Reflections on a Course

I taught Management of Technology for the first time ever this semester. Management of Technology is suppose to be a capstone course, a course that puts all things together. Its suppose to be that final course that talks about what it means to be an IT manager today and more importantly what students should expect out of a job.

I didn't feel that this course went so well for me. In the end I did get a number of students compliment me on the course, but overall I felt there was a massive disconnect between my goals and expectations for the class and the students themselves.

First off, the vast majority of these students can't write. I know they're IT majors. Some of them can't string two thoughts together coherently to save their lives. Some of them have terrible grammar and many of them don't turn their spell checker on (or don't bother with the results). And I'm complaining from a "who taught these kids?" perspective and I know my writing wasn't perfect, but this is pretty ridiculous. As an IT person, and hopefully an eventual manager students have to realize that writing is critical for their position. IT involves LOTS of documentation - comments in code, requirements, emails to executives, etc. Without a solid foundation of writing skills, an IT person will not make it up the ladder.

Second, I found the entitlement attitude to be very true amongst this group. Not all mind you, but there were just many students who failed to turn in assignments throughout the semester and then wanted reprieve at the end. When my manager tell me that something is due for a client on Friday, its due Friday, the expectation is that I will give it on Friday. I had assignments which I gave extra notices that they were due and sent reminders and still did not have them turned in.

This was extremely frustrating. I understand these are young and eager IT majors who want nothing more than to start configuring routers. Life is not all about configuring routers. I went through a very traditional CS program where life was all programming and when I hit the workforce I was woefully unprepared for the management crap that I was subject to. I just want to portray the importance of writing and management and timeliness to these students before they get into the workforce, but no, a number of the same students who turned projects in late are upset because they didn't get an A or B in the course.

In the end, I learned a few things:
1) Even though it was hard, I stuck to my guns and felt ok about it.
2) I need to do a better done of explaining the purpose of the course in the beginning.
3) My own preparation and documentation needs to improve.

About three weeks ago, I really had felt that I had hit the wall and wasn't sure that I would continue past the next semester. Now that I've had a little time to regroup, I'm going to keep marching forward positively into the Linux course and just work to make it as prepared as possible.

PhDs and such

Its no surprise I've been thinking a lot about academia. I'm not unhappy in my current job, I just think that teaching is what I really want to do. Then I struggle with the PhD part of it, I'm not about to drop out of life for 4-7 years to get a PhD. I just can't. I've heard all the reasons:

1. Once you get out, you'll more than make it up.
2. Its not really that bad.
3. Its better in the long run.

Rob's take on the reasons:

1. Yeah right. Let's just say that with my current salary, taking a 70% paycut (which is what I would get) for 4-6 years and then teaching at roughly 25% higher than I make now, not counting the increases I would get in the 4-6 years, just doesn't equal up.

2. HA!! I saw firsthand the hours and hours and hours put in by PhD students. Acting as slaves for their professors, expected to be there at their beck and call. Covering classes for them. And then to see the PhDs who didn't make tenure track slaving away at the bottom of the totem pole.

3. Ok, so there is some long run opportunities that having that PhD do get you. The starting salaries at the colleges are higher and you do have a better chance getting in as a Doc than not.

There's just been a lot of feasibility issues for me.
1. I'm 31, almost 32. 4-6 Years of my life is quite a large chunk of a very productive part of my life. Now I fully realize there are plenty of older students that go back, but I'm not sure that its for me.

2. I am about to convert my girlfriend into my wife. This of course implies certain new responsibilities. Also, my girlfriend would like to get a Masters.

3. The more I read articles like this:
http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2005/0511/0511pro2.cfm

The more that I would rather teach at a private college or even a community college. I continue to think about online teaching or somehow converting my existing skills and reputation into a teaching job. Then, if need be, go for the PhD.

Basically, I've been looking back and have allowed myself to be too strongly influenced by my previous graduate experience. That school was trying to sell me a PhD, its what they sell. In many ways I guess I can't blame them. Its like my own business, Frost & Sullivan isn't for everyone. However, I can't keep going around feeling bad for not choosing to get a PhD and I can't feel bad because I don't want to pay the price required by many institutions for a PhD. I don't see the need right now.


I may eventually go back for a PhD, but where and what medium (online possibly) has yet to be seen.

Email Woes...

For my class:
What a better way to start the semester than with a real-world case study?!

Ready below and answer the following.

1) How would this email make you feel as a user? Do you think it could have been written in a way to make people feel better?
2) What do you think should have been in place to prevent this?
3) How would you present this situation to upper management (who were also affected by this outage)?


Greetings all:

As many of you know, last Friday night the North American MIS team needed to bring down our mail server due to a hard drive failure that occurred on Wednesday of last week. Unfortunately, the work with our vendor (Dell) did not go well and the mail server and all of it's data was lost. Additionally, due to that hard drive failure last Wednesday, we were onlyable to do back ups until Tuesday at midnight.As a result, for those of you who use desktops to access our Notes mailserver directly (i.e. no local copy), we regret that your mail data from Wednesday to Friday was irretrievably lost.

We recommend that for important documents you check to see if others with laptops were cc'd - sothat you can try to retrieve them. Rest assured that we are already taking steps and planned expenditures toensure that this does not happen again. As it is, a few highly unlikely,sequential events all had to occur for this to happen. So, the risk going forward is still low. For those of you who use laptops, this should nothave affected you (unless you've had a problem replicating your local mailfiles with our server files).

If you have any issues or questions, please enter a help desk or contactany of the San Antonio MIS staff.

