A new beginning – found through Twitter!

Well as you might have guessed by the fact that I haven’t posted on here for a while, I did get that second job and have now been working there for a month and a half so I haven’t really had time to update this blog (what with Christmas and New Year as well!). I had a months handover from the person I’ve taken over from, which seemed to go ok and now I’m ‘on my own’ as it were as the company is very small! Theres three of us in the office – the owner (who deals with Sales and does the JSPs), the webdesigner, and me. I’m trying to learn the different clients and the new system as quickly as possible but it always takes a while. I have at least already done my first system upgrade since the handover, which went very well, so *fingers crossed* the boss is happy with my work!

I actually got the job through twitter, though it actually turns out not as clear cut as I thought. I’d seen the job advertised, but wasn’t sure about it as I wasn’t sure my skills were up-to-date enough. Then the Java Developer (who I later found out I would be taking over from) contacted my on twitter asking me if I was interested in a Java job in town, and if so I might be interested in their job. Having been directly contacted, I gave it a bit of thought and then decided to go for it, and as they say, the rest is history! However, since starting I have discovered that they had actually seen my CV as an agency had sent it to them (even though they’d said no agencies!) but even though it had been obfuscated it didn’t take them that long to find me on twitter!

As I thought, my current skills are a little out of date (I mean I’m coming from an EJB 1 and 1.1 application running on WebLogic 5.1 for goodness sake!), but the people are friendly, and theres no office politics which I can’t stand, and I’m learning new things all the time. Oh yes, and as an added bonus I can walk to work still!

Result!!!

Waiting for interview conclusion

This has been a very nervous week for me, as I wait to hear from both of the jobs that I have had interviews for to see if they want to offer me a job. Its made doing anything else hard, as I’m all on edge – I guess I really want to get a job now rather than just sitting around at home!

I finally got an email from the Uni job yesterday to say that I was a ‘strong candidate’ but that they had offered it to somebody else. I’m actually quite disappointed about that one, as I thought I could offer a lot but I wonder if my PHP knowledge was not quite good enough.

I’m still waiting to hear about the other post – on Monday I was told that the decision should be made at the ‘end of the week’. I’m trying to keep myself busy on some SQL development work but its hard to concentrate and I jump everytime the phone rings. So far no news though…

2nd interview update

Had my 2nd interview yesterday, and I hadn’t know how to prepare for it due to the way the invite was worded. Turns out it was more of a heres what we do from each member of the team, and be shown the code and systems with opportunities to ask lots of questions. Apparently they’re seeing other people and a decision will be made at the end of the week so more waiting!

Still waiting to hear back from the university PHP job too, so I’ve sent them a chasing email but no joy so far. Someone just let me know whats going on please!

2nd interview!

Had an email yesterday calling me back for a 2nd interview for the Java job on Monday – woohoo! I’m a bit unclear as to what the ‘interview’ is for as it sounds from the email that its a case of working out whether I like the office and team as much as whether they like me!

*fingers crossed*

Scheduling an SSIS package using SQL Server Agent

Having got past the other issues I’d had with creating my SSIS packages, I now needed to set them as scheduled jobs on the database. This again was not as easy as I thought it would be as there was a problem with permissions. I’d followed this codeproject page to help with permissions issues but my proxy still did not have enough permissions on the server to run the jobs so I went back to using SQL Server Agent.

I then came across a problem with the password the SSIS packages were using – I’d stored it within the package and this ran fine when run directly as an SSIS package but not when run by SQL Server Agent as a job. A bit of digging around online led me to creating a configuration file for the SSIS packages to use which would read in the password. This was done as follows:

• Edit a package in Visual Studio, and choose the ‘Package Configurations…’ option from the SSIS menu.
• If not already selected, tick the ‘Enable package configurations box’
• Click ‘Add…’ to open the configuration wizard
• Specify the configuration type as ‘XML configuration file’ and enter its name and location
• On the ‘Select Properties to Export’ page open up the properties for the database connection under ‘Connection Managers’ and put in tick in ‘Password’.
• Name the configuration and click finish

At this point I thought there would be a way to set the edit the configuration file to set the password within Visual Studio but there didn’t seem to be a link related to the package or the project, so I opened up the file in notepad and set it manually

• Double click the Database Connection manager you want to use the password for, and make sure the ‘Save my password’ option is unchecked.
• Now in Management Studio when you run the package manually, or when scheduling it as a job you need to add the configuration file you have just created under ‘Configurations’.

At least thats what I had to do to get it working for me.

