University of Phoenix Students Can Use iPad

I read a post on Lifehacker about software discounts available for those with .edu email addresses. I thought "You know, I still have an email account with the University of Phoenix". I decided to log in.


I've logged in before for various reasons. I occasionally use their databases to do research or read something in the Wall Street Journal (or other paid publications) for free. I've gone into the eBook library a few times to grow my knowledge. But I don't log in much. So today, I thought to check.

I noticed the image on the left. That's a definite plus. While I was a student, I struggled with an 8MB IMAP email/newsgroup account centered on Outlook Express. I never liked Outlook Express, but in 2 years of struggling, I couldn't find an alternative that didn't suck less. Just in time for my final class, UOP rolled out a new online classroom and after I graduated, all students got gmail accounts.

 I've written several posts between 2005 and 2007 while I was in the BSIT program. Most were rants about UOP. I've been told this blog is actually considered an authority on UOP topics. Perhaps someday (like when I pay my Bachelor's degree off), I'll go back for a Masters.

I'm Going to Become a Windows Mobile "Hater"

I’ve decided that I'm going to become a Windows Mobile “Hater”. That will probably seem unreasonable and illogical to many, but so be it.

That does not mean I am going to become a Microsoft “Hater”. I won’t become a mobile device “hater". I won’t become a Windows “Hater”. My “hating” is going to be specifically directed at Windows Mobile. That includes Microsoft’s Windows Mobile team, their “partners”, and the telcos, at least in regards to Windows Mobile.

I am going to become overly critical of the platform to the point where I do NOT recommend it. If you’re considering a Windows Mobile device, please, to preserve your sanity, don’t get one. Get a BlackBerry or an iPhone instead, or just get a plain old dumbphone.

I’ve had several Windows Mobile devices over the years. I’m tired of the same annoyances and performance issues that are common to every device I’ve had. Here is my device history:

University of Phoenix Switches to Gmail

I logged onto my page on the University of Phoenix's website yesterday to see what the commencement information is for this year. As I was poking around, I decided to log into my webmail account so see if anything has happened since last October. I found two emails regarding the University of Phoenix switching student email accounts to gmail. Wow, new students are blessed. I had to deal with an 8 MB account limit over IMAP. I had such a horrible experience that I thought for a while that IMAP was an older technology.

For some reason, most of my traffic on this blog is from people looking for UOP email account settings. Of course, they don't stick around and leave comments to make me feel better (or worse) about the time I've spent putting more than 240 posts on this blog over 3 years. Ya'll can stop searching now, as gmail's help can provide all of the information you need.

I'm not sure what they're using for newsgroups, but searches to my blog can trail off. Gmail can help you.

Technorati Tags: UOP email,University of Phoenix,gmail

I Just Completed The Biggest Challenge of My Life

This morning I was able to check off one of the longest running tasks on my task list. It was listed in Microsoft Outlook and Pocket Informant as "Complete BSIT from UOP." I actually finished my final class on October 11, but I had been waiting for two credits from the "Here's To Your Health DANTES" test to register. They finally did, and I filled out my diploma application. I decided that I can now check the task off of my list even though it could be a few weeks before my degree actually comes in the mail. Over the two years that I have been working on my degree, that task has served as an anchor. For a while when I was using My Life Organized heavily, it was the top of a project tree involving several classes and sub-projects for those classes. At other times, I sat alone in my Outlook task list as a reminder of an open project. Now it is finally finished.

Technorati tags: Univeristy of Phoenix, Degree Completion, Goals, Achievement

Forget Everything You Learned In School?

For those of you who went to college directly after high school, how many of you graduated and got your first job only to hear the words "Forget everything they taught you in college"? To be honest, hearing that would tick me off immensely. After working very hard for more than two years and racking up somewhere near $25-30k in student loans, I would not be happy to hear that the entire time was mostly a waste and the concepts I just spent time and money learning are only theoretical and won't do me any good in the "real world".

The University of Phoenix is far from perfect, but one thing I do like about the school is that instructors are required to have a minimum of a Master's degree and must be leaders in their fields. I spent my entire time in the FlexNet program, in which a student attends the first and last class session at the campus and the weeks in between are conducted online through a newsgroup. I'm currently taking my final class onground at the Buck's County campus. I'm finding that the on ground program is much more demanding than FlexNet. I don't mean demanding academically, but more demanding on time. Since I go to class directly from work, I stay at work until time to leave. That means putting in more than a ten hour day at work, then driving to Buck's County, PA for four hours, then get home around 11 PM when I normally leave the house at 6 AM.

Because instructors must be highly educated and experienced, I've had some really good people to learn from. One instructor had risen all the way to Vice President at a telecommunications company. Another instructor was an IT manager in a very large corporation. My current instructor is a microbiologist who has had a highly successful business career.

The material that I've learned in my classes is much more than theoretical. I truly have learned material to help me in my current job and to give me perspective on how we conduct business. I was hired into my current job after providing onsite support to engineers for development testing of the very large scale program that I work on. (I purposely leave my employer and industry vague when I have to mention work on this blog.) One of my responsibilities in this position is to represent our customer during a hardware acceptance test. I act as an observer and sign off after analyzing data with my counterpart in another organization. I then produce a report. When I first started in this position, I was trained as an observer on the last shipment of the previous platform. Because this was an established platform, the hardware acceptance test took about 40 minutes to complete and sign off. We had a few "glitches" to adjudicate, but for the most part the test went off without a hitch. After that, the platform changed. The hardware changed, and the program had to change to accommodate the hardware and newer features. The next three acceptance tests I observed took more than five hours to complete. Talk about being late for lunch! Because of my background in developmental testing support, I murmured that the program was bad and needs a lot more work however; officially I did my duties with the sign-off and report.

