The Popularity of Blogs

Posted on by Michael

Well heck. Seems like just about everyone has a blog these days. Famous people, me, other not famous people. Someone just CAME UP with it one day (like Al Gore inventing the Internet) – and suddenly everyone’s gotta have it.

Famous People have them.

Star Trek nerds have them (and strangely enough it looks like ours…).

My friend Sean even has one.

Some are free, some are not. Some even have ads and can make you money if people actually show up and read your thoughts.

Anyway, I’m just amazed at all the blogging going on. Seems like a cool business idea, except that you can get one for free. Free. That’s a word you just don’t hear anymore. What’s the catch? I don’t think there is one. Millions of people talking about what interets them (and some other people). AND it’s free. Weird.

So there it is. Blogging is fast, free and some people even think it’s fun. Hey – whatever floats your boat. I blog. Sure, I admit it – who doesn’t anymore? It draws out the poet-philosopher inside me that so often is tied up by the coder inside me. I’m appreciative of a forum where I can just talk about … well obviously whatever if I’m blogging about blogging.

New Toys

Posted on by Michael

I have proceduralized two new utilities: An HTML Display utility and some page break code.

First:
wou_util.html_help.print_normal_text(ptext varchar2, ppixel_width number);

I have had situations in the past where I’ve accepted text from a textarea (which allows Carriage Returns), then want to display that text normally on a webpage. Well, the carrriage returns don’t render, so it looks like @#%(*&@ . Anyway, I’ve got this procedure working in both IE & FF (I still officially hate FireFox…turd) – with one caveat. You have to pass the width in pixels to get IE to render correctly. Anyway.

Second:
wou_util.html_help.page_break;

This procedure SHOULD produce a page break (not on the screen) but in the printed text. For some reason I could not get it working correctly in FF for me, despite much effort. I think it might be the CSS I’m using. If someone uses it, please let me know if it works for you.

Anyway, spent a good deal of time coding today – hope these utilities might do you some good someday.

It says Pride is a sin…

Posted on by Michael

Ok, maybe I’m not proud. But BOY am I happy. LDAP authentication to CBORD is working, and the room signup process (which begins on April 3, 2006) is coming together. I think we have all the pieces put together and I’m now waiting for Thursday to do our testing.

14 people from the housing office have filled out an application and chosen roommates and will (on thursday) choose rooms and be assigned to rooms based on those mutually requested roommates. It’s pretty exciting. If everything goes as smoothly as I’m really hoping that it does – well, I’ll be oh so happy. I really want this to go smoothly this year. About 400-500 people will probably use it between April 3rd and June 16th, so it’s gotta work well. We’ve got the timing and the tools worked out. Now it’s just making them work.

It’s been a long road getting here, but things are progressing at a pleasantly steady pace. I’ve got lots to do, and that’s good. I hate… HATE … being bored. Nothing worse. Anyway …

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by my project list – I can see the years it’ll take to complete them all. But I’m hopeful. I keep getting them done slowly. One by one they fall. I probably won’t be able to keep the schedule I’ve outlined for them all, but I’m pleased to be making progress. Hurray Progress!

President’s Speech

Posted on by Michael

Apparently the president gave a speech yesterday. It was noteworthy enough to make the paper. I’m not too happy that I missed it – I didn’t realize that it was on a wednesday. I thought it was today so I was going to go, but was (thankfully) redirected by another staff member that it was yesterday.

I know things aren’t too solid right now. I think I understand the issues. I Think the students understand the issues. I see it as a money problem – I think the Faculty do too, no matter how many times the word ‘Respect’ is used in it’s place.

Do we really need more ‘interesting’ press in a tough time? I don’t think so. I understand what our faculty are fighting for, but as an unclassified staff I find it hard to empathize. Even if the faculty got 0% extra, the unclassified have been waiting just as long (if not longer) for a raise (cost of living, merit, etc…). When the faculty get even 10%, that’s 10% LONGER that Unclassified staff have to wait. Do I want it all to be fair? Sure – but how can I support them without being ‘fair’ to other unclassified staff?

Man, it’s a wierd world. I don’t claim to understand it, I can just comment about it.

I wish I had more to say. Words of hope – but I don’t know how this is all going to turn out. I just know it’s gonna be bumpy yet. I hope we get through it. I think we will.

LDAP (it’s good to be the king…)

Posted on by Michael

Well it’s been awhile since I wrote a coding blog. This isn’t REALLY a coding blog, but the category seemed lonely, so what the hey.

Today (and yesterday… and friday) I’ve been emailing a programmer in NY, working with them to get our residents authenticated to our housing system via some web pages that they have provided. This is all in preparation for the great and mighty ‘Room Sign-up’ process, which involves current residents choosing rooms/roommates for next year. In the past, this very manual process involved MANY hours and whiteboards, lines, noisy rooms (none of which I like too well).

Anyway, welcome to the Information Age. Things can be done online, and theortically, will be done online this year. April 2, 2006 is our target date for the release of this new tool. Back to where we started – we’re HOPING to use LDAP to authenticate current residents to this website allowing them to choose preferences, pick roommates, and ultimately choose their very own room.

Will it be like choosing a seat on an airplane? No. But it’s progress. And I like progress. Rome wasn’t built in a day – and I’ll just be happy to have this thing working.

