Ryan Sechrest

Published by Ryan under Personal on December 9, 2009
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My morning started out at 5:40am with the alarm followed by the snooze key… three times. After I finally decided to get up at 5:55am, I had a nice bowl of “organic” cereal. After this, I packed my stuff and was off to work at the Help Desk. I arrived there about 6:40am. I like being there a bit early, as I can setup my workstation and that way I can be ready by 7:00am when the Help Desk officially opens.

I was at the Help Desk until about 9:58am, which is when I got ready to go to class. Right before going to class I had my official term review. An excerpt from the review reads as follows:

Besides improving in regards of punctuality, we recommend that Ryan continue to review his resources and work with supervisors in order to expand his Help Desk specific troubleshooting abilities further and become more familiar with Help Desk resources.

I left out the good parts, because they are already good, I just wanted a small reminder to see what I still need to work on. The big things: Set two alarms as I was late twice! Use the resources BEFORE asking a question, even though asking is faster. Both make sense and I will definitely work on those.

Now, back to 10:00am. I arrived at my programming class and received my two last programs… one A and one A+. I’m very pleased with those grades, especially as one of the programs was one of the hardest programs to this day — for me anyway. After I picked up my two programs and was caught up with everything else, I was free to go back to the Help Desk.

I arrived back at the Help Desk at 10:30am and had to take my term assessment from the Help Desk. 10 questions about what I should know by now. I think I got most of them.

At 10:59am I clocked out and now I was headed towards Air, Land, and Sea, to continue on improving the quote request form. Very complex stuff we got there, especially because quote request form is very “conditional” as in… if user chooses this, present these questions. From these questions, if they choose this, present these set of choices. If choice “A” is selected, perform these actions… and so forth. Lots of logic there. So we’re trying to figure out the best way to code it and present it to the user.

At 5:15pm I was driving towards Micro Center. I had to return a product, well, more or less exchange it for something else. I also picked up a free flash drive with the coupon from the mail. They also had Micro Center mugs at the front door, so I grabbed one of them as well. Micro Center is really nice. They 15x the selection of Best Buy and their personnel is very personable and forthcoming. That would be a nice place to work, especially because its surrounded by customers who need help followed aisles and aisles of potential solutions to their problems.

At 6:00pm I was finally driving home. I didn’t get caught up in traffic all that much. It was extremely cold today by the way. I feel like year after year I feel colder. I used to love the cold. I’d keep my windows open at night, but now, that’s unthinkable. I’m turning into a summer person!

Overall, this was a very eventful day and I can’t wait for Friday, when I’m off again, because then I get to work on my Web site again! ‘Till then!

Published by Ryan under Personal on November 8, 2009
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It’s so beautiful outside today – 78.9 °F. I’m sitting here in the sun with a cup of Khaldi’s coffee, Norah Jones playing in the background, and I’m coding my homework for my DHTML class on my laptop. This is a perfect Sunday. I haven’t been this relaxed in a while. I even got all my laundry done. Later I’m gonna clean up a bit and then go to dinner with a friend. This is why we work so hard, so we can enjoy days like this. I wish I could do this every week. -R

Published by Ryan under Personal on September 23, 2009
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My license plates expire this month, so naturally I thought about getting new ones 2 weeks before they expire. Well actually I’ve been thinking about it all month, but with all the homework, projects, and regular work, there wasn’t any time – really. I finally rushed and caught up on all my homework so I could get a safety inspection on Tuesday and then get my new plates.

It’s Monday and I remember that some of my lights aren’t working. So after I determined which ones, I had a friend pick up all the light bulbs since I was working. After I got off in the evening, I picked up the bulbs and after 30 minutes of fiddling, I had the two major ones swapped out and now they were working. I’m ready for the inspection.

It’s now Tuesday and I take it in. Not much time goes by until someone comes out and says: “Ryan, your inspection failed and here is why.” They gave me a list of problems and items that were “missing” on my car that used to have a place. Brake pads were one of the items. So I asked them: “What’s absolutely required for me to pass the inspection” and they said “brake pads”. OK, so how much is it? They quoted me $300 something for pads, rotors and labor. Well, that’s quite a sum. They say they can’t fix it today though so I have to come back tomorrow.