After beginning the IT program at the University of Phoenix, I learned about concepts such as the Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC). To be honest, I had not up to that point differentiated between hardware and software testing. I assumed that the software did not work therefore the entire system had a problem (part of the reason for Microsoft's reputation ) . That was not so. Because the platform changed, the hardware had done its job but the program had not been developed enough yet to be mature. I talked with some members of my organization and learned that indeed, the software being used to certify the hardware was only guaranteed for that test. Because this is such a large program, the hardware is shipped first and the software is installed later.

I now have a new appreciation for the hardware acceptance test that I observe. I got a chance last year to assist the engineers who conducted the development testing, and that was a lot of fun and very interesting. I learned a lot from that experience and now having worked both hardware and software testing I have a new appreciation for how programs like this (large scale programs) go together. I tried to get a position in the development test group, but at the time it fell through. I'm needed in my position, and while development test would have appreciated my help, nobody would provide funding for me to have an extra computer to keep in that office, and I could not get VPN access to the network that they have to use.

I am pleased at least in this regard with the University of Phoenix: I will not be told "forget everything you learned in school."

Technorati tags: Univeristy of Phoenix, College, Education, Testing, Engineering

IT Needs A Backup

Even though I'm about to get an IT degree, and I have a lot of IT experience and knowledge, and a lot of my friends work in IT, I don't actually work in a straight IT capacity. I'm more of an engineer working on a testing program. I know enough about IT to be at least a little bit critical of other people's work when the situation warrants it.

I was talking to some people recently about the IT field. I can't say that IT in many organizations has a stellar reputation, and in some cases I would say it is deserved. If you've ever read (or been) the Bastard Operator From Hell, you might understand what I'm talking about. What I told the people I was talking to that day is that IT is a very strange paradox. IT is a highly service oriented field, but the qualities that might make a person good at IT also tend to make them less personable. Most IT training centers around the technical and so the service aspects are often left out. I do notice that a lot of IT departments don't provide a lot of user training, and most users aren't interested in that training. If anything, the goal seems to be to lock the user down so that the helpdesk has to be called to change the wallpaper on a user's workstation.

What really gets me though is when IT departments seem to go out of the way to appear incompetent and lazy. Last night I had class at the University of Phoenix's Bucks County campus. UOP does provide wireless Internet access, as they should when the textbooks are all online. Why shouldn't you be able to get to your textbooks WHILE YOU ARE AT SCHOOL? Last night, I was able to connect to the access point but there was no further connection to the Internet. My instructor was having the same problem. We also noticed that the projector was projecting "Please clean filter" onto the bottom of the lecture Power Point presentation, cutting off some of the text at the bottom. When the school's employee came in to pick up the attendance sheet, we decided to ask her about these problems. As for the "Please clean filter", she said that IT told her it's supposed to do that. Seriously, they said that? Talk about lazy. Just clean the damn filter, turn off the warning, or return the projector and get one that works. Doesn't anybody do research before they purchase equipment?

As for the Internet issue: "Oh, our IT guy is on vacation." So, what? I'm paying $1400 a class, and I should be able to get to the textbooks while I'm actually at the campus, shouldn't I? They do have another IT guy, but he doesn't know where the router is. Son of a motherless goat! How stupid and incompetent can this department be? We're talking about an organization (UOP) that supposedly trains professionals. Don't they hire any? Of course, if the IT guy who was not on vacation actually knew where the router was, he could probably fix the problem in a few second by resetting the router, which is one of the most common reasons why a wireless access point would allow connections in but not back out.

I know there are a lot of problems in modern companies regarding the IT department. They're often overworked and under appreciated and at war with their users. I've worked support jobs before, and it's hard when every single phone call starts off with somebody yelling that somehow you did something to cause their problem before you even know what the problem is. It's very, very hard not to go to war with your users under those circumstances. We have to avoid it though. We have to face the fact that IT is service oriented. We have to provide some training to the users whether they want it or not, and we have to make sure that somebody else knows how to reset the router when we go on vacation.

Technorati tags: Information Technology, Bastard Operator From Hell, Univeristy of Phoenix

What Is Your Opinion of Customer Service in This Country Today?

After two years in the University of Phoneix's FlexNet program, I am now in my final class. Although I have finished the Interdisciplinary Capstone class for the bachelor's program, I have a critical thinking class to make up which I am taking right now. I have to take this class on ground, which means each week I have to drive the the University of Phoenix's Bucks County campus from 6:00 to 10:00 PM each Thursday. For the most part, other than being exhausted and of course having a hard time getting up at 5 AM on Friday after getting in so late, I'm enjoying the class. My instructor has run many businesses and has worked as a business consultant and has a lot of background to share with us in the class.

Last night, he asked us a question pertaining to the subject material of identifying problems. He asked "What do you think of customer service in this country today?" I could have gone on all week. Let's see what I think of customer service off the top of my head:

• For one thing, I'm not very happy with customer service at the University of Phoenix. The classes are great, but you're on your own if you need to speak to an academic or financial counselor. If you call, you had better get a live person on the phone and you had better resolve the issue within a phone call. Nobody will return a message and in my experience, nobody will call you back "after I look into it". I have lost thousands of dollars in GI Bill benefits because they won't report my attendance correctly to the Veteran's Administration, and they have reported to Citibank that I have completed my classes and am now in that six month window to start repaying student loans EVEN THOUGH I AM CURRENTLY ENROLLED! You also cannot expect a consistent level of service from each counselor you talk to. I've had some jump over backwards to email me information while others tell me to look it up on the website.
• Last Monday, my iPaq hx4705 Pocket PC died. I found a Cingular 8125 on Ebay for a good price and took the Buy It Now option last Thursday. The Pocket PC arrived at my house less than 24 hours after the shipping notice was sent, but the wrong battery was in the box. I contacted customer service and was told the correct battery would be sent to me. Here I am, five days later, without a battery. How can it take five days to ship a battery from Virginia to New Jersey? I'm not aware of any anthrax threats, there's no postal strike, and this business seems to ship UPS anyway. UPS shouldn't take five days for this distance unless you specifically paid them to do it.
• And of course, if you look at my archive, I can't get a medical claim processed unless I take my own time to call and call and call and shepherd the claim every step of the way.

