Here is an overview of how your accounts get created. Grab a pencil and a 3x5 file card or something, you'll want² to take notes.

[POSTOFFICE] [ECAMPUS] [WEBCT] [MAIL] [ETAL] [ALIAS] [EMPLID] [BARCODE] [NETREG] [DIALUP] [WIRELESS]

POSTOFFICE: If you've been at URI for more than a year or so, you probably have an email account at POSTOFFICE. This username was assigned to you by the university. Write down on the file card: "POSTOFFICE ID:". If you don't know your postoffice account name, that's good, because they³ are trying to get people to stop using them⁴. So just write "none" next on the card. If you used to have an account on Postoffice, but you can't remember what it is, then look at About Postoffice IDs, which talks about them in detail.
Write your Postoffice ID next to the word "postoffice" on the card.
Write the password that goes with it next to it.⁵

ECAMPUS: Regardless of whether you're old enough to have a Postoffice account, if you are a currently enrolled student, or you are currently an employee⁶ of URI, then you should have an ECAMPUS account. This account gets created when you, or someone who thinks they're helping you, goes to the ECAMPUS Webpage feeds it your identifying information, and makes up a name, password, and trick question for you. Write "ECAMPUS-ID:" on your file-card. If you haven't got an ECAMPUS id, or you don't know what it is, then look at About ECAMPUS IDs for information about how to create or discover your ID, and retrieve the password.
Write your ECAMPUS ID, and the password that goes with it, on the card.

WEBCT: Now the fun starts. For most people⁹ , a day or so after you create your ECAMPUS Id, a magic Ebot¹⁰ Spawns an account account for you on WEBCT. The Username for this account is copied from the username for your ECAMPUS account, but it uses your birthdate¹¹ (in the form MMDDYYYY) as your password. Go to About WEBCT for more information. Write down your username, followed by "WEBCT". If, therefore, you had chosen "tinman" for your ECAMPUS username, then your WEBCT username would be "tinman". WEBCT is set up so that, if you aren't in the datafile that it gets from ECAMPUS, then it decides you don't exist in WEBCT either. (I think).

MAIL.URI.EDU: Shortly after your username gets copied in WEBCT, your user name and password get shipped over to MAIL.URI.EDU. Thus, ususally, MAIL.URI.EDU uses the same name and password that WEBCT does.¹² So your MAIL.URI.EDU name would also be "tinman", and the password would still be your birthdate. When you change your password for MAIL.URI.EDU, the password for the corresponding WEBCT account also changes, but the ECAMPUS password does not. When you change the password for WebCT, the password for the corresponding MAIL.URI.EDU account also changes, but again, the password for the ECAMPUS account does not. Go to About MAIL.URI.EDU for more information. Write down the password for MAIL.URI.EDU and WEBCT, with little arrows pointing to both.

ETAL: Now, there are some people who need to have email accounts that Bob the Magic EBot didn't create, either because they're not the kind of people that Bob works for¹³, or because someone wants a special email ID for a special function¹⁴ For those people, we have ETAL accounts. If you are someone that the IT department trusts¹⁵, then you can fill out a form that creates an email account on ETAL.URI.EDU. You get to pick the username and password. ETAL accounts do NOT have matching WEBCT accounts. ETAL accounts do not have matching ECAMPUS IDs. If you have an ETAL account, it's because you, or someone else, specifically asked for it. Go to About ETAL for more information. Write down that username, followed by "@etal.uri.edu", and then the password.

ALIAS: Because the email address that you get for mail.uri.edu may be too complicated¹⁶ or otherwise not appropriate for an email address for general use, some people¹⁷ are allowed to create an ALIAS, which is a fake email address like: "woodsman@uri.edu", that catches incoming email, and re-directs it somewhere else, like "tinman@mail.uri.edu". Unlike ETAL accounts, ALIASes don't actually exist, they're just a way of hiding your actual email address from the rest of the world. Go to About ALIASes for more information. If you have an alias, write it down, along with the email address to which it points.

EMPLID: The nine digit number in the middle of your URI ID card is your EMPLID, in the campus databases. It's named the "Employee Id" in spite of the fact that many of the people who have one aren't employees. It's also called your URI-ID number, your Student-ID number, or your Staff-ID number. You need to know what it is, mostly because it's almost never¹⁸ what people mean by "your User-ID", and because it can sometimes be used to look up what your username really is. Go to About EMPLIDs for more information. Write your EMPLID on the card, followed by "EMPLID".

