devmorgan.com

Sleep.

It’s something that I have done a lot of over the past week.

I find breaks very amusing. I don’t really travel too much, so I look at a break as an excellent time to get work done. I know, I know, I am weird.

So this break I had a list of things to do…

1. Get healthy
2. Work on independent study
3. Finish up capstone proposal
4. Rest

Well, the first one is sorta completed. I still have a little bit of a cough, but I am no longer sick. A warning to all: Do not get the flu on finals week. It sucks.

I was able to complete a little bit of work on the independent study that I have been working on… of course, I only got the work done today, and there is still a lot to do.

Yeah. Capstone proposal didn’t even get looked at.

Rest… now… I got lots of rest. I slept at least 12 hours a day, every day. Holy crap. I don’t know if I can go back to a normal sleep pattern now. However, the down side to doing this is that I really got very little done…. but I got rest… and that was the goal, right?
I wish I could have blogged more. Perhaps I will soon. I have a few comic ideas too. Here’s to week 1!

This past quarter, I was taking a class in which I got to play with web services. I developed a web service in Java and used the latest application server, Glassfish, to deploy it. To consume the service, I was going to write a C# desktop application, and a Flash Lite mobile app. I thought it would be very exciting, and a lot of fun.

I was wrong.

The C# app was nothing remarkable. In fact, I was very impressed at how easy Microsoft has made web services. Just point Visual Studio at the auto generated (more on this later) WSDL file, and you can make the calls easily.

The flash application was…. more of a problem. So, in an attempt to explain why it was a problem, let me make a nice broad claim…

Flash will not work with Glassfish.

Random Yokel: But Dave! Isn’t the point of web services interoperability?
Dave: Why yes! Which is why I don’t know who to be more mad at…. Adobe or Sun!

So, Lets discuss what is wrong!

Using Glassfish, you automatically generate a WSDL based off of your Java code. The WSDL itself is valid XML, and a valid WSDL. However, when I pointed my little flash mobile test application at the WSDL, it failed. The error that Flash Lite 3.0 gave me was:

There are no valid services/ports in the WSDL file!

Weird. Especially because there definitely is a single, valid service and port in the WSDL… but that’s ok. I tried to turn it into a standard Flash application (rather than a Flash Lite 3.0). I removed the little bit of ‘mobile only’ code, and ran it again as a Flash 9 app (but the code was still ActionScript 2.0). It loads… so I try to execute my helloWorld() method (just returns the String “Hello World!”), and it fails:

Element tns:helloWorldResponse not resolvable

Strange. However, at least it appeared to get farther this time. Now, this error message gave me a little bit of a headache for a while… and then I found out the Flash does not support xsd:import. So, because the WSDL file that Glassfish will automatically generate (I suppose I should have guessed it would cause me problems), includes an import to an external schema defining your data types, Flash will choke. Ok. Let’s get around that. So, I took the WSDL that was generated by Glassfish and merged in the schema file. Simple enough, no problems. Run the code, pointing to the new WSDL which I hosted on my server (so: http://localhost/newWSDL.xml, rather then Glassfish app server: http://localhost:8080/Path/File?wsdl)… New error:

Unable to connect to endpoint: <PortURL>

Damn it. Nothing appears to be wrong with my code, C# and PHP can easily connect to my service. I was able to find this document, which basically says that Axis (another Sun app server) is sending poorly formed SOAP packets, and the solution is purchasing Flash Remoting. Right. I believe that. If the packets were poorly formed, I should be getting errors in other languages. Besides, my helloWorld() method is only returning a String! Personally, I want to think that it is some Flash sand-boxing issue, but I truly can not figure it out. Why this is so difficult? My final conclusion on this project was that Flash can not connect to a Glassfish app server (at least, out of the box). If someone has figured out how to make the two play nice, I would love to hear it.

This is bad news for Sun and Adobe. The point of web services is interoperability between systems. If you can’t deploy a simple application using Glassfish (which is the new Sun App Server…) that can be consumed by a simple Flash app… what is the point? Sure. I could go the Microsoft route, but what if I don’t want to? What if I can’t?

I have the flu. I don’t have time to sleep. I have major projects to finish.

This sucks.

I hope to post again when I am through this hell.

I have been going to RIT for a while. Grad school is still fairly new to me, and it really has been the first time I have been challenged. The work isn’t particularly hard, but the most difficult part is the intense amount of work expected. Throw in the 20 hours of tutoring and teaching I do, and I start running out of time fast.

What does this mean? It means that I spent last night’s exciting superbowl in my living room with my laptop coding (although, to be fair, I was pretty much only paying attention to football by the 4th quarter). I was hoping to draw a comic last night after the game, but since I was experiencing a delightful bug with glassfish, I was unable to get to it. This is a direct side effect of “crunch time”.

Weekends are assumed to be spent in the labs now, be it for tutoring or to try to get my projects done. I knew this coming in, but it starts to get worse and worse as the quarter ends. Since RIT has 10 week quarters, when the crunch starts to come, the best students are the ones that are adept at the art of triage. Which assignment is worth most? Which assignment has the closest due date? How much will not doing this assignment hurt me? These are not good questions to have to ask, but in a student-academic setting it happens a lot.

