Bring out your conferences. Bring out your…

Posted on by Michael

Alas, conferences are not dead, but are alive and wild.

Sunday we move in like 1000 people (many of which will leave within 7 days), but by then everything will be in full swing.

We’ve had some … fun … trying to get everything ready for them. ‘Course we have this same complication EVERY year I’ve been here – making our systems and tools work for temporarily housed conference members (many of which don’t use our network). But for those who do, and the many ways they do, life can get complicated. And often does.

So this year, we have probably the best system ever (I always think that), which John and Paul have been instrumental in designing, setting up, testing and deploying. I’ve been there to ask irritating questions and try to simplify things whenever possible, but the real credit goes to our local Bradford experts.

All in all, sunday shouldn’t be a huge issue. We’ve setup and tested all necessary systems, with a good amount of success (this week we have one conference, which went well). It always seems as though we’re behind whenever conferences come to town, but I’m not feeling quite as CRAZY this year about them. I know Patrick’s stress level will go down after the end of next week. 🙂

Now I’m trying to keep up with all my meetings and make progress on the integrated online wou/housing app. Lots of little projects that are all pilling up quickly. Good thing I’m taking most of the July 2nd week off – otherwise I might get caught up!

Productivity +

Posted on by Michael

Regardless and irregardless of a relatively lousy night’s sleep last night, today was pleasantly productive. I had a lot of little projects hanging over my head that needed to be cleaned up and finished, and today I finished them all. Yeah – like All of them. I’m just incredibly happy about it, and now I can focus even more on the online housing application merger. After talking through some details with Summer, I’m not quite as worried about the 7/1 deadline.

The online app requires the unified app, which will be up by 7/1.
Module 2 is the online housing app for paper WOU applicants. That’ll need to be up ASAP after 7/1.
Module 3 is the future residents info page, which will be up by 7/15.
Module 4 is the online preferences update page, which will be up probably in 2008.
Module 5 is the roommate match tool, which will be up …. later.
Module 6 is the presignups process where current resident recontract with WOU to live on campus next year. My guess is that we’ll rewrite this and go live April 2009.

So this ‘online housing application’, is no small deal. But now I’ll have some real time to work on it.

Tomorrow I’ll be in Portland for part of the day attending a Computrition conference/seminar. I hope it’s worth the pain in the …. sleep. (9am conference in portland = getting up at 6 am)

This week

Posted on by Michael

Well I was on vacation last week, then got sick. I’ve been feeling sick this week too, but still worked on the timesheet program, the online housing app, and did some computer forensics.

I gotta rest this weekend and get all well cuz my deadlines are starting to press in and things are only gonna get busier.

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Auditors. (crud).

Posted on by Michael

So I totally understand why we need them, but that doesn’t mean I gotta like ’em.

Student Payroll had this little flaw that was missed in the original design. The calculation algorithms grab the most recent payrate and multiply it with the # of hours to get an amount of $$ to pay them. When you live in the present, this works great. However, for those looking at past data it’s all wrong cuz the reports are all dynamically calculated … you guessed it… with their current payrate. So today I found out an auditor is arriving next week to review payroll and our pre-test failed due to this issue.

After SUPRISingly little time, I was able to reconcile to of the most important reports and make things synchronize. Now I just have to update any and ALL reports that use this algorithm. Easy right? Sure, should only take me another few hours, but here’s the REAL fun: Effective Jan 1 (most years) is a federal/state minimum wage increase. Our payperiods run the 12th-11th (for reasons I don’t even wanna start on). The short of it is that any report that covers multiple calendar years (Dec 2006-Jan 2007) are wrong. The original design was never intended to pay someone two wages during one payperiod. Bleah. What a mess. So today I also updated the timecard view allowing for 100% accurate (even across years) calculations. That can now be compared to the batch sent to payroll for audit purposes. And they balance. ‘Course.

Anyway, so not only do we have these updates to do (getting the report payrates to work) but Payroll requires some security updates, interface upgrades and a bit of retooling. This is all to be finished by July 12. Should be an adventure 😉

Online Housing Application

Posted on by Michael

So progress continues. I’ve got all but one portion done of the one form required to gather housing information from applicants. A little info tomorrow will provide me with the setup to finish the relatively complicated DOM/AJAX algo-code (algorithm and code). Once the form is PERFECT (which it really needs to be), I can work with Summer, who has been most gracious, to make all the money stuff and banner stuff work.