I haven't had a very good time with customer service lately. During the discussion in class, I proposed to my instructor that customer service people should somehow have to be accountable when they make mistakes or overlook certain issues that cause pain or financial problems in a customer's life. Why nobody at Aetna over a two year period could look far enough into my case to see that the reason the claim was denied in the first place is because that doctor was not recorded as a primary care physician for an 11 day old baby is beyond me. I did not learn this until right before the doctor's billing office was going to put this on MY credit report and I stayed on the line with the CS representative going through every last line of the database for both of my children to find the cause. I had to do the work for them by standing over their shoulders on the phone.

If you work in customer service, yes, I know the job normally sucks. Maybe it's the only job you could get. Still, please recognize that you may hold the finances and medical cases of other living people in your hands. So what if the people are jerks? It's your job. Please, take some pride in your work.

Technorati tags: Customer Service

I'm In The Final Stretch...

Once again, I have slacked off from posting on this blog. I almost seem to be schizophrenic about blogging. One moment I want to be an A-list blogger with a readership of thousands and the next, I just want to make an occasional post when I have time.

I'm in my last few days of the Interdisciplinary Capstone class at the University of Phoenix. I have to take a Critical Thinking class, a CLEP exam, and a DANTES exam, and I will finally have my Bachelor's Degree. I'm thinking about celebrating by looking for a new job. I'm actually sort of torn about that. I currently work with the best group of people I have ever had the pleasure of working with, but the work itself is less than challenging and exciting. I'm able to manage my own priorities and mostly set my own schedule. I rarely ask for time off anymore; I just take time. As long as my work gets delivered on time and I account for 80 hours in two weeks, I'm left alone. I like it that way however; I have more than  30 years left in the workforce and the time has come to think about the next step in my career. I've been monitoring positions on Career Builder lately, and I believe with my degree and experience, I can easily get an engineering position. In my current job, I'm only NOT an engineer in name only if that makes any sense. In other words, if I had been hired into this position with a degree, I would have been classified as an engineer.

I have considered making an offer to any readers or anyone who happens to stop by with general questions about the University of Phoenix. If you have a general question you would like to ask, feel free to email me: emuelle1 at gmail dot com. My specific experience is with the IT program through FlexNet. My next and final class will be onground, and I have not taken any purely online classes. I also have not taken any general ed classes through UOP. If you do have a specific question I will do my best to answer off the top of my head, but I may have to reply "I don't know". When I was looking for information on UOP to decide whether or not to choose them, I found very little. No bloggers at the time had posted anything about the school, so I would like to do whatever small part I can to help others make a decision about higher education.

Technorati tags: University of Phoenix, FlexNet, IT Degree

When Designing, Consider Your User

I've written before about how much of a pain in the neck it is to deal with HSBC Mortgage for anything outside of regularly scheduled monthly payments. If a payment gets hung up in the mail somewhere and is up to 15 days late, a computer calls you demanding a payment be made right then and there. No option is given to talk to a person and explain that the payment was sent so just sit tight and you'll get it you greedy impatient bastards. Lately all of our payments have reached them in plenty of time not to have to deal with this junk. My wife and I have different bill paying philosophies. When I used to pay the bills, I would send them out as soon as possible. She likes to wait until closer to the due date so the money stays in our account collecting interest, and with bills like the mortgage that have a grace period, sometimes she'll wait a little while. I instructed that HSBC be paid early so I don't get any more calls.

At one point, we thought we would try to use our Rewards Visa to pay the mortgage because we could get lots of rewards points that way. Well, HSBC has some policy (and again, you can only deal with the computer) that any payment done outside of sending a check requires a service fee, which I believe is as much as $30. Seriously, this is one of the largest banks in the world and they want to gouge you for paying with a credit card?

This and other examples leads me to wonder who comes up with these business policies? Have you ever visited a website or downloaded a program that seemed to have been designed only for the use of the designer or programmer? "I'm the greatest coder who ever lived, and you'll just have to do things my way because I know better than you do" seems to be the mentality.

I found a post on Web Worker Daily called Web Design: The Human Approach. This advocates a form of role playing in the context of designing a website. Designers should create personas and characters and then work through the website as that person to see if the site can meet his or her needs. I honestly believe that this approach should apply to other concepts as well, especially programs and business processes. Two of the most challenging and life changing classes I've had at the University of Phoenix were on business systems analysis. A good systems analyst should be able to look at the business processes, interview the users and other stakeholders, and then design (or purchase) and customize a system to meet those needs. A system can't be geared too much toward the users nor can it be geared too much toward the business processes. For example, until last year, my current company still used paper timecards. My previous company, which I left in 2004, was using an eTime system as early as 2000 or 2001. The system was painful at first, but by the time I left the company the bugs and kinks had been worked out and I thought the eTime system was great. This company, rather than copy a successful concept, decided to reinvent the while and create a new eTimecard from scratch. The timecard is written in Java, is only supported on Internet Exploder 6, and crashes my browser 2 out of 3 times I try to use it. I've actually found it to be more reliable running in IE Tab in Firefox where it only crashes the whole browser 1 out of 3 times. When the application was first rolled out, it was apparently written entirely against the business rules for the paper timecard. The rules were if you made a mistake, you had to line out the entire line, initial, and write an explanation for the mistake at the bottom. The electronic timecard followed the same rules to a painfully exact level. If you were in the block for Tuesday, for example, and entered 4 hours against a contract, then tabbed to Wednesday, and said "Oh, no, I only worked 3 hours on that contract on Tuesday!", you could not go back and change it. You had to void the entire line, add an explanation in a pop-up box, then add the charge number and start all over again. I remember at one point I got so angry with this cumbersome process I actually wrote in the pop-up box:

I made a mistake and recorded the wrong amount of hours against this contract. I would also like to add that this is the stupidest application I have EVER used. What bonehead wrote a program that doesn't allow you to make a change during the active session? Isn't that the whole point to moving to an electronic system?

