Unit 12

So, to be honest, I actually read most of these articles.  Not just skimmed as with previous units, but READ.  The subject of project management is something I am weak in.  I have always had grand ideas, but never really bothered learning how to make those ideas happen.  Certain things I could just wing it and figure out as I went, but for major projects, that just does not fly.  The Cervone articles were the most helpful as the broke down the concepts of project management into clear and easy to follow components- identify and correctly define issues, understand the context of decisions, identifies options, evaluate the risk of each option, prioritize options, choose one based on risk assessment and option assessment, take action and inform stakeholders, then review the choices made.  I actually took notes.  Crazy.
Several of the articles functioned in this manner, although many of them focused too much on the technology plan to be of use throughout my other job functions.  The main idea was the importance of project management, and how some companies make errors when they do not utilize experts in project management.  I couldn't say I found any bad advice, I just found articles that were not easy to read as I could not relate to them.  They were too tech jargony for me to be interested in.  I felt myself skimming those articles and switching back to Cervone for clarification.
I saved several of the articles for later perusal.  Really enjoyed this unit.

Unit 11

Unit 10 really killed me.  After posting an update today, I noticed I had already posted some answer to Unit 10.  That resulted from taking too long to process information and trying to break it up over the course of time.  Unit 10 took me about six hours to complete all assignments.  In comparison, Unit 11 took me one hour.  Only one?  Using the coding and the function of copy and paste works well.  I did have to break up the copy and paste and take it line by line to ensure I knew where I wanted the code to look.  I created an entirely new database in no time at all.
So looking back over the course of the class, I would say my biggest improvement was in the creation of databases using a variety of tools, PHP, Webmin, and the MySQL monitor.  I picked that up the quickest.  I am really really really really weak on MySQL queries.  I could not for the life of me figure out the pattern, and I am normally quick with such things.  I kept getting an alias error and then could not ascertain how to establish an alias.  I need more practise with this.
Have I changed my aspect?  Yes, overall.  Folks that understand this must be extremely patient.  I feel stupid for not being able to do this as easily as I thought I would.  Then I recall that folks take COURSES, lots of courses to learn how to do these things.  I should not feel so bad.  I do feel accomplished from the Unit 11 Assignments.
Digital information creates a new set of issues to solve.  I can see how easy it is to make a faulty database, and how frustrating one little typo can be.  It is too easy to make a mistake when it comes to digital information.  I will probably be more forgiving when I encounter an error on a website as I now understand how difficult it is to manage all facets of the information being provided.  No wonder IT is such a high paying job.

Unit 10

Working through the various routines was straightforward.  I did have one issue, which I was pretty sure I would have.  I decided to take my home computer to work to try and get some of my class done during the downtimes.  All went well.  I was able to use vmware and do assignments one through three.... easy.  Then I got to the part where I needed to login to webmin.  I knew that I would have issues as my network was now ASU instead of my home network.  I went through trying to figure out how I could still complete my assignments at work... but I just could not do it.  I believe it has something to do with how my computer is recognized at the ASU network vs my home network.  Ifconfig indicated my ip address was still the same.... but I have a feeling ASU assigned me a different IP.  Also, I was using ASU guest, I know there were recent hacking issues with ASU so I suspect security was pretty tight.  Soon as I came home and tried webmin, I had zero problems.   I did note that I keep creating users and I neglected to write them down.  Definitely a learning experience there.  SQL was ok.  It was not as intuitive for me as some of the other languages we have used.  I have the least experience with SQL so I am sure that figured into being a little more awkward.  I feel I am in the home stretch, now if I can just pass those pesky quizzes.

Unit ten

Unit ten took a while.  I began working again and was having the issues with connectivity at work vs. access to my computer and home network.  That being said, learning MySQL was .... fun?  No, really.  I had a time when I got stuck on a prompt and left me hanging with a '>.... what the heck?  Well I finally figured out that it meant I needed to close a single quote.  So, finished that and voila... suddenly MySQL was easy.  It all comes down to learning the correct commands.
I did not find SQL to be any easier or more difficult than the other languages.  It all comes down to knowing what you want to do and finding the command to do it.  A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.
The class for me has been mostly about applying these technologies instead of hearing the words.  Sure I had heard of linux, or SQL, or XML, or what have you, but rarely had I been forced to use them.  Having a class ensured I actually made sense of what we read.  But the reading was tough.  Actually, the reading was probably the toughest for me.  A lot of it would make sense until it did not make sense.  Then I started reading for the sake of reading.  Giving it a break would usually help, but did not work in the weekly time constraints so well.  Ah well.  I am glad to have taken the course, but it was rough.  Not sure I would want to go through it again.
Now to have time at home to finish the database and complete exercises ten through 12.  almost there.

