Week 14 Enterprise Computing: Clear

This week's lectures were interesting. I could tell that Professor Olsen really liked the subject as well. It built upon the storage knowledge from weeks 2 and 3 and gave some specific hardware  and software examples of ways to meet computing needs for business.

Regarding thin client virtualization, I believe our company uses a form of this for our funeral directing software. All of the data and software is kept on servers in our main offices in Houston, Texas. We log into client computers with our personal login to access the system. If there is any loss of connectivity to the Internet we lose all functionality with the program, which happens very rarely. Other than the client machines used specially for video and sound production, there is very little memory needed locally to run the system.

I really got a lot out of Professor Olson's descriptions of how hardware would be setup for Hierarchical Storage Management, and Storage Area Networks to insure redundancy and safe and efficient data storage.

I also think that in many businesses thin client virtualization could be the answer for the efficient use of data storage. Purchasing storage as needed and being able to divide the space needed for clients in more exact quantities sounds ideal.

Email Security Project

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20013451-266.html?tag=mncol;txt

http://sify.com/finance/rim-confident-of-resolving-security-concerns-news-technology-klvakeehbjc.html

One difficulty international companies face is complying the different laws and regulations in the countries in which they do business. Recently Research In Motion, the developer of the popular Blackberry smartphones, has had trouble in India regarding their communication security.

India threatened to ban RIM's email and messenger unless the government could gain access to the encryption of these services. India claimed that unmonitored communications posed a security threat in their country. RIM's enterprise service has global security policies, and does not have custom encryption policies for individual corporate or government clients.

The threat of the proposed ban was avoided and according to RIM in a customer statement a mutual agreement is in the works. India is the fasting growing market in mobile communications.

Week 12: Communication and Networks

This week’s lectures were totally unexpected. The difference between the material in the textbook and the greater depth of the lectures shows that Professor Olsen has a passion for networking. I enjoyed comparing the concepts from the material to my limited knowledge of the network at work.

This week at work we switched around the layout of our office. I had to run new cable for one workstation and a printer that was previously connected to a workstation by USB. This also required manually configuring IP addresses to the printer under the direction of our network administrator. At the time I was just following the instructions of the administrator at the time. I wish I had been through this material before I did the move I think I would have a better understanding.

I also wish I had checked the cables before I ran them! I ran them over a drop ceiling per my manager’s instructions. Who knows how old they are and of what bandwidth they will support. First thing tomorrow I'm going to check and make sure it is at least CAT5e. I'm guessing not. 

Week 11: So-so on Systems Management

This week’s lectures and material were relatively new to me compared to the rest of the course up to this point. I feel that I have a better understanding on what systems management is about and can relate many of the terms and the roles of people to the systems i use at work.

The system we use for managing the finances and other aspects of our funeral home is called CFSS (Carriage Funeral Service System). Our parent company, Carriage Services, Inc. operates 144 funeral homes nationwide. CFSS is used to generate purchase contracts, manage inventory, and print documents.

As an end user of such a comprehensive system, it's easy to point out the system's short comings. After this module of the class I have a deeper respect for those that manage the system. Developing a system with thousands of users at different security levels,  must account for differences in laws from state to state, and securely handle sensitive information must be an enormous task.

The third generation of CFSS is increasing integration with other programs such as the software that we print stationery for services and update our website. We also have the ability to add pre-arrangement contracts in the system when they are purchased. These features reduce the time we spend entering data and save us a lot of time.

Carriage Services Website

Database Project

I am proud of myself for getting this project done early. Especially since It looks like I will be installing a garage door on my house instead of working on school this weekend.

I was introduced to Microsoft Access in the Intro to computers class I took as a prerequisite for the Online Business Program. I learned more about what a powerful tool this could be in business, especially in the hands of a database specialist. I learned about the different delimiters and text qualifiers of text files and how to import them to Access. I had been familiar with the Query, Form and Report Wizards from the last class. During the database project I familiarized myself with manipulating these objects in Design View. I found that it was not very intuitive, but with some trial and error I improved.

