Recently in Misc Work Category

I set up my new blog here.

WebLEDS has now been fully tested, and certified, to run on Windows Server 2008, 64-bit O/S. Up to this point, WebLEDS was only runnable on either Windows Server/2000, or Windows Server/2003.

If we're interested in migrating WebLEDS to Windows Server/2008, this will involve a complete reinstallation and reconfiguration of WebLEDS, as well as a custom migration of all existing user data and configurations from our old server to the new. There is a charge for this service.

Back to work in the new year. Though it's been a chilly couple weeks, I have to admit, I like this better than rain, but that's soon to be back.

After time off, there's always a list of issues or problems that have occurred that need to be addressed. So far, here's my list:

- Classroom services request form was throwing errors on submit. Come to find out, it was still using cougar as the mail server. I changed that to outgoing, and then the utl_smtp.helo server to ora.wou.edu. That fixed it, so I did a search on all the code for cougar and changed any place it was used for the mail server, I changed it to outgoing and recompiled.

- The International admissions application is now complete and live. I've changed all the links from the old online application to the new one and also went through and changed the links for the pdf version to the newest one wherever I could find it.

- The graduate admin application to view admissions apps was the same as the one for the undergraduate admin, so I made some modifications to it to more reflect the different process the grad office uses for applications.

- I've gotten two reports that graduate applicants are having a problem inputting their address information. One was second hand email, and I couldn't duplicate it, but the second called and I logged in as her and put in the exact information she was trying and it worked fine. She was using the same browser (Firefox) as well, so I'm not sure what's going on there. I'll just have to keep an eye on it.

- I received an email about a new process for CPR (Course and Program Request) for adding a Writing Intensive Committee. I'm not quite sure how that's going to work, so I'll need to meet with Ellis before I proceed.

- The scholarship application meeting will be next week, which I'm actually looking forward to. I need a new project.

- For the rest of this week, I'm going to attempt to figure out what is going on with the application to banner process. That has just been a nightmare from the beginning, but I hope to have it fixed soon. I know those at the admissions office would be happy to have that fixed.

- Richard told me that some students were still going into the wireless app to "sign up" for wireless service, even though they no longer need to do this, and it's throwing an error. I'm going to do a usertype check and just not let students get that far anymore.

So I got an email from Mike Huber stating:

Mike Ross was able to kill the job running on ora (the test instance) and we'll be able to test again tomorrow when the job runs again (on production) to make sure everything is working correctly.

I've gotten a good start on the repopulate option for the course change request application. I've set up the list of all previously requested changes from the current user and put them in a sortable table.

Now that I can choose which request I want to repopulate, I need to mod the code to grab all the data and put it in the correct spots. Easy.

So I actually had my review this year, which was a surprise to me. I figured we wouldn't be getting reviews this year due to the contract we're in. It was pretty much what I expected, but there was a self-eval question after that really made me think.

It was about what goals I would like to have for the coming year. I've never really been a goal-setting kind of person, and I think this has been detrimental to my moving forward, both in work and personal life. I'm more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of person. I think really concentrating on some goals will be very good for me, and I've asked Ellis to help me with this and have some checkups throughout the year.

For some of my Staff Development time, I've been learning how to use Photoshop. I listened a little bit to the vtc.com course, but mostly I just got in there and played around. I've actually been able to figure out quite a bit. I've got the whole layers thing down enough to get it to work and I love the Blend Properties, though I have a tendency to "bevel" every edge. I've made easy background images from the gradient tool as well. I've made all my signatures for my pdf files from scanned images and then used Photoshop to make the background transparent so that you can see the signature line under the stamp. That has saved me so much from having to print out documents, just to sign and then scan back in to email. I think I'm now ready to take the more advanced vtc class for Photoshop.

Grad app upload to Banner
Grad Office Secure Document Upload
Service Requests
Blog - check :)
Staff Development

So I've been attempting to have a meeting for one of my projects now for 5 weeks. I was thinking, "Today is the day, I'm sure of it!"