Unit Nine

Wow, this week turned out to be a bit more interesting for me.  I like organizing and considering ways to access information.  It also allowed me to work on a project that I kept putting off.  This week getting through the reading was the toughest part.  After going through the lecture and doing some of the reading assignments, it all felt like gibberish.  So... I gave it a rest overnight and slept.. a lot.  Then I woke up this morning and re-read.  Suddenly it was in English again and I was able to pull through.  I can honestly say I read more and understood more this week than in prior weeks.  I had a hard time drawing the ERD with the new method of identifying relationships.  Instead of pulling out my hair, I decided to verbalise the relationships and table figuring out the drawing tool.  Why stress out at this time?
I am also having issues with the quizzes.  Some of the questions are obvious to me, other are not.  This clearly goes back to skimming vs. detailed reading.  Guess there is no way around detailed reading for this class.  Stay tuned!  I am excited about my database.

Unit 8

This was quite a bit of reading, took me a bit longer than it should have to get through the reading.
First, a couple thoughts.  Planning takes time, having a good strategic plan is important for an organization to identify and attain goals.  A good strategic plan will consist of having a strong technology based component.  I have seen many strategic plans, usually they are decent and appear to be well thought out, but I am just not sure how they go about ASSESSING the attainment of a strategic plan.  So many people know what they want, but they do not know how to reach it.  Additionally, we gather a lot of data but we do not all have the ability to data mine the information to find patterns in the information.  It all comes down to time.  The advent of technology has caused a society that likes information fast, and some things just require time, which we cannot always afford.  Libraries can be lean workplaces, that is, there is not always enough staff to really put time into learning how to gather statistical information, or participate in professional development opportunities.  As a former library staff member, training was focused on librarian development and not support staff.  Someone has to run the day to day operations of the library.
All right, so the train of musing ends.  I believe the document that was the most useful to me was the "State of the Union" article by Eric Chabrow.  Highlighting the difficulties and pitfalls really made me consider issues with strategic plan, and specifically consider issues with technology plans.  All libraries seem to want the same things, and the write it down in a pretty format as they need to as a means of getting government funding for certain projects.  I just do not feel the oversight over technology projects is there.
That being said, I do see myself working on technology plans in the future.  I have enough technology ability that I could be a contributing member of a team.  I do wish I could take a class on statistics first, so I could see what all this data mining business is about.

Unit Seven. Easy------ I thnk??

Unit seven was another week of procrastination.  Zipped through everything and I am even sure I understood some of what we did for the assignment.  For XML I went about it the same way as I had for HTML.  Read a little, and just tried to absorb as much as I could while reading, then went about practising it.  In this case I had to look at quite a few examples of XML.  I wrote up my practise exercise, copied it to my server's website using WinSCP and then posted it in the dropbox.  That is when I noticed that it was not quite kosher.  Oh well, looks like it will be a minor fix with the tags I used.  Somehow it did not recognize the titles of what I typed in?  
Just spent a few minutes troubleshooting. I think the XML element <title> gives the title to the website.  I changed the element to <book title> and that seemed to work.  I can see how XML is pretty specific with its tags.  It makes sense though.
Update on my system.  Everything seems to be working correctly.  I can ping, I can change information using the server and have it show up on WinSCP.  I am not sure  H O W it is all working together, but it is.  SO far so good.

Unit six, finally some troubleshooting fun

Talking about HTML

So to begin learning about HTML I went to the tutorial and started reading this and that.  About the time the words were muddling together and my eyes were crossing I decided it was time to start trying my hand at updating my 504 webpage.  Logged into WinSCP and pulled up my index.html file.  Ahh, some of the memories were coming back.  I always think of HTML as being a cousin to MARC.  Just have to know the right tags and you are golden.  So I went back to the tutorial links and selected some I might want to play with.  AH HA, decide to go with some sort of layout fun.  Put in the code....and well, let's just say my web page is as ugly as sin right now, but you can get the idea of what I am going for.  I also created a subfolder on the WinSCP function for DigIn.  My hope is to have embedded links for the DigIn files, and a link to my blog.  We shall see what comes with that.

