Master Nerd

Well today, in lieu of either a OUR or UCS staff meeting, we had a 5th Site meeting. This meeting included many delegates from OSU, OUS, as well as many of the WOU UCS staff and other WOU superstars (VP’s, Directors, etc…). It was a Long meeting, but a good one.

Topics included Banner upgrade information (past and future), Web Best Practices, OSU OSL, and some OSU/OUS network information. Overall, very useful information. Some of the nuances and detailed information was relatively unrelated to my area, but nearly all of it was interesting.

I thought I’d give a small rundown on each of the 4 topics:

As I’ve never actually used Banner, nor do I have a login, I thought this portion of the meeting would be non-understandable, boring and useless. It was non of the above. Besides the painful cost of trees, I came to understand the new scheme to merge the different Banner databases (SIS, FIS & HR) of each OUS campus. To my best understanding OSU has already completed this little jaunt. For the most part it had little to do with me, so I shall move on.

Web Best Practices was interesting, enlightening and provided us with a link to the OSU best practices site. I have yet to read the information there, but am relatively convinced I’ll be changing some of my personal and professional web development practices.

I was very pleased with the discussion led by Scott Kveton about the OSU OSL. I’d heard alot about the Open Source Lab, from Chris White (OSU). During this discussion, a major point of conversation was Redwolf, and it’s relation to Open Source programming. I don’t want to sound proud, or boast, but I’m glad we have something that we can share with the world.

Lastly, we discussed network infrastructure, Internet2, large network issues/concerns – and how we might further collaborate/learn from each other in our little OUS world.

It was a good meeting, with a pleasant lunch. It got all of our wheels spining. We went back to ITC008, and discussed… (please see next blog)

So we’ve been having this problem with our Nutrition & Menu Management software. For one user in particular, this one feature caused the program to hang and crash on them.

Today I duplicated the problem with that users’ account on another computer, after verifying that ANOTHER user account COULD in fact do this feature from the machine.

So, we knew:

1. This computer is capable of this function.
2. The error seems to be following the account
3. All user access permissions appear to be correct.

Anyway as I was passing through the Dining Hall, I informed Karen of my progress on the situation and after a few seconds she suggested we try making another user account. Now, why didn’t I think of that?

I created and tested the new account (successfully, I might add). The user ALSO tested the new account succesfully after multiple tests and situations. So I think that fixed it. Weird but true. We’ll find out at the end of this month when he REALLY needs it.

I returned from the Computrition Symposium early this week. It was a rather dichotomous trip, in my opinion. In one sense, it was the least relavent trip I’ve been on – as I was the only client IT person, and did not use the software on a regular basis. On the other hand, I had the most to learn, and learn I did. As I was totally out of my element, I was forced to learn and practice new things.

When I returned I told my wife that I could go for about 2 days without speaking to anyone – as I had used all of my ‘small talk’ for the month on this trip.

“Polite Conversation is rarely either.” – Someone funny

Ah, how true…

Anyway I was really forced to connect with attendees (mostly Dining Managers – like Karen, who I went with) on another level. There are so many IT people who I can talk with for a couple of HOURS on any of many technical subjects. These folks (for the most part) didn’t really have any technical conversation interest, and so I was forced to ‘play on their territory’. Not that this is bad, but I was more tired when I returned of trying to find conversation topics, then traveling.

lol. Another of many funny things was that at most social events, some kind of music was being played – in most cases quite loudly. There was a lot of ‘say it, don’t spray it’ conversation as we had to nearly yell to be heard by the person sitting next to us.

Alas, it was a good trip – I received a great deal of education about supervising. I used to just be this IT guy … you know…”give me a sword and point me in the right direction”. But as I continue to mature (as well all do…hopefully…) I’m coming to understand more of how the world works. Getting the training about Supervision, Management, etc.. now is invaluable.

More than that, it’s causing me to ‘change my mind’ and point-of-view about how I look at the world. Am I designed to be a supervisor, manger, leader, owner, etc… ? If my life were a tailored suit, it would say ‘Made by Management’ on it.

Is that what I want to be? A manager? I’ve seen myself as an employee for so long it’s a real philosophy change. But if I AM destined for that then I should really plunge in. Bill has really been encouraging me to step back and try to see the bigger picture.

Seeing the world through new eyes.

It’s not easy. But I think it’s necessary. It’ll build character (thanks Dad). I’ll take all the training I can get now, as it may not always be available later on. This conference also got a fire lit under a project I’m very excited about. But you’ll have to read my next blog to find out what…

Conference Time again. Karen Nelles (WOU Foodservice Director) and I are going to Woodland Hills, CA to the Computrition Symposium. We’ve had Computrition for a little over a year now I think, and (from a support point-of-view) I like it.

Not only does CT (Computrition) run on Oracle, it was originally programmed in Visual Studio (which used to be one of my favorite dev environments). Long story short, I was very pleased by the quality, style and stability of their product.

From a real support point-of-view, CT is very pleasant in that it ‘just runs’ for months on end with no real need for pampering. Now every 2-3 months it hiccups (either due to user error, or DB issues) and we make a call to support, who’s response time and solutions are excellent. Overall I’ve been well pleased with their product and support.

So Karen and I are going and I think we’ll learn a lot. I’ve been to an ACUHO-IT conference, a ResNet conference, and a CBORD conference – so this will be an interesting comparison as Computrition seems to be a relatively high-class company.

I’m excited to go and hope to learn as much as possible. I’m also very fortunate to have the opportunites that I’ve had to travel. Being born and raised not 40 miles from here – I haven’t really branched out much in the ‘travel’ area of my life. I’m relatively happy just ‘being at home’. But the last few years I (and occasionally my wife and I) have had some incredible opportunities to ‘see the world’.

Strangely the more I travel, the more interested I am to see more of the world. I think some people probably see some, and are quite satisfied, but the more I see, the more interested I am in going.

Not that I love airplanes – but they are an occupational hazard for world travelers such as myself. I know that we won’t always have the opportunity to travel as much as we have been/are, but I’m very grateful for a job that lends itself to travel opportunities and supervisors who have found me worthy of that training.

We had our first Standard 5 team meeting last week. I’m still not exactly sure what we are doing, but I’m confident that we’ll figure it out soon.

I think that I helped Tina and Karen with their first step, but did not know it until the meeting with had for S5 in HL 205. I’m guessing we’ll be doing some of the same things, but with more information gathering, research and evaluation.

It should be an interesting process (Accreditation), and I think a lot of people will be relieved when it’s completed.