(several paragraph rant on homework assignments deleted, perhaps I will write an post on it another day)

So, it is crunch time here at RIT. You can see it in the eyes of the students, you can start to hear the sense of urgency in their voices. General grumpiness levels are up due to lack of sleep, and labs are starting to get more and more crowded as the final weeks tick away. Not much can be done to prevent the inevitable, but some thing can be done to keep yourself sane.

1. Set aside 30-60 minutes a day to have fun
2. Have one fun thing to do a week that takes up a little bit of time (usually Friday or Saturday night)
3. Smile, at least a little.

Making sure that you get to at least spend a little bit of time a day to do something fun (be it playing pool, playing a video game, watching TV, or hanging out with a friend for a meal) is vital to keep yourself from burning out, and burn out is the worst thing that can happen here. Shutting down at the worst possible moment, the last week of the quarter, is what needs to be avoided at all costs. So, grab that cup of coffee with a friend, let your brain reset before getting back to work.

Do at least one big thing that is fun a week. If it is going to a party on Friday night, or maybe going out bowling with friends, it is what you have to use to drive yourself to make it through the week. Think of it as the reward for accomplishing the work you have been doing all week. Make sure you don’t get too crazy, because I know programming with a hangover sucks, but make sure you relax.

Smile. Please Smile. This is the toughest one for me. Despite the scientific proof that smiling is actually good for you, this is just as much about keeping everyone around you from getting more and more down. Seeing someone smile is… rare… here at RIT. Try to make the last few weeks of the quarter as painless as possible for yourself and everyone around you - if you smile, it adds that little bit of happiness to the environment you are in… and if enough people do it, maybe the end of the quarter will just be busy and stressful, but not depressing and painful.

Classes here started back up this week, and I have become frustrated at how little time I have to do my side projects. It’s not that I really should be working on these side projects, but it gives me a much needed release from the constant thinking about current classwork that my brain really needs.

I find that in my standard day at school (which is about 10-14 hours a day), I am tutoring about 30-50% of the time - even if I don’t have tutoring hours. The rest of the time is me fighting to try to stay ahead in a course. This is frustrating. Even after getting ‘ahead’, I fall behind in another. This constant back and forth is definitely not good for my stress levels!

Perhaps the bigger problem can be explained by this crappy graph I drew.

As clearly shown, when I get more and more work to do, I have a larger and larger urge to blog. However, since I have less and less time to spend on side projects, I get less blogging done. Shame really. I have a few articles that I really want to write.. particularly about Hyperconnection (that article is about 1/3 done actually) and the differences between Business People and Technology People.

Luckily, this quarter I have a programming class that is letting me get my programming fix out of the way (last quarter was rough without writing any code), so I really just look forward to having time to devote to writing and drawing. We shall see if I am able to find the time to write and draw more though. Even now I am writing this entry while I TA for a class, and have been pulled away several times to help students. I just hope I have some time to sit down and write!

A strange thing. I sit here on a Saturday evening getting ready to go out, after accomplishing a lot of work during the day. Of course, the major problem is that the work that I did today, was not what I should have been working on.

Week 1 of the winter quarter at RIT just ended, and I am already behind on my courses. Crazy huh? I have a full course load this quarter, including an independent study. This is putting me in to high gear right from the beginning. So, this weekend, I should be working on all of my course work.

Yeah, Right.

I spent today running errands. For the first time in about a month I actually went grocery shopping. When I got home, I did laundry. While that was happening, I cleaned my room. Yes. I cleaned my room. Wow.

So, now I am planning to head out for a little bit. Even more work not getting done… but I got a lot of other things done! Including putting my resume online, as well as starting work on my projects page. Maybe tomorrow I’ll work on what I should.

Wow.

It’s only been a couple days, but I am already feeling the heat from classes again. Generally speaking, each class isn’t too bad from a coursework perspective (except project management, which is my first, and likely last, online class). However, the problem I have is I have a lot more on my plate then I really should. Working as a Tutor, TA, Lab Instructor is 20 hours of work. Add to this, the ‘16 hours’ I am supposed to dedicate to each graduate course (taken from my project management syllabus), times 3 courses, will give me 48 hours of coursework. Add to this, I need to finish my independent study which will take… many… hours of work, but for the sake of doing fun math, lets assume it will be 8 hours a week. 76 hours a week is what I am ‘expected’ to perform. Lets not even talk about my side projects!

That’s not that bad. Right?

This coming quarter I am going to be taking the “Beers of the World” course offered here at RIT. So, I have decided to do a little prep work. I just took my first trip to the store Beers of the World here in Rochester, and purchased (with the advice of a co-worker), six beers that I have never had before.

The goal is, I will try them, see what I like, take notes on what I buy and taste so I can keep track for future reference, then continue to purchase new beers and continue to broaden my palette. For those of you that know my picky eating habits, that is something you would rarely hear me say, but I am going to try! I even bought a new bottle opener just for this momentous occasion.