Or not...

I need this meeting to verify all points of the application have been completed and are accurate so I can mark it off as being done. Maybe next week? Keep your fingers crossed.

Well, with all the service requests I was assigned dealing with this issue, no one is getting back to me now. I'm going to have to assume that it's fixed, since I could never duplicate the problems.

I also have a meeting next Tuesday @ 12:15 to go over the final sped application. I'll be happy to see this one ended!

An issue came up that apparently someone tried to use the application without putting in a last name and it crapped out on the bank site. Needed to add more checks to make sure that both the last name as well as the vnumber are put in before submitting to the bank.

I've gotten a number of service requests in the past week dealing with accountlookup. It seems a number of people were getting 2001 error when attempting to set their password. Unfortunately, I have been unable to duplicate any of these issues, which is extremely frustrating. I've even proceeded to change their password and then log into webmail without any problem.

However, when I try to log into the network with their username and new password, I get the message that their account has been disabled. Obviously, this is not the same as getting a 2001 error within accountlookup, but their does seem to be an issue with the cron job to set the AD password after the ldap password has been updated. They could also be students that no longer have AD accounts. I've sent message to those students I could get a hold of to respond and let me know if they are still having issues.

So I was asked to beta test the new student plsql ...something... training program, for new student programmers to learn the basics of the tools we use here at WOU. I was created by students for students! (Catchy, right?)

So it looks pretty good, easy to use and goes over the basics. I really am nit-picking, but I wanted to get all the bugs down:

In the try it boxes, there are spaces in the textarea that have to be deleted before typing will work. Otherwise it just shows it as wrong.

In GET/POST - submit button doesn't show t

In JAVASCRIPT - "Click to Execute" doesn't do anything..
What should go there? <script> or rescomp.js ?

In the try it, a new window pops open, but the Home link on that page takes you out of the portal with no style.

On all continue to next section, I always get the alert: You are not allowed to view this page yet.

PL/SQL - It says to delete everything, but don't delete author, created date, and purpose! It's important for later programmers to know a little about this program later.

Also, I noticed the use of htp.prn(', htp.p(' and htp.print(' without explanation.

In the URL for the db, also give the aliases - public2db and debug2db.

INFINITE LOOPS - Add exit or exit-when for them to test it, ie EXIT WHEN x > 5;

EXCEPTIONS - weather should be whether

PL/SQL Quiz - This quiz was ridiculous. It took me 6 times to pass it, and that was just by remembering what I picked before and using a process of elimination. The answers are confusing and there are gotchas, which is not the point of quizzes. Some are even plain wrong:
What's done every time you create a table? -> Says correct answer is create test data, but that is not what the training said. It stated to create a sequence.
Foreign Key is suppose to be a key from another country? Come on...
Doesn't keep money total from quiz to quiz.
Doesn't give correct answer when wrong.
Question make a custom exception -> should be declare a custom exception.
exception BOO; -> should be BOO exception;
when BOO then...

SEQUENCES - misspell --> relationps

RELATIONSHIPS - They primary key --> The primary key

ODL and SSN Example - intelligible (?) I think you mean something else; subscript 1 on hover says Easter Egg! I'm not sure what's up with that.

Okay, that's all I got for now.

Priority Project Status Due Date Notes
1 Admissions App In Process 30-Jun
1 Admissions Project No contact from Adm
1 Forums SSO In Process
1 Friend & Family page In Process 25-Jun
2 Grad App Test
2 HTTP-REQUEST In Process
2 accountlookup error handling In Process
3 Blogging In Process
3 Teamwork In Process
4 SpEd Trio-App In Committee
4 Wireless debug On list of things to do
4 Staff Development On list of things to do ajaxian.com iGoogle, Dojo AJAX
5 IRBAPP Done
5 PR News On Hold

I've finally managed to update Teamwork with current projects and also my staff development hopefuls. Yeah me!