It’s now Wednesday morning and I’m calling for more quotes. They all seem about the same and so I decide to bring it in. After the car drop off, I had a friend pick me up and take me home so I could work on some homework. Finally at home, my computer was acting up… I had such a tight leash on my computer’s security, that everything stopped working because it thought it was being attacked… which granted, sometimes that’s the case. So I couldn’t do any homework since I was trying to figure out which one of my firewalls was causing the problem. Currently I have 4 firewalls… 3 hardware ones and 1 software one. In the midst of all this I get a call from the car place. “Yes, Ryan? Unfortunately we can’t put on the brake pads because the calipers are frozen (not in an icy way) and they can’t be used any longer. The calipers need to be replaced.” Let’s talk dollar amounts. “It’s gonna be an additional $300 something to get those replaced.” So now I’m at $600 something plus tax. Well, I didn’t have a lot of time and after some research on the issue, it seemed legit. I gave them the ‘go’ to fix it. After 4 hours they fixed it and I picked up my car. As a side bonus, all the squeeking stopped on my car. That’s kinda nice.

I finally have my safety inspection pass and I can get new plates I guess next week, which is when I have some free time between classes again.

After all the expenditures, I guess it’s gonna be bread and water again for a few weeks. What a life.

Published by Ryan under Personal, School on September 16, 2009
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I had my last midterm tonight in Database Concepts. It was an OK midterm. I knew most of the multiple choice answers by heart and was able to answer all the essay questions in detail. The only doubt I have is on the diagrams. They could be right or I could have missed something. Good news that I also got my project back, you know, the Legal Eagles one and I’m happy to report that I got a 95% on it. I got a 100% on last week’s quiz and homework… so that’s cool too. I will give me some slack time should I miss a few questions on the midterm.

On another note, while I was driving I was thinking about the glass being half full or half empty. People determine whether you are an optimist or pessimist depending on whether you see the glass half full, implying you feel like you have more, or half empty, which is implying you only have a little bit left. Now, I was thinking about this scenario and I have come to the conclusion that depending on the context of the scenario a full or empty class could be considered optimistic. If you look at it from the way that the glass was empty and now it’s half empty, you actually have more that you’d expected, so you are happy that it’s half empty because that’s better than empty. On the other side, if the glass was originally full and now it’s only half full, that’s sort of depressing and so now you’ve become a pessimist. This saying, using my context, doesn’t make any sense then because I’m assuming that the glass had different fluid levels at the time of observation. In the original saying it wouldn’t matter whether it was prior full or empty, because what matters is that the liquid level is  halfway between the bottom and top of the glass. What am I trying to say? I’m saying that you can’t take a situation for what it is at the time you were able to observe it. You should always wonder how did it get there and where might it be going. Put the situation into context which may include surroundings, other people, etc, and make an informed decision based on the facts and not just a glimpse.

That’s all I got.

Published by Ryan under Personal, School on September 15, 2009
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My first day of mid-terms is over. I have one more tomorrow. I’m currently taking two PIECs and now the PIEC effects are starting to surface… headaches, sore eyeballs, dehydration, caffeine overdose, etc. Wait, what? You’re wondering what a PIEC is? You could look it up on Sechrestpedia, but it hasn’t been created yet. PIEC (pronounced PEEK) is a class that provides a substantial amount of information in a very short period of time. You’re almost getting an information overdose. PIEC stands for Power Information Enforcement Class. At some point everybody goes through the PIEC effects

I’m gonna try and finish my program now… my data structures program, which involves a templated list class that uses a dynamically allocated array. Yeah, fun!

Published by Ryan under School, Work on September 13, 2009
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It’s been a long time since I worked a full day at the front register and I quite enjoyed it. I didn’t have to do a reset or breaks and lunches for that matter. It was a very calm day. We had a steady stream of customers from 10am on up. Many of our regular customers, that I haven’t seen since I worked mostly morning shifts, came in today and were surprised to see me. We caught up a little bit and then I sent them happy on their way with their groceries. It was a very sunny and warm day today as well. Most people don’t want to work the front register because it’s too “boring,” which granted, when there’s nothing to do, it can get very, VERY slow, and the hours will feel like minutes, but on a Sunday like this, everyone’s up and about enjoying the last day of the week and getting items for pick-nicks, games, barbecues, and so forth. You could easily fall into a state of depression considering you could be at one of those places, but the fact is, I gotta work. It’s just something I have to do and a wise man once said: “Life isn’t fair!”

