Master Nerd

We had another DevTeam meeting today. Since our recent departmental shifting, I’ve been asked to serve as the Programmer Manager. I’m pleased and humbled by the change – knowing I will grow both personally and professionally – and get some real change made.

Today I took more of a leadership role at the DevTeam meeting, with Alex and I driving the meeting. He’s been great and so instrumental in getting these meetings going. Now it’ll be my responsibility to keep them going and make sure they are valuable and productive. My desire is to find ways to build the team, work more efficiently and have a bit of fun in the process. Who says Nerds should be boring? Seriously.

Anyway, my todo list seems to grow daily as I steadily approach the birth of my first child. I’m really hoping to complete many projects before he arrives. I think I can get caught up, but we’ll see. Much remains to be done. And the days pass.

I’m thankful for the opportunity to affect change. I think change IS the only constant. And there is so much more we can do for our students, staff and faculty. I want to see WOU shine. As a team, I think we can make it happen.

Blogging really is more of an art than a science.

I just realized I haven’t written one in about 2 months. Wow.

So here goes.

Move-in went pretty well. We got more students online, faster, with less people than ever before. That’s noteworthy.

Went to Florida for a week to a CBORD conference. Learned some stuff. I just keep hoping and dreaming bigger. Integration is the word for the week.

Life is basically business as usual now. My todo list keeps getting longer. Strange. I’m sure looking forward to the Holidays this year. Lots of preparation going on. I’ve never really enjoyed working so much. But to see so many projects come together at home is very nice.

I still have a few timesheet mods to do.
I should get the developer meetings rolling again.
I have lots of little projects, but the big thing is getting this transfer from the WOU online app to CBORD working. It’s pretty crazy stuff. But I’m getting closer.

Back to work…

Time ever just …. pass for you?

Hi my name is Michael, and it’s been over 3 weeks since my last blog.

Apparently I’m not an addict. But I’m back.

Updates? Changes? Hmmm….. lemme think:

We got the registers put in last week. It was about what I expected. No Major issues, and everything still seems stable at this point. Time will tell. Soon I can RIP (no exaggeration) all the old gear and everything out of the telcom closets and Julie’s office. I’ll gain a monstrous cart and lose just PILES of old, dirty, nasty equipment. The new registers are hot. I’m excited about how well they should work. Here’s hoping my expectations aren’t too high…

John was a huge help. Sometimes another pair of hands makes a huge difference.

Still updating the Timesheet program. I should have 2 of the 3 remaining updates done this week. I may hold off on the 3rd update. It’s pretty big, but today I devised a way to test it.

Online housing app is still kinda on hold. I may work with Summer late this week, or early next week. We’ll see. I know she’s got a ton to do and at least as many deadlines as I.

I moved a bunch of deadlines back into November because time is running out and I wanna have as reasonable of expectations as possible for move-in. With Bradford better-than-ever and John here I’m thinking it’ll be pretty smooth.

Lots to do, but I think I’m on top of it. The online housing app is the major stressor and the thing I have the least control over.

The RA’s will be arriving in 2 weeks (sheesh). It’s like summer started just awhile ago, and now it’s over. Wow. Anyway, lots to do to prep for them. I think we’ve got a real chance to get into Fall Term without being so behind it’s terrible. Some hard work and good teamwork should land us there in great shape!

These last two weeks, we’ve had two new people start in Housing and Dining. I’ve been running about trying to get security and access for them – and irritating people along the way.

I have a bad habit of wanting things now. Especially things that are do-able. So if I push too hard, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to irritate people but I probably do because I like to get as many things done as possible in one day.

I’m pleased with the new folks. They look like good additions to our teams.

You know … it’s thursday – and I can’t really remember what I did this week. I went to some meetings. In fact, today I went to a LOT of meetings. But we got stuff done. But I wasn’t in my office as much as desired.

I guess it’s not all bad. I was hoping to have the online housing app stuff done by July 1. That’s like monday. So not so much. But no one is crying tears. I should have v1 ready by Aug 1 @ the latest. A little vacation next week should help r3lax0r me and chill me out.

Dale and I have been working on the Scheduler App which is ready for Beta. And it’s June. w00t

And Bill and I fixed the oracle EM on one of our servers. THAT’s been on my todo list forever.

Tomorrow is SOAR. So I gotta look pretty and talk to parents about computers. Plus I have some politics to negotiate, questions to ask and a meeting with Bill and Alex.

All in all, I’m busy (not bad – except for my diet) – but still getting stuff done. I almost had my todo list down to one page a few weeks ago. But not now. 2 or 3 projects will get the list shorter. And I found that only like 10-15 lines of my 60+ line todo list aren’t due before 10/1. Boy wouldn’t THAT be nice. Here’s hoping 🙂

To conclude this blog, I’d like to express my general thankfulness for my job. I could have it a lot worse, and I want to be as appreciative and thankful for this job (and the people who trust me in it) as I am blessed by it.

Well conference heck weekend is just around the corner and we’re pretty much as prepared as we can be. Paul and John did some configs and testing today, and Alex helped me make and prep more accounts. I think we’re in good shape for Sunday. I’m pretty sure the housing staff isn’t looking forward to it.

Now that the ‘conference craze’ is ’bout done, I can settle back into working on the online housing app. I’m still concerned about some of the future modules, but the basic section should work fine. Politics, policy and programmers could all be obstacles on this one, but I’m confident we’ll win the day in the end. Chris and Ann and I met for a few hours and made some real headway on the wordsmithing of the app and getting little details figured out. It might be OK. I just don’t like feeling like I’m doing the right thing the wrong way. That’s always rubbed me wrong.

It’s been awhile since I’ve had a really funny or controversial blog – I’ll work on that.