Master Nerd

As many of my Faithful Followers know … I’ve been collecting old Mac Mini’s for sometime now.

Yesterday I spent almost the entire day attempting to install and manage Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC).  UEC has a Eucalyptus core for clustering.

So I got the software installed on the minis (3 of them).  One is the cloud controller, the other two are just nodes.
I reconfigured a switch and put them on the right VLAN and built some firewall rules so that everyone can talk to everything.  Progress!

Then I setup a subscription to Landscape to manage them.  And I can manage them, but need to have a non-self-signed CERT to do so 🙁

I logged directly into the Cloud Controller, and canonical’s CERT is messed up with GoDaddy.  After an hour of searching, no one had a solution.

So I jumped over to RightScale.  Management works… but they don’t have any Eucalyptus images.  No worky.

So I tried HybridFox.  Same deal.  No images.

I started working with enStratus, but I’m thinking my cloud is a bit “old” for them to really help me, although I actually got two emails from them.

Eucalyptus actually called me too, and we talked, but as I was only doing research, and want to do it on a private cloud, he had little feedback for me.

Overall, I think cloud computing is probably neat in Amazon’s EC2 – where it works.
Private clouds?  A joke for the moment.  At least with Eucalyptus.

Some day perhaps.  Until then, my Mini’s remain @ my /command.

I recently upgraded to Firefox 11.0
We have a security appliance on a private network.
It has a self-signed CERT, so I get the “This Connection is Untrusted” page.  That’s normal.

I click “Add Exception”.  I click “Get Certificate”, but the page says “This site provides valid, verified information.  There is no need to add an exception.”
So the “Confirm Security Exception” button isn’t clickable.
You’ve locked me out of anything with a self-signed CERT ???

Really?  No one bothered to test something so critical before it was released to the planet?

wow … No wonder you’re losing to Chrome…

Bill handed me a project in December/January that I JUST finished 🙁
It was a many-term online schedule of classes.  The “live” production one only shows terms that students can actively register for.  This told looks at historical and future data to provide needed info to Deans, etc…

Anyway, with some real help from Soukup, I got it done 🙂

Nathan and I have been digging into WorkLoad for a few weeks now, and yesterday we had our first real ‘status’ meeting with key players.

We had few (if any) bad assumptions or calculations.  Most of the work will be focused on understanding the Banner forms, their inter-connectivity, and how they access/calculate the data.

A few more weeks of work, and we’ll have another status meeting in April.

So our nFx Ranger died a few weeks ago, and I rebooted it, etc… – to no avail.
Finally opened a support case, and we’re gonna rebuild it from scratch.

I have the DVD and just got the password so I’m gonna start the rebuild now.

I have just a few projects left before I can finish scheduling all the campus programming projects.

Faculty Load has taken a lot of time this week, and will consume much of next week as well —

90% done!

Haha – old joke.  It wasn’t really funny back then …

So BK handed me a project to update a realtime schedule of classes for the Deans and AP.  The code was there, but it was out-of-date, was missing terms, missing data, so-so interface, etc…

I added the terms, added security (Portal), loaded the data, re-re-re-re-re-re-loaded the data and got about 20% 🙂

Next week Mike can vet my data, and help me fill in some names and we can push it to the important people —

Then on to PM!  … and training … and Faculty Load.

http://cpsfoundation.org/?page_id=178

It is time.  My running debut is in 15 days.  Today I ran ~3 miles w/ BK.  My knee still feels good, so I’m moving forward.  Paid my fee and I’m ready to run!

It has been a very long time since I competed … in anything really (except for DISC GOLF!)… ahem.  Running.  Anyway, I’m excited.

Faculty Load Kickoff is next week.

Jeremy will be up on Monday to do some Banner training.  After that I’ll have about 1.5 days to totally ramp up, learn and try to understand Faculty Load. 

What it is? 
Who is involved?
What do they want?
Why do they want it?
When do they want it?
What do they expect to get from it?
Whose expectations are misaligned with other groups?

What are all the steps?
Which ones are critical?
Can we group the pieces into groups?
Which steps are in the first group?
How long will that take?
Where do we start?

As you can see, I’m full of questions…  questions that need answering.  And no Saruman to provide counsel.  That’s OK.  We have a group of real smart people to help us work through this until we have a successful product!

If I were a unix server, my cpu load averages would be in the 90’s.  like all week…

I have a disorganized desktop, a completed eval that I still need to go over with an employee, 320 emails in my inbox (ouch), and a list that’s growing each day.

Did I mention that I had 5-6 hours this week that were not scheduled?
Holy hand-grenades.  It’s been wild.  Oh, and I’ve not been feeling well for about 3 days (compacted by that disallowing me to exercise).

I want a nap, and a cookie 🙂  On the bright side, I had some very productive meetings this week.  Some might even allow me to have other people do some of the many many things on my list 🙂