Monday, May 5, 2014

Update on stuff

It seems that blogging might be to me what it was before. This has nothing to do with what's going on at the moment or what needs to be done, but more of a reflection on everything I've encountered to this day.

As I go into what hopefully is my last semester as an undergraduate, I want to take time to reflect on what everything really means. Is life what you make? How do you define a full life? What makes a person successful?

By no means have I lived an enjoyable life, but I've lived a full life. And I hope my life experiences teach future generations on what life can be. I enjoy doing school work because education is a lifelong process. No one can ever learn too much. But what does this have to do with my endeavors into the computational sciences? Not much really. Computers are my escape. Computers provide an alternate universe to me. Computers can help me create what the physical world cannot. But how does this help everyone else? Does it make people more "anti-social"? My dad told me something that was made personal to me, but it can be applied to everyone who understands it. "Everyone has a niche. Find your niche and you will do great things."

Thursday, February 27, 2014

Gathering information for a project

Looking at the three ideas I posted before, I think I'll run with the one for my dad (which you can read here).

Setting: Living room - one evening

Possible means of gathering information would be a direct interview which would contain the following questions:


  • What do you need the program to do?
  • What do you want the program to do?
  • Are you looking to manage the data yourself?
  • Would you like it to be web based or proprietary to your machine?
  • Who else would have access to your program?
Those questions would start the interview, and each answer could/would lead to more focused questions on the product.

Follow up: Arrange a follow up session to get additional details

Until next time :)

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

HHSAA Letter

Mr Christopher Chun,

Aloha! I have a proposition that could help beef up the current HHSAA website with content that is will benefit students/athletes, coaches, and parents. Currently, I'm a student at Hawaii Pacific University, taking a class on Software-as-a-Service, and would like to use what we are learning to help revamp your current site. If you would like to discuss in further detail what I have in mind, or what we can do to help you, please do not hesitate to ask.

Respectfully,

Thomas E. Wassum

Software for the DoD

Mr or Ms Director,

While I was a member of the fine armed forces of the United States, I noticed a few things that could make the use of current software in Army Aviation more logical as well as user friendly. I am currently a Computer Science major at Hawaii Pacific University and am taking a course in Software-as-a-Service. While the idea isn't to create a whole new product from the ground up, what I'd like to propose in keeping up with the time honored traditions of any service member, past or present, is that we change something to better link a couple programs that bog down computers. If you have any more questions, feel free to email me.

Very Respectfully,

Thomas E. Wassum
US Army Veteran

Possible way of contacting my father and other members of his group

Mr Darryl Wassum and other Kane Club Members,

My classmates and I are involved in a class that is teaching Software-as-a-Service (Saas). I came up with the great idea of finally helping you out with your struggles on the Excel spreadsheet by creating a possible software solution for your group needs. What would be ideal is that we have a sit down together and discuss what you truly need the program to do, and how we can fit those needs into our abilities to create beautiful programs for everyday computer users that love golf. The true ideas behind what I have in mind can be found here and here.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if this sounds like something you'd be willing to do.

Very Respectfully,

Thomas E. Wassum

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Hawaii High School Sports FTW!!!!!!!

I had an out there idea about helping streamline the HHSAA (Hawaii High School Athletic Association) website to keep things up to date at all times. (You can read that blog at this wonderful location :))

While I'm not currently in contact with anyone at HHSAA, that doesn't mean it won't happen in the future. The real idea is to keep Hawaii High School events up-to-date for a multitude of reasons. The idea of stakeholders in this are astronomical!!! Here are a few that swim to the top of my head

1) Student Athletes- It will help student athletes keep track of their "stats" for future use when trying to gain recognition for schools at the next level. While scouting still happens, quantifiable data is hard to beat, especially if it's verified by a third party.

2) Parents- Oahu has a strong military footprint. With that being said, a lot of parents are not physically on the Island, and a lot can be said with the stats that are put out in public forum. Even if it's just a stat line, I know that seeing my children did something, no matter how far I am, is worth checking every day. I say with the upmost certainty that a lot of parents feel the same way.

3) College Coaches- Athletes create a buzz, no matter the sport. College Coaches can start "tracking" possible future athletes and create their own type of sabremetric system to "rank" student athletes.

While these are only three ideas of possible stakeholders, I'm very certain that if you're reading this blog, and understand the idea, you could come up with a few more yourself. PLAY HARD!!!!

Further the idea of logistics support in army aviation

Let's ponder my vaguely descriptive post about my trials and tribulations in army aviation. The current program does work, but how to we get it to work better, with less time "looking" for stuff.

To answer a question from the comments of the original post, this program is more of an Aviation Logistics Support/Maintenance Help idea.

Take a problem with an aircraft, let's say the number 1 engine (if it's a multiengine airframe, that would be the farthest to the left when look from back to front) doesn't start. When the fault is entered, the program will "help" the maintainers by bringing up a troubleshooting tree in the manual, and then moving through the steps with the maintainer. Current programs out there (as current as 2012) allow for a Technical Manual to do this, but not the actual logbook that stores all aircraft information. It would work almost like a hyperlink.