Importing SQL Server Integration Service Packages

Due to waiting for answers to emails and for changes to the database server to be applied (exactly how long does it take IT Services to turn on SQL Server Agent???), I’m still waiting to complete the SQL Development work I started so many weeks ago. But I digress…

Part of the work is to create SSIS packages which I did using Visual Studio and then imported into Management Studio and ran them. Part of the package was to output the query to a file whose filename included todays date which is very easy to do using the Expression Builder (and this wiki proved very useful) but no matter what I did to the package it would run fine in Visual Studio, but when I imported it into Management Studio it would revert to using an old filename that I’d put in when I first created the package.

Quite a while later (being a bit slow today obviously!), it dawned on me to check where I was importing the new version of the package from. I had assumed that it was importing from the place that Visual Studio was saving to, but no it was using the SSIS folder where I’d exported a package with the same name much earlier. Doh!!! Changing to import from the file system and selected the new package and ta-da, it all worked! Oh what an idiot I am!

Note for the day – ALWAYS check the basics when things aren’t working!!

More Interviews

Not had much time to update recently as I had two interviews to prepare for. One was for a Java job, and the other PHP so there wasn’t much overlap on the technical side!

Both interviews seemed to go ok (though I went a bit blank on some PHP syntax in the test for that job) and I coped ok with most questions, included the one which had so many parts (think up a scenario, then do this, then that, then explain this, and that, etc!) I had to ask for the question to be repeated halfway through!

Won’t find out for a week or so, but *fingers crossed* one of them will be successful. Its quite stressful this job search/interview process!

Moodle install issues

Today I downloaded the latest stable Moodle (1.9.6) from http://moodle.org and set about getting it installed on Wamp on my Vista 64 bit machine. It wasn’t as smooth as I thought it would be to do though!

Like a number of other PHP applications, you unzip it and then run install.php to go through the necessary steps to create the config file, database etc. The first issue I had was with the data directory that Moodle required.

In the install, you are allowed to pick the directory where the data directory should be – no problem I picked a place on my harddrive and clicked on ‘Next’. The install then waited for a long time and then just stopped with a blank screen. Looking at the directory where the data directory was going to go, I could see that the data directory had been created so thinking it was just a flaw I tried again… and again in a different browser but still no joy.

Looking at the PHP error log indiciated the issue – despite the fact that the installer lets you specify the location of the data directory, the installer was EXPECTING it to be in the WAMP webroot (wamp/www). Setting that as the data directory location got me to the next screen where I could put in the database information.

Having entered the database details, I clicked on Next only to get the same issue – a long wait followed by a blank screen. Looking at the PHP, MySQL and Apache logs showed nothing wrong and I could see that the database was getting created in MySQL, so what was going on?

I bit of debugging within the install.php file showed that the problem related to moving onto the next page which did a check for the location of a file as well as allowing you to change the location of that file. I resolved the issue, by removing the check on whether the file existed until after the user has clicked ‘Next’ on that screen, and changing the check for the existence of the file from using HTTP to using the file system. This allowed me to carry on with the install and finally complete it.

I’m not sure if these issues were to do with my system setup, or a problem with the Moodle 1.9.6 installer but I can see from the moodle forums that other people have had similar issues and are still stuck. I’ve posted my solution on there so hope it helps other people!

On a side note, I found the moodle.org forums useful but the whole moodle.org site has been very flaky for me today – often giving me a null page response. Typical that it happens when I’m trying to get Moodle installed!

Application form was worth it

Finally heard yesterday that I have got an interview for the post that had such a locked down application form so it was worthwhile battling through it and all the stress!

Got just over a week to prepare which is good, so I’ve installed Moodle (which is what they use) on my home machine and had a play with the guest access and forums on their site. Hopefully it’ll all be useful!

Someone from my local area started following me on twitter too, and asked me if I was looking for a Java job. They’ve pointed me in the direction of a local company so I’ve applied. From doing a bit of research, it looks like the guy who mentioned it might be the person I would be replacing – wonder why hes leaving?!

Lost from the ‘jobless’ total

Its a bit of an obsession in the media during the recession to quote the changes in the ‘jobless’ total for various countries and try and analyse the numbers of graduates etc who are struggling to find work. However, it has to be remembered (and often is only a throw away comment in the articles) that the figures will not cover everyone who is unemployed, they only cover those people who are actually signing on at the job centre.

The figures do not cover people like me who don’t have a job and are actively looking for another job, but who aren’t signing on. The reasons for this can be numerous and include:

• no longer able to claim benefit (I was astonished at how ‘short’ the time was that I could claim for despite paying my contributions for so long),
• have too much in savings/assets,
• unaware that the job centre is for people of every level/type of job,
• found it too depressing to go back to the job centre again (me),
• are getting the odd contracts here and there (me)

Theres no way that all ‘jobless but not signing on’ people can be tracked, but it does make it essential to take such figures with a pinch of salt.