As for how the database could be made more functional, Iwould use lookup fields for all of the data that has a specified number of responses. In my project I formatted the Gender and Membership types only, but the State Field could be done as well. This would enable new records to be entered with less keystrokes.

Week 10: Databases, Clear

I was looking forward to this weeks assignments as I am not very familiar with Microsoft Access. The lectures were a little dull until I opened access and tried working with data along with them. This made them much easier to understand the processes and hopefully will help me finish my project on time.

After I took the prerequisite computer class for the Online Business Program, I found a way that Access can be used at our funeral home. For the last 30 years, every time someone passed away, we would type (on a typewriter!) The name of the deceased, date of death, file number and method of disposition on a 3 x 5 index card which would be filed alphabetically in a card catalogue. This is ridiculous, not only because of the archaic method of record keeping, but because the information is of very little value. It is only used to make it easier to look up records in our archives by name.

I proposed and designed an access database had more valuable fields such as buyer names and contact information, and contract numbers. Access allowed the user not only to look up decedents by name, but the information could be sorted by any of the information in the record. The database was available to the four funeral directors and the office manager, and since it contained more more info, sometimes we could avoid having to pull the physical record from the archives.

I am met with a lot of resistance when trying to update or change the processes at my job. When demonstrating the new database to my boss, another employee turned my computer off during the demonstration, thinking that a power failure would be a reason not to use it. To demonstrate it's superiority I pulled an shredded a random index card from the old catalog and turned my computer back on. Guess what? My database was still fine, but I still am working on updating our office.

Week Nine: Is anyone not clear on the internet at this point?

I was so wrapped up in the Presentations in Web 2.0 project before  leaving for the weekend that I forgot to post before I left. Glad I checked Blackboard before hitting the sack!

The internet...I'm not really sure what to write on this one. This the first week that I feel I was already familiar with the material.

The search engine has replaced many information resources. Email is now the main form of communication in most businesses. I stay connected with people all over the world through forums on topics that interest me.

I think you can even take classes online now...

Presentations and Web 2.0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfuX78xgYCY

Well that was interesting...

I used an idea I had for an entrepreneurial venture that supports funeral homes with staffing and other services as needed. I used PowerPoint as my presentation software and uploaded to the web via YouTube. The intended audience is funeral home owners, managers and funeral directors.

To critique myself on this project I filled the same rubric form  that I filled out for my peer:

Presentation Evaluation Rubric

Name of Presenter: Courtney Charvet

Your Name: Courtney Charvet

	Missing or lacking	Meets the minimum but could be improved	Excellent
Is there a logical flow and sequence of content? How could it be improved?		Should have paused speech between some slides
Does the presenter anticipate questions and answer them in the right place? At what points did you have questions that were not answered?			I think I did. I didn’t go into pricing so as not to bore the instructor
Did the presenter grab your attention in the first 30-60 seconds?		Luke warm on the intro
Did the presenter ask questions and spark your curiosity?			I tried to make the listener think about the important  aspects of the job.
Did the presenter set the context with a concise explanation? Is it clear what the presenter is trying to share?			I think this would be very clear to a Funeral Director which is the intended audience
Did the presenter validate any claims?			I supported claims with logical explanations of benefits
Did the presenter avoid inconsistencies and errors, typos and unbelievable claims?			Yes
How well did the presenter avoid clutter?			Kept slides simple
What did the presenter do to ensure readability?			Large Print, Simple bullets
Did the presenter say it, and then show it or did he/she read the slides?		Slipped a few times

In critiquing my peer, Stephanie Howick, I realized how different each and everyone of our presentations must be. Stephanie's project was very well rehearsed, and she used the slides to support what she was saying. She did not read a single item off of a slide. I wish I could say the same for myself.

Rehearsing and listening to yourself in a presentation is very difficult without feedback from the audience. I am comfortable talking and making presentations to a crowd in person. I found myself studdering a lot, something I am not really used to. I wish I had more time to devote to this project. Powerpoint is one of my favorite programs.