It’s kind of a beast, but I’m getting moderately good support from CBORD, and that helps keep things moving along. Anyway, I think all the puzzles pieces have been cut, we’re just trying to fit them together in a way that actually makes sense.

One of the nicest things I think about this whole process, is the integration of the SSO technology. To use LDAP authentication for the Room Sign-up Process, students will need to the use the newest version of our Unified PL/SQL Security Code (Cookie Security Code) that we’ve converted into an SSO (Single Sign-On). In short, once the student has logged in once (and as long as their session is still valid), they can move seamlessly through SSO-enabled systems without having to login to each individual system.

This technology is very powerful, and has the potential (like most powerful things) to be dangerous. Students will NEED to know to be careful as once they’ve logged in – they’ll have access to all SSO-enabled systems. Currently we have 0(zero) SSO-enabled systems that are live, but they will become more and more commonplace.

It’s fun stuff, and credit is due to Summer, who helped get all this going.

I love it when a plan comes together. I just got the email from NY saying it’s all working. Tested it twice – all seems lovely.
Just lots of work to do now. We’ll get it done. Hurray!

Not a fan of today

Posted on by Michael

I’m usually a big fan of tuesdays. When you have wednesdays off that’s pretty common I hear. But today hasn’t really lived up to the assumed standard. I guess I just don’t like getting bad news (or apparent bad news). It’s not healthy for me – it creates stress for me – and between me and co-workers.

… and sometimes the bear gets you. Welcome to today.

Anyway so CBORD is irritating me to no end. Not only are they asking for information NOW, but I can’t get ahold of anyone (I JUST received an email from them – but it didn’t really help anything along) – and now it’s 2pm, so it’s 5pm in Ithaca, NY – so VERY few people are still there.

Anyway it’s frustrating being the middle man. I’m trying to do this for group A, but group B needs info from group C and … yeah. Anyway – it’ll probably get done – I just don’t like stress. Not good for the heart.

Breathe in, breathe out…. Breathe in, breathe out.

Cameras

Posted on by Michael

Well it’s an ever-interesting story with cameras.

We’ve finally got the last one all setup and recording (although we have 10 more on order now…). I’m re-evaluating the way that we use cameras, and so we’re going to be changing some security settings, updating cameras, etc…

It would be a long and tedious process without John, so I’m very glad he’s here. Really, I’m training John to be able to handle the brunt of the camera setup, installs, etc… That way, I should be in my chair more, and more should get done. Theoretically.

Anyway, so things are moving forward, and I’ve got to write some stuff for John later today, but then he’ll be pretty much up-to-date. It’ll be good. One whole less category for me to deal with. I’ll still help him and all that, just the busy sorts of things he can do from now on.

It’ll be excellent.

The pieces come together…

Posted on by Michael

Well our Oracle 10g DB seems to be getting better each day. The final core element came together today as we got the DADs configured properly and tested. We had made an incorrect assumption to begin with, which caused us to waste some time chasing a problem we still can’t explain. After starting again from the beginning all seems well.

I’d say there is probably only 1 or 2 more really big things to figure out before we can start doing some real live testing. One of those is incremental backup – but I’m sure I’ll talk more about that when we have it figured out.

All in all, it wasn’t as tough as I thought it’d be, and I’m very pleased that we are getting this far. We will probably start the 2nd half of our training thursday or friday, which should fill in the last few knowledge gaps and make us much more comfortable having a live 10g DB in the near future.

Training

Posted on by Michael

The CBORD staff member who originally came to train us to use their software (as well as set it up) came back this week on tuesday to help us with the Online Housing Application. It’s that time again. It kinda breaks down like this:

Next Academic Year Application:
– Application
– Roommate Match Tool
– Preferences Update Area

Current Academic Year Application:
– Application

Room Signups: (for folks choosing rooms for next year)
– Preferences Area
– Roommate Request
– Squatters, then everyone else Room Choice Tool

So there are three major areas of ‘the wou online housing application’. So that can make life complicated, but it’s not so bad. Our still-to-do list includes: LDAP authentication for access to the above system and online credit card payment.

Cool, huh?

Anyway, so the CBORD guy came and helped us run through scenarios and configure the tools to perform the required duties. We’ve never really had a non-paper process, so everyone’s really counting on me. I seriously hope that it all works. We are gonna setup a test run, and if that goes well I’m relatively confident that the room signup process will go well when it goes live.

Anyway, enough blogging – I’ve got WORK to do. This project has been ‘idle’ for awhile – now it’s crunch time. It’s gotta here. Here goes.

It’s ALIVE!

Posted on by Michael

Oracle just makes me happy. I’ve heard some bad press lately about them, their service, etc… – but they have a D A R N good database, and I just love it when a plan comes together.

Troy and I have the DB running well now, and today we got the modplsql Apache working. That means that we can serve PL (PL/SQL) procedures out to the web. I know – it’s no new thing – we’ve been doing it forever. But NOW – we have it working on the new Oracle 10g DB – which no one has done here yet.

Long story short, I’m happy we got it working. I don’t understand ALL the fine-grained details yet, but I have most of it figured out. It’s exciting, and soon we’ll have all the necessary components working and our training complete – and we can begin testing to move the Dining menuing and inventory application over. Once that’s working well, my Machiavellian scheme can continue by bringing all my other supported applications over to this ONE Oracle server.

Wouldn’t that be wonderful…

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