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varjohaltiaHere's your typical LJ post of my weekend.
Friday evening and most of Saturday were spent working on my second research project. Originally the project was to find out if western-educated political elites of non-western nations promote different economic policies than their locally educated colleagues. As it turns out, we could not find any existing work in the field, nor any data, and so the project was retasked to collect said data. Consequently, I'm in the process of identifying the executive branch members of six countries and finding their educational histories (that is, find their biographies, really.) In some cases (Poland, Thailand) this is easy, since the government web page, available in English, provides all I need. In other cases (Japan, Brazil) this is surprisingly hard, since all the bibliography databases the university is subscribed to are incredibly anglo-centric. You're lucky to find one in ten of current ministers of European, South American or Asian countries in any of the Who's Who products. By suggestion of librarian LaVoie, I will probably enter the lair of some local research librarians for additional help. Still, it's kind of fun, and I get the feeling that I'm doing something vaguely worthwhile.
As part of this project, here are some completely random factoids:
Anyhow, I also did manage to squeeze in watching Shawn of the Dead and Assault on Precinct 13, and visiting Liang's China Bistro in North Tampa. Said bistro is very reminescent of PF Chang's, just in a much smaller and intimate atmosphere, with more nifty stuff, like boba drinks and teas and a wider menu. Quite nice, and they have a drive-through pick-up window.
Sunday I attended Kevin's D&D game, including a new character (Hi, Emily!) We had to bail out somewhat early to see Finding Neverland, by invitation of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
moonwolf's parents. An interesting, peaceful, beautiful period movie, though with a fair bit more sets and good acting than content.
And then work... Now, hypothetically, there's a new building. The building is two stories tall, with the first floor being quite high to accommodate large auditoriums. It attaches to a building that's three stories tall. The first floors line up, and the second and third, respectively, line up. A decision was made to have the new building have a first and third floor, but no second. The building is built, signs are placed on the wall, cabling for all building systems, data networking and phones is pulled, and labeled with room numbers.
Someone decides that no, let's make it second floor instead of third floor. All the signage is ripped off, new signage is bought and attached. The data and telecom contractors haven't had time to redo all their labeling yet.
Someone decides that hey, while we're at it, let's "correct" the room numbering. The room numbers on almost all the rooms in the building change, including the first floor.
So, all the new signage gets to be ripped out, new signage purchased. The telecom and datacom contractors can come in and figure out a way to relabel everything. Since this likely involves undoing all faceplates and bezels on patch panels, and perhaps even rearranging the patch panel all of which means twisting and bending cables that weren't intended to be moved, and since it's pretty much guaranteed that just replacing numbers will lead to errors, all the connections have to be also retested. Presumably the HVAC, intrusion alarm, fire alarm and electrical people will have to do the same. This is expen$ive. And all the construction drawings based on which the thing is being finished are wrong. New sets have to be produced by the architect, printed, and distributed to all the contractors which have to make sure their workers don't work off the old ones.
Now, we all make mistakes. At least I do. I order the wrong kind of optics by mistake, or get the quantity of switches wrong or what have you. The couple of projects where I've goofed up we've ended up adjusting the budget by a few thousand dollars, max. But this is just ridiculous. I can hear the swoosh of likely six figures being poured into a pit. All because some dean or other person decides that they've changed their mind about room numbers.
At least the floors are still Italian marble. The kind that comes from Italy.
Quiz: Which hypothetical college would this be?
Oh yeah. We also site surveyed more wireless in ADM and CIS, installed a new access point in CIS, updated several coverage maps and web pages, updated some servers, added new devices to network management, stopped a DoS attack that took the Lakeland campus offline for a few minutes and informed the help desks, replaced some fiber connectivity in our UTC upgrade, and inspected the now-to-be-redone wiring in a hypothetical new building. Also dealt (shortly) with Cisco in trying to figure out how the PocketPC 2003 built in VPN client (it's there, just really well hidden!) can be made to work with their 3000-series concentrators.