Installing a new server and the issues within

I decided to install another server as the optional but highly recommended tag made me think I should really have a second server to play with.  Installation went well, smooooooth in fact.  I was thinking it was going to be another assignment with no interesting fun.  However, I forget to install webmin and forgot to bridge the system.  The fun ensued.  So I backtracked to webmin and tried to install.  Only I could not get the computer to access outside sites.  I could ping the IP address I gave to the second VMserver, but I could not see the internet from the server itself.  HMMMMMMM.  Try to figure it out then recalled I had not bridged the system.  Went to bridge and it did not fix the problem I still could not see outside of the VM.  SO, in the interest of not knowing why I deleted the file and decided to reinstall the entire second server again.  Second time was the charm.  I was able to see the computer, the computer could see out and I was able to install webmin AND set the static IP and bridge and still see out after all that was done.  I am pretty sure I had some human error in there, perhaps not going in the right order as once I did follow the right order there were no issues.  All in all it was fun trying to figure it out. I was definitely getting faster at typing the right codes and not having to check my notes.  I am super excited now.

..... if only I can fix my website now.

Unit Five

So, getting reading to post unit six and then I noticed something.  I never posted five.  Pretty sure this is one of those instances where I wrote something in my head, posted in my head and neglected to verify if my wishful computer to human brain interface was able to directly upload without the use of typing hands.  Someday... someday.
The variety of materials has been useful.  I love having text based information to read, but without actually using some of it right away the readings have little relevance at this time.  This causes my technology literacy rate to slow.  I know in time some of the information will re-surface and come in handy, but I fear the amount of reading is difficult to absorb.  I do not think there is enough time to do the text and the practise of the text in one full class, so it is up to me to motivate myself.
The videos and podcasts are a great help.  I still have yet to have an issue with any of the tasks other than minor easy to troubleshoot problems.  As a scientists, I am used to following complicated directions without error, so this makes for pretty boring blogging and discussion posts.  To overcome this I probably need some major project to motivate me, and one that does not have explicit instructions.  Not that I want that, it scares me, but it would probably make me have to think a lot more.  I have a mix of learning styles.  I can learn by reading if I can picture it in my head.  Otherwise, I have to kinestethically do something to learn.
Overall, I would say there is a decent amount of variety, just a wee too much text to read.  It feels like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book.

Unit four continuation

Reinstall of the desktop was successful.  Now the desktop launches and all functions and programs work properly.  As for a formal comparison. well obviously the users and groups method was the easiest and most complete method of handling the process of user creation and management.  The group function looks like it could be a useful tool in the future.

So far the problems have been minimal.  A few minor glitches here and there but nothing major or hard to handle.  Biggest issue is the typo. I was constantly hitting the wrong key and having to figure out how to zig instead of zag.  Other than that it is a piece of cake.  Not sure why I balk at doing this since it is not difficult once I get down to it.  Sure it will get harder as we move on.

Unit Four

Finally made it through the end of my last week of work and I am ready to focus on this class.  Doing this assignment was a breeze....until it was not.
Following instruction was fairly straightforward.  Type this... and this will happen, check check.  I hit a snag when I forgot my username for the server, was blocked using Chrome but then switched to Explorer.  Went to change password in the server and noted that my username is not the username I had originally thought, so problem solved.
Then I breezed through the next set of instructions until I went into less, and promptly forgot how to exit out of the list.  That required a bit of backtracking on the reading until I found the magical 'q' button that would exit me out of less.
Adding a user via the command line was pretty easy with the directions in front of me.  Would be harder to replicate without instructions but at some point I am sure it would be more intuitive.

Then went on to Ubuntu and realised there is an issue.  It never launches the utility so I usually type in startx and it launches the desktop.  However, it is still not working.  Going to reinstall the desktop and try to finish.  Part two to come later........

