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January 30, 2008
Hey, I Still Ride the Electric Bike...
except, not when it snows or rains too hard. Just for fun, thought I'd update you on my electric bike experience. I've owned it now for about 5 years (I really forget exactly how long) and ride it to work nearly every day. After performing the repairs on it last year, it has just been rolling along with very little maintenance. I estimate that I've ridden it about 6,000 miles, maybe more. The electric bike is still a lot of fun to ride - it sure beats driving to work in a regular old car. You get the wind in your face, yet are still fresh as a daisy when you get to work. This is probably the biggest advantage to me of owning an electric bike - it is just plain fun to ride.
Current distractions are a squeaky front brake - needs new pads, and the front tire is original so it needs to be replaced. That's it. Oh, it needs to be washed, too. Not bad considering it is ridden day in and day out.
The batteries I'm using now are the Chinese version of Yuasa batteries and they are really holding up well. I read that it reduces the life of these batteries if you run them way down before recharging them. So, I have begun to recharge every other day whether they need it or not. Before, I liked to see how far I could go before they gave out, but that may have been responsible for shortening the battery life. These are showing no signs of slowing down yet.
If you get the chance to ride an electric bike - give it a try.
Posted by rossm at 1:09 PM | Comments (0)
Moving AERO to 10gR2
Those of you familiar with the UCS department know that two key employees have moved on to different jobs in the past month - Joe Crowe and Travis Knabe. It's hard to see old friends leave, but just a part of life, I guess. For those of us remaining, we will replace the positions, meet new people, and move on. I mention this because Travis was a key player in making the upgrade of our Oracle database happen. It's kind of ironic, we were getting pretty close to doing an upgrade about a year ago, maybe more, when Troy Knabe left (Travis' brother), putting this project back to square one - Troy was "the" key person back then. Thankfully, Travis is still available to help on a reduced time basis, and we are mighty close to getting this upgrade completed.
We have a running 10g database on our backup server (not production) that has a functioning web server and a web interface to the Oracle Enterprise Manager. This was our practice upgrade of a copy of our production database, and with a few wrinkles, went quite well.
The basic steps for completing the production upgrade are to modify the OS etc/system parameters on Sundown slightly, create Oracle Homes for the new database and HTTP server, install db and HTTP server, run the upgrade script to identify issues for the upgrade, perform the upgrade, re-configure and clean up old directories and legacy code.
Stay tuned for more blogs with upgrade details as we move forward.
Posted by rossm at 9:53 AM | Comments (0)
What is this "Astra" Anyway?
Many of you have heard the term "Astra" being tossed about campus. What is this, anyway? Well, in a nutshell, Astra is the name of a new application that is responsible for scheduling classes, events, and equipment for the entire campus. Astra is the brand name of the product, which was purchased from Ad Astra. The expectations for Astra are to centralize scheduling, make scheduling information more readily available to the campus community, better utilize our existing classroom space, minimize or eliminate "double booking", and improve notification to interested persons (such as the Physical Plant and Public Safety) when events are scheduled.
As you might guess, the installation, implementation, configuration, and I'm sure a few more "tion" ending words, is a pretty big undertaking. There are about ten main users of Astra, and five persons from campus went to Kansas City for user training. The class scheduling portion will be used the first time for this coming Spring term. The classroom scheduling team has been working hard to get the information entered into Astra that will permit us to run the "optimizer" for scheduling those class sections. The "events" schedulers are also busy entering their data to allow us to switch to Astra next month. The equipment for the Hamersly Library and the Werner University Center will also be in Astra by next month. Nathan's equipment will continue to be scheduled using the WOU website until these other areas are up and running.
One thing you will be interested in is the Astra "web interface". This interface will display scheduled classes and events, and show you what rooms are available for you to reserve. You will be able to request a room for an event from the web. To get to the web interface, go here. If it asks for a login, use "guest" with no password.
From a technical standpoint, I have been very impressed with Astra. It resides on it's own server, connects to our Oracle database, and has a mostly live interface with Banner. The implementation of all of the pieces went very well, and it all works! If you've ever set up Banner interfaces, you can appreciate how nice it is to get one going with very minimal problems.
The problem of scheduling is an NP Complete problem, which means there is no solution that can be solved by a computer in finite time. However, it is possible to approach a solution in finite time, and it is fun to run the "optimizer" in Astra. First, you put in all your class section information (times, instructor, class size....), all of your preferences (which rooms are best for which classes), and your "hard requirements" (the science class must be in the science lab, for example). Then you run the optimizer and it will schedule more than 90% of your classes for you. It also has a tool that shows you all sections which weren't able to be scheduled, why not, and gives you a list of all possible substitute rooms. If there is an available room that's appropriate for that section on the list, you can select it, press OK, and it's done.
There's lots more to Astra, and I'll be writing more blog entries in the future. A huge amount of work has been done entering the initial campus information into Astra, and people all across campus are doing just that, even now, and have been doing it for over a month. I'd like to thank everyone involved for their hard work in getting Astra off the ground. The benefits to WOU will be worth the effort. I'd also like to thank Bill Kernan for trusting me with this project.
Posted by rossm at 9:06 AM | Comments (0)
Hello From Home
Well, an experiment is underway - I'm trying out working from home one day per week, on Wednesdays. Dale Goodell is manning the office at the Physical Plant. Hopefully, this will give me some time to focus on three goals:
Get my Blogging up to date
Put the finishing touches on Astra implementation
Upgrade our production database to Oracle 10gR2
The plan is to give this a try for two months. The biggest advantage so far - I can see it raining out of my window!
I'll keep you posted.....
Posted by rossm at 8:55 AM | Comments (0)