Jump to FAQ:

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/computing/myaccount/ lets you forward emails from your current FAS account (while it's still active!) and allows you to set up a vacation message so people know you may not be able to respond for a length of time.

http://www.post.harvard.edu/ lets you set up or manage a post.harvard.edu address so people know where to contact you after college; don't forget that you'll need to update the mail forwarding info throughout your life for this address to remain useful.
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24. My termbill balance?
http://termbill.harvard.edu/
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25. Quick money?
You can participate in studies at the business school or at WJH. For more information on studies at the business school, see http://www.hbs.harvard.edu/cler. Studies last from 1-3 hours and pay -40. You must be at least 18 and not on the regular Harvard payroll (casual Harvard employees are okay, though). For more information on psychology studies, see http://studypool.wjh.harvard.edu/, and follow the "Currently Available Studies" link to this page. Psych studies usually have a payout of about for a 30 minute session.
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26. Stamps?
There are several places very close by Adams House where you can find stamps:
Nini's Corner (the news stand by the Greenhouse Cafe) sells individual stamps.
CVS sells stamps, at cost, in books of twenty (.40)
Leavitt and Pierce sells stamps (with a fee); they will actually sell individual stamps if you only need one or two.
The Science Center basement also has a stamp machine.
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27. The hours for the MAC?
They are normally Monday-Friday 6 a.m.-11 p.m.
Saturday 9 a.m.-9 p.m.
Sunday 9 a.m.-11 p.m.
Check http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~athletic/mac.html for the complete schedule (including holidays), or call the MAC front desk at 5-2219.
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28. This class that claims to be in "Grays Hall"?
It's for real. There are in fact classrooms in the freshman dorm Grays; they're in the basement, accessed via a stairway in the back of the dorm (i.e. on the side of the building facing away from the yard). Think of it as an obligatory weekly trip down memory lane in which you are graded on participation.
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29. Videos and DVD's to rent?
Right here in dear old Adams. The House library lends out videos; check the list of movies on the Library portion of this website. Most of the House collection is in VHS format, but DVD's are being added.

QuickFlix, right behind Adams House on Bow Street, also has a decent selection of new and classic DVDs. However, rentals can be a tad pricey, and their short loan periods means you could rack up hefty late fees.

There is a modest selection of DVD's for rent at Tommy's Value, right near Tommy's Pizza on Mt. Auburn St. Also, if you watch a lot of DVD's, sharing a NetFlix subscription with your roommates could be an option.

The Harvard library system also has lots of movies--especially older movies--and it's free. Lamont has a number of VHS tapes and DVDs. The Harvard Depository has a more extensive selection of new and classic DVDs. However, you typically have to plan ahead and request your movie at least a day in advance of viewing. Search the HOLLIS catalogue for what you're after.

Otherwise, if you are looking for real video rental places, check out Hollywood Express (stores at 1740 Mass Ave. near Porter Sq. and 765 Mass Ave. near Central Sq.) or Blockbuster (right in Porter Square).
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30. A way to get out of Jury Duty?
Unfortunately, according to Massachusetts law, you are required to serve even if you are from out of state. However, Adams residents do note that you are allowed one change of date and a change of venue if you are assigned far from Cambridge.
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31. A new ID/swipe card?
ID cards are no longer replaced each year. You keep the same card all four years. Lost cards can be replaced at the registrar's office for a fee.
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ADAMS HOUSE FACILITIES (FAXES, ROOMS)

32. Does Adams House have guest suites?
Adams House no longer has an overnight suite. There is one suite with two single beds in Kirkland (/night, call Diane Barrios at 5-2272) and one suite with a single bed and a fold-out in the living room in Lowell (0/night, call Beth Terry at 5-2283). Reservations are to be made by Harvard affiliates only (exception: non-Harvard affiliates can call but only two weeks prior to desired date, not way in advance).

