Practicum 1 Journal 5 - November 27, 2013 - Continuing with the Map Making

This is going to take a while. Working on maps can be fun and all, but trying to get 8 maps transferred into Microsoft Word with different maps can be a little tough. I like reading maps, especially with a compass and some fellow Scouts working on trying to find a point for a race. I am not (along with most people) able to sit down for several hours and work, I have to get up and do some other work every so often.

Luckily between 2 of the front desk clerks I am kept busy whenever I needed to get out of my chair. 

Practicum 1 Journal 4 - November 26, 2013 - Map Making

So today I didn't get to work on ArcGIS, I got to work in Microsoft Word. Yesterday I was working on GIS getting used to it and getting to know the program but today I was working on adding arrows and boxes to a couple of large TIFF exports of ArcGIS.

One person in the office was a little behind with her reports (from what I understand) and waits till the last moments then asks the person that normally does the maps for his part of her report. It wasn't very hard, it is just going to be quite tedious.

Practicum 1 Journal 3 - November 25, 2013 - Learning to map

So today I got to try something that is similar to Google Maps. It is called ArcGIS. Cities such as Vancouver have been using it for a while now and have set it up with all of the crazy expensive addons. The one I was using is technically the minimal version that they had purchased, but they have been integrating it with almost every system they have, and if it isn't hooked up to it, it is probably in the works. It is really cool, I was even able to look at where the fibre lines were laid under the streets connecting the city buildings together. So we will see what they are wanting me to do tomorrow.

Practicum 1 Journal # - December 5, 2013 - Practicum 1 - Trailer Park Boys?

So today I started the second part of my first practicum where I went from being at my little corner office into being in a trailer with 4 other people, definitely a change. So now I have a desk as well, and a small laptop (bigger than a netbook) that I am doing my work on for them.

I am going through our city's website and helping to make it W3C compliant because there is one person on our city's council that is blind, and the person that is the head of the IT department for the city would like everyone to be able to use the website.

Practicum 1 Journal 2 - November 22, 2013 - Learning to map

So today I got to use the map creation program that they have at the municipal hall. It was really cool actually, I looked at my house, Pavel's, and Mark's. On the map I was able to look at the water lines, the storm sewers, and the normal sewers, on Monday I am going to be working on it more indepth with the person that usually works on it, to help them finish off their report.

The ladies at the front desk are really nice. When my back was hurting for sitting for so long, I got up and asked them if there was something they would like me to do. I ended up filing something called microfiche. Microfiche are actually documents that have been scanned, inverted, and turned into film, essentially you can turn an entire filing cabinet into not even a single drawer in one. On Monday or Tuesday the lady that showed me the microfiche is going to show me how to use the machine to view them.

Until Monday, talk to you guys later.

Practicum 1 Journal 1 - November 21, 2013 - First day on the job

Today was my first day working on my first practicum, it was a little scary at first, but hey, who doesn't get scared with new experiences. My first practicum actually has two parts to it, one working for the human resources department for 10 days then for my last 10 days working for the IT department. Oh, and did I mention that I am working for the municipality, wonder what future employers will think when they see that I worked for a municipality. So I was shown around the office by my practicum host to meet everyone and to get a feel for everything.

After he was done showing me around he showed to a desk, thats right, how many of my classmates can say that they got their own for a practicum. Although the desk belongs to someone who is away sick for a while (I hope he is doing better), it is still nice that I get a desk to work at.

Today my job was to look through every link on the Human Resources page to check for dead links or stuff that should fixed. Overall the page was pretty good, a few problems were found noted though. The one I thought was the weirdest and funniest glitch was that there was a linked that worked, but when you opened up the page (it was a link to a BC Provincial Government web page actually) the page was basically a website with no CSS or any design to it.

A couple other things I was told was that I will going out with the Bylaw Enforcement Officers for a day to see how they operate and what they do. Also, Wednesday next week I believe, I will be helping out a lady in the office printing and filing dog license renewal forms, so not the funnest or most related to IT work ever, but at least it is fairly easy to do.

So until tomorrow, have a good night readers.

November 6, 2013 - Virtualization

Today we talked about virtualization of operating systems and computers.

We had to come up with the pros and cons of a business moving 3 different machines into one server that would virtualize them

Pros of Virtualization:

• Less Machines to heat up and use electricity
• Less Machines to maintain
• Less to upgrade when needed
• Each virtual machine is saved in one (or a couple depending how they are selected to be saved) files
• Easier (usually) to maintain
• If the machine goes down, can send files to a different machine to run from
• Can easily restore a VM from a backup
• Security, because if someone hacks into one VM, they don't have access to all of your machines

Cons of Virtualization:

• If one machine goes down, so does more than one service
• Usually more expensive to start with
• Has very little if any control of the hardware
• Security also, because if someone breaks into the host OS then they have access to all of your virtual servers

Here are some videos to do with virtualization and a introduction to a virtualization infrastructure:

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLJbP6vBk2M
uploaded by: Eli The Computer Guy on YouTube

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kiftbm1L_eQ
uploaded by: Eli The Computer Guy on YouTube