I've realized there were quite a number of updated I needed to do since I hadn't been in there in awhile. It's fairly up to date now, and I'm going to try and stay with it. I even noted that I was added to another task put in my Mike H. (Still not quite sure why I'm on this project, but oh well.)

There are a number of annoyances with this application. Noticeably, the links at the top for project takes you to a search page, rather than a list of your projects; the subtasks need individual assignments rather than follow through from the parent with the option to edit; and it's just not a very sexy application, but maybe I just need to spend more time working with it.

Well, it was a sad week, as we had to say farewell to Joe Crowe ... Ye will be missed. We had a nice party on Thursday and many of you were able to come and wish him good luck and goodbye.

After the Banner consolidation, on Sunday I brought the Admissions application back online, and it's been causing nothing but grief since then. Once the process passes to wouprd and collects the credit card information, etc..., it appears to be running through the charge process twice on some runs, but not all. It always seems to happen when someone wishes to pay both the housing application fee as well as the admissions fee. We had it so it called the charge procedure once and then applied the correct proportions to tbraccd by calling wou_ar twice, so I modified it to call once and not break up the payments. This may cause some accounting nightmares, but I hoped it would make it only charge the card once. No success. I've added more debug code and I'm still trying to figure out where it's going wrong. Logically, it should work perfectly! Very frustrating, as this piece of the program has been since the beginning.

I've also progressed on the PrISM Oregon project and have most of the table structures completed and the application page started. I'll add in Steward's design code to get a feel of how it will eventually look.

I've created a new php page to be included on the home page to show specific events chosen by PR to show up automatically when the date falls within the current two week range. It's been working beautifully, until today. It was having connection issues, and rather than dying nicely like it should, it decided to throw an error and stop the rest of the page from loading. Obviously that will never do, but I'll have to wait for Ron to come in on Monday to figure it out.

I met with Bruce Vickers Wednesday morning to review the Vault and go over the application details. It's pretty straight forward and it hadn't been taken beyond a report repository, but I believe he'll want to expands it's capabilities.

Hope all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

I've been back from vacation for two weeks now, and I think I'm finally caught up. My project load is actually looking pretty good. Edsmart seems to have dissipated, or at least I haven't heard of it continuing. I've been put on the new PrISM Oregon project, which is "a statewide public/private initiative to build capacity of elementary and middle school teachers in math/science". I'm currently working on the table architecture and application flow. The page design will be implemented by Stewart Gilbert.

There is also an HR project on the list for the electronic authorization of employment documents. This project will put the following forms on line and available for approval by a digital signature:

• Authorization To Fill
• Employment Authorization
• Pay Adjust

I still have football recruit database in my queue, but that will just have to wait, again, until January, along with a few other projects.

With the aup emails going out we came across ldap only account for generic emails that were attached to valid vnumbers. If you have received an email for one of these generic accounts, please respond to the email stating that it is not a personal account.

The wireless package was confusing some users due to the wording. I've modified the application to check the user type and display appropriate wordage, including fees that will be due. Also, Brian pointed out to me to check on the pidm that's returned and not put a charge in Banner for -1. All has been fixed.

The second notification for aup is going out today. If you have not signed both the Acceptable Use Policy AND the Monitoring Consent form, you will receive another email and should look like this:

'Dear x:

This is your 2nd of five emails reminding you to sign the Acceptable Use of University Computing Resources policy AND the Monitoring Consent form. There are two seperate pages. The first one is the Acceptable Use of University Computing Resources, the second is the Monitoring Consent Form. Please be sure you electronically sign both documents to ensure your account is not disabled.

You currently have 14 days to sign the policy.

