W00T!!!!

I got a job that started Sep 1, 2009 as the Usability Manager with an Internet Service start up (and I really mean start up – I’m the 7th employee!) and things have been so busy I only just thought of posting about it now.  The company is called CrowdTrust and the product will most likely be called Gleanr (we’re in the middle of the branding process right now) and I’ll tell you more about the application once the web site goes live.

What’s really refreshing is to be among developers who really GET User Experience.  I mean, how many start ups can you think of that hire a Usability Manager before hiring a QA manager?

{big time snoopy dance!}

:-j(enni)

Ron, Nathan and I went downtown today “just because”.  While we were there we walked around the Vancouver Art Gallery and, within this one block journey we encountered:

• The Islamic Cultural Expo
  (at the front, with many tents, music, food, etc.)
• Several old men playing chess
  (They’re always there on the weekends)
• A Zombie Walk
  (with many people in zombie costumes, zombie face painting and more, all to raising money for a charity – I think it was the BC Children’s hospital)
• A Pre-Teen busker who was playing the Bagpipes
  (He was very good. He was also right next to the Zombies, it made quite a bizarre combination)
• A Juggling Troup at Practice
  (They were just in regular clothes and puttering about with different tools – clubs, batons, strings will balls on the end hula-hoops)

Ah yes.  Vancouver.  Can’t get much more multicultural than that. :D

:-j(enni)

Well, that “almost” job with Burntsand I mentioned just after I finished my college diploma courses hasn’t worked out so far.  The thing is, they still really want to hire me, but the economy has put a damper on their efforts to land a new contract – according to their HR person, a process that used to take one to three weeks is now taking three weeks to over a month. This is as frustrating for them as it is for me – while I’m annoyed that they haven’t hired me yet, they’re just as annoyed that they haven’t been hired either!

At this point, the head of the Burntsand Vancouver office is saying he hopes to have the contract approved by July 15th but, of course, he can’t even guarantee that.  This is, unfortunately, an untenable situation for me – as much as I want to work for them and they want me to work for them, I desperately need a job ASAP. So, I’ve been working on my online portfolio (all the jobs I’d like to apply to indicate they require applicants to provide some kind of design portfolio) and have also started to look at possible freelance jobs through Craigslist and the like.

You know what really sucks?

This is the third time I’ve had an “almost guaranteed” job that has, apparently, failed to work out:

The first time was just after we moved back here, when the manager of the department at the company in question actually had all the paperwork to hire me all filled out and had even handed it in to his manager for approval but then the head office declared a hiring freeze for which, although he tried for three days, he was unable to get an exception. (It turned out that the freeze was because another company was starting the process to acquire them.)

The second time was at the start of my current drought of work, and the manager at this other company who had interviewed me once before (but for a different company) said he fully intended to hire me but that he had to meet with a couple more applicants just for the purpose of due diligence. And then, much to both his and my annoyance, he was told by his manager that there was this project manager whom he really liked and he was to hire this other person, using up the “headcount” that he had set aside to hire a user experience specialist!

{sigh} I’m really getting tired of this – it’s almost been a year and a half since I was let go from CGTV… When is all this bad karma going to switch to being good karma?

:-j(enni)

I just realized I haven’t updated my blog to discuss my weight loss since the first time. Bad Jenni!

So, this morning, I weighed in at 140.5 lb – that’s 4.5 lb down from my starting point. While I dropped almost 3 lbs in the first three days that was undoubtedly water weight as I bounced back up to 144.5 a couple of days later, but it’s averaged a fairly steady 1 lb / week over all (this week was 1.5 lb).  So far so good.

Now if I could just get myself exercising regularly again I could bump that up to 2 to 2.5 lb a week... we’ll see. It’s hard to get motivated for exercise when you’re still looking for work (more on that to follow).

:-j(enni)

This morning I:

• Handed in my final school project
• Got my marks and signed off on my projects for Flash & Dreamweaver (100% on all four of them!)
• Submitted my practicum documentation
• Filled in the CDI College graduation request form

And THAT means that I’m DONE!!!!  Yay! 