N.B. these suites are in such demand that they are often booked up just when you want one.
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33. How do I find out my 9-digit zip code (ZIP+4)?
Thanks to the new online directory information system, you can find out your nine-digit zip code without ever having to contact another human being. Go to the following URL (PIN required):

http://my.harvard.edu/directory

On this page you can see your ID photo and lots of other information the registrar has about you; you can also change the phone number which the Harvard directories list for you and set how much of your contact information is visible to the outside world. In the rows next to the heading "FAS Registrar Data" is a line titled "Mail Center"--this should list your House mail center address, including the full nine-digit zip code.
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34. Other problems?
Contact Jorge if you live in Adams (5-2258) or Ronnie if you live in Claverly (5-2289). If you get stuck on the Claverly elevator (and have a cell phone), call 5-5560. If you don't have a phone, but somehow have a laptop and are reading this, yell loudly and bang on the walls.
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35. What about long distance faxes?
There is a fax machine in the Harkness Commons at the Law School that works with your PAC code / PIN. If you walk past Langdell Library and go into "the Hark," the fax machine is down the short set of stairs and in the corner around to your right. You can also send long distance faxes from the Adams house machine using a calling card:
Dial 1-800 number (don't forget to dial 9 first!)
Input calling card password
Input the long distance number you want to dial
Wait for the connection to be made
Send the fax
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36. What about the other Adams facilities and rooms?
This information and more is in the Adams House Facilities section of the Adams House online facebook.
-Computer lab/Fax/Copier (C-entry): Swipe in with your ID card.
-Music practice rooms: Located in B and C entries, they are open 9am-11pm, and there are sign-up sheets. If they're locked and unoccupied, you can get a key from the super's office if you give them your ID card. Contact music tutor David Trippett for more information at trippett@fas, and obtain a key of your very own for a deposit through Sophia Chaknis.
-Pool table/foosball room (D-Entry): You can get a key from the super's office.
-Kitchen: The super's office loans out a key to the student kitchen in H-entry, but you can also get in there via the Diaspora Room using your room key.
-Darkroom (under I-entry): Contact photo tutor Michael at nitsch@fas
-Gym and weight room info (under G-entry): Contact the super or get a key from Sophia Chaknis ().
-Theater spaces (K-Space, Pool Theater): Contact Sophia Chaknis to reserve space.
-Bow & Arrow Press: The Bow & Arrow hosts open presses every Wednesday night.
-Arts space/squash courts: The ARTspace is open to Adams residents, and has some free materials which you can use to generate your own pieces of creative genius. You can obtain a key from the super. Contact Tom Howell at tshowell@fas for more information.
-Diaspora room: Your room key should also get you into the Diaspora Room in I-entry (lounge, cable TV, access to the student kitchen), which you can reserve in advance by using the sign-up sheet on the door. (If your room key doesn't work, or if you live in Clav, you can get a key from the super's office.)
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37. What are the addresses of the Adams buildings?
Main Entrance (C entry, Russell Hall): 26 Plympton St.
Apthorp House: 10 Linden St.
Claverly: 63 Mt. Auburn St.
Dining Hall (back entrance): 11 Bow St.
Randolph Hall: 51 Bow St.
Senior House: 63 Rear Mt. Auburn St.
Westmorly Ct.: 13 Bow St.
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38. What are the hours of the Adams House library?
Check the Library info webpage at http://adams.student.harvard.edu/library/info.htm. In general, they are: Sunday-Monday 10 am - 1 am
Tuesday 11 am - 1 am
Wednesday-Thursday 10 am - 1 am
Friday 10 am - 10 pm
Saturday 10 am - 7 pm
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39. When are posters torn down from billboards?
In Adams House, billboards are partially cleared by the morning stairway/hallway cleaning crews--in general, they remove anything with dates that have already passed, and anything from a non-Harvard group, but they leave everything else up.

In the Yard, Facilities Maintenance Operations removes posters on Mondays and Thursdays. In past years they did this at 7:45 a.m.
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40. Where can I dispose of batteries? How about lightbulbs?
You can bring batteries to the super's office for disposal; please do not throw them in the regular trash.