The Acceptable Use of University Computing Resources policy and the Monitoring Consent form can be electronically signed at http://www.wou.edu/accountlookup

Your account will be disabled on October 19, 2007 if you do not sign the policy. In order to re-enable your account you will need to sign the Acceptable Use policy and change your password. This can be done electronically at http://www.wou.edu/accountlookup

Please view Bill Kernan''s Blog for further information http://www.wou.edu/~kernanb/blogs/archives/2007/08/computing_syste.html

Thank you,
Computing Services'

Seeing as it was the first week of class, it was actually fairly slow for me. Wednesday was the busiest. I had a meeting with Joe Sendlebaugh in the morning to go over the vault and what was all involved in that. I also removed a user that would no longer need access to it. It was a nice, short meeting. I then had a meeting in the afternoon with Arne Ferguson and Tim Bowman. That was not so short. They really want to integrate everything they use to keep track of players, from first meeting, recruitment, playing and alumni, all in one place, but using multiple tools. I've been attempting to do some research on how to pull this all together, but it looks like there will have to be some manual steps in between.

I've still be getting errors from Kimber on EdSmart (shocker), and neither Ross nor I are having much luck tracking down the source. She's still wanting changes and updates to this program, but so far, that just seems to break it more. I believe Ross has been trying to get all the data they need pulled directly from the tables.

We had some small issues with wouprd on Wednesday as well that created havoc across numerous apps, including accountlookup. It fortunately didn't last long and everything is working.

The wording for the aup email has been modified to include explicit instructions to also check the form for monitoring consent. It appeared that users were going into accountlookup, accepting the aup and then stopping before also checking the monitoring consent form. So those users that have only checked one will be required to go back in and check both.

We ran into a minor parking permit snafu yesterday that involved online permit purchase for students only. For some reason, the form was submitting to the faculty/staff side, which of course won't work as there are different fields. Since this was later in the afternoon, Soukup and I decided to just change the submit to the student side and enable it for student web. Myron was kind enough to go through and test it for us by purchasing a permit and it appeared to all work. I'm hoping there wasn't a reason that it was pointing to the incorrect procedure, but we'll just have to see today. I'm hoping Brian will be able to tell us if anything is broken.

Of course, the typical service requests. There was one that involved a user that was unable to get through accountlookup. Ended up being the vnumber in LDAP was for another user with the same name. I changed his LDAP entry and it worked. There seemed to be quite a number of issues with accountlookup, and few seem to have obvious problems. I'm just going to have to chock it up to user error for now until I see some way that there really is a problem to fix.

Bill has asked me to include another aspect to account lookup that link to a way for students to only lookup their Vnumber. Apparently there have been quite a few students that use accountlookup for this purpose only, but are having to go through the acceptable use policy every time. To speed up the process, we'll add another link that will facilitate this usage. It's in the queue, but probably won't be done until after my vacation.

As you've probably notice, we started sending out the notice for all users to go through and "sign" the acceptable use policy through http://www.wou.edu/accountlookup. In order to make the almighty auditors happy, it's just something that must be done. We must make sure every user has signed the policy and keep that date for reporting purposes. If you've signed it recently, we apologize for the inconvenience, but it shouldn't take you more than two minutes.

I've written all the code to send out all messages to users that have not signed the policy (according to our records) and to deactivate the accounts of those that do not sign by our cutoff date. Since that falls within my vacation, it will have to be run by Alex. Hopefully it all works.

The policy application for hr to keep track of all users that have read the Consensual Relationships and Discrimination policies and either accept or have questions on these policies. The application will allow hr to answer and post all questions that users on our campus may have about these policies. I'm sure they will eventually wish to add to the policy list, but for now, there are only two. Get to reading them and make sure you understand. For a complete list of all the University's policies, you can go here.

After dealing with the service request system, I've come to realize, I don't appreciate having to log in every time I click on a link in the service request email, even though the cookie is still valid. I therefore asked Ron to change to servicerequest alias to point to the list of requests, rather than the login page. After this took effect, Alex was able to modify the email notifications to include a link directly to the service request, a huge improvement.