BARCODE: In addition to your 9 digit EMPLID, there is a barcode on your ID, with a 14 digit number underneath. This number is mostly important in that it's *NOT* your EMPLID. It is, however, used by the HELIN¹⁹ (Library) system for your Inter-Library-Loan requests, and for the Helin-ic Online databases if you're not within the URI domain. Go to ABOUT HELIN for more information. Don't bother writing down the barcode number.

NETREG: If you are trying to use the ethernet from student housing, you will have to deal with NetReg²¹. The basic idea is that, the first time you try to browse on the internet, instead of getting the page you asked for, you will get a page that asks you to register. In theory, you type in your MAIL/WEBCT username (being a copy of your ECAMPUS username), and the password (being your birthdate, unless you changed it) in MAIL/WEBCT. Then you have to re-boot, but the next time you try to get on the web, the network knows who you are, and lets you go where you want. Go to About NETREG to find out more about what Netreg does, and more or less how it works. Unfortunately, sometimes (and to date nobody has been able to explain why) your username doesn't work. In that case, substituting your EMPLID, but still using the password from your MAIL/WEBCT account may work.

DIALUP: If you are not on campus, (or, come to think of it, even if you are), you can get online by dialing in to URI's modem banks. When you do this, the system needs you to identify yourself, so that we're not providing free internet service for the entire planet earth²². If you're using the mail-server that we WANT you to be using²³ which is MAIL.URI.EDU, then you just type your bare username. If you're using an ETAL account for mail, then you follow the username with "@ETAL". If you're using a POSTOFFICE account, then you follow the username with "@URI". Then you hit [Enter], and it asks you for your password. Feed it the password that goes with your email account. Note that if you think your email address is something of the form "tinman@uri.edu", it won't work, because that's an ALIAS, which is forwarding to somewhere else, and you have to use the account to which it forwards. Go to About DIALUP for more information about DIALUPs.

WIRELESS: URI attempts²⁴ to provide wireless access. When you connect via wireless, you should be diverted to a web-page asking you to sign in, similar to the way NETREG works. A good description of URI's wireless network is kind of a moving target, but if you have an email account on MAIL.URI.EDU, that username and password should work to get you on the wireless network called "student". Go to About WIRELESS for more information about how to get on wireless.

0: From Dictionary.com. "Annotate: To furnish (a literary work) with critical commentary or explanatory notes; gloss." In this case, more than usually critical. If you're easily offended, or have one or more lawers on retainer, I enjoin and adjure you: read not the notes!

1: For the value of "best" that means "A semi-accurate description that I can probably publish without getting fired."

2: Ok, you probably don't WANT to take notes. Do it anyway, I'm not going over this again.

3: "They" being the Evil Nomes, Lead by King Roquat of the Rocks, who, as you know, (or should) is terribly afraid of Eggs.

4: This after only a few years, in spite of the fact that this postoffice ID is synonymous with your NETWORK ID, which was supposed to be forever. From this we can determine that "forever" is equivilent to "Real Soon Now", which also means a few years, except that one is a duration, and the other an interval. To illustrate this, see the statement "The parking problem will be solved Real Soon Now". To find out how long you have to wait, convert the interval to a duration, and you find that "The wait for a parking solution will be Forever." Q.E.D.

5: Yes, I know that conventional wisdom is that you should never write down your password. Like a toothbrush, you should also change it once a month, and never share it with anyone. If you trust your memory more than you trust your fellow man, (and/or your ability to hide things), then you can eat the note card when we're done. Sure, the ink is toxic, but it's better to die of stomach cancer than to rot in jail because some nutcase stole your username, and sent death threats to the president, isn't it? Your call...

6: By "employee", I mean someone that Human Resources has put data into the computer about. It doesn't matter if you work for URI, (God⁷ knows *I* don't, and they pay me anyway.) You can work for URI, and not be an employee, or not work for URI, and be an employee. What's in the computer *IS* reality.

7: By "god" I mean "Cthulu". Or whatever other deity(s) or lack thereof⁸ as you may choose. Or who may choose, you, come to think of it. Because Cthulu Loves you. With Ketchup.

