Category: Blackboard Vista


  • Blackboard has a conference they call BbWorld. I noticed there are some odd tweets with the same #bbworld hashtag lately. These appear to be about a Blackberry conference to be held next month. Collisions on names are common enough. For example, here are a couple names our clients use to brand their sites which other…

  • An effective way to explain something is to use a metaphor. This can be especially effective by picking an metaphorical object or behavior with which the audience is already familiar. The one I see most often is comparing computers to a car. This morning I saw this on an email list describing a person’s experience…

  • I noticed one the nodes in a development cluster was down. So I started it again. The second start failed, so I ended up looking at logs to figure out why. The error in the WebCTServer.000000000.log said: weblogic.diagnostics.lifecycle.DiagnosticComponentLifecycleException: weblogic.store.PersistentStoreException: java.io.IOException: [Store:280036]Missing the file store file “WLS_DIAGNOSTICS000001.DAT” in the directory “$VISTAHOME/./servers/$NODENAME/data/store/diagnostics” So I looked to see…

  • If Blackboard opens up the schema for Vista 8, then maybe I’ll feel more comfortable sharing the reporting SQL I use. Ron Santos has a good PowerPoint on SQL for reports at Simon Frasier University.

  • Staying true to tradition, Blackboard found a great speaker, Seth Godin, with a positive message. Notes people took… Scott Kodai Paty Savage Peggy Collins Laura Gekeler Scott found the best point, I think. Compliance doesn’t work to create value. Compliant work will always go to the lowest bidder. We can always find someone cheaper to…

  • From a January 13, 2009 email from Michael Chasen to the customers: Please share any feedback with me directly at a Web site created for just that purpose called Tell Michael Chasen.  I will personally read every message I get, so please let me know what you think. That page in the email is no…

  • Amy’s dump of the CE/Vista settings table ended up with a slightly different format than mine. I was able to use sed to rejoin the correct lines. This resulted in two files with spaces on about half of the lines in the file. Ouch. Thankfully diff has a -b flag to ignore the spaces. Really…

  • A blog without comments to me isn’t a blog. Blog posts are about stimulating discussion, so the comments are most important feature. Content without feedback is a publicity or news story not a blog. So Blackboard Blogs at educateinnovate.com isn’t really a blog. Steve Feldman, Bb performance engineer, had the first Blackboard Inc blog with…

  • Every time a Vista 3 node is shut down without going through the initiated shut down process, there is a chance of incorrect data written to the tracking files (in NodeA/tracking/). Normally it leaves strange characters or partial lines at the end of the file. This is the first time I have seen it write…