Day in Review -- Geek Speak

More class. I think this class could have been decent, but it is only the 2nd week it has been out. The labs still suck, but at least 13-15 were ok. The order and organization of the class is simply terrible. Feel like whoever wrote this was a dog from Up! Squirrel! and we change directions.

On KACE help desk...trying to figure out how to auto-select the submitter's default campus (ldap department mapped to user field location in our environment) at ticket creation. Also trying to do it for 3 others fields. Missing syntax or something. I think it might be a join on submitter & user fields (MySQL back-end). But is submitter populated during creation or will it be a ticket rule later?

Anyone using Fileway's products? Any thoughts are the thing?

Day in Review -- Geek Speak

We had a vendor claiming that we were blocking their mail. Asked for the bounce message. There was none. Figure spam filter hit hard and just hung up on the connection. Do research and show no blocks. Talk to the vendor..."Oh, its working, no one has responded yet. I guess people are busy". Or my guess is users recognize spam even when an email filter doesn't say it is for them. Just a guess.

SQL class is going down the suck terrible path. Material is good. The labs blow. Either you cheat and use the scripts provided or have no chance. Then the organization is terrible. For authors and trainers, scattering shooting topics is no way to learn. BUILD on topics damn it! If you are going to jump around at least show me why and what we are gaining doing it this. Doing back-up/restore followed by security and auditing and then indexing followed by maintenance plans? huh? How about we put the pieces together? Security and auditing today? seriously, wtf?

I'm sure there was more, but what a frustrating waste of a day. Time to practice a bit.

Day in Review -- Administrative Overhead

Slow day on this front. More people are gone due to summer vacations. Probably a good thing. More time left for class.

Day in Review -- Geek Speak pt1

Training on MS SQL 2008 R2 day 2. Not a whole lot to add. Lots of material to re-read tonight. This is one of the times actually reading the material with the product running is required.

Someone blew up one of my applications. Grrrr. Upgrades can be bad. get to put the material in class to practice.

Day in Review -- Administrative Overhead

So I am still in training this week. My groups have managed to keep the train on the track, make general progress on items, and generally be good. Still trying to get the dates set for our two new techs. Summer time with forced week off holidays (july 4) and new budget monies adds a new wrinkle to the procedure.

The large project details is being finalized so we can present to the holder of the moneys and the Finance office. I love having good people.

Technology Integration & Silos & Relationships

I hate silos of information without integration. crapcrapcrapcrap. We have a tool that can help our teachers relate testing materials to all sorts of other information. Awesome. The vendor wants to use AD as the authentication. Cool, that's my group. We can do that. We already do that for others. Vendors question, how do you relate your uniques IDs to your SIS. Me, dunno but will find out. Ah crap. I'm not ever ever gonig to publish what they use for a unique in AD. Find a second unique field. Good. So now I have 2 unique fields in AD to match our SIS & BIS and we gotta keep them updated. Sad part is both systems support AD authentication, but when we deployed, AD was the issue. Happens. Now we have to figure out how to put the pieces together so they get updated.

Day in Review -- Technical

In SQL 2008 R2 intro training. FYI, almost all day 1 training days just sucks regardless of class. suck suck suck. Start with a group of 15-25 geeks trying to show each other who's geek is biggest while we introduce ourself. This group wasn't bad though (or i'm getting old). Followed by the intro to the product. then lunch. Sometimes the last half of the day actually hits some material. This one did.

Our instructor appears to be good. Withholding final judgment until the week progresses. Just don't read the damn slides to me!

Day in Review -- Administrative Overhead

Off-site and in training with only periodic breaks and a Monday. Yep, all sort of irons in the fire needing attention. Actually, the irons were good things. One of my leads is running down the paperwork to get our two new techs started. I may be picking up someone elses "left-overs." I know this person works hard and can fill a gap in my group, so I'm quite happy about the situation. 3 new staff members in this day and time. I'll take 'em.

Only thing I hate is not being able to disclose the situation to my group. Secrecy spreads rumors and uncertainity. We have too much work to do.