I would like to think that my witty and insightful comment turned the company around, but I'm sure it didn't, or at least I couldn't have been the only person to complain because the rules were fixed which is good. Now if you make a mistake you can change it until you save the timecard. After you save, you must provide an explanation for chances. Even though I never notice my mistakes until after I save, I can live with this.

I put that story out, not to complain, but to support the point to this post that if you find yourself designing a website or writing a program or even crafting business processes, take into account the people who will be using your program, visiting your website, or following your business processes. Most of the time, you are not designing for yourself.

Technorati tags: Web design

University of Phoenix- The Saga Continues

According to a systemwide email sent out to all UOP students last week, the school will shortly be moving close to if not into the 21st century. They won't be exactly Web 2.0, but I'm sure we'll be up to technology from about 2001 or 2002. There will be a new OLS (Online Learning System) that will hopefully be easier to use than Outlook Express or Outlook Web Access.

I just finished up my Web Programming units. I just had ten weeks between two classes of html and JavaScript. I'll be happy to get back to writing papers. I had a really good instructor, but I seem to be missing a part of my brain that handles code easier. I'm much better of with hardware setup and software configuration than I am with writing code be it C, html, Java, etc. The five week classes that we have are not long enough for me to work with the code well enough to learn it. Once I complete my degree, I hope to go back to the textbooks and slowly work with the examples and exercises to gain a better understanding. In my degree program, I have covered C, Java, html, and JavaScript as well as Unix shell scripting. I'm not proficient in any of them at this point.

Because we get a week off for Memorial Day, I now must turn my attention to another hurdle to graduation: foundational credits. Although a lot of my military training and experience as well as other college courses I've taken do count toward credit, I still have to make up for some humanities and health credits. My academic counselor suggested the Analyzing and Interpreting Literature CLEP and the Here's To Your Health DANTES. I went to Barnes and Noble this past Saturday to look for study guides. From the Analyzing and Interpreting Literature CLEP guide, I don't believe I have anything to worry about. My wife says that my Bible studying has given me enough of a background for that, plus I've always been an avid reader. The study guide didn't really intimidate me, so I'm not worried at all. The DANTES, however, makes me shudder. I decided that rather than try to gather all of the books in the bibliography (which could take a lot of time and money), I would find a study guide. I found very slim pickings, however. What worries me most is that I could not find very much information at all on what value the few guides available offer. I ended up buying this guide for $34.95, which can be downloaded immediately, so the guide is already on my hard drive (and open in my browser via the Adobe plug-in). I also found this book on Amazon.com, but the reviews made me wary of purchasing it. Most reviewers said that the book was worthless. One said to make sure that you get the Study Guide rather than the Q&A. I could not find any way to verify which if either this book is, so I decided against it.

I could not find any blog entries either. I guess maybe I will be the first blogger to discuss this issue. I guess people finishing up college credit have better things to do than maintain a blog.

One other obstacle to graduation is a core class that somehow did not get scheduled called "Critical Thinking and Computer Logic". I may try to do a guided study for this course. How hard could it be? It's supposed to be one of the first classes in the program and I'm nearing the end.

How To Post A Message To Univeristy of Phoenix Newsgroups Using Outlook Web Access

This post has specific application for University of Phoenix online or FlexNet students. I've written several times about how I dislike having to use Outlook Express for newsgroup access, but the Outlook Web Access is much worse. Today I finally figured out (I'm a little slow) how to work around the biggest problem I've had with OWA: getting posts to show up in the newsgroup in the proper thread.

If you've used newsgroups before, at least on a newsgroup reader, you know that a discussion thread has a high level post and all of the other posts are threaded through it. I guess you could represent it like this:

My main post
---first reply
------reply to reply
---------reply to reply to reply
---reply to original
------reply to reply
---another reply to original
------reply
---------reply
------------reply
---------------reply
------------------reply

It can be very hard to follow a discussion in a newsgroup even with this hierarchical format. Now imagine if a post that was responding to another post down in the bowels of this discussion suddenly showed up as a top level post, almost as if this post was a brand new topic. However, when you read this post, it appears to be a reply to somebody but there is no context whatsoever to help you identify what the point could possibly be.

Outlook Web Access works like that. I've been in classes where a lot of students had to use OWA in order to meet their "two posts per day for four out of seven days in a week" and following any discussion is difficult. Early on in my FlexNet experience, I wrote off OWA for anything further than submitting assignments when I can't connect to the newsgroup. This does happen once in a while. However, today, I found a way to reply to a post while keeping my response in it's proper place within the thread. I did a screen capture using FastStone Capture (free software that you cannot afford to live without) and posted the picture here. The picture isn't very good here, but if you click on it you'll get full size. I blacked out the names of my fellow students for privacy.

This is the procedure. Now, if you've long since figured this out then you probably aren't reading by this point. If you're new to UOP or if you've been there for a while like me and never bothered to figure this out, the procedure is just like above. Step 1, place a check mark next to the message you are responding to. Step 2, click "Reply Group". For extra measure, I added a "Re:" followed by the subject that I was responding to in case this didn't work. It did, however, so I'll be using OWA in the future when I need to.

Using Thunderbird for University of Phoenix Newsgroups

Thanks to the folks at My Blog Log, I now have access to some very basic statistics about my blog. I can see the last ten searches or links that led visitors to my blog. I noticed that yesterday, somebody was searching for some keywords involving Thunderbird and the University of Phoenix's newsgroups. I have some experience with this, so I thought I would write a brief post with advice.