This also means that I’m almost[*] officially a fully qualified Programmer Analyst/Multimedia Web Developer. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... woohoo (Maybe I can get a job now...) :-/

Actually, it looks like I may have a job lined up … got a call from one of my recruiters about three weeks ago for a “User Experience Developer” position requiring ASP.NET and UI design for Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server 2007 “Master Pages”[**]. The position is with the 10-person Vancouver office of a consulting company called Burntsand and, after four interviews (two phone, two face2face), the Director 100% wants to hire me but the deal is, as a consulting group that’s part of a larger entity, they have to have a new contract signed before they will be allowed to actually hire someone new. And they expect to have a new contract signed off “any day now.” {shrug}

For the moment, I’m waiting. If nothing comes of it by early next week I’ll be back on the full-time job hunting bandwagon.

:-j(enni)

[*] I say almost because my instructor does have to mark and submit my final project to the school before it’s officially official.
[**] My old pal “Content Management Server” back from when NCompass was acquired by Microsoft was merged into Sharepoint shortly after I left that division within Microsoft. Master Pages are to Sharepoint, essentially, what Templates were to CMS.

Well, It’s been about 18 months since I reached my goal weight of 135 lb while with Jenny Craig. And in that time I’ve allowed my weight to creep back up by about 10 lbs, only half-heartedly trying to get it back down and blaming my lack of progress or even maintenance on being at school and a lack of opportunity for good exercise.

Well, no more.  My good friend Penny Parris has given me the incentive to get back those ten pounds, and possibly a few more (I secretly would really like to be down at 130 lb) by announcing her “Pounds off Penny for Pennies (or Twonies)” project (that links to her blog. There’s also a Facebook Event page).

Her plan is to use the incentive of getting pledges from friends and family per pound she looses over a three month period to be donated to the Heart and Stroke Foundation of BC. Many of her friends are supporting her and several of us have also “jumped on her bandwagon”, adding an additional pledge per pound that we are also able to lose over the same period of time.

To give me some more accountability, I’m also going to post details of my progress on my blog here, starting today. So, I started a week ago, weighing in on Sat. May 23 at 145 lb. After a week of concerted effort I’m already down to 142 lbs. today.  What a great start!

And as a “public service announcement” for anyone else who is interested in living a more healthy lifestyle, I highly recommend the Windows application Diet Power 4.4.

My mum discovered this application about five or six years ago (it was on V3 at the time) and my parents and I have all used it with great success several times since then (it was a particularly useful addition to the basic Jenny Craig program). The application allows you to enter your weight, your daily food intake and your daily exercise and from that information it tracks the your nutrition levels, total calories and progress against a goal weight (which can be lower, higher or even the same for maintenance). It calculates how many calories you should be eating each day, initially based on standard averages for a person of your gender, age, height and weight but recalculates the amount based on your actual metabolism as determined by the exercise, food and weight details you’ve entered. 

It’s an awesome program, and totally worth the US$39.99.

:-j(enni)

I’ve been working on Adobe Flash projects for school and needed some sound effects and music loops for one of them. Not wanting to shell out much, if anything, in the way of $$$ for a silly school project I Googled download (“music loop” OR “sound clip” OR “sound effect”) free.

This search returned a fair number of sites mostly offering “Royalty Free” files vs. “Free to download and use” files.  However, one of the first in the result list, Partners In Rhyme, was exactly what I was looking for. Yes their main thing is “Royalty Free Music and Sound Effects downloads”, just like the others, but the site also offers a nice collection of “free to download and use” sound effects and music loops and I found what I needed there. And, if I had been looking for higher quality files for commercial use, the prices for their “pay to use” files seemed quite reasonable.

What’s more by mentioning them and linking to their site on your site or in a blog (like I’m doing here) you can get a free sound effects library from them that they claim is worth $50. (Note that links put on Myspace, Facebook or Bebo(?) pages aren’t eligible for the free library)

:-j(enni)

Well, I’m finally done with Introduction to SQL Sever 2005 and I couldn’t be happier about it.  I usually hold on to text books because they continue to be useful in the future but, for the first time ever, I’m planning on selling this atrocity to one of the next students who have to take any of the courses that require it. I’ll probably include a print out of my personal errata file though – it’s only fair.

However, before I close of this chapter of the Textbook Follies thread, I wanted to leave you with the very last error I discovered.  This is an actual question from the end-of-chapter exercises of the last chapter I read (2nd to last in the text) and pretty much proves our theory that this was an Oracle textbook that was massaged into a SQL Server text book (bold font used to highlight the error):

5. You have been asked to load data in Oracle that is currently stored in a spreadsheet file. You will probably use the __________ tool.

