October 2008

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Icky LiveJournal

October 27, 2008 in Interweb, from LiveJournal by Big Eazy | No comments

LiveJournal’s new logo says “UndeadJournal”. I am sure that is so they would not cause offense by calling themselves DeadJournal, a long-time competitor. Unfortunately, the domain http://undeadjournal.com/ redirects to http://jpdefillippo.com/blog/. Maybe that means undead is safe? Guess I could leave a comment and ask how JP feels?

Naw.

Having the Life

October 25, 2008 in About Me by Ezra S F | No comments

I really don’t like this question.

If you could inhabit the body of any famous person for one week, who would you choose and why?

The intent probably is more to have someone else’s life. However, the way the question is stated, I really would not get to have that person’s life… Just be in that body. I am me. They are they. Their life is based on their responses to their environment. My responses to their environment will be different. Let’s say I pick a Nobel Laureate. Now I have these completely foreign responsibilities I know nothing about handling. Unless I pick someone with a similar life to mine (no fun), inhabiting anyone else’s body would be a nightmare not a dream.

Yeah, I am overthinking the question.

Probably this is because I cannot think of another life I would really like to live other than my own for a week. I like it. It is mine.

Protected: Autistypal

October 24, 2008 in Uncategorized by Big Eazy | Enter your password to view comments

Rock Eagle Debrief

October 24, 2008 in Blackboard Vista by Ezra S F | No comments

GeorgiaVIEW

SMART (Section Migration Archive and Restore Tool) created for us by the Georgia Digital Innovation Group seemed well received. I’m glad. DIG worked tirelessly on it on an absurdly short schedule.
Information is strewn about in too many places. There isn’t one place to go for information. Instead between Blackboard, VistaSWAT, and GeorgiaVIEW about 29. I amazed I do find information.
Blackboard NG 9 is too tempting for some.
Vista does DTD valdiation but not very well. We need to XML validation before our XML files are run. As we do not control the source of these files and errors by those creating the files cause problems, we run them in test before running in production. I am thinking of something along the lines of validating the file and finding the errors and reporting to the submitter the problems in the file. Also, it should do XML schema validation so we can ensure the data is as correct as possible before we load it.

Yaketystats

If you run *nix servers, then you need Yaketystats. I have been using it for 2 years. It revolutionized how I go about solving problems. If you are familiar with my Monitoring post, then this is the #2 in that post.

That is all for now. I am sure I will post more later.

More IMS Import Headaches

October 20, 2008 in Blackboard Vista by Ezra S F | No comments

I got this error while trying to run an XML IMS import using the WebCT / Blackboard CE/Vista siapi.sh script…

A unit of type Institution cannot have a unit of type Campus as a child.

Guess being on vacation last week spaced my neurons. Normally, I ignore Blackboard errors as meaningless. This time I listened to the error and sent myself off in the wrong direction trying to figure out what was wrong with the typevalue element of the XML was wrong. Typevalue defines the level of the context. So while my level was set to 30 in the XML, for some reason it must be ignoring it, right?

Wrong! The problem was really that the relationship.sourcedid.source was set to “DBA IMS IMPORT USG_COL” instead of “DBA SIAPI Import USG_COL”. So it was unable to find the parent object. So the error makes no sense to me now.

Can I have my two hours back?

Home Again

October 18, 2008 in Family, from LiveJournal by Big Eazy | No comments

Had a great visit with family over the past week. I really do love my family. I ought to visit more often. After all, the point of not moving too far away was to make it EASIER to visit. Maybe I do live too far away?

The extended family is all over the world and visits my grandmother much less than I do. I could call, email, or chat through Facebook more.

User Interface Resigns

October 17, 2008 in Interweb, Photography by Ezra S F | 1 comment

Why did you do it, Flickr? Why?

Originally uploaded by issuez

Changes to the Flickr home page and Facebook’s overall UI were intended to make them more streamlined.

So why is there a vocal rejection of these UI changes? Well, management is focused on attracting new users. In their minds, the people using the system are hooked and going to stay. Word of mouth is how I see these new users getting added. Upset customers don’t recommend a company to their friends.

tag: photography