Who could benefit?

1) Department of Defense- One program helps the defense budget cut down by allowing one program, written by one company, to do what 2 or more programs do now. While this may seem like a monopoly, it's only for one facet of the Department of Defense, and not for creating unfair business practices.

2) Maintainers- The one stop shop of a program creates less lost time "looking" between two or more programs to get a job fixed. Less lost time creates a better "operational readiness" outlook.

3) Commercial airlines- If the program works for the largest organization in the world, why wouldn't it work in the private sector as well? All companies are worried about profit, and a simple, or not so simple, program could create less spending on technology.

One day this idea will come to life, or maybe it's in the works. Either way, technology is taking over businesses at a fast rate, to help move things faster and faster.

Another week of blogs!!! More Golf Please?

Last week I shared a few ideas of possible problems that could be fixed with a little software ingenuity. Let's look at the first of the blogs that helps my dad, which can be read here.

Really, how effective would a program like this be? Who would be a stakeholder in an idea like this?

The obvious choice would be my dad, because working the books would take on a whole new meaning. But honestly, who else would benefit from this? Here's a small list of who and how this program may help

1) Golfers in the club- If the program handles the math properly, the only real issue that could arise from this idea is user error. If everything happens fast, golfers will wait shorter times to get results for that week.

2) Other golf clubs/groups- If the software can be generalized to fit the needs of different groups, why wouldn't another group want to use it?

3) Other sports that have scheduled social outings- Other sports could benefit by tweaking the code just a little to fit what the user wants. Want to know how your weekly tennis outing goes? Just input some data. Want to know who is the best at bocce ball? Look at a histogram of past events.

While staying on topic a bit, the real idea for this program is to get the end user to input as little data as possible to get the results they need. With a little more time, I think this could happen easily. Happy blogging :)

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

What could possibly help my interest?

I spent a few years as an athlete and enjoy keeping up with the current headliners in local sports. It seems to me that here in Hawaii, high school athletics aren't as "popular" as they are in states like Texas or Florida. Sure, Michelle Wie was a hot sensation when she was at Punahou, but what real buzz do the scholar athletes of this great state create? In all honesty, I had no clue who Manti Te'o was prior to his days at Notre Dame. Maybe it's because I was once a part of it that I have an interest in it but the website for the Hawaii High School Athletic Association has looked the same for almost a decade. Maybe we can help give it some more spunk? Stay current on sports statewide? Who knows???

Fixing some bugs from my past

A few moons ago, I was a mechanic for the US Army, fixing beautiful machines that fly everywhere in the world (to see my specific job, what this video). When I first started, all records and logs where kept on paper, leaving little room for computer error, but a lot for human error. Uncle Sam decided digital was the way to go, and ULLS-A(E) (Unit Level Logistics System- Aviation (Enhanced)) was born (as far as I know).

If you go to the Software Engineering Center- Lee website, it gives you a brief rundown of how/what helps it all work. If you don't want to go, it's written in the .NET framework using Microsoft SQL as the database. Working as both an end-user and database administrator, I saw a lot of issues in the program. While no program is perfect, this one can use a lot more work. Linking different components together to increase operational readiness would be the biggest selling point, but I have no idea where to start.

Helping out the pops with some coding magic!!!

An idea I've had for a while, but hasn't come to fruition is helping my dad's Saturday golf club out with a program that will take a lot of human error out and do a lot of math really quick. He plays what is called a modified Stableford (look at the rules/scoring here). Currently, he does a lot of it on Excel, which isn't a bad choice, but is very limited due to how the person that created the document set it up.

The real help would be an custom app created just for the club, which could be used for other clubs to meet their needs. It could easily fall under the SaaS train-of-thought, which little tweaks making it a customized experience. Because the only real language I know at the moment is Java, I've ran into a few errors on both the data management and UI side of things. The math portion isn't hard, just creating something really beautiful that people would want to use all the time. Hopefully the current course load I have will get me to the point where a good solid week of coding will create this masterpiece. Until then, tee it high and let it fly!!!!

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

What got me to this point

Seeing how this is the first time I've written a "blog" since the days of Xanga, I'll give a small background and where I hope to go of myself. I grew up in many great places, but mostly on the beautiful island of Oahu. I do have two children, ages 9 and 2, that mean the world to me and are the reason I joined and got out of the military. I didn't entertain the option of going to college right out of high school because I had no clue what I really wanted to do. I was always good with numbers, but math wasn't something I saw as a way of earning a boatload of money. On top of that, my 9 year old was born when I was 18, so I started a little early. What got me seriously interested in Computer Science was the time I spent in Korea as a Database/Network administrator. Working with MySQL and the program SCP6, that opened my eyes to the world of possibilities of what computers can truly do, and help with my number obsession.

But where does that lead us to from here? My first experience with programming since the days of MS-DOS in mid-90s was just a year ago with Java. And now, I get introduced to a great scripting language Ruby. But do I really see Ruby taking me to where I want to go? I can see how Ruby would work for Software as a Service, and quick fixes for software that's blasted to a bazillion different computers. Where does this all lead? Only time will tell