{rolls eyes}

I’m so glad I’m SO DONE with this textbook.

:-j(enni)

Being at school sucks – I just wanna stay home, sleep, read and play WoW (Yup, I upgraded, and bought a copy for Nathan.... It seems there’s a lot of truth to that comparison between Geeks and Drug Dealers...)

sigh

Back to work.  At least I’ve finally started the final project for this class and will soon be done with the textbook – from – hell. :P

:-j(enni)

OMG!  The beautiful, climbable, plum tree in our back yard has fallen over due to the weight of the snow in it’s horizontally sprawling branches, exacerbated by the rapid moisture build up overnight (after a day of cold, blowing snow we went into a night with thawing temperatures high enough that the snow melt off the roof dripped so fast it sounded like a rain storm).

It was such a nice tree too. It produced the most delicious and juicy plums in the summer that I used to make some yummy jam.  It’s such a pity.  Nathan is quite devastated – he and his friends loved to play in that tree. (On the plus side, we are moving into a place with a cheaper rent at the end of January anyway, so Nathan wouldn’t have had much time to go climbing again anyway.)

In addition to that immediately obvious destruction, a visual inspection around the house has also turned up the fact that the outer cross beam of the shelter behind our back door has also broken and the umbrella tree in the front yard may have lost branches on one side.  Ron’s going to be going out shortly to knock snow off both structures to reduce any further damage (the second cross beam of the shelter is bending dangerously and appears to be starting to crack) and possibly rescue the umbrella tree if the branches have not actually broken yet.

I do feel sorry for our landlord. That tree was one of the big selling points about this place, because it neatly divided the yard into a sunny half and a shady half making it a great place for barbeques and for kids to play. Especially as, last year at this time, he had to replace all the fences around the yard because the wind storms we had last winter blew them over. That said, when we moved in we mentioned that all the trees were quite tall and really needed to be professionally trimmed to keep them healthy and strong and he wasn’t willing to do it. In this case, he wasn’t even willing to reimburse us if we decided to have it done and they were really too large for us to consider trying to do it ourselves. So, in a way, he brought this down upon himself… (ha! no pun was actually intended)

:-j(enni)

PS: I’ve attached pictures of the serious damage as well as some photos from earlier showing how things looked before.

Plum Tree

Before:

Dec 17, 2008 – Nathan building a snow fort the first day it snowed this year.

After:

Back Door Shelter

Before:

Dec 20, 2008: Attempted photo of birds visiting our back yard for the birdseed we put out

After:

“Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough. I am going to snow anyway.” – Maya Angelou

In a metaphorical sense, I’m glad I have snowshoes today.  We already had about 15 cm (6” for my American friends) of snow from the first dump last Monday and then it started snowing again about 11:30pm last night (Dec 23) and hasn’t stopped since.  I just went and checked our driveway, which Ron had cleared to the pavement yesterday afternoon, and there’s been 20 cm (8”) since last night.  I’ve heard on the news there could be as much as 30 cm (1’) by midnight tonight.

A White Christmas used to be so rare around here – I remember being particularly disappointed a couple of times when it would snow on the 23rd or early on the 24th but then it would rain, or get a lot warmer and everything would have melted away by the afternoon.  The snow, when we did get it, usually came in late January, early February, and occasionally as late as mid-March. That’s definitely changed – I’ve noticed we’ve had the white stuff on the ground at this time of year a lot more over the past five to eight years.

The weather people are predicting rain by Friday with highs of 8C (46.5F) over the weekend, so I expect everything to start melting and the “flood gates” to open up.  In which case, we’ll all be wishing we had a canoe (it’ll be too cold for a bikini) instead of these snowshoes.

:-j(enni)

My Introduction to SQL Server 2005 text book never ceases to disappoint.

I'm currently reading a chapter dedicated to Transact-SQL (T-SQL), Microsoft's proprietary procedural programming extension to the SQL database language. The content for this chapter must be new material (i.e., not based on a topic found in the ORACLE version of the text book) and so, one might think, it would have been more closely reviewed during the edit cycle...

But no. No, there are several fun and exciting new errors in this chapter too.

