Crescendo has been mostly done since it's roll out in July though there were still some non-critical features that hadn't been implemented yet. I've been on and off the project for months and the other day finished adding the last of them. I'm quite pleased at how this project has been almost bug free since it's release and how well accepted it is with the group of users. One of the new features I added was the ability to form-fill PDF files and store a history of the files generated. This is used for contracts. The original document is created in MS Word, exported to PDF, then brought into Adobe Acrobat to have form fields laid on top. Then it is brought into Crescendo and it just works. The trouble is that the PDF library I used to form-fill and merge the FDF with the PDF costs $2500 USD for unlimited royalty free distribution. I've looked at all the free ones and they don't do what I need. Since the software has to work offline I couldn't just buy a 1 server version. Once the client has purchased the license then I'll release version 1.1.0 of Crescendo. 1.0.0 had one of the two major modules complete and the second mostly completed. Sometime this year I think we'll be adding a 3rd major module to the system and when it's fully functional and implemented it will become 1.2.0 Well I hope this entry didn't put you to sleep!

I'm up in Saul Ste. Marie right now for a week and officially shut down the old system last night about 6:45 PM, imported the data into Crescendo and did the training today. It was _very_ well received. Everyone really loved it and talked about how it's been designed exactly how they need it, it's very easy to use, and they're all excited about getting to work with it. I wonder if part of the excitement is because they all got new laptops and desktops to work with the new software :) The HRDC was there to review the software and to make sure it does everything it needs to do to give them their quarterly extract file. There are a few minor tweaks I need to make but other than that they said it looks great. They remarked about how similar it is to their software suite but said Crescendo looks nicer, and does certain things that theirs doesn't. Of course, theirs also has features Crescendo doesn't have. This is great news to us.

I'm having one hell of a week. Yes -hell- of a week hehe. I drove up Sunday (6 hour drive) and went to work Monday morning at 9am to prep the server. It's a new server with Win2k3 Server 25CAL and it will become their new domain controller, file server, print server, and crescendo server. I spent the whole morning and most of the afternoon fighting to get the free version of SQL Server installed and working properly. I wonder how many grey hairs that gave me? I've never used it before, I'm used to the normal version of SQL Server. Finally I got Crescendo Server all set up and it was time to create the user accounts for everyone, set up all the right permissions, group shares, home directories etc... that took me until about 7:30 PM. Then I had dinner, went back to my hotel room and made some last minute tweaks to the main program and setup program. I worked until midnight.

Tuesday I went to work at 9am again.. unpacked and set up 13 new computers. I cleaned them up, set up a bunch of other programs needed on it them and finally installed Crescendo. Sean helped me with that (thank god) and that took until about 5:00 to finish. No issues. I had dinner, then shut down the old system, and began the importer program. It didn't finish importing until 10:30 PM. There was tons of data to import plus the logic to translate the data was huge. Next I realized that one of the fields didn't import properly.. a critical field so from my hotel room I had to fix the bug, upload the importer to the server, wipe out part of the data and reimport it :( My bug fix had new bugs and it took 3 tries. Finally everything was done by 1:45 AM and I could rest. You know, none of that stressed me out too much because I know that no matter what goes wrong I can fix it. That is such a good feeling. I realize things can take time but I'm also confident in myself that I can fix the problem.

Today.. I go to training, train everyone and OF COURSE.. bugs I've never seen before even after tons of testing. Bugs I couldn't explain, some I couldn't duplicate, and others caused by incomplete data imported by the old system. The kinds of bugs I expected. It happens every time we roll something out and a bunch of people start using the software. For the most part everything worked flawlessly. The bugs we found were mostly minor and I can fix from my hotel room tonight. Yes I've got another few hours of programming tonight before bed.

Tomorrow I meet with the group again for the morning. While they work away at the program getting to know it more I will be moving email and files over from about 4 computers to their new workstations. After that I have to meet with two other departments and do speed training with them :( I've also got to go around to 25 computers and join them to the new domain controller and switch the network printers to the new server. OMG can I do this all in a day? I need the people there to type in their passwords :/ I'm starting to feel sick. I've been working insane hours lately and despite how well things went today I know that I've got tons of work I NEED to do tonight before morning, and even more work that needs to be done tomorrow. I leave Friday. It's a 6 hour drive and I'd really like to leave by noon or 1:00 PM. That'll give me a few extra hours to finish up things that didn't get finished on Thursday.

Yay for Crescendo!! Sean says this opens the doors to many great new things and processes. He thinks the government will see it's benefits and might find other uses for it. The HRDC joked about how they could train people on this system since it was so easy to use.

