Politics? Polls? Really? Why? Ahh... Who cares?

http://www.presidentpolls2008.com/

You know, I think I may take a year or so off from politics. Hillary and Rudy have the top slot in all the latest polls on this site. The nominees will be decided by the end of February. Almost three months before Indiana gets a chance to vote. If those two are still in the lead by March 1, I will not vote for President. I cannot, with a clear conscious, vote for either one. It would be no different than what it is now.

That's my opinion anyway. What say you?

My PCRes Hell

Its midnight. I am dizzy, my chest feels like I have an elephant on it, and I am very tired but I cannot sleep. Yes, I am fighting a cold. I am also in PCRes Hell.

PCRes is a wonderful tool we have for patrons to reserve computer time with little or no staff intervention. 90-95% of the time I think it works like a charm. It's the other 5-10% that stinks! We recently upgraded to the latest and greatest version (v3.3). One of the things we were encountering that prompted the upgrade was double bookings and missing session clocks. I must admit, of all the double bookings reported, only two were true double bookings. The rest were usually user (staff or patron) error.

An example would be when a patron tries to get a time closer than their first reservation. They keep making reservations until they get the time they want. In the process, they cancel their previous reservation when they accept the new one. Then they get ready for the computer and forget which time they had. Not too mention, they inadvertently tossed out the good receipt. So they show up and their computer is gone. Someone is already on it. Other times the card gets used by two different people. Mom makes a reservation then one of the kids needs to get a computer. They use the same card Mom did, canceling out Mom's computer time. Mom then shows up and her computer is in use by someone else.

Next is the missing session clock. I have been able to duplicate this three times. But never the same way twice. Though some staff have seen patrons type a few keys while the computer is logging on, and poof, no session clock. Then there are times the session clock is missing but staff are sure it wasn't removed by user intervention. What stinks is that the system appears Off Line to the server. Which means reservations are being made. Unless the system is marked Out of Service, PCRes will continue to make reservations for the computer. As far as the server knows the computer is Off Line because it is getting ready for the next user.

So far I have been able to determine that the suspect computers are being restarted in the middle of login. Is this user intervention or a glitch in the program? I do not know yet. I spoke to our vendor prior to the upgrade and we appear to have all the bases covered. I would mention the list of things we checked but I am not at work right now. It's after midnight. One thing I do know is the user policy isn't in play until the Desktop Manager loads. This means, with the right timing, a user could tinker around with the keyboard and kill PCRes. I am not ruling out the fact that malware may be causing this.

The missing session clock is very random and jumps around from computer to computer. Many locations share one server for the Management Console and we have some branches that haven't reported the problem. This, however, doesn't mean they are not experiencing the problem. I have to take people at their word. But, I am certain if they had a missing session clock they would be on the phone to the Help Desk toot sweet. Because it will appear to double book patrons. And patrons who are legitimately on the receiving end of this are far worse to deal with than someone who may be... say... trying to pull a fast one. It sucks. They thought they had a computer, probably waited hours for it, then find out their time was lost because of this missing clock. If it were me I would be ticked off too.

So here is where the frustration comes in. Staff are dealing with a patron who just lost their reservation. That patron is probably a little ticked off. Add to this the fact that they now have to stop helping one patron to deal with this PCRes issue. See where I am going. STINKS! The Help Desk gets a call about how a computer has double booked people. That's about all you can get out of the staff person that called. They are too busy and/or frustrated to give you anymore information. After a little time the tech will call back to get more information. For whatever reason, there isn't much more information to get. All I have is a computer and time and double bookings. Trying to troubleshoot this would be just the same as if a patron came in asking for a book. Nothing more to go on other than they want a book. You can ask for more information, but that is all you are getting. See? How do you know what book they want?

If I only had a reservation number to look up. Better yet, the library card or Guest ID number that was used to make the reservation. When I have this information I can use the tools provided in the PCRes software to determine what happened. Especially if it was s reservation issue. Having the same information has helped with the process of isolating the processes involved with the missing clock.

The information on the reservation receipt alone can provide so much information for troubleshooting. I am told that many times patrons don't even have their receipts with them. As long as you have their library card or Guest ID you can look up their reservation information. So there isn't much concern over this. Personally, I wish there was.

We use to try and get staff to send us the receipts when they report PCRes problems. I think we should do this again. When patrons have reservation complaints staff do their best to resolve the problem on the spot by getting them the next available computer. This means I have time to investigate these problems and could wait to get the receipts before I do.

I wouldn't mind setting up a PCRes lab at Library Plaza and offer classes to staff on how to use the Staff application to lookup some of this information. If anything it would be a refresher. I could also use the time to show staff all that is involved from the IT perspective when we try to run down these problems.

It seems like I may be taking this PCRes thing a bit to personal but I can't help it. When you add up the time involved in learning the system, creating the application objects, training staff, and time spent investigating trouble tickets. It's easy to do this. The first thing I have to remind myself is that the problem isn't me. Not personally any way. There could be a problem with the application object or how the system is configured. All things I have worked on, but those are learning events. Learning from your mistakes helps you improve your skill set.

Well, if you've made it this far thanks. If you run into any PCRes problems try to remember to get the library card or Guest ID, and the information off the receipt. I am committed to getting these problems resolved and can assure you I do feel your pain.