This was not my best project. I hope to improve on whatever is next.

Week 7: Presentations

This weeks assignments in my honest opinion, were the best so far. I especially enjoyed the videos from Ted.com. I do my best to watch one of Ted's talks everyday and have the page set as my homepage in my browser. The avatar lectures however, I thought were weird.

One of the main tasks of my job are presenting options of services, merchandise, and personalization available to clients. There is little use of technology for now and most of the information is exchanged face-to-face, but I see this changing already. When someone is going though the difficult situation of losing a loved one, they often are not comfortable speaking with someone in person. They often turn to the Internet for answers to their questions. Historically funeral homes have been reluctant to offer too much information on the Internet about services and pricing. Online presentation of this information could be delivered to clients in a way that could conform with a companies best practices in a medium that is more comfortable to a person in a ragile state. This could provide much more than a price list, and explain further the value of the services. This could also help differentiate our company from competitors.

The material this week was great, and I had fun.

Week 6: Clear on Multimedia

This subject deals with some issues that comes up often at my work. Though most of the vocabulary from the lectures was new for me, but I was relatively familiar with the concepts from editing photos and videos at home and at work.

My wife and I have two kids and that keeps the pictures and video coming. While the videos we make do not require much editing, my wife enjoys scrapbooking and many of our photos need to be cropped or fixed in someother way.

Working at a funeral home, a particular issue at work is our customers sizing photos for obituaries, memorial program handouts, and tribute videos. In all cases, it is important to have the client provide us with the highest quality photos possible. It is especially important when the photos are used to make a photo tribute that will play on a large screen mointor during a funeral.

Excel Project

I completed the Excel project today with little problems. The centering and bold instructions were very straightforward and simple. The first challenge that I came to was selecting the areas to paste the relative formulae to. When using the shift/control.down arrow keyboard shortcut, the entire column was selected, well paste the data. I used the mouse to scroll down while holding shift, selecting the first and last cells in the column with no issues.

The printing preferences in Excel 2010 are slightly different than in 2007. I feel it was even easier to do these steps with my new desktop than with my laptop running the older version. The headers and footer and footers were very intuitive and I did not need to use the help functions.

Before this class I had no experience with Pivot Tables. The first one gave me a little trouble, but once I realized I was not giving the program enough information to make the table, it went just fine. I really like this feature and can see using it very soon.

Here is the screenshot of the AvgIncrease Pivot Table:

Week 5: Clear on Excel, some formulas are tricky though.

Glad to get to some meat in ISM. Excel is one program I would like to be more proficient with. I have a new boss at work and he realizes the value of Excel's abilities. My old boss didn't use (or expect me to use) Excel at all. So I need to get better quick.

When generating pricing documents for our funeral home we like to group individual prices into popular packages to make the information more easily understood by our clients. My last boss generated these package prices on paper with a calculator. We are finding discrepancies in the price lists generated before the change in management. My Excel project for the week was using the data from our general price list to make tables for each package. I plan to make a more in depth model using historical data of our package mix to project revenue with changes in individual prices.

While I am pretty good at making simple tables and models in Excel, I would really like to be better with large amounts of data. This weeks lectures introduced me to some shortcuts that are much appreciated, especially the keyboard shortcuts. Some of the navigation is slightly different in Excel 2010. It is fairly intuitive, but it took me a few seconds longer to print the column titles on every page. In 2010 you click on the square to the right of the field and enter the cell range in the separate field that opens. The syntax for the "If" function is tricky.

This is a fun class. I must be a nerd.

Week Four: Clear on Software Analysis, Licensing and Life cycle

This week's material seems pretty straight forward. I really enjoy moments like this in the Online business program. After taking Managerial Economics with Dr. Dewey and Finance with Dr. Tapley in back to back semesters, I'm pretty fried. Also the direct, no-nonsense quiz questions are greatly appreciated.