I can't believe it.. a full year has gone by since the day I was given the OK from Doug to begin development on what became Crescendo! I originally thought it would be a 4 month project, however the first 4 months of development I was only working 25 hour weeks because I was finishing off college. Midway through that I was given the task of providing tech support for almost 50 computers around the province answering every computer question and obscure problem possible which was a HUGE drain on my time. While working 9-5, I'd be lucky if I started programming by 1:00, sometimes 3:00 because the whole morning I'd be on the phone fixing stupid problems. I'll admit that since I'm supposed to be programming two huge projects at the same time and managing other people's projects I have not been able to put enough time and work into their network which is needed to solve their problems. The other day I handed the work off to Mike which is a huge load off my shoulders. It's slowing him down now but his work is pretty much finished at this point and this will allow me to finish my projects.

I'm on the final stretch now.. just another week or two of programming left and it will be release time! I'm also waiting for the phone call from Sean to tell me he's ready to assemble his workers for training. I'm so excited about this project because I've put in endless hours working days, nights and weekends all throughout the past year trying to get it done faster. Never being able to work for more than 20 minutes at a time without being interrupted certainly didn't help but hopefully now things will be much better. This project is so big, so complex, so well designed (at least I think so :).. It's all my design and programming (database, protocol messages, server and client).. and also the webreports is my brain child too. I walked our junior programmer through programming it exactly the way I want every step of the way and now it's done. Yeah I'm having a bit of a trip right now but I think I deserve it after all the hard work and dedication I put into it. I'm meeting with a salesman tomorrow who will be selling it nationwide. It does quarterly extracts to the Federal Government and we're going to try making it the national standard in it's industry.

Today I rented a car and drove to Saul Sainte Marie. I'm staying at a travel lodge for the next 3 days. I noticed a network plug in my wall so plugged it into my laptop to see what I can do with it. It lets me on the Internet without paying! This is great, it's the first time I've ever used Internet from a hotel room. I know it's nothing new, some people have been using it for years. I wonder if it comes with the room, or if they somehow detect me using it and add a $10 charge to my bill? I guess we'll find out when I check out.

So what's on the agenda? There's a long story to tell about how their network and servers were set up before I took on remote network administration. I won't go into details, but basically it was poorly designed and configured. I knew what I wanted to do with the network since June but needed to buy a few licenses first. It took until now to get them. So now I'm replacing their old file/print server & domain controller (1 computer) with another computer with a much larger drive, that's faster, has a 40 GB tape drive attached and has 25 client access licenses. I have to copy the user accounts over and all their home directories, and other shares on the computer. Have to set up network printers, go around to each workstation and join the new domain, clean worms, replace Outlook with a different email client, and my favorite part: roll out Crescendo!

Yes it's true, I'll be giving the two departments that will use Crescendo the most a copy of the software and will be training them on it. They will be able to play with it for a few days and come up with a list of suggestions and/or tweaks they want made. I'll go back to IJW and will do that work, then we'll go live. I'm so excited, I've been waiting a long time for this. I've been working days, nights and weekends for the past month trying to get things ready. I hope they like it :| This program replaces 4 separate programs and does everything in one big system. It can work offline and synchronize with the server later, and has an extensive custom reporting system (lets them design their own reports)

Already under high pressure to get Magma installed, more equally high priority stuff has been put on my plate. Crescendo has been put on hold for over a month so that we could work on Magma. My best guess is that there's another 2 full weeks of programming to finish the stuff that needs to be finished so they can go live with the second major module. The first major module was finished late October, but they haven't started using it because of some complicated issues out of my control. Apr 1st is quickly approaching and they were supposed to be using Crescendo by then. Now the plan is to roll out both modules at the same time instead of phasing one in then the other. I'm supposed to go up to their office to do some other work next week and Doug has asked if I can put Magma on hold to finish Crescendo before I go up! That's about 2 weeks of programming over the next 5 days. On top of that, I had to upgrade their mail server to support anti-spam filtering & malcious attachment filtering, reconfigure the RAID drives in a new server, purchase and install the OS, configure it to be a fileserver with about 50 accounts, configure the tape drive, install SQL Server 2000 & Crescendo Server on it and I'm sure there's more. That means I'll be working day and night. I really don't think all of that will get done by the end of Tuesday night. I started work on Crescendo again on Friday but had a million other things to do and didn't get much Crescendo work done. Today I spent about 4.5 hours working on the mail server because of configuration problems and poor documentation so didn't get much Crescendo work done either. However tomorrow (Sunday) I'll go in early and spend the whole day and night and will hopefully get one of ther major parts finished. I've been working hard like this for over a month now and know that I'll burn out for a while if I don't slow down soon. Hopefully I can slow down in about 2 weeks. I don't mind doing this once and a while.. the killer is having to walk 45 mins each way in the cold. Try doing that once in the morning, then coming home for dinner, then going back after dinner and then walking home again. Do that Saturday and Sunday. Sure I could cab if I want to spend $30/day. Hmm now that I think about it, it's cheaper to cab then to waste 3 hours walking when I could be working.

** Update : It's Sunday 8:00 PM and I'm at work... I was just telling Bruce about my new deadline and as I was telling him my nose burst and started bleeding! I quickly got it under control, but wow! That doesn't happen often.