I am no fan of Microsoft's Outlook Express. I do use Outlook as my mail client, not so much because it's the best out there, but because it is the best integrated PIM (Personal Information Manager) that will interface with my Pocket PC. Outlook Express was originally (as I recall) delivered under Windows 98 as a built-in mail client. At the time, I preferred Netscape's mail client, which I used heavily for many years.

The University of Phoenix requires students to use Outlook Express, which is about the only product they officially support. Their tech support will also support Mozilla's Thunderbird. Because I don't like a lot of the UI and operation of Outlook Express, I have tried many other options, but I always end up back at Outlook Express. OE doesn't do a good job, but it does what I want slightly better. I don't like the fact that every time Outlook Express runs, it has to call up Windows Messenger no matter how hard I try to uninstall or disable that useless program. Microsoft may run a monopoly on operating systems and office suites, but they have a long way to go to write a decent IM client.

I have configured Thunderbird 1.5 for the University of Phoenix's newsgroups on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. That is the biggest advantage to Thunderbird; cross-platform capability. That's one of the things I love about Firefox as well. With Del.icio.us bookmarks and Google Notebook, I can work as effectively on any computer I happen to use. When I found that Thunderbird 2.0 is out, I decided to try it as well.

Two of the biggest problems that I have with Thunderbird involve my own workflow habits. Outlook Express allows the user to not have any message marked as read until the user is done with the message. I haven't found a way to do this with Thunderbird, but I have found a decent workaround: I set the "Mark message as read after..." timeout to 10,000 seconds. This is an idiosyncrasy that I picked up from the influence of David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology, although it is not exactly orthodox GTD because I don't always act on the message the first time I read it. I don't mark a message as read in email or my UOP newsgroups until any action associated with that message is completed, whether that action is read, respond, or follow up on a comment or link contained in that message. If a message is marked as not read, that is my visual cue to do something with the message. This way, if the instructor asks a question deep in a thread or a student makes a post I want to follow up on, I can find it again because that is the message I haven't marked as read. This morning I discovered another work around that was holding me back from Thunderbird: marking a message as read. In Outlook Express, you can right-click and select, "Mark as read" or press the k key. You can also hit the context menu key (right of the space bar between Alt and CTRL) and k. In Thunderbird, the context menu requires the user to go to one level deeper in the menu, as in Mark -> As Read. I just discovered this morning that pressing the m key with a message highlighted will mark the message as read.

Another nag I have with Thunderbird is that I constantly get a pop-up alert saying "An NNTP (News) error occurred: No Permission". It gets to be a pain, and I don't get this with Outlook Express. I have no idea how to overcome this error. I've tried changing my time-out, but that doesn't seem to help.

I also tried Windows Live Messenger Desktop Beta, which seems to be the replacement for Outlook Express on Windows XP. I found it to be too unstable for use. I liked the UI, however, and when the finished product is released I may use it. Windows Mail, which is included in Windows Vista, did a great job with my UOP newsgroups as well. I would recommend it for you Vista users. I have no idea if UOP supports Windows Mail yet. I don't think they support Internet Explorer 7 either. As I wrote in a previous entry, the UOP seriously needs to be brought into the 21st Century.

Thunderbird configures easily enough. I found it much easier to configure T-bird than to manually configure Outlook Express. UOP does offer an automatic newsgroup configuration script in their online classroom, but that script will only work in Internet Exploder 6. Once I upgraded to IE7 beta 2, I had to learn how to manually set up my newsgroups. If you already have Outlook Express set up, Thunderbird will automatically detect and import your IMAP email account from UOP.

Assuming that you have to configure Thunderbird for UOP access yourself, here is a brief procedure:

1. 1. Open Tools =>; Account Settings
2. 2. Name your account anything you wish. Put in your name and UOP email addresses in the appropriate fields.
3. 3. Click Server Settings. Enter the server name as emailxx.phoenix.edu, xx being whatever server you happen to be on. Enter your username in this format: ols\username.
4. 4. Select Add Account. This will be a newsgroup account. Fill in the requested information.
5. 5. Under Server Settings, make sure that SSL is enabled and the server is set to port 563.
6. 6. Outgoing server should be emailout.phoenix.edu, port 465.

When connecting, enter your ols\username and password, tell Thunderbird to remember, and go to town. Thunderbird 1.5 never seemed to remember my username and password, but it looks like Thunderbird 2.0 will, so I may be using this from now on.

Now to get newsgroups, click on File => Subscribe. Select whatever you named your UOP Newsgroup account from the drop down menu (mine is named Flexnet). Under "Show items that contain:", enter a search term for your class or program. I typically search under XBIT, which gives me the newsgroups for my program.

I wrote the subscribe procedure after several nights of my youngest not sleeping, so if it needs to be overhauled or clarified feel free to leave me constructive comments and I will revise it accordingly to make it easier for others to follow.

This procedure should work the same on Linux and Mac OS X.

Learning Team Projects at the University of Phoenix- Playing Consultant

I’ve written a few blog posts about the University of Phoenix here, here, here, and here. Most of those posts simply tie in some time management concept to my experiences at the school, so this time I thought I would write about some of the actual content and experiences in the University of Phoenix’s FLexNet program. FLexNet is the best and worst of both the online and on ground curriculum. I honestly have no interest in driving 40 miles to Wayne, Pennsylvania on a Wednesday night every week for 2 years. If you’ve every tried to fight your way through Philadelphia on an afternoon, you can sympathize with me. The Schuylkill Expressway was not designed for half of the traffic that flows along it, but aside from that, I would get home late at night and I need to be at work early, so really the on ground curriculum isn’t for me.