While I haven't run into any ORCALE syntax yet, so far they've misspelled one T-SQL keyword two different ways, have repeated the information describing the syntax and use of another keyword in two different subsections and have mixed up the keyword information between two related statements.

I have extremely low expectations for the two remaining chapters I will be covering in this text.

:-j(enni)

Yep.  Part Seven.  Really.  With two subsections even!

part 7a: Data Disk? What Data Disk?

So, in my last post about textbook related problems I talked about how the textbook for my SQL 2005 Database courses was missing the x86 version of the software it was supposed to come with.  And told you I had solved that problem by downloading the 180-day Trial from of the Microsoft web site.

Well, that was a Friday and, as I'd spent two days studying for my "Data Exchange" challenge exam, I wanted to catch up on them by doing work over the weekend so I sat down on Saturday, installed the trial, and started working my way through the first chapter of the text book. Only a few pages in I stumble upon the first of many references to a "Student Data Disk".

"WTF...!?"

It turns out that there is supposed to be a second CD included with the text. It contains a bunch of SQL script files, divided into folders - one for each chapter - that are required to run through the examples in each chapter and to complete the "hands on exercises" at the end of each chapter.  And I don't have it.

So I go online and check out the publisher's web page for the text, and search on the author's names (James Perry and Gerald Post), and even search on the names of the first data file (Ch01Explore.sql), looking for somewhere to download this data from.  Somewhere along my, ultimately futile, search, I do discover that there is also supposed to be a "Companion Web Site" for the book containing resources for students and instructors. However, can I find the URL for this site anywhere? Nope. There's nothing in or with the text (as an aside, the text book for my Access Database course cleverly included companion web site information by providing it on a piece of paper inserted into a CD sleeve glued inside the back cover of the book), and I can't find anything more specific than the fact that such a site is supposed to exist somewhere online. 

I did, oddly enough, manage to track down the first script by name and the contents of the file I found actually did what the text of the Chapter was expecting it to do. It was particularly odd because the file I found was attached to information about the ORACLE Database Server... however, as later discoveries I discuss in part 7.2 will show, this was perhaps not as odd as it initially appears.

Despite finding this one file, I was so frustrated by the entire situation that I couldn't force myself to keep looking for additional files nor could I face reading through the text just to take notes, so I was, in the end, unable to catch up on the two days as I was hoping to.

When I got back to school on Monday, I brought this rather problematic issue to the instructor.  Luckily for me, he had saved copies of all the data files for the text on the school network folder for the course. There was also a file there that contained the URL to the companion web site (although, once I loaded it all it contained for students were copies of the data files I now had).

So, at this point I figure I can finally start learning something about Database Architecture and SQL Server 2005.

Hi-ho, back to reading and note taking I go...

Aside

To add an interesting side note to this data near-disaster, I eventually discovered that one of the data files that I received from the instructor contained the wrong content. I figured this out when I ran into significant problems trying to complete the first hands-on exercise at the end of chapter 3. Having brought the situation to the instructor's attention, we compared the script file I had to the "instructor copy" (vs. the "student copy") of the file where it was easy to see that the content in my file was completely different from the content in his file.

What it looked like was that someone had copied the script for the second exercise, made some changes within it that introduced syntax errors and then saved this modified script over the script for the first exercise. Thinking that the copy of the file on the school network might have been overwritten by a student - accidentally or otherwise - I downloaded a fresh copy from the companion web site but, no, the new file was incorrect in exactly the same way.

Kind of bizarre, actually. But really, what about all this isn't bizarre?

part 7b: Egregiously Erroneous Zone

The first chapter of the text is pretty straight forward - it's mainly an introduction to and steps for installing the software.  By the second chapter the text starts to get into specific examples and I have the scripts I need to follow along. So far so good.

It's in the end-of-chapter exercise section of chapter 2 that I first notice a small error - there's a relatively small typo in the script that students are directed to type into a SQL script. When writing SQL statements character text strings are always delimited with single quotes (apostrophes) on either side. If the string itself contains an apostrophe you identify this by typing two apostrophes one after the other where it occurs in the string.  If you don't do this, the parser assumes that the character string ends when it hits the lone apostrophe in the middle of the string and then reports a syntax error when it encounters the rest of the string.  In this case, the script neglected to double-up the single apostrophe in the word don't - that is, the script showed 'don't' and not 'don''t'.