If you have a dead incandescent, first discard it as trash. Then reconsider whether you really want an incandescent. Compact fluorescents work better than incandescents on half the wattage. If you have fluorescents, they contain mercury and must be recovered for recycling--talk to the super, who will probably ask you to box it up for protection and take it to his office. Label it "Mercury Lamp for Recycling."
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41. Where can I find out all sorts of information about Adams House facilities?
Go to the Adams House Facilities section of the Adams House online facebook.
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42. Where can I find used coursebooks? / Where can I donate used coursebooks (and course books)?
The answer to both of these questions is the Adams House library. Coursebooks and books can be put in the collection box next to the library attendant.
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43. Where can I pick up a recycling bin if my room doesn't have one?
There are bins to be found in the tunnels under C-entry. They are in a room next to the laundry room.
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44. Where can I watch cable TV in Adams--and what channels can I get?
Cable TV is available in a few house common spaces. The Diaspora room in I-entry has a large TV (but no dvd player) and gets basic cable. It is accessible with your Adams room key. Another basic cable TV is found in the Molotov, which is open as an informal house cafe and study space most school nights. A schedule of when the Molotov is open is sometimes posted to the Schmooze. The Molotov also has a Playstation 2 with Dance Dance Revolution pads. Finally, for those using aerobic machines, the fitness room has a small TV with basic cable and a built-in VCR. Keys for the weight and fitness rooms can be purchased from Sophia Chaknis in the house office for , with a refund upon return of the key at the end of the year. Premium cable (HBO, etc.) seems to be unavailable on campus, although that may change some day...
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45. Where is the fax machine and how do I receive incoming faxes?
The fax machine for student use is in the photocopier/typewriter/fax room next to the C-entry computer room. Its fax number is 617-495-1883. Incoming faxes can be received from anywhere.

If you're expecting a fax you should check the machine by (1) making sure it has paper, and (2) phoning it, to make sure it's picking up properly (if it is, you get the classic loud beeeep of a happy fax machine; if it isn't you get Dennis Skiotis's old voicemail box). If you are not sure how to fill the fax paper tray please ask someone in the super's office.
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46. Where, and what, is the Molotov?
The Molotov is the Adams House cafe/grill of the people. It is totally student-run. The Molotov sells all kinds of snacks and drinks at cost, and is usually open from 10 p.m. to midnight; watch the Schmooze for announcements of special openings and events (Sunday Night Football, DDR, Joke Night, poetry readings by Seamus Heaney...). The Molotov is the room marked "EXPLOSIVES B" on the first floor of D Entry in Randolph Hall.
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ACADEMICS

47. A school hasn't received my recommendation letters yet--arrgh!
Otto notes that admissions offices processing thousands of applications are a perfect environment for a package to be misplaced. You are always welcome to have another copy of your letters sent out--just bring another stamped and addressed envelope to Otto in C-18. Or you can FedEx a sealed set which you get from the House office yourself.

It is important that you put adequate postage on the envelope, or the post office will return it. 41 cents is not enough. Put several stamps on.

Finally, Otto emphasizes that you must get the address precisely right. Even if the Post Office delivers the letter to the right school, schools will just return imprecisely addressed packets to the sender (most places' mail departments don't have the capacity to spend the time figuring out where vaguely addressed packages go. Plus nowadays there are fears about letter bombs, etc.).
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48. Help me get my recommendations in my House file sent out!
Here's what Otto has to say:

Turnaround time: except for pre-professional packets (Medical and Law school), recommendations are sent within one working day from the time you bring an addressed, stamped envelope to Otto in his office, Adams C-18. You should make sure (1) that the letters from your recommenders have reached the House by checking the rolodex on Otto's desk and (2) that the envelope you bring also has your name and the names of the recommenders whose letters you want photocopied in the lower left-hand corner of the envelope. As for confirming that a letters has been sent out, well, Otto says, "Because we sometimes receive as many as a hundred or more requests to send letters in a single week, we do not compound the processing time by keeping additional records of when each request is processed. However, we can guarantee that all requests are processed in the time frame above, so it is not necessary to check back on the status of your requests. We have not yet failed to mail letters out, so if other institutions' admissions offices or potential employers should ever claim not to have received letters you have asked us to send, they are either tied up in U.S. mail or (more often than not) misplaced at the other end."

