September 23, 2008: CCA Day 2

Scott Alan Miller — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:33:21 +0000

59 Days to Baby Day! (31 Weeks and Four Days Pregnant)

The original plan was to be up at seven thirty, or so, this morning and to be heading down to Castile Christian Academy by eight thirty. That did not happen at all. I was really exhausted and slept for ten hours. I did not wake up until Dominica woke me up at eight thirty five!

I got ready pretty quickly but it was still almost ten o’clock by the time that we got down to Castile to get started for the day. The sleep was probably important as my back is killing me today from all of the lifting of the rack and the computers yesterday. It just feels like muscle spasms in my lower lumbar, nothing to be alarmed about, but that does not make it hurt any less. I can barely walk today, let alone stand up straight.

Today was spent mostly in a panic trying to get enough stuff done so that the computer lab would remain usable after we have left this afternoon. We delivered down two more computers from dad’s house this morning which means that all of the “built” machines that he has had in storage for the school are back at the school (unless there are even more about which we do not know) and the only machines that he is still storing are the machines which are in parts and need yet to be assembled before being delivered to the school. Those are for another day.

Dad managed to get the wiring in place to allow us to hook up the new server. That ended up being a project that required the entire day. We use NIS for authentication at the school so I had to migrate the NIS system and the NFS system and get the workstations authenticating to the new server. That really was not that bad. The NFS was more of a problem than the NIS which worked like a charm the first time.

The big thing that we do not have working again, yet, is the Internet access through the Dansguardian proxy. For now, Internet access is just turned off. Hopefully that will be simple to fix remotely. There was just no way that I was going to be able to deal with that today in addition to everything else.

Dad and Dominica went out to Lorraine’s for lunch again and brought food back to eat at the school while we kept working. Good food even if it does not mean a break in the work.

By the end of the day, the total “dead” count was twenty-two computers! That is a lot of computers for a little school with very limited resources to lose. We left with seven computers functioning in the computer lab and running OpenSUSE 11. It is enough to get them through but the real hope was to have computers running in all of the classrooms and in support areas but there just isn’t any cabling yet to support that and, apparently, not enough computers either!

We also got the wireless up and running again which is important and now the kindergarten room is online once again. All progress is good.

We got to shut down the old server, a Compaq Proliant 3000, which was ancient and in horrible condition. To its credit, it was a salvaged machine and has been running at the school for about four years now and doing so under pretty tough conditions. It was mounted onto a shelf built just for it about eight feet in the air in the janitor’s closet at the school where it got no air circulation and was subject to all kinds of dirt and humidity. It is really amazing that it lasted so long. Currently, it is being considered to just leave it up there as it is so dangerous to bring it down and there is no further use for it. It has 4.3GB hard drives and PC66 memory!

We ended up staying later than we had intended at the school, but it was necessary to get enough done so that they could keep working. It was probably around four thirty when we left although I did not check the clock. It was so late that we decided that we would have dinner with dad at Lorraine’s before getting onto the road to drive all evening.

From dinner in Castile Dominica, Oreo and I got in the car and drove down to Varna, New York to drop off a switch that we needed to deliver today. Getting to Ithaca didn’t take as long as we had thought that it would and we were there in no time.

From Ithaca to Newark took a few hours and we decided to risk the route down Interstate 81 which is under construction. Dominica was right that being late on a Tuesday night it would not be very busy. That was definitely the right route to take from Ithaca.

We arrived in Newark around one in the morning. Pretty late but not nearly as late as it could have been. We unpacked the car, watered the plants and got right off to bed. Dominica has to be up at six tomorrow and I am on the early shift at work so I have to be up early as well.

Technical Web Design with XHTML and CSS

Scott Alan Miller — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 15:59:03 +0000

Six day class that I taught at Castile Christian Academy covering strict technical web site design using standard XHTML and CSS. Roughly the equivalent of a collegiate class in web design. Few college courses actually go this far and cover this much from the technical perspective. This class does not cover JavaScript or other web programming methods. This is strictly a class covering the technical aspects of building a single web page.

Due to the length of the course it was split into six days (one day per week) and the videos have been split into a dozen parts.

Xvid videos in 320×240, perfect for playback on Linux, Windows, Mac OS, Creative Zen Video, etc. Videos hosted courtesy of OurMedia and the Internet Archive.

This class does not cover any theory of aesthetics in web design. Nor does it cover server administration or management. The goal of this class is to take the student from only a basic knowledge of the web to possessing the skills necessary to pursue a career in professional web design.

castile – Sheep Guarding Llama

September 23, 2008: CCA Day 2

Technical Web Design with XHTML and CSS