Redo

Ever heard the term “GIGO”? If not, it means “Garbage In, Garbage Out”. That’s exactly what has happened to the SQL data warehouse I worked over a year on. The main data source, a student information system (SIS), is so fubar that I can’t guarantee the data.

The problem stems from lazy end users (about 80) of the SIS. Instead of checking if a student already existed, or heeding the error that a student already existed, they would just change some small detail about the student. This little “work around” causes duplicate entries in the SIS. Trying to code around the problem is out of the question simply because there are too many variables. Plus, when the duplicates are found in the SIS, I wouldn’t know which entry is correct so I may import the invalid entry while ignoring the valid one.

This sucks on so many levels. The highest level is the fact that the best option is to blow away what I have and start over. That will involve not only importing information from the SIS but also importing every standardized test (ACT, SAT, etc.) again in order to match it to a student.

I have brought this issue to the attention of those in charge but it was pointless. The answer is always “Maybe they just need more training”. Yeah, that’s it. The other four times they were trained to not do it was wrong. Fifth times a charm.

Idiocy - Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. - Despair, Inc. Idiocy poster

25.Jul.08 Microsoft SQL Comments (2)

Recovering grades

Summer, for the school system, is not a time of rest and fun. No friends, it is a crazy time of working fast and trying to get everything ready for the fall. The frenzied work can really be seen in the IT department. Computers have to be ghosted (updated WinXP, new software, etc.), wireless controllers/AP’s installed and new network equipment is set up.

This year was made even more fun because all of the high school teachers had their own laptops. The laptops were taken up the day after the last day of school. An email went out to all of the teachers and principals letting them know when and where to bring their laptops. The email also informed them to back up any important data to their user directory because the laptops were going to be reloaded.

One teacher got a little too delete happy. When he brought his laptop to us, he said, “I accidentally deleted all of the final grades for my class.” What!?!?! That’s right people. Instead of uploading his grade file daily to the grades server, he kept them on his laptop so he could work on them at home and only uploaded every 9 weeks. That’s a bad practice in and of itself. We asked him why he did that but he didn’t really have a good answer (shock?).

So what did we do? We Recuva‘d (bad form, booooooooo) his files. Recuva is made by the same company that makes CCleaner and Defraggler. Recuva can be installed on the local machine or carried on a portable drive (just copy the extracted executable). I took the hard drive out of the teacher’s laptop and put it in an external enclosure the school technician had. The drive was then connected to the tech’s laptop, which I had downloaded Recuva onto, and we ran the deep scan to see if we could retrieve the file.

Recuva has a really nice GUI that shows you if a file can be recovered or if it has already been overwritten by other files. Thankfully, the grade file that held all of the class final grades was able to be recovered. The teacher was happy because that saved him a weekend of re-entering all of the grades manually. I was happy because that’s one more person that owes me a favor.

Men are not punished for their sins, but by them. - Elbert Hubbard

04.Jun.08 School Work, Software Comments (0)

Don’t be a Ted

Every IT department has a Ted. Ted is a decent tech. He does the work he *has* to do but sometimes must be pushed a little to do the other work. Yesterday was one of those days that Ted needed a push. Unfortunately, the pushing got old so I ended up fixing a problem myself.

One of the executives, Sarah, had a problem with her Outlook Web Access. She could connect to the web interface and read her messages but she couldn’t send any messages. Every time she tried to send an email, Internet Explorer 7 would crash. This problem had been going on for almost 3 weeks. Ted couldn’t find why IE7 crashed so he installed Firefox. Problem solved on his end.

Well, Sarah could send emails but she couldn’t change font settings (e.g. bold, font size) using Firefox. She wanted to use IE but all of her request for help fell on Ted’s deaf ears. The frustration got to the point yesterday that she finally came down to the desk/cubicle where Ted sits in order to ask him to come fix her problem. For some unknown reason, Ted was throwing out one excuse after another for why he couldn’t come today. I could tell Sarah was getting upset so I told her I’d come and look at the problem.

Sarah pulled up OWA using IE and showed me how it would crash when sending an email. I had never seen that problem before so I did a Google search. The second or third result gave me the steps to correct the issue. All I had to do was uninstall Outlook Web Access S/MIME Control. I had Sarah send me a test email just to be sure it was working. The email went through and she was really happy. Three weeks of Sarah’s problem being ignored was fixed by doing a two minute Google search.

Why Ted didn’t really try to fix the issue is a mystery. Even when I asked him about it, I one lame answer after another. He did tell me that I did a good job. Thanks Ted.

The difference between a job and a career is the difference between forty and sixty hours a week. - Robert Frost

13.May.08 Software Comment (1)

Same switch, different location

A friend called me a few days ago and told me about a problem where he works. The company was combining their two office locations into one in order to save money. It was a good idea anyway because the two locations were only a block apart. They (friend’s employer) had hired some contractors to install 15 new network drops. When the contractors finished connecting the new drops to the shiny new Linksys SD216 16-port switch, the computer and printer moves began.

Quick background: The CEO of this company is tight with money. They have 15 workstations (old PIII systems), 1 server (newer P4 system) and 5 laser printers so they have no need for an IT department. An IT support contract? HA! Those cost too much. They would just call someone (read: cheapest price) if the needed help.

Now that everything was moved and set up, they were having a problem with one of the printers. No one could print to it. My friend said it worked fine at the other location and the CEO was ready to dock someones pay for “destroying a perfectly good printer”. That’s why my friend called in a favor* and asked me to look at it.

The first thing I did was print out the config sheet for the printer. When I did that, I saw that the IP address was set to 192.168.11.114. I asked my friend what IP range was the office network using and he wasn’t sure so we looked on his workstation. His workstation was set to 192.168.10.90. Aha! I told my friend that the printer IP was set up incorrectly and that it needs to be set to a free IP on the 192.168.10 network.

My friend told the CEO, who was watching nearby, about the easy fix. “Impossible!” I heard. “One of my neighbors is an IT guru and he said the printer was damaged in the move. He even checked the connection and said that it should work because it’s on the same switch as all the other computers.” I told the CEO that I would bet lunch on the fix. The winner would choose the restaurant. He liked that idea and said, “I hope you’ve saved up a couple of months salary because I don’t eat cheap.”

Long story short: I reset the printer so that it would pull a DHCP address, set my friend’s workstation to print to the printer by creating a new TCP/IP port using the printer name and ate the best free (for me) lunch ever. Sweet, sweet victory.

*Be careful when you tell a friend “I owe you one”. This is one of the rare times it actually worked out for me.

The manner of giving is worth more than the gift. - Pierre Corneille

09.May.08 Networking Comments (0)

Free Icons

I am not a graphics person. Not even by a long shot. I can’t even get stick figures right. So, while working on a web site, I needed some icons to use on the page (RSS feed, print, etc.). The best icon sites I found are:

SearchIcon.Net
InterfaceLIFT
Free Icons Web
Icon Archive

All of them have huge collections of icons that are free to download. I had to use GIMP to scale some of the images because there weren’t any available in 16×16 or 24×24 size.

What sites do you use for finding free images?

20.Apr.08 Internet Comments (0)