Then:

– Integrate applicant data into CBORD
– Provide secondary/modified interface (with LDAP authentication) to housing applicants who have already applied to the university.
– Testing and implementation by 7/1

And I’ve got two more projects due by 7/12. It’ll be a busy month. July should be a bit slower 🙂

Helpdesk review…

Posted on by Michael

Today John and I spent some time talking about the Residential Computing Landers Lab Helpdesk app. It’s a tool that a student programmer of mine once wrote. We use it daily in the computer lab, tracking calls and keeping in communication with students with computery problems.

After our conversation, we have decided to meet tomorrow to review the Helpdesk. John is rewriting the helpdesk and portalize-ing it for simple use through the WOUPortal. So tomorrow we’ll do a full audit, looking at the DB design, moving through each page thinking of ways to improve it’s efficiency, flow and features.

One thing in particular we’ll be looking for are appropriate opportunities to use DOM and AJAX to improve the speed and accuracy of data and searches from the Helpdesk. The goal is not to bloat it, but to use it when we can significantly improve the experience or accuracy without decreasing performance, etc…

I never took the time to review the code or application (the Helpdesk) so tomorrow will be some much-needed maintenance combined with incorporation of new features that we’ve recently designed and tested. One of those tools (toys) is a feature similar to that of GoogleSuggest.

Honestly, it’s an exciting time. The number of tools we have grows each week. Now if we can just get together and share, learn and implement…

Vercon … revisited

Posted on by Michael

StaffDev = success;

Yesterday John and I worked on Vercon. Before, when working on it, we had made quite a bit of progress. The difficult DB and technical portions were basically complete. The primary missing piece was displaying the code in a semi-readable and VERY copiable form. That proved to be an … interesting task.

The initial idea was a textarea. It shows tabs, carriage returns, etc… Seems like just our boy. But the problem is, when dumping the entire contents of a package into a textarea, the inevitability occurs where you use a textarea. The problem occurs when you print the tag from the code it actually close the textarea on the page. Then the rest of the code renders like HTML from there on. What a mess.

So, we tried some HTML tags : , , 

, combinations of the 3 ... all to no avail.  Bleah - life was starting to look grim.  We had done the 'hard' parts and now were getting hung up on the 'easy' part.  On to research.  After looking at other people's suggestions - we finally came across a solution (although I had to read it 5 times to realize it WAS the solution).


We needed to replace all the 's with & gt;


So we make this function (which only half works ... still) and throw each line through it before throwing it in the textarea.  Now it's starting to come together.  So being the semi-perfectionist I want it to be perfect.  I'm only asking for the world ... how hard is that?


Some links above the textarea allow VERCON users to switch between the spec and body with a simple click of the mouse (only for packages).  It's actually cool logic.  Then we found some code inconsistencies which we used a clever algorithm to solve.  Suddenly we're feeling all kinds of smart and after copying and pasting our output on top of the code, it's found to be identical.


All of this to say that if VERCON makes a backup of your code (which doesn't work yet cuz it's still in test), then you could click the backup date, select all, copy and paste over your code.  Instant backup.  It's cool, but we still have some work to do.  Soon we'll flip on the switch so it'll be doing some real work.  Then the real testing begins.


The final, pan ultimate step for VERCON is the hopeful possibility of being able to click a button to overwrite your existing code with the currently viewed backup.  This would allow users to instantly switch between code with a mouse click.  How's that for backup and recovery?  But that's still a ways off.  Not to mention that I have 4 StaffDev topics, so VERCON doesn't get as much love as it should.  But one day...it'll work too good.  And it'll save someone's life (code) - as it did mine already...

Developer Meetings … needed

Posted on by Michael

So MikeR and I had a good conversation today.

Status quo is something that I lack interest in. I always like pushing forward, discovering, finding new technologies, playing with fun toys and making things work. Lately, I think as a department, we (UCS) have developed some good technology. But I think we all suffer from:

– Feeling too busy
– Doing two peoples’ work
– Fighting distraction from clockin to clockout
– Having breathing room to stop and think, daydream, innovate, be creative or think real big
– Pressure to complete current projects quickly without giving them 100% so we can get to the next project(s)

Mike and I talked about having more developer meetings. Are you cringing inside? I’m sure some of you are. We’ve had them before and I know some people saw no benefit from them. So I’m challenging those of you who didn’t find any value in what we DID – What can we do NOW to improve our communication.