Friday evening and most of Saturday were spent working on my second research project. Originally the project was to find out if western-educated political elites of non-western nations promote different economic policies than their locally educated colleagues. As it turns out, we could not find any existing work in the field, nor any data, and so the project was retasked to collect said data. Consequently, I'm in the process of identifying the executive branch members of six countries and finding their educational histories (that is, find their biographies, really.) In some cases (Poland, Thailand) this is easy, since the government web page, available in English, provides all I need. In other cases (Japan, Brazil) this is surprisingly hard, since all the bibliography databases the university is subscribed to are incredibly anglo-centric. You're lucky to find one in ten of current ministers of European, South American or Asian countries in any of the Who's Who products. By suggestion of librarian LaVoie, I will probably enter the lair of some local research librarians for additional help. Still, it's kind of fun, and I get the feeling that I'm doing something vaguely worthwhile.
As part of this project, here are some completely random factoids:
- Thai officials have royal decorations such as Knight Grand Cordon (Special Class) Of the Most Exalted Order Of the White Elephant and Grand Companion (Third Class, Higher Grade) Of the Most Illustrious Order Chula Chom Klao.
- Thailand's king was born in the United States. One of the thai princesses married an American while attending MIT and decided to stay here with her family. The name of the current king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, translates to Strength of the Land with Incomparable Power
- German foreign minister Joschka Fischer, apart from being a radical (as in violent) leftist, also has had no formal schooling since age 15. Gerhard Schröder, Germany's prime minister, was a "mainstream marxist" in the 1970s--and a lawyer. The political and educational background of Germany's, and likely those of other European leaders, is somewhat surprising.
Anyhow, I also did manage to squeeze in watching Shawn of the Dead and Assault on Precinct 13, and visiting Liang's China Bistro in North Tampa. Said bistro is very reminescent of PF Chang's, just in a much smaller and intimate atmosphere, with more nifty stuff, like boba drinks and teas and a wider menu. Quite nice, and they have a drive-through pick-up window.
Sunday I attended Kevin's D&D game, including a new character (Hi, Emily!) We had to bail out somewhat early to see Finding Neverland, by invitation of
moonwolf's parents. An interesting, peaceful, beautiful period movie, though with a fair bit more sets and good acting than content.And then work... Now, hypothetically, there's a new building. The building is two stories tall, with the first floor being quite high to accommodate large auditoriums. It attaches to a building that's three stories tall. The first floors line up, and the second and third, respectively, line up. A decision was made to have the new building have a first and third floor, but no second. The building is built, signs are placed on the wall, cabling for all building systems, data networking and phones is pulled, and labeled with room numbers.
Someone decides that no, let's make it second floor instead of third floor. All the signage is ripped off, new signage is bought and attached. The data and telecom contractors haven't had time to redo all their labeling yet.
Someone decides that hey, while we're at it, let's "correct" the room numbering. The room numbers on almost all the rooms in the building change, including the first floor.
So, all the new signage gets to be ripped out, new signage purchased. The telecom and datacom contractors can come in and figure out a way to relabel everything. Since this likely involves undoing all faceplates and bezels on patch panels, and perhaps even rearranging the patch panel all of which means twisting and bending cables that weren't intended to be moved, and since it's pretty much guaranteed that just replacing numbers will lead to errors, all the connections have to be also retested. Presumably the HVAC, intrusion alarm, fire alarm and electrical people will have to do the same. This is expen$ive. And all the construction drawings based on which the thing is being finished are wrong. New sets have to be produced by the architect, printed, and distributed to all the contractors which have to make sure their workers don't work off the old ones.
Now, we all make mistakes. At least I do. I order the wrong kind of optics by mistake, or get the quantity of switches wrong or what have you. The couple of projects where I've goofed up we've ended up adjusting the budget by a few thousand dollars, max. But this is just ridiculous. I can hear the swoosh of likely six figures being poured into a pit. All because some dean or other person decides that they've changed their mind about room numbers.
At least the floors are still Italian marble. The kind that comes from Italy.
Quiz: Which hypothetical college would this be?
Oh yeah. We also site surveyed more wireless in ADM and CIS, installed a new access point in CIS, updated several coverage maps and web pages, updated some servers, added new devices to network management, stopped a DoS attack that took the Lakeland campus offline for a few minutes and informed the help desks, replaced some fiber connectivity in our UTC upgrade, and inspected the now-to-be-redone wiring in a hypothetical new building. Also dealt (shortly) with Cisco in trying to figure out how the PocketPC 2003 built in VPN client (it's there, just really well hidden!) can be made to work with their 3000-series concentrators.
