Dull-ville Population: Me

Life is getting a bit more dull day after day, especially this weekend. Other than having some fun ripping up 3 layers of floors at Dougs, things are back to their normal dull self in my life at the moment of unemployment. It has been a while since I have been challenged or found pride in the work I do. I think that is one of the biggest problems I have had since leaving Hempfield and Memorial Hospital.
It is very hard to find new endeavors in this economy especially since I am still working towards a degree; fingers are crossed however, I am hoping a few things turn out. If not, I will need a double dose of medicine, haha.
I am also working on a 3rd shift sleeping schedule, and it kinda sucks, I am not sure why I cant relax and fall asleep like a normal person, I end up sleeping until about 3-4pm in the afternoon, I still feel exhausted but, I still cant sleep. My ideas on that matter are running out.
On a more exciting note, the iPad is scheduled for release on the 3rd, very eager to get a hold of one to play with, I wanna see how well it can handle RAW images right from a SLR camera SD card. Thats all for now, I should get a doctors office visit scheduled maybe? haha

Another week ahead

Things have been busy, but the weekend is over already and another week is ahead. Hempfield High Schools graduation is tomorrow evening, I plan on attending tomorrow evening to see some friends that I have watched grow up for 4 years graduate and move on.

That however, is the high point of the week. The rest of the time will be spend figuring out some financial loans to keep school moving ahead at HACC, as well as looking into Etown for the spring. There are bumps in the road at the moment financially, and I really do not wanna put school on hold for a semester so I need to get things settled. Why does this financial stuff have to be such a pain in the a$$ ?

This week I am finally finishing two videos I have been working on over the past month or so, one being the 30 hour famine video for Wayside Presbyterian Church, the other being Holy Spirit Lutheran Church’s 50th Anniversary video. They were bot enjoyable to edit however, the 30 hour famine video was my own creation so I was able to be creative, while the 50th anniversary video was more of just editing and putting pieces together.

Not only did bad news come about financial info this weekend but a summons for jury duty. Which means I may not be able to play in the HEF golf tournament on the 15th. That is a bummer, I am still trying to figure out details on that one…

Last week I got new pairs of shoes 1 casual 1 dress for work. Thanks Anne !

This week is also Apples WWDC keynote so we should see some cool stuff come out of it. New iPhone?,OS X Snow Leopard and maybe some new hardware.

I was also excited this past week because it was the premier week of “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” I have to say its a very cool set on the Universal lot in LA. Conan has brought the entire staff from his Late Night show. I am expecting a lot of the same stuff from Conan. I think everyone else is as well. Its gonna be great !

All and all I have a lot of things going on and am gonna be busy and stressed until I get these things worked out with college and the financial aid office as well as other finances. Here is hoping all goes well !

Peace out.

HEF Golf Tournament

While visiting everyone at Hempfield on friday. Brenda invited me to get a team of four together to join everyone at the HEF golf tournament on June 15th. I have never played gold before, however I plan on having as much fun as possible looking like a fool. After hearing that Mike and Jeff S. were on a team I was excited to see this event. Now I think there is going to be a bet of who is going to have the lowest score. I am excited to see everyone from Hempfield that day as well as to spend time with old co-workers and some of the administrators from Hempfield. It should be fun. right now I have 3 of the 4 team members for the tournament. Derrick, John and myself. So if you read my blog an wanna and/or know how to play golf , let me know ! I need to have some sort of advantage over Mike and his team…

DotNetNuke it to hell…….

So, let me begin by saying that no the site is still not live yet to the network. It works great on the locally on the server and IIS is configured correctly and I can navigate to the site however, it just comes back saying “cannot connect to server” well by the end of today, NO one can tell me why this is happening, not my co-workers or even my former co workers from Hempfield. So I am actually at a loss and not sure what to look at to try to fix it to get this ready. It is somehow not seeing 4 files that it needs to launch the actual site. They are there in the folder where they should be and yet, NOTHING happens when I navigate to the site. Today is a perfect example of why I am switching my major to something else.

Summer 09′

I am happy to see friends that went through their graduation this year, as well as looking forward to spending time with all my friends over the summer. Things have been interesting this year and with most of my friends moved away from lancaster or PA and those who are away at college, things were kinda boring or lonely. So I am hoping this summer turns out to be fun.

Things have been tough this past year without having my closest friends around, I have some of them that work at Hempfield but the rest are away at college. With most of them not around around or not able to have a chance to talk because they are busy its hard for me because I end up bottling up all my thoughts or problems and have no one to talk to.

The good news is I try to have a little fun everyday and least for an hour. I may watch tv, read, or just browse the internet. I always try to end up relaxing to calm my nerves.

I am excited yet scared to catch up with a certain person, I plan on being cautious because I was already hurt big time once before so we will see how this goes. I know most of my other friends are gonna wonder why I am even bothering….  but we shall see.

I am also gonna hope to get some free time in July to help with Waysides youth group and their missions from the 4th to the 10th (I think) I may not have a chance to take off work or I may to busy with summer classes. That is up in the air as well.

Overall I am hoping to sort some things out as well as get back on the road to life this summer and have a plan again.

we will see I guess….

DotNetNuke at Memorial

After being impressed working with DotNetNuke at Hempfield on their new website before I left. I have decided that bringing it to Memorial Hospital would be a project that would get the thumbs up.

I was given a project to somehow collect all the contact information (e-mails, home/cell phones) of our hospital physicians, administrators and staff to cross check with our payroll database. The idea is for us to get the correct information to create an “alert now” type of directive that will allow us to get information or a message to the staff in need of an emergency.

Originally I was asked to learn Visual Basic and write a windows application that would basically be a “contact form”. After spending about 4 days learning about SQL databases and learning a bit of Visual Basic I started building. The database part was easy enough in SQL but the windows application was a bit tricky for me since I was trying to get the “submit” button to actually insert the data that was filled in each text field into the SQL database. I was so close and I know its a few minor modifications away from actually working however, I was on a tight timeline.

I finally spent an evening thinking about other ways this could be done and it finally hit me…. I knew that DotNetNuke already had a “registration form” that would you could fill out and submit data into a SQL database so I did some researching and I found a custom module that allowed me to make a custom for of my choosing and link it to a table in the database.

So with that I got permission to try DotNetNuke before we contracted this project out to someone outside of the hospital.  It took a few tries to get it installed due to some hardware and software issues but then finally, third times a charm and I got it installed on the third server I tried. (with Mike Grahams help of course).

Once it was installed and the portal was running it was about another hour until I got the form module installed and had the custom form built. It wasn’t perfect yet it was usable and I  got the “looks good” from the boss.

This weekend I found a DNN skin that would fit well to the hospital (color,theme,layout) with some slight adjusting the skin fits well to the website that the hospital already has.

Hopefully I can get the hospital to use DNN for more than just gathering staff contact information. Maybe i’ll wait to see how well this will work and how well this is gonna be received before I mention that we can use this to replace the intranet we already have.