Medical and law school packets, which have to include Dean's letters, are overseen by the House Law and Medical committee chairs, not the office of the senior tutor.

Faxing and e-mail: In general, faxed or e-mailed recommendations are not acceptable. The former are usually poor quality, and the latter are not that easy to verify (would definitely have to be sent from the recommender's own e-mail account, not from the House). Otto recommends that students wishing to get letters where they're going as fast as possible pick up a signed and sealed copy from the House office and have it FedEx'd. (See elsewhere on this page for information about where to go to FedEx things.)
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49. How can I obtain a transcript of my grades?
You can get an official transcript from the Registrar's Office at 20 Garden St.. Detailed instructions, and a downloadable version of the transcript request form, at

http://www.registrar.fas.harvard.edu/

If it doesn't need to be official, you can get a list of courses and grades in PDF form from the Registrar's website. Click on "Undergraduates" and "Student Record."
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50. How do I convert Harvard courses to credit hours?
A regular half-unit course counts as 4 credit hours; a full-year (1-unit) course counts as 8 credit hours. As far as the Schmooze can tell, this holds true for all courses.
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51. What address should I ask recommenders to send their letters to if I want them to go into my House file?
Senior Tutor, Adams House
26 Plympton St.
Cambridge, MA 02138-6607
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52. Where can I find exams from previous years?
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~exams/
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COMPUTER/E-MAIL/WEBSITE INFORMATION

55. How can I add money to my printing budget?
See http://www.fas.harvard.edu/computing/kb/kb0050.html. In brief, you can:
Type termbill at the fas prompt to charge to your term bill.
Use your credit card on the FAS printing website.
Use Crimson Cash at the Science Center Help Desk.
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56. How can I find other answers using the wisdom of the almighty Adams schmooze?
E-mail the schmooze and ask anything! You can also browse the archives of the list from April 2003 on by following the links at http://lists.hcs.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/adams-schmooze. You'll need your password--if you don't know it, go to the bottom of the same page, enter your e-mail address in the text field, and click the button. Then click the "Remind" button on the next page to have your password sent to you.
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57. How do I BCC e-mails (hide the recipient list) in Pine? Also, how do I change the reply-to address so it shows my summer/other email address?
Using Pine, hit the Control- and R-keys simultaneously, which sets up "rich header." Then type in the people you want to BCC under the BCC line. You can also change your reply-to address through "rich header."
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58. How do I check my e-mail on the web?
You can now access FAS email over the web at http://webmail.fas.harvard.edu. Unless you are especially apt at sifting through and deleting emails on a timely basis, you will run out of webmail space. Set up a free email account (www.gmail.com is what most people use) and then go to http://www.fas.harvard.edu/computing/myaccount/ to set up email forwarding to your new account.
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59. How do I convert documents to PDF format?
If you have MacOS X, it's easy: from the print dialog box, click the "Save as PDF..." button toward the lower left. If you don't have MacOS X, you have several options:
Transfer your file to a lab computer running MacOS X and work from there. But if you do not want to work with OS X...
Transfer your file to any of the Windows PC's in Harvard's computer labs; they all have full versions of Adobe Acrobat, which means they are capable of printing any document to PDF. On these computers, Microsoft Word and other programs have a "Create Adobe PDF..." option in the File menu.
You can obtain a copy of the full version of Adobe Acrobat for Windows from the software downloads page, www.fas.harvard.edu/computing/download, but you also have to install KeyServer (from the same page). This should enable a Create Adobe PDF command in most programs, including Microsoft Word.
You can sign up for a service from Adobe that lets you convert documents to PDF via a website, http://createpdf.adobe.com. The first five documents are free.
If your system can print documents to PostScript (e.g.: in Windows, the Print to File option), you can convert that PostScript to pdf using the free Unix utility ps2pdf on the FAS servers. An example:
I create a document called blah.doc. From the Print dialog, I choose to print to file, creating the file blah.ps.
Using SecureFX, I upload blah.ps to my FAS account.
At the fas prompt, I enter the command "ps2pdf blah.ps blah.pdf".
Using SecureFX, I download blah.pdf to my computer--et voila!
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60. How do I get off the schmooze list?
Send a message from the e-mail address that you want unsubscribed to adams-schmooze-request@hcs.harvard.edu with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the message text. if you want to re-subscribe to the list you do the same thing but write SUBSCRIBE in the message text.