Next week will definitely be busy, as I'm sure it will be most everyone on campus. It's also another week closer to my vacation, yeah!

This ended up being a short week as I was out Monday and Tuesday sick. On Wednesday, Ross came over to discuss issues that had arisen with Edsmart. After really digging through the tables and attempting numerous changes to no good, we finally figured it out, or I should say we stumbled upon the answer. One crisis down, 10 more to go.

Joe Sendelbaugh asked to go over the Vault at the end of the month, so I've asked to set up a meeting with him sometime then.

The LOS application for Tim Bowman needed tweaking, so I was able to fix most of those issues for the new camp and he seemed pleased with the changes.

There were quite a few service requests that I went through and attempted to assist with.

I've finished up the HR policy approval site for the two policies they wanted on there: * Concensual Relationships
* Discrimination and Harassment
The application will be able to track if a user accepts the policies or if there are specific questions they have concerning the policies which makes it so they cannot accept them. The admin side allows hr to answer and/or reword the questions and have them posted to a web page.

Short week, as I was off Wednesday-Friday. However, I did manage to get in a few meetings on Tuesday before going off. Travis, Joe and I went over our new project to get the Acceptable Use policy agreed by users each year and all the steps that would entail. Travis and I also met on the ssn search program that we're implementing. Finally, I had a programmers meeting with the following agenda:

Old business:
* 1. Discuss Copper and its custom interface possibilities.
* 2. Discuss MS Project.
New Business:
* Discuss current, individual project management styles
* Brainstorm development process
* Short Term
* Long Term
* Determine homework and next meeting date.

Ellis emailed me as well to finish integrating the housing module into the online app. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, as I've been pulled into these other top priority security projects. That will just have to wait, along with everything else I still have in my queue.

This week was spent with, what else, EDSmart. Kimber needed to have the data entered into the database retrieved back out for reports. As Ross is out to attend his son's wedding (congratulations to him), so I did the best I could to figure out the data she needed. Considering the lack of organization with the old tables, and the fact that data for the same thing seems to be stored in multiple places, it was a difficult endeavor, suffice it to say. Mostly it was data for specific terms formative evaluation for MAT and Teaching Ed programs. There also were numerous students that should never have been in the database, so I also attempted to remove all the data associated with them.

One problem that we ran into with the Teaching Ed data was the score values listed in the database. There was a range from -1 to 5, but the paper forms only list an available range from -1 to 4. I, unfortunately, cannot assume where the extra option came from, or where it should be mapped to. Considering Ross has dealt with this data before, hopefully he can shed some light on the discrepancy when he returns.

I'm sure this is just a scratch on the surface of the problems we will face when we attempt to convert the old data to the new database system Ross and I are trying to build.

I also watch a webinar on Nmap Thursday evening. It went fast, so I'll be re-watching it later to understand everything in more detail. I'm also scheduled for the Cross-Site Request Forgery webinar on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 at 11:00 AM PDT. That should be very interesting. It's put on by WhiteHat Security who provide a comprehensive solution to the growing problem of website security.

I received a new top priority project today dealing with policy change, specifically dealing with the Acceptable Use Policy. Now, rather than requiring the users to agree to the policy once, they will be required to agree every year. This will require not only policy change, but mods to LDAP, possibly the oracle database, and also AD accounts. I've been thinking about at least the LDAP and oracle changes that can be made, and hopefully this project will go smoothly (and fast), as the deadline for completion is August 15.

Well, it's been a busy week. I started out on Monday having a meeting with the Banner team and the feeling was that Ross and I are exactly where we were before. Therefore, we've decided to take a more structured approach to this project and start with the design. I've been working on that most of the week. I've also been doing as much reading as I can on what that structure is suppose to be. Since we've never really done a complete project management approach, this is relatively new to us. I know that it should be done and I understand a vague idea of the steps involved, but nothing concrete, so I've just been doing research on such.