I’m not so sure about the online curriculum either. A friend of mine worked as a hiring manager, and his advice to he (he is a UOP graduate) is to avoid getting a degree that says “online”. Some hiring managers are old school and when they see an online degree they see a degree mill, no matter how hard you have actually worked for the degree.

Enter FLexNet, a worthy compromise between the two. FLexNet is a good program because it allows you to meet the instructor and your fellow students in person twice a class, yet allows the actual course work to be done through the convenience of an online environment, and your degree does not have “online” stamped on it. I’ve been in this program since September of 2005, and I am really happy with it, except for a few minor challenges.

As a school founded for working adults, the University of Phoenix is based around a curriculum designed to make adults better at their current jobs. As I am in their IT program, it is assumed that I already work in IT in some capacity, which is true. Occasionally there are students attempting to change fields, but to be honest, the UOP is not the place to do that.

As a part of their attempt to educate adult students in a real life work environment, UOP likes to make students work in learning teams of between three and six students. During an introductory class, students read through what is called the “Learning Team Toolkit” with several articles and chapters focusing on working in teams. Each class, in addition to individual assignments, students are required to spend at least five hours a week working on a learning team assignment. The assignment typically covers the span of the class and involves a final paper and presentation before the rest of the class. Instructors differ in that some require progress to be submitted each week for a grade while others only want the completed project turned in at the end of the class.

Learning team assignments can cause frustration, and in some classes I’ve wished for a more sociopathic model of learning. I’ve had members of my learning team who can’t seem to start unless we have an in person meeting. Because most of our teams have members who span south Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, meeting in person is highly impractical. I always refuse to meet in person because I need my time for other things than driving into center city Philly, paying bridge tolls and parking, buying coffee, and having a rather unproductive talk. The next idea floated is a teleconference, but to be honest, those don’t always work out well either. Most students are on different schedules. If I’m going to do a telecon, I prefer to do it around 7 PM but not on Wednesday because I have church and some nights my wife needs me to go shopping with her so that isn’t even practical. Some people can’t do it then and want to do it at 9 PM, when I’m not available because I’m trying to get my kids to sleep and my brain shuts down around 9 anyway because I get up at 5 AM every morning. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said “We’re information technology students, so why don’t we actually use some form of information technology for our meetings?” I actually prefer to work in the class newsgroup, which I’ve mentioned in other posts is based on Outlook Express. I’ve tried other solutions such as Thunderbird, but to be honest, as must as I hate Outlook Express, I can’t find a Windows newsgroup client that will do what I want so I suffer with OE.

OK, now that I’ve gotten the explanation and the negatives out of the way, let me explain what the learning team assignments are. Each class is five weeks long, as the learning team is given a project to complete based on the subject matter of the class. In some cases, a learning team is able to create their own company. In other cases, the company is given to them. For two classes, we actually did create our own company. In our “Project Planning and Implementation” class, we created a company that sold disaster insurance to mobile home owners. We created a Microsoft Project file to consolidate four independent insurance salespeople into one company with a data center. In the next class, we took the same company and created a project based on an IT upgrade.

In a following class, the instructor gave us a project to upgrade the IT infrastructure for a small local hardware store. One of my team members arranged an interview with the owner of a small, local hardware store and we based a lot of the project, including our time line, off of what he told us. The instructor actually took points off because he said the four months for an inventory was unrealistic, even though that’s exactly what the owner of the hardware store told us!

For other classes, the university maintains a series of virtual organizations and projects are assigned based on them. This is where it gets to be really fun, because if you look past the academics, we’re actually playing consultants and I try to have fun with the project. I’ve had team members who get caught up in academic matters and seem to think the paper is supposed to be a summary of the textbook, but that isn’t the case at all! The paper and presentation are supposed to be actual and realistic proposals to a company. I do the best I can to have fun, and if information isn’t directly given to us, I make it up. During the presentation, if I’m asked a question about why we suggested that something be done a certain way, I say that the board of directors told us that’s how they wanted it, or the help desk asked for that feature. We’re also often free to assume that we have an unlimited budget so we can suggest brand new desktops for everybody while we’re developing a network plan.

One of the frustrations I’ve had with other team members is the desire to summarize irrelevant information. Some people want to spend 4 slides talking about the history of the company during the presentation, when the presentation should be designed as a briefing to be given to the company itself. I’m sure the CIO has better things to do than listen to a contractor begin a bid proposal with “This company was founded in 1984 by so and so, and grew to a …” I’m sure the people we’re presenting to know that!

It’s interesting to see what other teams get from the same assignment. In our last class, the learning team project was to design a Network Operating System (NOS) upgrade for a manufacturing firm. Our individual assignments had to do with setting up the domains and user groups them, as the class was called “Windows Networking”. We evaluated the situation and of course recommended that the company go with Windows Server 2003 (No, really? The whole class was based on it). We also recommended Windows XP Professional to be installed on all of the desktops. While giving our presentation, one of the other teams asked us why we didn’t go with Windows Vista. I took that question, and said that because application and driver support is very spotty for Vista, and because XP is well proven and supported, we recommend XP. The other team in their presentation recommended Vista. I can’t say I agree with their recommendation, but that’s what these projects are for, to force us to look at this material in a practical manner. To be honest, if I were giving this proposal to a real company, unless they specifically asked for Windows Vista, I would still recommend Windows XP for the exact same reasons.

In my current class, Web Programming I, our team assignment is to put a shopping cart on a YouTube-like site. That should be interesting.

Limiting Scope of Thought

I just started a new class in my information technology degree program at the University of Phoenix. The new class is Web Programming I. I’ll have another Web Programming class after this one, and I’m happy to have the same instructor from the two Java classes I took last year. The class I just finished was called Windows Networking, and what I learned from that class is much more valuable than the curriculim could indicate.