The licensing of software was the most interesting to me. I recently bought a new desktop and bought MS Office 10 even though I had a Office 2007 disk from my laptop. I wasn't sure if the EULA for an employee home use program would allow it to be installed on two machines. Even though I'm small potatoes, better to be safe than sorry. The importance of software licensing was also emphasized in the Entrepreneurship class I completed in the spring. Proper licensing of common application software is often overlooked when starting a small business.

I was able to relate some of the material from the lectures to my work experience. In addition to the horizontal software that most companies use such as MS office, funeral homes also use a program to manage client data, generate contracts, and print necessary forms such as death certificates. The program we use at North Brevard Funeral Home, CFSS is developed by our corporation. It is not only industry specific, but company specific, linking our finances, inventory, and even our websites to make our jobs easier.

In other news, today has been a great Saturday. The wife, kids and I went fishing this morning and I hope I fixed an oil leak in the MG.

Clear: Operating Systems Week 3

So I've watched the last 5 lectures on operating systems and the material was much less familiar than the hardware lectures, but stilll pretty straight forward. Many of the subjects such as the BIOS or Basic Input Output System were familiar from dealing with the IT helpdesk at work. We do take for granted just about everything that happens when we press the power button.

I alway wondered where Kernel had come from. It was not explained in that great of detail in the lectures. I am familiar with the term from seeing it on my computers in the performance tab of the task manager. I did a search and found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_(computing)

I was really disappointed in my quiz grade. It seemed to me that about half of the material on the quiz came from the lectures, and there was no reading assignments or other material that I could find. I have swung wide before, I just hope I'm not missing something. Update: Professor Olson corrected the quiz! I'm glad I wasn't going crazy.

Clear: Hardware, Muddy: Second Life

After watching the first three videos for weeks two and three, I am more excited about this class. I have done some simple component swaps, but never built my own computer, and usually rely on the advise of my brother for advise on hardware and software. The lectures are very easy to watch and interesting. I did learn that I probably did not need a quad core processor. Now I going to purposefully make sure I'm doing more than one thing at a time, just so I didn't waste my money.

Even though I am considered "the computer guy" in my office, I really am not deserving of the title. I usually use this method:

http://xkcd.com/627/

At work, reluctance to use computers is a source of frustration for me at work. My co-workers at times are reluctant to give up with the old ways of the funeral industry and let computers share some of the most simple tasks that take up much of our time and energy. Some of our state and local forms and documents are still completed on a typewriter. Yes, a typewriter.

O.K., so one of the extra credit opportunities is to create a profile on second life. I am all set up...and officially creeped out. I can see that it can be a way to increase communication skills in electronic platforms, but I just don't understand the attraction of doing this for fun. I had a hard time figuring out how to update my appearance and I can't really figure out what exactly I'm supposed to do, other than talk to weirdos. I hope I can find the recommended sites and get through the instructions for the extra 20 points. The problem with Second Life is that every minute you spend in it, you lose a minute in First Life. First Life rocks, by the way.

Clear: Week one and...Carburettors!

I am excited about ISM and especially look forward to learning more about Excel and Access. The first week seems pretty straight forward. Netiquette is extremely important both in business and leisure when using text-only forms of communication. I am active on a few discussion forums (mostly cycling or car related). While most of the posts are courteous, occasionally simple misunderstandings escalate and feelings are hurt.

I mentioned in my introduction that I worked on old cars as a hobby. I Currently have a 1972 MG Midget and today I received my carburettors back from South Carolina after a rebuild.

Are they not beautiful?

Goodnight! -Courtney

Introduction

Hi! I'm Courtney Charvet from Titusville, Florida. I work as Funeral Director at North Brevard Funeral Home and enjoy spending time with my family when I'm not busy with work or school. I also try to fit in some hobbies now and then such as working on cars, running, surfing, cycling and theater.

I am looking forward to this class and was pleasantly surprised when I read through the syllabus. This was not what I expected. I am new to blogging so this is a little out of my comfort zone, but I am always up for a challenge!