Dale Miller

I finally found something (not particularly useful) to do today. I’ve spent much of the day just sitting and listening to music — things I’ve never heard before, things I’ve heard recently, and things I haven’t heard in a long time. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday.

Since I earn lots of vacation each year, and haven’t gone anywhere in the last few, I have vacation days I need to use up or lose. Since I can’t, in good conscience, give them up, I’m taking most Fridays off from now to the end of the year. You would think that this would be good. It gives me an extra day to rest or work around the house. While it’s true that I *could* be doing useful things, I usually end up sleeping in and then take the rest of the day to become depressed and bored. That pretty much describes today. I have a number of things that I could be doing (cleaning the house, typing up my notes for dance class, reading books, etc.), but nothing I *want* to be doing. Actually, that’s not true — there are a number of things I want to be doing, but they all involve having another person to do them with. The novelty of being by myself wore off long ago.

So, yeah, Fridays. And tomorrow I still have nothing I want to do. I need a heaping helping of motivation.

Yesterday evening driving home I began to get rather depressed, and was that way all evening. This morning I woke up with a headache. I was afraid that was indicative of my day. That turned out not to be the case. A BC Powder nicely did in the headache, and I had a rather good day overall. I was able to handle most of the steps in tap dance, and had a good time there. I spent the afternoon working on XML files to feed into Cisco phones to build corporate and personal directories (with much success), and had a very good time in choir this evening. I even had a couple of people talk to me after rehearsal, which almost never happens. About the only downside to the day was that I left the book I was reading in the choir room. Since I doubt I’ll be in town tomorrow, it will be Monday before I can get it back. It’s not a great problem, since I have several in my to-be-read pile, but I wanted to finish that one.

I live in the country, and I typically drive many miles a day just commuting to work. As such, I’m fairly used to seeing things in or alongside the road. The usual dogs, cats, opossums, armadillos, deer, turtles,?? and chickens, and sometimes the more unusual like larger wild felines or coyotes. However, in the past few days I have seen something I don’t remember encountering before — tarantulas crossing the road. I’m sure if someone hits one I wouldn’t notice the splotch, but these have been alive and moving across the roadway. Seeing the first one was strange, and the subsequent ones just added to the strangeness. Why have I never noticed them before? Why am I noticing them now? Has central Arkansas suddenly hatched a larger-than-normal crop of tarantulas? Is this the opening scene to a Hitchcock movie?

When people ask me what I do for a living, I often reply that I’m a computer nerd. For the most part, if I told them what I actually do, they wouldn’t understand. I think many professions are like that, unless you’re on the inside you really don’t understand what’s going on.

Part of my job consists of data manipulation. UALR has many different systems that often need the same data. I’m a firm believer that data should be entered only once and massaged as necessary to fit into other systems. However, I also try to do things the “right” way. The problem is, the right way is often not the simple way. You sometimes have to go around the world to get next door. This afternoon’s exercise is a case in point.

The UALR website has a section called the A to Z Index. It’s a fairly good display of information about websites, people, etc. One problem is that the people data was originally entered into a standalone database, and no provisions were made for upkeep. Most of the data to fix this problem is in our central administrative system. No problem, right? Just change the A to Z index to point there and the problem is solved. If only I could solve the technical issues without political issues raising their heads.

The “right” (industry standard) way for this to work is for the webserver to query the enterprise directory via LDAP. Okay, that’s the way we want to do it. But… we don’t have all the information we need there yet. Step one is to determine what we need that’s not there and modify the LDAP schema to accommodate new attributes. But… the directory is populated from the Sun Identity Manager (IDM) product, so it then needed to be modified to feed those attributes to the directory. But… we still don’t have a source for them. We feed IDM from a table in the administrative database, so columns have to be added to that table. But… what goes in those columns? There is a job that watches other tables for changes and populates the IDM feed table. That job has to be modified to add the new columns. Oh, but there are new tables involved, so those tables have to have triggers added to signal the job that there are changes to be processed. Alright, now the table is good. Back on the IDM side we now have to change the job that processes the feed table to account for the new columns (in a proprietary language called Xpress). If all that works, then it’s necessary to change the web script to do LDAP queries rather than database lookups.

So, to summarize, when we want to add an attribute it requires modifing:

• LDAP schema
• Identity manager output schema mappings
• Identity manager input logic in Xpress
• Columns in a table in an Oracle database
• Logic in a Perl program to maintain the above table
• Triggers on new source tables
• Webserver scripts in PHP

That’s straightforward, right?

Oh, and I started my day standing in the rain troubleshooting electronics in a parking gate that wouldn’t read CampusCards.

This really is how I spend many of my days.

I actually remembered three dream sequences upon waking, one pleasant, one neutral, and one unpleasant, in that order. The first involved climbing Pinnacle Mountain with Kayla (from dance class). This one made since since we talked about the trails yesterday. The second involved a real-life roleplaying game at the Museum of Science and History. That was a bit odd since I haven’t been there in years, and have never participated in roleplaying games. The third I awoke with a dozen or so ticks on me. Not embedded, just crawling. I truly hate ticks. When I really *did* wake up, I had to make sure there were no ticks on me.

I’m going to be late to work, but I’m typing on the computer rather than getting ready — sounds about normal for me.

I have eaten out far too many times this week.?? Wednesday evening I ate at Corino’s, Thursday at Sonic, and tonight at Applebee’s. In the two restaurants I used a technique I have tried with much success. When the waitress asks me if I’m ready to order I say “Food.?? Surprise me.” and hand her the menu back. Occasionally I will have a waitperson that is unable to cope with that request, and simply won’t bring me something unless I specify. Those aren’t the fun ones. Both times this week I was quite pleased with my dinner, and in neither case was it something I would have been likely to order. Over the years I’ve done this, I think I’ve only had one meal I didn’t like. Even it wasn’t bad, just not quite my style (some sort of fish, if I remember). I have, on occasion, even had items that weren’t on the menu, just because the waitperson knew they could be prepared.

For quite some time I’ve considered doing what Norman Drabble did in a couple of recent strips:

I haven’t decided if this would be a good idea, or likely to get me locked up. In Arkansas it could go either way.

As I ran into my co-workers over the course of the afternoon, I shared the following untrue statements.?? Can you figure out why?

“I once ran a 100-watt radio station in the AM broadcast band without the FCC finding me”.”Last night I downloaded the complete discographies of Flaming Lips, Nickelback, and Pink”.

“I may look like gold, but I’m really a ferrous compound”.

Today just seemed a bit off to me. Maybe it was staying home yesterday and only starting the week today. I made it into work on time (for a change), and was fairly productive, but things just didn’t feel right. I left mid-morning for my quarterly check-up so I can keep getting Lipitor, and ate afterward, so that probably didn’t help much. In tap class it just felt like I couldn’t do anything right. I can do the steps by themselves, but I couldn’t seem to tie them together today. I don’t feel much like going over them tonight, either. Maybe in the morning…