So far so good. I was introduced to Joel on Software by a friend of mine in Florida a long time ago, but doing a search on project management has led me back to this site, and I've been learning a lot from it. I highly recommend the online book User Interface Design for Programmers. Informative and even funny!

Another appropriate article I've found is called Ten Steps for Managing Parallel Computing Projects by Don Heller. The title is pretty explanatory, and as we all have numerous projects on our plates at the same time, I thought it would be a useful read. Fairly "duh" kind of stuff, but nice to review all in the same place. Another one I'd like to mention is Putting Structure to Application Development by Benjamin Elmore, which reviewed methodologies, UML, and some good examples. Much more in-depth article, it's in fact two parts.

The programmers of UCS also had their first meeting Tuesday and was a huge success! I'm quite excited about all we talked about and really hope that we can make the changes we've discussed. I really feel it will improve our work conditions as well as our products we put out, finally producing the high quality work I know we are all capable of. We're starting out by testing Microsoft Project and Copper as project management software. I've only dabbled in both, so I'll need to play around a little more.

It almost feels like it's been two weeks with the day off in the middle. They should really work on those calendars so July 4th always falls on a Monday or Friday!

I've been continuing with the Edsmart project this week, of course. Ross and I have a meeting Monday afternoon with the Banner team to see if there are modules in Banner that can do some of the required pieces of Edsmart so as not to need a re-write of those sections. Considering the depth and constant changing of the numerous forms involved in Edsmart, I can't see them covering much of it, but I can hope. Ross and I have met to go over what we need to present at the meeting to show the scope of the project and the data that will need to be put into reports that are generated on a regular basis.

The entrance application is in test with Kimber and her new assistant. We've asked them to keep a running list of errors or modifications that will be needed. I've started on the next form and have done some more research into the project and how best to incorporate the rest of the forms so they flow smoothly, something that was seriously lacking in the previous version. I would have, of course, preferred to have done the entire design and analysis from the beginning, but there just wasn't time. I'm hoping that doesn't come back to bite me in the b*** come later in the project, if indeed we are to continue with it (rather than transferring it to the Banner team).

I've been also working with Alex to learn about the project management software he's trying out and putting in my projects. It's an interesting application that should really help us with our projects by breaking them into appropriate stages and making sure that they are done correctly to minimize errors and maintenance time after they are put into production (before they are ready, which is what seems to happen all too often due to time constraints). However, there is definitely more to ignore than to use with this particular application.

I've been doing a bit of research on Javascript and other interesting dynamic html tricks. I love being able to do snazzy, dynamic pages, and make sure they work in multiple browsers and operating systems. It drives me crazy when programmers don't take the time to test cross-browser compatibility and only program for IE. Considering we're going more and more towards Firefox (the best browser EVER!), it's important that our programs work on all browsers.

Travis has requested a new ssl cert for moodle so we can get that running with a real certificate, but we haven't had the credit card hold lifted to purchase it. I'm hoping to get that all done by the end of the day. Also, library.wou.edu cert is about to expire at the end of the month, so they'll need to get that renewed soon as well.

Well, as I won't be here tomorrow, I figured I'd wrap up what I've been dealing with for the past couple days and then get ready for my much needed long weekend.

Yesterday morning I spent between dealing with EDsmart and finishing up some small projects cluttering up my desk. I went over the edsmart priority list provided my Kimber and then reviewed all the edsmart tables for form building... there are a LOT of them! This was all in preparation of our (Bill and I) meeting in the afternoon with Hilda and Kimber. I also completed my laptop rebuild and returned it to Trisha, and then modified Thunderbird (which is the BEST email reader) with new security settings and extensions so I can view all my security mailing lists and emails within the single window.