The other good thing about working this morning was that I had consecutive hours to do my homework. I really loved that. I finished my Project 2, creating an ERD with all the entities, attributes, cardinality, and connectivity using Crow’s Foot and Chen’s notation. I’m about 75% done. I also finished my Database Concepts homework, although I still have to do the practice sheets. I started my program for Data Structures and got stuck, so I might have to talk to the professor about that tomorrow morning. This week, Tuesday and Wednesday primarily, I have some big exams. I’m gonna try to knock out all the homework before then so I can focus on studying for those.

And as always, when I have exams, other people’s computer break. I had three clients call me this week about various problems and somehow, somewhere I have to find the time to accommodate them, because we had Ryan Sechrest, Inc. don’t turn anybody away… especially if they might go to the GeekSquad. Well, I’m gonna go finish off my homework and go sleep….

Published by Ryan under School, Work on September 10, 2009
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I can’t believe I overslept today. First the power goes out and then I tune out of my alarm. I was supposed to be at the Help Desk at 7am. Seth, the shift leader, called me at 8:10am and I jumped up and looked at the clock… my first thought: “Oh …” So I jumped out of bed and within 5 minutes I was on the road. This is terrible. I never oversleep. I’ve only worked there for like 3 weeks, so what kind of impression does that make? From now on, two alarms will be set: one that can be turned off, and the other, the emergency alarm, all the way across the room so I have to GET UP to turn it off. I wish Seth would have called sooner. I’m always the first on there, so if Ryan isn’t here by 7am, you know something’s up. And even IF I’m late, I would always call.

At my other retail job I was doing resets and revisions today. It says on the planogram whether it’s a reset or revision. Officially, a reset is supposed to be a major change, which means it takes a long time. A revision on the other hand is comprised of minor updates, however most of the time revisions are just undercover resets. They want to elude you that this revision will be fairly quick, but if you’re adding 2 new times and move everything around to accommodate those, isn’t that sort of a reset as well? I’ll leave it as that.

Published by Ryan under Personal on September 9, 2009
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So I had my database concepts class tonight again and there was so much material to cover. This is by far the most interesting night class I’ve had to date, the teacher is really good, but even I was anxious to get out of there. So finally, after giving us a homework assignment, another project (I just turned in the law firm one), two practice sheets with 3-4 problems each that will take about 1-2h, I come home just to find… there is no power. No power since about 12pm. How is that even possible… it’s close to 10pm, so there was no power for 10h in my neighborhood. There were no storms or anything. Luckily, my dedicated backup battery shutdown my computer and switched everything off to preserve itself, so just in case the power was off for a while, I would have a source to charge my cell phone for example. As you can see by the way, now it’s 10:40 pm something and they JUST turned the power on. I was watching my security tapes to see what happened when the power went off. I it was interesting to watch. Then all of a sudden, the video feed ends… presumably because the battery was shutting everything down. So needless to say, I’m glad it’s back up… now I can sleep.

Published by Ryan under Personal, School on September 8, 2009
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I’ve been doing homework every day since last Friday. This, as in right now as I’m writing this, is the first time I’m all caught up. I finished by “default arguments” program, pretty much finished my database design for Legal Eagles, I finish my database homework involving relational models and ERDs, and I finished my information systems homework composed of GANTT charts and the like. I’m done. Wohooo! Now I can finally get my new license plates as they are about to expire… yes, having time for license plates is very exciting – anything but homework. And tonight, I will get more homework so this feeling will only last for another… 1h and 30 minutes.

Published by Ryan under School on September 6, 2009
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Congratulations! As the newest database design expert at Data Base Consultants (DBC), you have been assigned to create a database design for Legal Eagles to manage their office including time, billing, client records, cases, appointments, lawyers, and so forth. You are to determine the relations that will satisfy the given requirements. You will determine the keys: primary keys, candidate keys, foreign keys, and secondary keys. In addition, you will normalize all relations to fourth normal form (4NF). Lastly, assume there are no defaults and list ALL restrictions. Your report should contain a one page executive summary, one page for each database table using the data dictionary format with all keys and restrictions.

This was my assignment on the FIRST day of my Database Design class. Whoa! I’ve spent hours thinking about this and trying different scenarios, but there always seems to be a catch or something that doesn’t fit. I’m very, very close to having the entire database designed though, I just have to work out some minor glitches. Whenever it’s done, I will upload a Visio screenshot!