Work PR piece about the team for which I work. The ITS GeorgiaVIEW Team provided an example of tenacity when Blackboard, a product that enables universities to host classes online, released a security bulletin announcing a vulnerability which allowed a student to view a course’s full grade book by manipulating the course URL. Although the…
Yesterday was the 182nd day of the year, so at the halfway point, here is an update on my resolution progress. Complete unfinished novel series. I finished the Harry Potter series at the first update. The Sword of Truth series is now done. I have most of the Ender’s series books, so I am working on…
“We have stronger opinions about [iPhone vs. Android] than we do the moral frameworks to guide our decisions.” To be fair the choices were selected to be ones most people would have to have taken a Philosophy major to understand, Kant versus Mill. There are other moral guides like Jesus, Aquinas, Richard Dawkins, Mohammed, Pope…
I was sequestered in a war room for a month during which the Japanese earthquake and tsunami happened as well as the meltdown of the nuclear power plant at Fukushima. We projected on the wall video of the stories over and over. It just occurred to me each of the Empedocles classical elements (air, fire, earth,…
Analyst asked me to look at the server logs for a case where students were getting system exceptions. Armed with the JSESSIONID, I found many cases in the webct.log of an error called: “Stack size too large”. In my old email, I found a September 2010 discussion with Rajini Prabhu and Mike Cooling about thread-dump analyzers. In it Rajini…
There seem to be two ways to recommend something to others… Because the person making the recommendation likes it. Because the person making the recommendation knows the one receiving it and thinks that person will like it. The last time I looked, I am not anyone else. I like things others do not. Others like…
Hi Blackboard Support, Today, without warning, you changed Behind the Blackboard. Clients dislike surprises. We like knowing how things work. Give us access to the new thing before we have to deal with it. That way we become familiar with it. Even if you do not give advance viewing of the service, then advance warning…
There is a video of soldiers returning from Afghanistan irritated about having to pay out of pocket for bags they thought were allowed under the government contract with Delta Airlines. At the time, Delta’s understanding of the contract was First or Business class could carry four bags. Economy class could carry three. Because of this,…