One of the goodies given out at WWDC this year was a full unlimited-client copy of Apple Remote Desktop 2.0. After returning to NYC and proceeding at work with the major rollout of 135 new G5s for the Education Center, a number of us rapidly agreed that using ARD to help manage these machines is a natural choice.
Part of these 135 machines includes the podium machines in each of the auditoriums. Due to a need to remove the technical aspects from giving lectures, the podiums are almost always logged in and sitting at the desktop.
We also have four cameras in the main auditorium, since we are capturing the lectures to send to the school in Qatar. The monitoring station for these is located in a room behind the front wall of the auditorium, and there’s mild entertainment to be had watching the students falling asleep during the lectures.
So today, after I’m done doing a run down with a staff member, I’m walking by the monitors and our capture technician when I notice that there are a handful of students in the auditorium, including one standing at the podium. I can see quite clearly that he’s playing a Flash version of SFCave in IE, and the other students are watching intently and giving encouragement.
This is one of those times I started to channel the BOFH.
I quickly remote-accessed my workstation, fired up ARD2, found the podium on the machine list, and selected what is by far my favorite tool: The “Lock Workstation” tool, which not only displays a giant picture of a padlock, but lets you send a message to display as well.
I quickly typed: DO NOT PLAY GAMES ON THE PODIUM MACHINE. In hindsight, I should’ve added a “KTHXBYE”. Regardless, I sent the command.
There’s nothing more gratifying at 10 in the morning than filling a group of medical students with the Fear Of Administrator and causing them to laugh while running away from a computer.
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