Please, if you have anything good or bad to say about this please comment. You may be helpful in solving a problem.

Telnet missing from Windows Vista

Hey IT!

Have you noticed the Telnet client is missing from Vista? Not actually. You just need to enable this feature in Windows Vista.

1. Start
2. Control Panel
3. Programs
4. Under the heading "Programs and Features", click Turn Windows Features on or off
5. Click Telnet Client
6. Click OK

Wait a few minutes and viola you have enabled the Telnet Client. No restart needed.

The Water Cooler Goes Virtual and Global

I was skimming through the Winter 2008 edition of Intel Premier IT magazine, and found this article written by Jeff Moriarity. He is the Web2.0/social media design engineer at Intel IT. It is a rather informational article about how blogs and wikis can be and are used by business and enterprise users. You need an account to access the article online.

I have one better. A podcast, "Blogs and Wikis in the Enterprise: The Water Cooler Goes Virtual and Global". Jim Malone, Editorial Director for CXO media, Interviews Jeff Moriarity on how Intel uses blogs and wikis.

It lasts for about 15 minutes and I found it to be very enlightening. OK, I am a geek, so I would. I just think it is so cool all these communication tools that we have at our disposal. Though, the hardest part is finding the time to update them. Or maybe that is scheduling time to update them.

Thanks for stopping by,
Kevin

ps: I am SO GLAD Blogger saves my posts as drafts. I almost lost this post before it was published.

BKM: Best Known Method

My Learning 2.0 Journey, Part I

This is going to be short but I thought I would comment on my progress. Last week ITS took a crash course in Learning 2.0. We covered several topics each afternoon. Now many would think that being an "IT Professional" would mean I am on top of every little technology that's out there. Including blogs, wiki's and RSS feeds. That sounds familiar. :-) Actually I'm not. I understand the concept behind it all, grasp the technology. But there is so much out there to know that you can't be an expert in all of it. Nor do you find yourself ever using most of it. I am good, don't get me wrong. I am highly skilled at computer repair, and can find my way around the Window registry better than most, and there isn't a computer related challenge I will walk away from. Even if it requires time for research and study. But, I just don't see how anyone could ever utilize all these wonderful tools. My main problem would be keeping track of all the user accounts. That's why I stick with anything associated with Google.

Well enough of that. Here is a list of some of the things I have covered. Please note some of this was accelerated. There are some things I will revisit because I didn't get to spend too much time on them. Some things I have no use for but am happy to know they are out there. I will post more as I go and try to elaborate on some of them.

• 7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners
• Setup Your Own Blog (You are here)
  
• Post A Comment on ACPL Blogs (Always)
  
• Setup an RSS Reader (Google Reader)
  
• Instant Messaging (Live communicator)
  
• The World of Google (My Web friend)
  
• Flickr ( I will post my site soon)
  
• All Consuming
• Using an MP3 Player
• LibraryThing
• Del.icio.us Bookmarking
• Technorati
• Wikis
• Twitter
• Share Experience on Your Own Blog (on going)

Thanks for stopping by. ~Kevin

Whaazzzuup!

I am just cruising through Learning 2.0 @ the ACPL. That's how this blog came about. Since it is my first blog and full of miscellaneous (eclectic) junk I thought Eclectic Thoughts would work. I added the 2.0 for Learning 2.0, Web 2.0, and all the other #.0 that are out there.

Personally, I haven't caught the blogging bug yet. Somewhere I heard there were millions of people reading blogs. Unfortunately, those millions of readers were the authors of those blogs. Kinda like I am here.

But Dupont library has a wonderful blog they use. I was reading some of the posts and they are full of useful information for their staff. One of the posts even included part of an email I sent them about PC Reservation.

I usually find that I end up reading blogs during a political debate. But that only lasts long enough for me to realize one thing. We share this planet with a bunch of strange individuals. Problem is, I may be the strangest one of all. I mean I really feel like I am living in some parallel universe. Listening to what callers have to say on C-SPAN, or how some news outlets report on these debates, only proves my point. It's almost like I saw a totally different debate than everyone else. But truth prevails and someone actually writes in their blog or reports on the news the same thing I saw. Funny thing is, it always seems to be that one person who I felt had it all wrong from the last time. Go figure.

Since I am sort of on a political soapbox. Wow, blogs, electronic soapboxes. I am sure I wasn't the first to think of that. hehehaha. Anyhow, I heard about VAJoe.com and the sites Candidate Calculator. You answer a few questions and after you submit your answers it will match you with candidates that share your same views. It also lists candidates that have views close to yours. Sorry, I wont tell you who my top match is. I found it rather funny myself.

Well that's all for now. Thanks for reading and stopping by.

That's "It's IT Professional"

I was thinking of one of the iACPL video's we posted on YouTube when I was trying to come up with the address for my blog. Unfortunately, my memory isn't what is use to be. Take a look at this video and you will see what I mean. Oh... I am on the left. Yes... I am a ham...

This is the third in a four part series we did that pokes fun at how Librarians and IT work together. Face it, there is a little geek in all of us.

Sean explains this better on the ACPL IT blog.