When I saw that I would be taking a class called “Windows Networking”, I expected to be able to blow the class off. I’ve spent years networking in Windows, and it’s fairly easy, or so I thought. By the end of the first week, I learned a valuable lesson. The class was on Windows Server 2003, a product I have not had much if any experience on. I’ve gotten quite a big head on my shoulders over my capabilities with home networking, but that is the realization I came to: I’m thinking too small. Sure, I’m good with Windows XP and home networks, but that’s where my problem lies. I can’t say I’ve ever really thought about information technology from an enterprise perspective. There’s no way I’m going to be able to make any real money in the home market. Sure, maybe I can pick up a few dollars by undercutting Geek Squad, but how far would that take me really? No, if I want to make the “big bucks”, I have to start thinking much bigger.

Michael Hyatt wrote a blog post last month titled Why Vision Is More Important Than Strategy. He wrote about why it is more important to create or define a vision first, then let the strategy fit the vision rather than the other way around. Setting the strategy first will cause your vision to be much smaller. With that advice, I am going to craft a new vision for myself that will not be limited to personal computers but will encompass success in the information technology field.

More Thoughts About the University of Phoenix- Part 2- Can We Get Some Real Reference Material?

OK, part 2 of my posts on UOP. As I said in a previous post, I do enjoy the school and I'm learning a lot from my courses. Like all schools, I do have some comments, and this time they're going in my end of course critique. The SQL course I'm currently in has textbooks that reference Oracle quite a bit. Our instructor told us that we can use Access. Actually, I can see how SQL can do wonders for making Access more powerful. However, I'm finding it tough to find the actual commands that Access uses in textbooks that only teach Oracle. How many people do you personally know with Oracle installed on their laptops? I ran into some problems with a series of queries that I was supposed to write for this week, and I found that the Access 2007 help file is just about as useless as any that Microsoft has ever produced. I do respect Microsoft quite a bit, but one thing they have NEVER, EVER done right is to produce a help file that has any real use at all. Of course, they can't do a search algorithm either, which is why it's much easier to use Google to search Microsoft.com than it is to use whatever Microsoft calls it's search technology to search their own site. I've found Apple Computer's website search engine is just as bad if not worse than Microsoft's. I tried searching for a "G3 iBook Power Adapter" and got 10 pages of iPod accessories as a return. Too bad they don't have a Google search box on their store.

UOP instructors are all required to hold Master's or higher degrees and must be leaders in their industries. This can be a very good thing. Have you ever been taught by somebody with no real world experience? They sit in the classroom and teach their whole lives. When I was in high school and had to take a foreign language, I took German because I had lived in Germany. The German teacher had never even been there! I knew a few things that she didn't, and you can bet I used them. I do like that UOP instructors have to work in the industry for which they teach. I've been taught by experts in their fields. The drawback to this is that instructors have lives and other responsibilities and sometimes they just don't respond to their students. Another class that was going through parallel to us (until we hit the programming units and lost most of both classes!) had an instructor for Project Management who was teaching another class and also working on a doctoral class at the same time. They got practically no feedback from him. I resent that I have to bust my butt to turn in my assignments by midnight on Saturday, and most instructors don't get the grades back for 2 weeks. Since the assignments build on each other, it's very hard to begin work on your next assignment before you know if you've totally screwed up the last one or not. That is the situation I was in this week. Last week, I got the grades back for the 1st assignment a few hours after I submitted the 2nd one. I just submitted the 3rd one today without any feedback on the second one. I'm going to mention this in my critique too. Last class, I was finishing up the 4th week's assignment when I got an email from the instructor asking some questions about the 2nd week's assignment. Since I had completely screwed that one, and I had 2 more that were built upon it, I had to redo all three of them in the last week of the class while trying to finish up the Learning Team project.

I have good instructors, but I think they should face some penalty for not returning grades by, say, Tuesday. Just like we lost points for each day we're late, they should have to give us points for each day they're late.

Anyway, don't think I don't like UOP. I know most schools have one problem or another. If you're looking for information though, I hope I've been able to help.

More About University of Phoenix Part 1- Time Management in the Real World

I write now and again on the subject of time management. This week really threw me for a real world loop involving all kinds of time management and priorities. I wanted to write more about the University of Phoenix, but I don't feel like I can do it without filling in some other details leading me to this blog entry. When I first went looking for information on the subject, I really couldn't find many independent blogs and web pages with opinions on the school, so maybe I can contribute somewhat to the world of information.

I'm in the 4th week of a class called SQL For Business. UOP classes are 5 weeks long and can be fairly intense. I've had some classes that were easier, and other classes that had me running up until the last minute. This one, I've managed to stay ahead somehow, but I have really worked at it.

I used to be able to get some work done on Sundays. I don't have near as much time anymore, because my church started up small groups and my wife and I are leading one. We're very happy about that. I spent Monday reading most of my material for the week as I got time at work. It's tough to get evenings for class because I do need to spend time with my kids. Tuesday I was supporting a test, and I wasn't at my desk. I was hoping to get my work done Wednesday, but my oldest didn't sleep well and I stayed home so my wife could get some sleep. Today I ended up working late, hoping I could get my work done for school. I had a staff meeting, a company brief by a VP, and I also had to swing by the car dealer to pick up my registration and then to the inspection facility to get my car inspected. At least I passed. Normally I fail the first time and I have to take my car back. Anyway, tomorrow is out because I have another system test and Saturday I have a hiking/camping trip to go on.


To put it lightly, I really had to work to prioritize this week. Obviously, the camping trip is a goal I am shooting for, and the two tests I'm supporting are important because I'm trying to work my way into another position. There was nothing I could have done yesterday, because my wife and children are very important to me and staying home with them was the right thing to do, as I was able. And so, I had to sort through all of the things I should do and all of the things I wanted to do and either delete of put off quite a bit. Actually, when you're really pressed for time, it's amazing how many things on your schedule turn out to not really matter in the long run.

Can Somebody Invite the University of Phoenix into the 21st Century?