As it happens, the paragraph immediately preceding the script sample explicitly mentions this fact about apostrophes in character strings and ends by reminding the student not to forget to double up on apostrophes in this situation. Rather ironic typo, really, but nothing to be too worried about, right?

I continue with my studying and eventually move on to the third chapter.  In the section on making and modifying CONSTRAINTS (rules that determine what data can and can not be included in a row of a database table) I encounter something that is rather confusing - the discussion about the ALTER TABLE command mentions the keyword MODIFY, claiming it is used to make changes to the definition of individual table columns, however the sample syntax in the same area of the discussion shows this being done via the keywords ALTER COLUMN...

I do a test and confirm that the ALTER COLUMN syntax works while the MODIFY syntax does not.

I confer with my instructor.  He looks over the text for a bit, and then says that he thinks that MODIFY is the keyword used in ORACLE's implementation of SQL.

"WTF...?"

He does a bit of research online and concludes that, yes, the "incorrect" syntax is correct if used against an ORACLE server. He surmises that the text may have been originally an ORACLE textbook that has been "massaged" to work with SQL Server 2005.

Mentally I groan and think, "Surely, no good can come of this...."

Now I'm actually a little worried about the final exam for the course. What if I'm asked questions that have been crafted based on the erroneous information in the text book?  I don't really want to remember this stuff that is actually incorrect, but if I don't then I might get asked something based on it and I won't be able to answer correctly. The instructor assures me that he will review my test manually (all the exams are computer administered multiple choice things) and we can challenge anything that falls into this category if it occurs. (Aside: This actually does occur once on the exam, but I did remember what the incorrect details were in the text, so I got that answer correct)

Moving along I find a few more typographical errors in scripts students are asked to type in to complete the end-of-chapter exercises for Chapter 3. In Chapter 4 I encounter some more orphaned ORACLE keywords in the descriptive text as well as some more typos in step-by-step script text. I also start to find some plain old bad editing - grammar problems, situations where one sentence makes a statement and then a later sentence says something that contradicts the first statement.

And then, the pièce de résistance: A Chapter 4 end-of-chapter multiple choice review question where NONE of the answers are correct because of what amounts to a copy and paste error.

All together now... "WTF...!?"

Good God!

Did no one at Prentice-Hall actually copyedit this book?

Did either of the authors - both PhD's at Universities in the US, both with lengthy curriculum vitae that suggest they know what they are talking about when it comes to database architecture - bother to review their "massaged" book before it shipped?

Was there no one reviewing the book who went through the text and the examples and the exercises step-by-step to make sure that what the text said matched what the scripts did and that the scripts were valid?

I just thank my lucky stars that I'm a highly intelligent individual with a prior background in software development.  If I was someone who was trying to start from scratch all these problems and errors would just eat away at my morale until I was ready to give up altogether.

If I was either of the authors I would be embarrassed to have my name associated with this textbook. I'm seriously considering sending them an email letting them know just exactly what their so-called Introduction to SQL Server 2005 is really like.

As for the publisher - Prentice Hall should hang their head in shame! How could they ship such an awful product to instructors and students and feel justified asking more than $100 for it?

{fume}

That's So Jenni...

The number of errors in the text continues to grow and, me being who I am, I've started tracking all the errors I've encountered in a file which I started after I learned the instructor had sent email to the publisher looking for an official errata sheet only to find they don't seem to have one and because I knew there are other students who will soon be taking this same course in the near future who would benefit from the information.

Apparently, the publisher has subsequently asked the instructor if he would "share his discoveries with them." His initial response was that he couldn't because the work was not his but a student's. I've since told him that it's okay for him to share my notes with the publisher - I mean, yes, I shouldn't have to do this at all as it was a job they should have done before the book shipped, but, really, why make them re-invent the wheel when I've done the work already? Doing that would just be petty and, if there is one thing I'm not prone to, it's pettiness.

Just for the sake of posterity, I include a link to a copy of the file with my notes (it's in RTF format). As of today it covers all of chapters 1 through 6 except for the chapter 6 end-of-chapter exercises as I haven't completed them yet.

:-jenni

I wanted to put something up about school that has a more positive spin to it, so I thought I'd share my marks so far:

 
And, if I keep this up (that is, if I maintain a 90%+ in academics) I'm told I could graduate with honours.

Go me!

