A day in the life of a Systems Admin

Computers at Work     In this post I've chosen to discuss the manufacturing industry and computers at work because I have supported computer systems in this field for the last 25 years. During my tenure, I have seen many advancements utilizing computers, increasing output dramatically. As recently as 15 years ago, we would build inventory up in the winter to provide goods to OEMs when their production ramps up in the spring. Keeping inventory is a thing of the past, and now the focus is on quantities of one. One such process involves roll-forming. This is where you take metal coil stock, a big roll of thin metal, and pass it through rollers on a mill, which bends and folds it to make a shape. This shape is then cut to length as it comes off the mill. The sizes are downloaded to a controller where the operator punches in crucial information based on customer, color, and due date. The criteria entered then queries a MySQL database for all the quantities and lengths for the cu...

Mobile App Review - USA Rest Stops      In this post, I will be reviewing the mobile app "USA Rest Stops" by Innovative Software Technology, LLC.   Per the description of the application, you can "Quickly find all the rest areas in the U.S."   The categories it is grouped within the Google Play store are Travel and Local.   The application has a 3.6-star rating and has been downloaded over 100K times.   Innovative Software Technology is a small mobile app company that has published one application and worked on another. Usability      The application has a straightforward interface, and when opened, it uses your location to identify the closet rest stops.  As you can see from above, there are only four tabs on the bottom, and it is easily identified that they contain.  The home always lists the rest stops sorted by distance from you, the direction and uses icons to provide a listing of services at each rest stop as well as ra...

Language Levels      In this post, I explored different levels of programming languages. The languages compared were machine, assembly, block, and higher-level. I created a simple program using Scratch and identified any difficulties that I experienced. I further addressed how those difficulties were overcome, along with any insights that came about. Scratch      Scratch is a block-level language and allows users to drag and drop program snips that snap together, making a chain. "Scratch helps young people learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively — essential skills for life in the 21st century." (Scratch Foundation). The program provides an easy-to-follow list of color-coded actions to manipulate objects. The nice thing about Scratch is that I could make changes on the fly and remedy issues by trial and error. The one step that was the most significant help was reviewing all the possible options that I could perform...

Application Summary      In this post, I will discuss four of the applications in the Microsoft Office suite, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. These applications were used to document one day of my life. Word to create a journal entry, Excel to calculate the percentage of time used for each activity, and PowerPoint to present those results in a presentation. Microsoft Access was not used in the documentation of my day, but its usefulness was reviewed. Word      Microsoft Word is a word processor used to create formatted text compared to a text editor is only used to enter text. "A word processor is a common computer application for creating formatted text. The formatted text refers to features of a document like margins, text size, bold text, italicized text, colors, number of columns, etc." (Vahid and Lysecky. Sec. 5.1). Microsoft Word typically has a doc file extension but can be saved to many different formats. Word can be used to create...