account is being upgraded, and you need to e-mail your EKU username and password so they can activate the new features. What do you do?
a) Reply right away with your username and password
b) Reply only if you think you will use the new features being offered
c) Delete the e-mail because it’s a fake
d) Forward the e-mail to your best friend with the message, “forward this to ten people or you’ll have bad luck”

Question 2:
You use Internet Explorer as your main browser. This is…
a) Good because IE is the safest browser available
b) Fine because all browsers are equally safe
c) Bad because you should regularly change your usual browser as a security precaution
d) Bad because Firefox is the safest browser available on all platforms

Question 3:
Your password is “123AbC.”
This is…
a) Good because it contains numbers, capital letters and small letters
b) Bad because it starts with a number
c) All of the above
d) None of the above

Question 4:
You have a Facebook account, and on your profile you have listed your e-mail address and phone number so your friends can contact you. This is…
a) Fine, as long as you use privacy controls to make sure only your friends can see the information
b) Fine because there might be someone who isn’t your friend who needs to contact you
c) Bad because anyone can see any personal information you upload
d) Bad because Facebook sells your contact information to advertisers

Question 5:
You receive an e-mail from PayPal explaining that you have a suspicious charge of $634 on your account and telling you to click on a link to visit your account and review the charge. What do you do?
a) Click on the link and log in to your account
b) Visit PayPal.com and log in to your account to check the status
c) Delete the e-mail because it’s a fake
d) View the HTML source code of the e-mail to see if PayPal has verified the message

Question 6:
You’re about to enter your credit card number online. What should you look for?
a) A phrase next to the credit card number entry field like “secure transaction”
b) A second field for your security code.
c) A statement that your name and address must match what’s listed for your card.
d) an “s” after the “http” (https://) at the beginning of the site’s URL.

Question 7:
You take an online quiz or click an appealing adertisement and are asked for your cell phone number so your score or code can be texted to you. You type in your cell phone number and click “Submit.” This is…
a) Fine because cell phone numbers aren’t as sensitive as credit card numbers
b) Fine because you didn’t agree to pay anything
c) Bad because now you’ll get text message advertisements
d) Bad because you probably inadvertently signed up for a monthly service which will show up on your cell phone bill

Answers and explanations

Question 1: C) never give your username and password in an email.

Question 2: D) Firefox is the safest browser available.

Question 3: C) Passwords should contain letters, capitals and numbers, but not start with a number.

Question 4: A) You can give your friends personal information via Facebook, but never make personal information publicly visible.

Question 5: C) E-mails like this are always fake. If you’re worried, you can also choose option “B.”

Question 6: D) The prefix “https” designates that your connection is secure.

Question 7: D) Often there is fine print on these pages explaining that by entering your cell phone number you are signing up for a texting service. Answer “C” is also sometimes true.

Brady Begley stands in front of the ‘Resnizzle’ art in an IT office in the Combs Buidling. The art was drawn several years ago by his friend and ResNet student worker Chris Adams.

Many people go to college so they can get a good job.
In Brady Begley’s case, he left college in order to get a good job.
Begley, who worked as a student worker at ResNet for six years, was recently hired by Information Technology as a computer consultant — a ‘Mr. Fix-It-All’ for computers.
Begley applied and got the job before he finished getting his English degree at Eastern.
He is still working towards his degree, and hopes to have it completed within three semesters, but now his days are filled with HelpDesk calls and computer repairs.
Begley said his job leads him all over campus on many different missions to locations many students don’t even know exist.
“There’s certain buildings you never go into as a student,” he said.
Begley said he has wanted to work at Eastern since he was a boy, because his dad had always told him the best jobs were at the university.
And Information Technology didn’t waste any time putting Begley to work once they hired him — his second day on the job he was helping the EKU Police Department with a sensitive lost password problem.
Begley said after he’s finished with his English degree, he’d like to get a master’s in occupational training and teach other people to work.
He also wants to work towards more certifications that show he knows his stuff when it comes to computers.
But while Begley may be working more in an area outside his major, he still enjoys English literature, especially early American literature like Henry David Thoreau.
Begley plans on sticking around Richmond for a long time, and said he thought it would be cool to get into local politics at some point.
A position like city commissioner interests Begley, because he could have enough influence to improve things around town.
“I don’t know how any of it works,” Begley said. “But I know I could help people that way one day.”