... the other half is maintenance

This morning I arrived at work early - I was hoping to complete a mail-merge before my morning meetings and my afternoon with the kids.  But I made the fatal mistake of pulling up my email to make there wasn't anything more important/pressing.  Lo, and behold, I needed to finish some edits on the CASA Annual report.

I pulled up the report from the email, added an explanation about why our calculated retention rates for orientation attenders and first year freshmen do not match exactly Institutional Research's numbers (we include some students that begin in the summer and some populations that are excluded for state reporting purposes), moved some graphs around and other minor edits.

Next, I pulled a list of the remaining assignments to an advisor who left the university - a flaw in the current system is that when an advisor is inactivated, other departments can no longer look at his list - I have to use the historical database to pull that information (one of many reasons that assignments are due for a re-write).  

I answer a couple more emails.  Time for my 8am meeting with ACNS/the Library.  Walk around construction on campus and into the Library.

8am

Today's topic is the MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) on CASA taking over daily management of the laptop checkout program in the Behavioral Sciences Building.  For the past year, it's been a joint venture where Undeclared Student Tech Fees have paid for machines and our lab staff have worked equal hours along with Library student staff to checkout the machines.  The Library did all the maintenance and setup of machines.

So, now we will take over

• 10 Macbooks and 15 Dell laptops paid for by Undeclared Student Tech Fees
• 18 Macbooks and 20 Dell laptops paid for by University Tech Fees

We'll continue to use the library system to checkout laptops for convenience and to charge students who checkin items late and damage/destroy machines.

We (Undeclared Student Tech Fees) are augmenting the laptops with 18 Macbook Pros.

We are adding printers in the area and two printing kiosks.  Students will be able to use the laptops and webprint to print using quota on http://acnspapercut.colostate.edu:9191.  Quota can be added by transferring money from  http://ramcash.colostate.edu.

The Library added surveillance cameras over the checkout desk and will continue to handle the study rooms and seating, and the checkout program is still an extension of Library Technology Services.

We'll be extending hours and having two students watch the desk, hopefully filling the student technical needs even better than we did in the just-in-May-closed-Durrell-lab.

9am

I setup a new Orientation Graduate Assistant whose first day is today.  I talk about technology at CSU, what we provide, and an overview of how technology supports the CASA units.  We provision his account meaning I give him access to:

• A CASA account and ability to login to machines on the CASA domain
• Access to install programs on his assigned office machine
• An exception so that he can have an exchange account on mail.colostate.edu
• Access to edit portions of the Orientation and Transition Programs website
• Access to Lighthouse, Leave, Timesheets, and the Orientation Reservation system
• Access to InvolveNet, the tracking system for First Year Mentor Programs
• Membership in the appropriate Exchange groups for Calendar management and Distribution Lists
• The ability to remotely login to his office machine

10:15am

Head over from Aylesworth to TILT.  Finish moving a few items between rooms.  The computer staff moved across the hall from our former office into the former resource room.  Yesterday, the computer staff moved a fridge out and a bunch of desks, computers, monitors, etc into the new space.

*Found the door to our office unlocked.  Old habits die hard - someone unlocked it in the morning, but now there is no reason for it to be unlocked when no one is there.  So, I updated the sticky note on the door.  We'll see if people read.*

Move a bunch of stuff around.  Pulled the black crates and laptops that need to be moved back to Aylesworth.  Promptly forgot them for the rest of the day.

11am

Met with TILT staff about the Great Hall - we have added printers up there and a single machine for printing.  Worked out lots of logistics, and attempted to add the printers to the machines already in place.  Determined I'll need to work with their IT folks to install Papercut Client on laptops.  Lots of documentation needs to be written!!!  

The printers will work just like the BSB printers - purchasable quota can be used to print at any of the locations - Library, BSB, TILT Great Hall.  Housing is also adding printers in several of the residence hall main offices.  *Note to self - order the test printer for housing*

12pm

Rush home to spend the afternoon with my wonderful kids.  It's library day!

Now, here I am during quiet time - Tristin is sleeping, Collin is watching Spiderman on TV, Marcia has been learning Photoshop drawing using a Bamboo drawing tablet (and is now starting dinner), and I am adding way too much detail to this blog.

Gotta go back to work after the kids go to bed.  Still didn't get that mail-merge done.

Just another typical (a-typical?) day in the life of a University IT Geek Father.

Recovery

This weekend was obnoxious.  I caught something from Collin, and it was not fun.  Had to miss a BBQ and doing much away from the house.  At least I didn't throw up like Collin did.

The worst part about being sick is how you feel like you are missing everything and that life will pass you by while you are recuperating.  Then you realize, hey, my body is probably telling me something (I haven't been getting enough sleep), and to enjoy everything else, I first need to be in good health.

So I polled my facebook friends, and apparently they only want to hear about unicorn poop and rainbows.  Which is retarded.  It's what my almost three year old would ask for.  Well, he'd ask just for the poop part and then I'd remind him again that people don't like it when he talks about poop all the time and could he talk about rainbows instead?  So where do the unicorns come in?  I don't know.

Speaking of, Collin is very clever.  He can make up stories now.  He told one last night about spiders he found out in the garden.  They climbed up their web, up and up, until they were at the top.  Then (according to mr. almost-three) they pooped and it went on everything and everything turned into poop.  And Collin should have ended up in time-out for that one.

So, ummm, technology?

Matt and I have been working on GMS - list maker application.  Friday we got GMS to run a game on iPad, and over the weekend Matt and Mike got scroll working more nicely and the ability to dynamically create lists and add new items to lists.  Yesterday we figured out how to restrict the width of a field so that text typed in does not overflow the box but instead hides text.  Some progress.  Marcia created her first seamless tile, which we will probably use in the list program.

Restricting text basic methodology:

• A user types on their keyboard and as they type a string buffer is filling.
• The string buffer is drawn on the screen in the location of the focused text box, offset a tiny bit to center it.  Naturally, since the 'text box' is just a sprite on the screen, when the text being drawn on top of it overflows, it just keeps going
• Instead, check the length of the string.  If the string length is larger than the box, set the string to be displayed to cut off the first character.  Keep cutting characters until the text fits.  
• Viola!  The text stays in the box