You can also do this using the web interface to the mailing list, to be found at

http://lists.hcs.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/adams-schmooze.

You'll need your password--if you don't know it, go to the bottom of the same page, enter your e-mail address in the text field, and click the button. Then click the "Remind" button on the next page to have your password sent to you.
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61. How do I transfer files between my Mac/PC and Pine?
See the Computer Services Knowledge Base article http://www.fas.harvard.edu/computing/kb/kb0827.html for information on secure file transfer (SFTP, SCP and FTP via VPN).
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62. How do I, a soon-to-be-graduating senior, set up a post.harvard.edu e-mail forwarding account?
These accounts, which are administered by the Harvard Alumni Association, are not available until near graduation-time (around May 1 for those of us graduating in the spring)--for more information, and sign-up when the time comes, go to

http://www.post.harvard.edu

More on this and other Harvard e-mail forwarding-y thingies in this Harvard Computer Services Knowledge Base article:

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/computing/kb/kb0541.html
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63. I think I might have received an e-mail virus. What should I do with it?
Remember the old saying I just made up: "If it's Pine, you're fine; if it's Outlook, look out." Pine (via telnet/ssh) is the safest way to view emails of which you're suspicious. If you need help getting rid of viruses, e-mail help@fas.harvard.edu.

If you get an email warning about a virus, be aware that the email warning may be a hoax (or a virus itself). It's best to go to a legitimate virus website such as the McAfee Virus Information Library at http://vil.mcafee.com/ to check on the legitimacy of the virus warning.
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64. Webmail is not my friend. How do I download SecureCRT/NiftyTelnet from home?
Go to: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/computing/secure/. If you have MacOS X, you can use the Terminal program which comes with the system.
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65. What do I do if there aren't enough Ethernet jacks for everyone in my room?
You need a minihub, which lets you use one jack for several computers. The Science Center Help Desk (in the basement computer lab) lends minihubs and the necessary extra cables out.
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66. What is the address of the Adams House Webpage?
http://hcs.harvard.edu/adams
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67. What's the deal with wireless in Adams?
Wireless is available throughout the house, both in public spaces and resident spaces.
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68. Where can I find lots of helpful information about my e-mail account, the network, etc., straight from the Harvard User Assistants?
On the web: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~adams-help/ contains information on Adams House facilities (including lab status) and a Knowledge Base with documentation; http://www.fas.harvard.edu/computing/ has a wealth of documentation, downloads, and utilities.
In person: you may speak to UA's at the Help Desk in the Science Center Basement computer lab; the desk hours are usually: Sunday 12 pm-10 pm
Monday-Thursday 9 am-10 pm
Friday 9 am-5 pm

Over the phone: you may call the 5-9000 Help Line--during Help Desk hours, UA's answer the phone; otherwise, you will hear a message about scheduled and unscheduled system downtimes.
By e-mail: send your questions to help@fas.harvard.edu and you should receive a response within twenty-four hours.
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69. Where can I get cheap laptop/projector/computer equipment rentals?
HSA Rentals offers discounted Computer Rentals through two companies, Rush and Corris, which offer laptops, projectors, and all other computer-related equipment. Their numbers are 800-486-7874 and 800-293-3801, respectively, and you just call and tell them you are ordering through Harvard Student Agencies to get the lower prices. Items are then available for pickup and return at the HSA Store on 17 Holyoke Street.
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