Our meeting didn't go as well as we all hoped, since the project is so large and it's just not complete or logically written, so it really requires a re-write. Not surprising, there was disappointment in the progress of edsmart considering it had been worked on (not by me) for the past three years! Bill and I explained our plan we reviewed yesterday, but was nixed due to the OT and the lack of funds. This probably means I'll be working solely on this project for awhile. I'll meet again with Kimber Monday to review all forms that are not complete or functional.

I started out the day with a service request about the EDsmart form usage. I'm afraid I just don't know what to tell these people except to wait until it's re-written. That would be the best for everyone involved. It's only partially working as it is, and users are just getting frustrated with buttons that don't go anywhere or links that don't work, which I can't blame them. Hopefully I can get something going quickly, but it looks grim.

Due to the focus of last week, I'd become really behind in reviewing my mailing lists, so I spent a bit of time reading through all my security mail backlog. I also have an RSS feed where I keep track of Sun security alerts for our systems, and found a vul with JES Access 7.0, but we're good as we're running 6.

I'm having concerns about my current work load, and met with Bill to discuss these issues. I've been given the duties of security officer, as well as dealing with my programming projects, of which EDsmart is only one. Feeling a bit overloaded, we discussed some options...

I've been working on quite a few little projects lately. I'm still trying to work out the kinks with the admissions application. It seems that we're at least getting the majority of the credit card issues resolved without my input. I've added another feature to the application process that continuously checks a table for the authorization code and displays that, even if the page doesn't reload, which was causing people to think the application never finished. I've also added another section to the admin side to look for an application based on last name or authorization code.

I've finished the application for disability services for online notes interface. I'll be doing to run through with Terry Manning tomorrow and then he'll be testing it out on the students. It should make things much easier for them.

I've been talking with Bob Seay from NCA about an RSA installation with a demo kit. That came today and I'll be installing it on my Solaris box. I've already rebuilt it to Solaris 9, which is what it requires for the Authentication Manager, and it's patched and localized. Now I need to get the Manager installed and configured and a client to test out. I'll probably use my windows machine as a test client. It should work on any platform, so I'll probably want to test it on a couple others.

I've been doing a ton of reading to get ready for the security class I'm taking next month. SANS is putting in on at OSU, so I'll be spending an entire week driving back and forth. I should be thoroughly exhausted by the end, but I'll have learned so much. I'm really looking forward to it.

I had a visit from Tim Bowman the other day wishing for some updates to the LOS registration form I had created for him. They were pretty minor changes, and the administrative lists and sorting he wanted where actually already done and available. It was mostly just formating issues I had to deal with and those are all done now.

I ended up taking two weeks and it didn't go well, so I'll not talk about it.

I actually left work with things at a pretty good stopping place, so I didn't come back to a mess of work. I'll get back into OFAX and see if there are any other changes for the admissions application that I asked Dorothy to look at and test while I was away. Bill also gave me another project to get working on this morning. It will be an application that will send out email to the students based on different criteria. It should be pretty easy programming, but there is the issue of off campus email addresses, such as yahoo and hotmail. If we send out too many emails at a time, these domains will list wou.edu as spam and stop delivering our emails. This is the driving force to get all students to use their wou email addresses, but I guess the other addresses are still collected and we may be sending out to those. Bill said he would research how many we can send out at a time and I can write the script to put the emails into a table and then create a cron job that will send out the specified number of emails at a time. This will mean the emails may take awhile to go out, but at least we'll be able to stay off spam lists, which ends up being a lot of work for Travis to get us off.

Well, I'm back from vacation. It was wonderful! Sunny and beautiful Florida and I spent nearly then entire vacation on the beach. It was really relaxing and I'm almost happy to be back at work.

Of course, there was a queue of issues to take care of as soon as I got back, and I've managed to cruise through them. I'm still working on the football LOS registration and admin side, but it's fairly easy work. I finished the fix to the parking program. Cheri needed to give refunds for some citations and/or permits, but it would put the refund on the current term rather than the original term of the charge. I also had a meeting on the equipment request form. Apparently, it's still buggy, so I'll be working with Nathan to test it and fix the errors we find.