:-j(enni)

OMG! Can you believe there's MORE!

Right...

So I just started my next course, Database Architecture, paying $106 for a very large, thick paper-back text book called Introduction to SQL Server 2005 which included a CD with a 180-Day trail installation of the Enterprise version of Microsoft's SQL Server 2005.  "Cool," I think to myself, "installing this shouldn't be to difficult - I had to install SQL all the time to work with NCompass Resolution/Microsoft Content Management Server and there are instructions in the first chapter of the text."

So, I start reading the text where the SQL Express 2005 version of the server is mentioned. I actually happened to have this installed - it's done automatically when you install the Visual C# Express developer's tools - and the text did say that while the full Enterprise version is preferable the Express version will work in a pinch - there are a few reporting features that the book covers in later chapters that the Express version does not include but it is otherwise sufficient. Still, I decided I should really install the "full meal deal" and went about uninstalling SQL Express 2005 to avoid the possibility of conflicts.

Then, of course, I took the CD from the package, inserted it in my computer and prepared to install the program... only the link on the HTML-based Splash Screen gives me a "scripting error" when I click it!

"Huh?"

"Maybe," I think, "It's having problems because my default browser is FireFox and not IE." So I go into the Control Panel and change the default browser and restart the installation process.  Nope.  Still getting a scripting error. Okay, so now I open the file explorer, navigate to the CD, find the "setup.exe" file in the "Servers" directory and try to launch it directly...

"Arrrrgggg!"

What am I going to do now?  I decide to bring the CD to the instructor and let him know that I can't install the software. He takes the disk, looks at it for a moment and then points to some text on the label: "This disc contains x64 software only."

"WTF...!?"

The text book and the folder that the CD came in clearly state that it includes software suitable for both 32-bit AND 64-bit platforms. According to the instructor there should have been TWO discs in the CD folder, but he admits that one of his students who took and completed this same course a couple of months ago had a similar problem - only in his case he got two CDs but they both contained x64 software.

So, of course, now I'm wishing I hadn't been so concerned about potential conflict issues and hadn't uninstalled SQL Express 2005. After all, I'm thinking I'll have to reinstall it if I want to get going on this course and I know that Microsoft doesn't offer the 2005 Express version for download any more, now that SQL 2008 is available, so I'm going to have to wait until I get home where I have saved copies of all the Microsoft 2005 Express developer platforms (C#, VB.NET, J#, etc.) on our file server. But then I call Ron so I can rant about being in yet another textbook related mess and he says to see if Microsoft still has the SQL 2005 180-day trial available for download.

I'll be honest, I was doubtful but I did check and found that it is still available.  As it was only around 11:00AM at this point, and as I have a land line connection to the Internet at school whereas I'm usually on wireless at home, I decided to download it right then. I figured it would still take a while, even with the direct connection, but I'm usually at school until around 1:30PM and I could get started on reading chapter 1 while the download was in progress.

In the end the download took almost 2 hours and 15 minutes (it finished around 1:15PM) but now I have the installer I need and should be able to get serious about the course over the weekend.

:-j(enni)

PS: One last thing - please cross your fingers for me and hope I won't need a "part seven" on this topic!
:-j

So, there is this one course in the Programmer Analyst/Web Developer diploma program at CDI that I knew I really didn't need to take, and really didn't want to take, but that I couldn't claim I had credit for via my Computer Engineering degree: Data Exchange.  This course is all about all using XML (Extensible Markup Language) and the many specifications that you must also be familiar with to use it correctly such as DTD (Document Type Definition), XSD (XML Schema Definition), and XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language). And while I've certainly worked with XML in the past, the first edition of the official W3C recommendation for XML 1.0 wasn't published until Feb 10, 1998 - one year AFTER my 1997 graduation from SFU.

In any case, I knew I could easily challenge the course, so I ponied up the $50 examination challenge fee, spent two days reviewing online - I looked over the XML 1.0 W3C recommendation (4th edition) and also walked through the XML-related tutorials at www.w3schools.com - and wrote the 25-question multiple-choice exam this morning.

I pulled off 76% - I only needed 60% to earn credit for the course - which I think is pretty good for a two day cram session.

:-j(enni)

I finally finished my Systems Analysis and Design course last Friday (Nov 20). Due to a number of factors[*] this was officially eight school days late. Which sucked. Big time.