Your understanding during this unfortunate incident is greatly appreciated.

I saw this and had to laugh

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2007/tc20070424_967747.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_top+story

I, and I think that most other folks who lived through the dot-com bust and the telco crash have a hard time NOT laughing at articles like this. There's not enough students? You're damn right there's not enough students. When companies are going to bleed jobs the minute things take a downturn and when everything that resembles engineering is being sent overseas, you're damn right that students are looking at other careers. I hardly recommend Computer Science as a degree to anyone. I tell IT majors that the best jobs are project management of workers overseas.

Now India is turning out to be not quite the deal everyone expected. Managing remote teams that operate 10 hours ahead causes work slippage and there's QC problems so now companies are making noise about the lack of skilled labor. TIME TO PAY UP YOU CORPORATE CHEAPSCAPES!!!!!!!!

I'll take requests to go back to software development. Let's start with a pay increase and good benefits...

Recent happenings...

Well, the great idea that was supposed to be this blog has been difficult to tend to. Publication deadlines, teaching, and life and general have pulled me away from the original intentions of this blog. I'm still not sure exactly how I want to use this platform in the future. Frost & Sullivan wants us to blog more, which is fine and might be the approach I will take. Its just challenging because its not like I'm given any hours for blogging, its just suppose to happen. Like the vast majority of everything at this job, its just suppose to happen.

Also, the notion of using this blog for teaching purposes turned out to be more difficult than I had thought originally. The time it takes to upload and then trying to get your students to REMEMBER to check the blog, write a response and comment, just wasn't working. If I use that format in the future, I will work with WebCT or one of the systems in place at the school and then either crosspost, post the best responses or something.

In my class, we've been talking about careers and its caused me to do some reflection. I've had a lot of interested and difficult career experiences in my life and maybe I can pass along some of my wisdom (or lack of foresight) to someone else. Please enjoy Career Advice #1!

Having credit stolen on a major project that moves on to be a success is a frustrating experience that does take time to get over. You have to learn to let go.

Here's the short version:
I worked on a large project, was lied to about future employment and was never credited with my rather large significant contribution.

This thing has actually had quite a bit of success and has become a national program. And of course I'm no longer at the institution and you'll NEVER see my name on it.

Its really brought me down over the last two years. I sweated blood for that damn thing, burned myself out, let my classes slide, all for that cause and then to feel like I got nothing for it was definitely a slap in the face. So here I am, two years later, and you know I'm realizing more and more that nothing is going to change. There will never be an apology. The people who run the program are going to keep building the prestige and success of the program (because they get paid to). No one cares about what Rob did for that thing and that's just how it is.

And its one thing to talk about acceptance, forgiveness and all the Zen concepts in the world, but there comes a point where you have to just fight yourself out of the self pity and keep going. My career now doesn't involve working with my old employer. They have no effect on me whatsoever. I see my old employer through our local ISSA meetings and that's it.

I'm see a lot of working professionals who let this stuff ruin them for life. They get looked over for a promotion, credit is stolen, whatever, and they just don't let it go. It continues to affect their life, their disposition towards others, their whole life. Life's too short. And burning yourself out over wanting an apology or explanation doesn't help.

I have had several experiences in my life where I have made people mad at me without even knowing the cause. I have had people fuming and furious with me without ever knowing why. Was it justified? Occasionally. Sometimes I had done something that offended someone without even knowing it. Most of the time though, I didn't even know I had done anything wrong at all. Most people are like that.

So, what's the moral of this long ramble? Take the stabs, outright lies, and overlooks as gracefully as possible. That doesn't mean to become a doormat, but realize when the intent is malicious or simply ignorant and decide your course of action from there. It doesn't mean to torture yourself with a bad environment. It just means take what happen for what it was and move on from there.

Ethereal has changed its name

http://www.wireshark.org/

I just discovered that the Ethereal program I have used and loved for so long now goes by the name Wireshark. I would encourage everyone to download and play with Wireshark to help understand the OSI model and network communications better. We will do a lot with this program throughout the semester.

On a related note, this is a great blog that goes through tracing network communications, has sample dumps to put in Wireshark to look at, and even talks about spyware infections.

http://www.chrissanders.org/?p=47

In Class Exercise #1

Get into groups of two.

Tell me a little bit about what you believe to be the greatest computer security risk to students at UIW. Describe IN DETAIL based on either your own experience or the experience of friends. Include the reasons behind why this risk exists, what technologies could be implemented to help, what education could be provided to students, etc. This can be a physical risk (losing a laptop, shoulder surfing), network risk, lab risk, etc.

Think of risky behaviors you have seen on campus. Think of the dorms, the labs and other locations on campus.

We will discuss this at the end of class. Could dovetail very easily into an extra credit article for a group.

The OSI Model and Security

Reference article on OSI and security

This is a sample chapter out of a book that is a good reference for the OSI model in general (which you need to know backwards, forwards and sideways) and some interesting discussion about how security and the layers interact.

I want you to pick one of the layers and post an answer to the following questions:

1) Which layer did you pick?
2) Why do you feel this layer poses the greatest security risk?

For my class...or anyone else who wants to comment :-)

I commented to a reporter for this article back in July. I would like for you to research the issue and provide me a few paragraphs about your thoughts. Answer the questions

1) What was the problem (detail)?
2) Why was this a big issue for MySpace?
3) Who do you think is to blame? Microsoft, MySpace, or Users and why?
4) How can colleges (which have a high population of MySpace users) help control/educate their users? Should MySpace be blocked?