Panic and Relaxation at the End of the Semester

General panic ensued for our little team during the last few days of the semester. I am thankfully sheltered a little bit by my wonderful co-worker, Vanessa as she took the brunt of the data manipulations that had to happen. I played the part of data integrity checker and general assistant to her efforts. Everyone knows that this is a start-up university and as normal day to day events pass we are sometimes lulled into complacency thinking that everything is in place and then something comes up and slaps you awake and you realize again, that everything is not as it appears.

This past week was our most important week of the semester as our application, Blackboard, becomes the focus of every instructor to put their final grades into the grade books in each course. Theoretically, these data-sets are supposed to be compiled and then uploaded into the University’s student records that form their permanent performance matrix. We then become the nexus to ensure that this student data gets moved. Well, we had been waiting for something called a ‘Building Block’. for quite a while (since before I went to the conference in Swansea actually…). We finally got this component and I helped install it in our Test server. Everything went OK and then we installed it in our live server and it seemed OK. Luckily, we had spent a few days working with the existing building block for final grades before this event. To work with the data, Vanessa working her magic with Excel, goes through about 30 or more steps that she developed, to get the data into the format needed by the student services system – Course, Number, Student ID, and ultimately, the students’ final course grade. Well, when we installed the now component around 5 pm on the 31st of May, the next day we got an email from an instructor saying that their student’s final grades were changed and they could not alter it back! We found that all the B+ grades were changed to B and a few other things. We (Vanessa mainly) worked through the 1200 or more grades and compared the old data to the new and found that the new component had associated a new ‘reference table’ to compare % grades to, and displayed a changed set of Alphanumeric final grades. Oh, and the table it was drawing upon did not have a B+ in it so when an attempt at correction happened the B+ produced an error. Vanessa removed the new component and activated the old and ran the whole process again and compared, multiple times, ALL the grades and spot checked new changes – because faculty were actively still putting in grades and changing things on the fly… So, by Thursday afternoon this week, we were finally sure that everything was in place. The new component was sent back twice I think and it did not work as we expected it to either time… 8-/     So the plan now is to spend the summer testing and ensuring that our system will be more automated and less hands on for next semester. But then again, that was what our current plan and incidentally, last semester’s too!  In the end, not a single grades was lost, and for all intense and purposes, all of this activity went on behind the scenes and not a single student or faculty record was negatively impacted.  This reminds me of a saying I heard when I was running my own construction company:  The difference between an expert carpenter and a novice is that the expert knows how to fix his errors.

 During this time, I had been working on other projects as well. I have now got the Schools (K-12 schools) set up with a section of our Blackboard system so that they can manage their own users and courses (this was really fun to do and enjoyable to be involved with schools again). I have been building a course for the Dean of the Biosciences department here; working on a course for Occupational Health and Safety department related to Lab Safety practices at the University; and most recently have been working with the Human Resources department. This last project was fun because I found that the university does not have a hand-held video camera so I used Donna’s brand new camera that I purchased in London. I have found that the video quality is so spectacular, that it is better than any hand-held video camera I have seen so far – and it is a point and shoot camera! I purchased some software this week for editing because I did not have anything to edit High Definition video which this little camera produces. The software is simple, quick and produces exceptionally clear results for ANY kind of video file format. If you are interested, you can find it at: http://www.avs4you.com/video.aspx I am not selling this! The twist with this site is that you purchase use of ALL their software for either a year or forever – two prices. This is not ‘pay for one and then pay for the second’, it is ‘pay once and get all’ for the time period you chose. I have worked with probably a dozen different video editing programs and these produce seems to be about the best of the lot, so far.

Either side of the panic period, I have had two really nice scuba dives. We went north of the University to an area called Petro Rabigh which is the name of a Saudi petroleum company. Well actually sadly, there are three different industrial plants spewing gunk into the air along the coast in the same area which inevitably blows down towards where we live! One is this petroleum refinery, the second a power station (probably using fuel from the refinery), and the third, the second largest cement factory in the world (I have been told), no doubt using the near-by electricity source. Well, we boarded a small boat and went about 30 km further north to a reef called 5km reef. These areas see few people that one could consider it to be ‘near pristine’. We did two dives that first Thursday and between the two, a bit of fishing. I saw a barracuda over 6 feet long jump out of the water just before we left for home. We caught a yellow fin tuna that got away and a barracuda which I kept and brought home. I filleted the fish and ate ¼ that evening. I also I cut off its head and boiled it and then rebuilt it. Incredible! This thing is out of someone’s nightmare! The lower jaw is overshot and like a crocodile, only able to move up and down, not sideways. The upper jaw has a set of solid slicing (like knife tips) molars and then the teeth towards the front are on a separate set of two bones. Think of an old man who is able to take his upper set of dentures and move them forward with his tongue. This fish can push its front set of teeth forward about 1/3 the length of its lower jaw and then pull them back like a saw. If ‘grandpa’ had a set like this, no 15 oz steak would ever be a challenge!

The second Thursday took us to the same area and we saw a turtle resting on a slope of a coral wall that we were swimming alongside.  For perspective, this turtle had about a 30 inch shell.
During this same dive, we were surrounded by a very large school of young barracuda, each about 2 feet long. I enjoy looking up towards the surface as I swim along the coral wall, and at one place, I am sure I saw the same 6 foot barracuda that I saw jump the week before – the mother of all barracuda! I brought along my rod this second trip but was not lucky.

This Friday I went to the University pool for the first time and gave Kannan some pointers on swimming. He sits next to me and sees all the photos I take during my scuba diving and would really like to learn – but realizes that knowing how to swim first might come in handy.

And thinking of the future and what to do when Garnet gets here regarding transportation -- I finally got the lowdown! I now know that I do not need to consider the cost of fuel. I shot this image with my iPhone at the location where we met our dive boat. The small car is a Chevi and the truck, a Ford Explorer. The person renting the small car says it costs him SAR 13 to fill the tank; the owner of the Ford SUV, SAR 35 for his full tank. The exchange rate is 3.57 SAR to $1 CDN. You do the math! This is not an error either! This is from people who drive here and fill their tanks on a regular basis.