Although the school is willing to let students who need just a few more days to wrap up loose ends to do so without cost generally that's limited to about a week - i.e., five days - and this meant I was officially three days over that and who knows how my future courses will progress!

That said, my instructor told me he didn't think I'd have nearly as much trouble with the next course, Database Concepts, as the text, Microsoft Access 2003 Step by Step, was pretty straightforward and many of his previous students had finished the lessons in less than the assigned 45 in-school hours (that's nine school days).  Knowing this, and wanting to make up as much time as possible, I started reading and doing the in-chapter and homework exercises over the weekend even though I wouldn't officially start the class until Monday.

Well, he wasn't kidding about the book being straightforward and me not having trouble! I was already onto the fourth chapter out of the nine I had to read by Sunday night.  By the time I left the computer lab on Tuesday afternoon I had just one chapter of reading and assignments left and by Wednesday morning I was ready to do my 2.5 hour project (which ultimately only took me 1hr 15 min).  Ergo, I finished a nine day course in just THREE days!

W00t!  Now I'm "down" by only two days.

:-j(enni)

[*] These are the three main reasons I finished the course so late:

1. Mismatched between edition of text book and school developed "learning guide" (For details see these posts: #1, #2, #3).
   (As an update I found out why they hadn't updated the learning guide book - the computer of the person who was working on the update crashed fatally and all the data on his hard drive had to be recovered from back up.  That was done and things looked to be getting back on track when his new hard drive also crashed, only this time there was some other problems and they were unable to recover everything! An understandable excuse, but it doesn't change the fact that the discrepancy required extra work on my part!)
   
2. Incompatibilities between the UML Diagram templates in the MS Visio version installed on the school computers (2000) and my own computer (2003). This lead to subtle corruptions of the diagrams I'd already completed as I was switching back and forth between the versions which, unfortunately, resulted in a need to completely re-do eight or nine rather complex diagrams.
   
3. The amount of time actually allocated to complete the exercises for each "module" within the course was generally insufficient to complete them, even if I hadn't had software incompatibility problems to deal with. Imagine trying to complete two problems requiring a total of about eight complex UML Diagrams in just 40 minutes!  That's just 5 minutes allocated per diagram! Preposterous!

Even though I'm managing to "catch up", the whole situation is ridiculous and, being my father's daughter, I intend to write a formal letter of complaint about these issues. For one thing, I want a formal record in case something happens that causes the original delay to become an issue again. On the second point the school should not be using software that is technically obsolete - Microsoft does not officially provide support for software that is more than seven years old.  And the third point has, I've been told, affected other students in the past and the school really needs to know it should evaluate the course plan to fix this.

:-j

(and you thought I was done with this topic!)

Back in Textbook Follies, part two I noted the outrageous cost of my text books for Student Success Strategies [SSS].  Well it gets better - last Sunday (Nov 9th) I was going through the paperwork for the request I made to HRDC for the training grant I received and happened across the list of book costs that came from the school.  Well, what do I see but the text book for SSS was listed as only $57!  Even with the 5% GST there's no way that should equal $84!

So, I went to the financial advisor (who takes payment for books) on Monday and showed her my paperwork. She told me she was sorry but the price had gone up and whoever wrote up the school acceptance letter for me shouldn't have used last year's prices.

Well I'm sorry, but that just wasn't good enough - after all, this information was sent to the government and they used that to determine how much they would award me for my grant and we really don't have any extra cash to spare these days.  Being my father's daughter I said as much, intimating that I didn't think I should have to pay more than the quoted price, even if the actual cost had gone up. The financial adviser's response was that I would have to bring it up with my admissions officer (a lovely lady named Kris Scott who is actually at the Coquitlam campus of Vancouver Career College - VCC recently acquired CDI and I'm attending the Burnaby CDI campus) and she would then have to bring it up with the director of the CDI Burnaby campus "... if she agrees with you." :-P

{sigh}

Well I phoned Kris that afternoon and she was completely on my side.  She said that the prices included in the letter were faxed to her from the CDI Burnaby Campus and they had to honour it. She said she'd talk to her director who would then talk to my director and work everything out. Yay! Problem solved, right? I should have a credit for my "overpayment" in a few days...

Well, of course, nothing ever goes as planned, does it?