Last year, about 2 weeks after my second son Caleb was born, I suddenly realized that I needed to make a serious decision about my future. I wrote a few weeks ago on Think TQ, which I had discovered and been reading their materials for a few weeks about the time I made this decision. I had been reading a lot of David Allen and Michael Hyatt and several other productivity personalities and they were beginning to have an effect on me. I sat down and set some goals, and the product of these goals really made me change my direction. Now, I have made thousands of goals in my lifetime, and I'll make thousands more and most of them will not happen at all. Goals are very important, and yet goals must be aligned with your values and long term outlook. I could write a goal to "learn to crochet", but it probably won't happen becuase I really don't have any talent or interest in it. That goal will gather dust until I face the facts and delete it. I have learned however, that when I do set a goal directly in line with my values, things start to happen.

I'll give a little bit of background before I go further. I became a Christian in May of 2002. Shortly afterward, I made an emotional sort of decision to go into the ministry. I pretty much jumped at the first distance learning Bible college I came across and enrolled. The school was not accredited, but I didn't know what that meant anyway and I figured if it was God's will then there shouldn't be a problem. I enrolled in the Biblical Counseling program. I'm sure it's a very noble field, but I soon found that I did not dedicate myself very well to my coursework. I ended up having to request (and pay for) an extension. After I changed jobs, I started to look to my career. I began to realize that a non-accredited Biblical Counseling really won't carry me far in my career field, would not get me certified to actually counsel anybody, and I really don't like people anyway so why did I think this would be a good idea? (Note, I am not a sociopath, I just mean that the world is a much better place with me troubleshooting computers instead of people).

I was having a fight with my wife about the program. Actually, we had several fights. She was rightly upset at the money we spent on the program and the little I had accomplished. I was trying to work on my class one night and kept getting interrupted. I blew up. The next day, the same thing. I finally said "Well, I'll call them on Monday and tell them I'm dropping out!" When my wife didn't try to stop me, I left the room to think. Could this be the right decision?

I had made a 90 day goal about this time to complete a certain milestone in this program, and I was making little progress. But this goal was forcing me to confront an unpleasant little truth: as noble as I thought this field could be, it did not seem like a good fit for me. I'm a computer geek/wannabe engineer. I like to work on computers and other information technology subjects. I really do enjoy it. After thinking for a little while, I sat down on my computer to check the websites of some of the adult education institutions that I knew about: Phoenix, Kaplan, and I forget others. I did a Google search for others. I then called a good friend of mine who had completed a Bachelor's degree from Phoenix to ask him what he thought of the school and ask him what he thought of me dropping out of the Bible college. I told him I spent a lot of money on it but we might be better off if I admit that I made an expensive mistake and try to move on. He told me that sometimes we have to admit that. I gave it a lot of thought and prayer, and looked at the programs that were offered. I found that Phoenix had the best all around IT degree. Kaplan had IT, but wanted you to specialize in one of 5 fields: network, database, design, and a couple others. I did not at the time want to specialize that far. Actually, I still don't. After reviewing some of the options and talking to my friend about his experiences in the IT program at Phoenix, I decided to call for more information.

Caleb was 2 weeks old when I took the High Speed Line (commuter train) into Philadelphia to meet with the admissions counselor. I must have been smoking crack to want to start a bachelor's program with a new baby, but I had to do something. I completed the paperwork and got my transcripts sent in, and then I sat back and waited for the program to start. I enrolled in a program called FLexNet. The on ground program meets once a week, but if you know anything about the Philadelphia area, you would not want to try to fight your way from the southern part of New Jersey to Wayne Pennsylvania (near King of Prussia) by 6 PM on a Wednesday night. My friend advised me not to take the online program because during his time as a hiring manager he felt that online degrees are too new and some older managers might think it is a degree mill. FlexNet seemed to be just about right. You attend the first and the last class sessions in the classroom, and everything else is done online. So far, I am very happy with the FlexNet program. It meets my needs well. I am able to attend class just about anytime that is convenient for me but I am also able to meet the instructor and my classmates in person twice a class. I can work on class during the day at work when I have time, or at home in the middle of the night. Last year, while visiting my grandmother, I set my laptop up in her kitchen and dialed into a 30 day trial People PC account in order to attend class. When my mom passed away, I was able to keep up with my coursework while visiting with my family. I was given some lattitude by my instructor considering the circumstances, but I did mostly keep up. I am very happy with FlexNet and would recommend it to anyone.

OK, with that background in place here is the point to my post. The equipment and services that University of Phoenix uses seem outdated. For FlexNet, we use an Outlook Express newsgroup. Seriously, I thought those went away after 1998. Another gripe I have is that our accounts only support an 8 Meg limit. I began this blog entry last night while frustrated because I could not get a 7 Meg database to upload in time for the deadline for the assignment. The newsgroup can be accessed through Outlook Web Access, but that's even worse than Outlook Express. You cannot reply to a post through OWA, at least, it won't stay in the tree. It shows up as a new post. During one class when several people had to use OWA, the newsgroup was a mess. Conversations could not be followed at all.

I can understand business or medical students having to live with this, but seriously, this is an IT program. Can't we actually use IT for our class? How hard could it be for an organization as large as UOP to broker a deal with Microsoft to allow students to use a web based version of Live Meeting? On the one hand, we are getting pretty good at document verison control through a newsgroup, but this causes a lot of problems. I can't tell you how many times, the night before a presentation, 3 people are working at the same time. I'll upload what I think is verison 5 of the team presentation, somebody else uploads version 3, and another uploads version 7. Which one is most current?

I've been so tempted to take out a free website from Microsoft's Live Office just so we have a place to store and access documents online.

OK, that's a lot of babbling for a short rant. Set goals, further your education, and if you decide on University of Phoenix (which I do recommend), ask them to actually provide some IT for their IT program.