Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4

Tag: Blackboard CE/Vista

  • DSID-0C090334

    Working with our clients on LDAP configuration almost invariable starts with SSL certificates. Self-signed, intermediate, and take up a while. The two tools, openSSL and keytool have become my friends. Working with a network admin for the client, I finally saw the legitimate certificate correctly signed by the intermediate certificate not the self-signed. This means I…

  • xmllint

    This Linux tool is my new best friend. We get thousands of XML files from our clients for loading user, class, and enrollment information. Some of these clients customize our software or write their own software for generating the XML. This means we frequently get oddities in the files which cause problems. Thankfully I am…

  • Failed Sessions

    For exactly two months now I have been working on a re-opened issue (on Oct 7, 2009) where sessions appear to die in Blackboard Vista 8.0.2 hf1. The first time this came up, Blackboard support wanted us to overhaul the session management. BIG-IP documents saying attempting this new method was a horrible idea caused us…

  • Linux Adventure Part 2

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    Linux Adventure Part 1 | Linux Adventure Part 3 [SOLVED] So far into the story, I tried repairing Windows Vista which failed to actually give me a working entry into the operating system. The Linux Live CDs were non-committed forays into Knoppix, CentOS, and Ubuntu. All failed to turn on the wireless. An ethernet cord would…

  • Linux Adventure Part 1

    For about a week now I’ve been without my personal laptop as anything much more than a brick. I think tonight I am going to copy off the pictures and other important information to my desktop. From there, anything I do to make the situation worse will no longer matter as much. Monday night, I…

  • Useful User Agents

    Rather than depend on end users to accurately report the browser used, I look for the user-agent in the web server logs. (Yes, I know it can be spoofed. Power users would be trying different things to resolve their own issues not coming to us.) Followers of this blog may recall I changed the Weblogic…

  • Tracking Specific File Use

    CE/Vista Reports and Tracking displays summaries of activity. If an instructor seeks to know who clicked on a specific file, then Reports and Tracking falls down on the job. Course Instructor can produce a report of the raw tracking data. However, access to the role falls under the Administration tab so people running the system…

  • State of the LMS

    Watched an informative WebEx about The State of the LMS: An Insitution Perspective presented jointly by Delta Initiative and California State University. An true innovator in this market could become the leader. Market share numbers annoy me. These are always self-reported numbers from a survey. The sample sizes are almost always not very impressive and when…

  • Computer Metaphors

    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…