On Friday, I hadn't heard anything from the management at school, so I gave my admissions officer another call. She said she'd talked to her director and that everything should be all ticketey-boo, but when I went down to the main office to talk to the director, Jane, she said she hadn't heard from the VCC Coquitlam Director!  [insert eye roll here].  Anyway, I told Jane the full story and my opinion about the prices, gave her and the receptionist (who distributes text books when they are requested) a copy of the book list and prices in my paperwork, and told her I'd call my admissions officer back to let her know that her director hadn't called yet.

I did that, but I still don't know if the necessary calls have been made. I guess I'll find out on Monday when I try to purchase my books for the next class (Database Concepts). Hopefully I'll have a credit of about $24 on file that I can put towards the $34 + GST cost of the text book for that course.

:-j(enni)

Update - 2008/11/26: I did got my credit in the end and CDI will be selling me all future textbooks for the price listed in my documentation (or less, if the current price is lower).  Yay!
-j

Owwwie. I think I have sprained or strained my foot, all because I was running late this morning and, in my haste, I tripped and fell getting on my bus this morning.

The B97 bus was crossing the intersection just as I came up the block, so I ran to catch it - crossing against the light - and managed to arrive beside the front door at the very moment the driver started inching forward to re-join traffic. He, did, however, see me almost immediately and stopped to let me board. Not wanting to delay his departure too much I rushed to get on board, "jumping up" into the doorway with my left foot first. Unfortunately, because the bus had moved slightly the gap between curb and the doorway had widened by perhaps four to six inches and this was also one of those "kneeling" buses with a level floor that sits a bit higher than a normal step when it isn't "kneeling" in my haste to board I misjudged where I needed to put my foot and failed to lift my foot high enough to completely clear the edge of the step.  This caused me to catch the bottom edge of my runner at the toe and, as I had "jumped" up, my momentum pitched me forward and landed on both knees on the floor of the bus. The situation was worsened by the fact that my hands were full with an umbrella and my purse (which I was trying to open to retrieve my wallet and bus pass) and I had a backpack with my text books on my back. 

The driver was very solicitous, asking several times if I was okay and I assured him I was and he even waited for me to get myself back together before eventually pulling away as I went to find a seat. As I rode the bus all the way to the end of the route at Lougheed Mall he took advantage of this to call me aside as I left the bus stop asking for additional information for his incident report. Together we went over what had happened and he took my name and phone number. He also asked me to make an official claim with Translink, which I did. 

Although my knees appear to be no worse for wear, after the adrenalin had left my system I realized my left foot - the one that caught on the edge of the floor - was in worse shape than I'd initially assumed. The discomfort was minor to start with but did worsen as the day went on (while sitting still there is a dull throbbing pain across the front part of my foot, directly above the arch and the pain sharpens a little when I point or flex the foot and gets quite bad if I twist it left or right) so I've arranged to see my doctor tomorrow morning and I've been icing it every half hour since I got home this afternoon.

Anyway, here's hoping the throbbing dies down by tomorrow morning and my doctor's appointment is more or less unnecessary.

:-j(enni)

Update: It's a good thing that I'm going in to see my doctor as I received a response to the "incident report" I filed with Translink that indicates that they will be informing ICBC who will determine where the fault lies. If ICBC will be involved then it's almost a necessity to have a doctor's opinion on the full extent of the injury. Personally, I ascribe no fault to the driver for this - the driver had barely moved forward when he stopped to let me on and the increased gap between curb and step was certainly narrow enough that any passenger taking just slightly more care would not have had a problem, but I suppose official processes must be followed. I just hope that this doesn't lead to the driver being punished in any way for letting me on after starting to pull out - if there's one thing I can't stand is bus drivers who just drive away even though they've seen you standing right there.  :P
:-j

Update 2: (12:45p, Nov 6): Just saw the doctor and he called it a "hyperflexion injury" and described it as basically having tendonitis across the top of my foot. He said it should get better on it's own over the next ten days to two weeks as it's a tendon injury vs. the ligament injury that is typical of a sprained ankle (tendon's, being muscle-to-muscle connectors, apparently heal faster than their muscle-to-bone cousins the ligaments). I'm to keep off it when possible, ice it frequently and otherwise hobble along to get about.

{sigh}  Just what I need with a post-Hallowe'en house mess and friends scheduled to come hang out this weekend. :P