How can we stop re-inventing the ‘wheel’ to save ourselves and each other time?
What technologies or improvements have been made that others can/should use?
Are there some directions we’d like to take things to better serve our students?
Can we agree on those directions and communicate these successes to campus?

Perhaps I’m becoming somewhat of a Technology Evangelist, but it seems like every organization needs a few. I’m not some crazed techno-freak who believes in technology for technology’s sake. But by stopping here and there and working together, I think we can make better progress in the long run. I don’t always wanna be working so hard, nose to the grindstone, that I forget where I’m going … or why. What’s wrong with stopping and evaluating and refocusing?

I totally believe that it’s better to take 4 hours now and learn/develop/build something that will save me 3 minutes each day from now on. Eventually it’ll be worth it. Take DOM for example. Nice technology, but with near-infinite application. I can now write code to do things in one procedure that used to take me 3. I can improve the end-user experience. Sure it took some time to learn, but it’s saving me time now (not overusing new procedures, testing cross-browser JS, etc…). And I think we serve the students and WOU campus community better as a whole.

I’d like to begin again and have the programmers meet on some kind of regular schedule. Let’s talk about what we’ve done, how it works, do demos and make some decisions. As a team, we can move forward faster. Let’s face it, without more money and staff all we can do it work more efficiently – not harder. I wanna stop working hard and start working smart.

Nerds of the world untie. You have nothing to lose but your…

Oracle and Computrition

Posted on by Michael

Among the other projects I’m spinnin’, I’ve been working with Computrition support to get some end-user issues resolved. I won’t go into the issues, but yesterday I made a breakthrough.

After some playing my laptop starting working correctly (at least on the one issue I’m pursuing). OK, so on to the desktop. Not so much. After hours of installing and uninstalling the Oracle 10g client and the Computrition app … and hacking my registry … still nothing.

So more fighting, moving some files, renaming directories – spoofing the registry. Ah, success.

So I figure – easy (yeah, right). But doable. So I headed downstairs to duplicate the ‘solution’ – aka trashing everything and starting again. I think it’s related to having an oracle 8i client AND an oracle 10g client, but I’m really not sure yet. But things downstairs on that machine didn’t work. Weird. So back to square/circle one. I thought I was super close, now I’m not so sure. Maybe my computers just work cuz they fear me. Wouldn’t be the first time….

Anyway so thursday I’ll call support and have them talk me through a full purge and reinstall. Then we can try again. Here’s hoping!

Season change

Posted on by Michael

Well with Presignups BASICALLY out of the way, it’s time to transition.

In between projects, I’m working on a new tool called Logger (not to be confused with Frogger). Logger will keep a record of every important error event for all my code. At least that’s the plan.

For now, it’ll email me each day I work (aka not wednesdays or weekends) giving me a summary of information: current resident count, portal logins, group membership, etc…

So instead of getting emails when problems occur, I’ll get summary emails the next day. Now that I’m writing this right now, I’m thinking there are some things I still may want instant emails about, but mostly Logger is designed to tell me what has been going on, without clogging my inbox.

It’ll also help keep my systems synchronized by checking things that break and … FIXING things that are broken automatically then rechecking. Self-correcting DB code. It’s a weird idea, but somebody’s gotta try it.

So hopefully that’ll startup on thursday (when I hopefully have it done).

Then!

I’m gonna re-write the online housing application and incorporate it into the WOU online application.

I have some MASSIVE student payroll rewrites to do.

Also, I’m gonna design and build a system for the housing folks for use by future residents (200701) so they can see their preliminary room assignment, roommate(s) and roommate contact info. That is to alleviate the myriad mailings we do each time a room assignment for a future term occurs.

See, really down deep, I’m a closet tree hugger. I love saving paper. And ink. I like computers for that reason.

(Just don’t mention the fossil fuels we burn to run the computer, k?)

Today people in front of the WUC were handing out buttons that say Think Green. I’m into that.

Anyway if I get all that done, we’ll be ready for the August install, September prep, October cleanup, November baby and December migration.

Happy new year.