8: For which I think set-theory notation would be something like "[God⁺]", which means "There is a non-negative integer number of gods". Assuming that zero is non-negative. And that you can't have a fractional number of gods. Or that if you have fractional parts, you have exactly enough of them to add up to an integer number of... oh, never mind. Just remember that if you sue my butt for using the word "god", you'll have to sit in court while I explain what, exactly, I meant by that, and why it was appropriate, which I expect will take until one or both of us dies of old age, and gets to meet him/her/it/them. Or not, as the case may be.

9: In theory, every student who's paid up, and every staff/faculty member on the payroll. In practice, sometimes people don't make the list, which goes to show that the Magic Ebot¹⁰ is not god⁷. (Unless you'd like, are compelled, or simply happen, to believe that he is.

10: The Magic Ebot is named "bob". Well, no, he's NAMED "Robert", but we call his name "bob". We call The Magic Ebot "The Magic Ebot". But that's not what he is. Never mind what "Is" is. What the Magic Ebot IS, is a data-file that the people who run ECAMPUS ship over to the people who run the WebMail and WebCT servers,

11: Well, to start with, it uses your birthdate. Except sometimes it's wrong about when you were born. You can, and if you were following directions during student orientation, did, change it (your password, not your birthday) to something else.

12: Except that WEBCT has another internal list that it ALSO checks, so there can be WebCT usernames that don't match any MAIL or ECAMPUS Id. Or, even more fun, there can be a WEBCT Id that *DOES* match, but isn't hooked together, so that when you change the the WebCT Id, the MAIL.URI.EDU password that goes with the same username *DOESN'T* change like it's supposed to. If you are lucky, this will never happen to you.

13: Bob the Magic Ebot only clones your account name if (A) The registrar tells him that you're paid up, or (B) Human Resources tells him that you're a full-time employee.

14: Like, for instance, "Helpdesk@etal.uri.edu". Nobody wants to BE "helpdesk", for all their personal mail, but people like to be able to send mail to "helpdesk", so there's an extra email account on ETAL to handle that sort of mail. Mind you, we don't PUBLISH the email address helpdesk@etal.uri.edu, because, you see, that would be complicated and confusing, so we PUBLISH "Helpdesk@uri.edu", which is an alias, and mail sent to "helpdesk@uri.edu" gets intercepted and sent to "helpdesk@etal.uri.edu"which is obviously a much less confusing arrangement.

15: URI will trust you to keep tabs on an ETAL account if you're a faculty or staff member. In which case, you already have an email address. The bank won't lend you money if you're poor, either. That's Life

16: Or, possibly, not complicated enough.

17: Real people. Faculty and Staff that are full time, and to whom HRL will cop. Not Students. Not people with ETAL accounts. See note #15.

18: Except when the Evil Nomes from note 3 mess with bob the Magic Ebot, in which case, NetReg won't let you use your ECAMPUS ID (which is really the MAIL.URI.EDU ID of the same name, but will let you use your EMPLID instead, in which case the password is your MAIL/WEBCT password, which may or may not be your birthdate, or 8 zeros.

19: That's "HELIN" not "HELEN". "HELIN" is the Higher Education Library Information Network, for which you may find a use. "HELEN" is a unit of measurement for which you are unlikely to find a use, sans the intervention of [God⁺] from notes 7 and 8. (In this case, Eris²⁰). Far more usefull is the milli-helen, which is the amount of beauty required to launch one ship.

20: ERIS as distinct from EROS. They're not the same, although you wouldn't know it from how some people act.

21: Except, sometimes you don't. This is to make your life easier, you see. Rather than complicate your life and irritate you at the beginning of the academic year, by making you register before you can get online, we like to complicate your life by letting you on at the beginning of the year WITHOUT registering, and then when we've lulled you into a false sense of security, change the rules on you.

22: We're nice, but we're not that nice.

23: Which, today, is MAIL.URI.EDU. Last year, it was POSTOFFICE.URI.EDU. Next year, it will probably be something different, in which case you'll suddenly start having to add "@MAIL" to your username when using it to authenticate via dialup. Of course we won't tell you when we make that change, and you won't be able to see what's wrong because you're using one of those never-to-be-sufficiently-damned dial-up-scripts that hides everything from you.

24: Which means you paid for it, and sometimes it works, in certain places, and sometimes it doesn't, and for some people it doesn't work at all, in which case, someone might look at it when they have the time, but no-one's making any promisses. We're getting better though. We'll have it all working Real-Soon-Now.