I'm still working on the EDI set up. We finally have the communication working between us and Texas SPEEDE server, now we need to set up the file movement so the EDI.Smart software can see the files. Once that's finished, we can move onto the next step and our contractor, Cheryl Kolbe, can return to campus. It's moving along after having stalled due to my vacation.

I was able to take yesterday, Tuesday the 14th, and go to Portland with Troy and Shaun for an all day session on Oracle 10G Grid and RAC workshop. It was really interesting and well worth the time. I was also lucky enough not to have to drive (Thanks Troy!). Of course, because it was only one day, much of the difficult part of database and system setup was already completed for us before hand. We then were able to install RAC and set everything up with multiple instances. It was just the tip of the iceburg, but I found it very fun and was grateful to go.

I've finally received constructive feedback for replacing the third security measure on our accountlookup application and have implemented it. Hopefully people will find these pictures much easier to read, but I have a feeling I won't be able to please everyone. Remeber, if you want to complain, come with a solution!

Yesterday was the 5th Site meeting, something I'd never been to before. I actually found it quite interesting and came away with many things I'd like to work on here at WOU. For general overviews, you can read through Ellis' blog or Travis' blog.

One thing specifically that I was interested in was the SSO issue we've been attempting to deal with here. We have been looking at a way to use the Sun portal cookie to establish SSO between everything, however we do not have all the pieces yet to implement it, and it had been stalled for some time. After the meeting, there was a mini-meeting within our office to discuss ways to move forward with SSO, even if it's just a baby step. Ellis and I have agreed to implement SSO cookie with just our pl/sql apps. We're using cookies already within our apps that require log-in, so it's really just the next step. We're still working out all the specifics, but I think it will be up and running very soon. This is very exciting and should really make a difference, especially for the people on campus that use our apps quite often.

As most anyone in my office knows, I use my Mac almost exclusively now. With the addition of terminal servers, I can get any application I need. This has induced me to move my Dreamweaver license over to my desktop and try to expand on my web development. I have run into a serious roadblock, however. It has come to my attention that I cannot view numerous files and folders that I would need. I've been informed that it's a fault with netlink and mac connection to external servers that causes this discrepancy between what I see on a mac and what I see on my windows machine. Thus, another reason to push for the website migration. Until this is fixed, it's really not useful for me to work on a mac for web development and will have to continue my development through terminal servers and my windows machine.

It's been extremely quiet around here this week due to most of campus being elsewhere (on vacation). I've mostly been trying to not break anything and stay out of trouble. I've made some minor tweaks on previously written projects and reading up on EDI and OFAX. It's an extremely in depth project, and it's taking awhile to figure out the programs written for OSU. Some of the tables we have in common, some may be equal to something we already have in place but by a different name, and others are new.

I was able to be here for the cougar problems we had Tuesday. I actually learned quite a bit and it was interesting to see all the steps. I love systems stuff, and would really like to be more involved.

After returning from vacation yesterday, I've mostly been doing catch up. I didn't check my email once while I was gone, so there was quite a bit to filter and go over.

I've also been working on a Sun Web Learning course that was purchased for the department. Since it's mostly about how to use Unix, it hasn't enlightened me too much yet. I've just started the module on vi though, and there are some interesting commands I did not know about before, so that's been helpful. I've added them to my cheat sheet by my desk.

Yesterday was just one of those days. It was more of an experiment and discuss kind of days. I got wrapped up in the wall of monitors project that Troy was working on. That was fun. We now have the 15 monitors hooked up the 15 thin clients all controlled with one keyboard and mouse and the display can go over all screens (just like it was one big monitor). Very cool!

I also got another project, self-serve pin reset. This is definitely needed, at least until we can get banner to authenticate against ldap. Poor Leonard in the Registrar's Office is getting numerous phone calls every day to reset pins for those who have forgotten.