Unit Three Tough Week

This was week of major procrastination.  The mental block was strong this week and it was difficult to motivate myself.  WHY?  No idea.  When I finally went to the assignments, installed the server, practised vimtutor, checked connectivity.  You name it, it worked.  No issues, no hiccups, no problems.  I did have moments where I excited into Normal mode when trying to insert text in vimtutor and had a partial panic until I figured out I was in normal mode.  I still need to practise configuration but anticipate it will not be an issue.  As for configuration, never have done it before this week, at least not that I recall.  Hmmm, I did install a 2400 baud modem once, that might count.  I still do not know how I did it but it worked.  As I am used to reading and conducting lab experiments, I think this helps me to follow written instruction accurately and allows me to not have issues with installing servers or doing text editors.
Continuing to read the Stephenson text.  He is a fantastic author and I loved the description of the old dial in box that would grab onto the phone and you hoped it would attach correctly.  Reminded me of an old B sci fi movie.

words to look up- heck some may reappear again

sudo
syslog
ftp
directories
job
baud

Unit 2 Cruising through the command interface

Playing with the system was an interesting venture.  As I was first going through the tutorials and messing with the virtual desktop terminal I was reminded of my old gaming days when I used to MUD or play early text based games.  All one needed to know were basic commands to tell the game or computer what you were doing.  Seems simple enough.  As I read through the tutorials, several of the items reminded me of the MARC record, so it was not complete gibberish to me.  I feel like I am relearning a language that I sorta picked up years ago, but was never completely proficient in.
I took the tutorials one step at a time, read, skimmed, re-read certain parts.  My eyes glazed over for certain sections.  It was necessary for me to actually try things and play with the machine rather than just read the text. A lot of the words ran together or caused me to question the meaning.  There are a lot of commands to remember... I am thinking I might need to buy a book to help me with easy access to commands. It is easy to understand basic concepts, but harder to get a grasp on the fine details of the commands. My intent is to keep skimming the tutorial, and then go back to it as I actually try to do more things in the virtual machine. Compared to how quickly I normally navigate through my computer, this is pretty slow and cumbersome for me.  This really is a lot like learning a new language.

Words to look up:

shell
bash
bin
.cmd
root

Unit One

First of all it is interesting to read the strange lingo and odd mannerisms that appear on this forum.  Definitely need to do a cultural immersion to fit in to this site.

I was scrolling through the random questions when I noticed the sticky thread that was tacked to the top of the discussion.  Hmmm, I bet they are useful.  So I went through the "LINUX Command Line Learning Resources" posts.  There are several links to help guide us through some actual coding.  I noticed some of them indicate a lot of people cut and paste code instead of memorise it.  I had heard this before so it seems pretty accurate.  I think it would be useful to memorise though, if it breaks how will you fix it if you always cut and paste?  You wouldn't know how it works.
Also found a list of keyboard shortcuts  those are always handy when working on computers.

Words to look up:

GUI
CLI
Unity
Command File Extension (command line)


Feeling in over my head.

Week One

Blog post

So far it has been smooth sailing.  When I heard it would take a while to download the Ubuntu desktop and server program I thought to myself, “Does it really take that long?  Pshaw.”  Well, oddly enough it did take 30 minutes.  I would say that this is a sign of how inexperienced I am when it comes to this side of technology.

As far as the reading, oh my.  I have a lot of work ahead of me.  It is very much like trying to understand a foreign language.  I am looking forward to some hands on projects that will help me make sense of the words and apply a word to an action.

Here is a list of words that I have had to look up:

TCP/IP

kernel

GNU

compiler

So far I am trying to not overwhelm myself with the vocabulary.  About to start week 2, hopefully I am not so slow this week.

DigIn.... dig it.

Hello,
My name is Kelee and this is my introductory post for the Intro to Applied Technology course that I am taking as I pursue a master's in library science.  I have very little experience with applied technology.  I use computers and I rarely break them. I can usually troubleshoot most computer issues, but rarely know HOW.  I use the trial and error method of solving problems.  I secretly believe myself to be a computer genius based on this experience.  I am hoping this class will not break my little computer genius bubble, but perhaps it would be good to get a little modesty fed to me as I struggle through assignments.  That being said, I am about to embark on the first weeks assignments.  We shall see what the future will hold.