Scrum Basics week 1 journal

 This week, you worked on meeting with your team and learning to use Trello to create a Scrum Board. In your journal, discuss the following:

• What went well this week?
• What challenges did you face this week?
• What can you do to improve team performance next week?
• How can you apply Scrum principles in your professional life?

Your journal entry must be between 300 to 600 words. Though APA formatting is not required, it is important to cite any resources you may have used in APA Style.

What went well: The creation and interaction with the Trello board - It was quite easy to create and customize. I appreciate the option to invite members via email, or to generate a link for them to use for joining. I do wish it had the same type of access permissions that are available in Google Drive files, such as "View only," "Comment only," or "Edit" - But then, maybe it does, and I just haven't found them yet.

What went not-so-well: One of our four team members didn't show up to join us until the day the project was due. In a completely remote course format like ours, it's a little more difficult to hold somebody accountable, although it's not too very different from an in-person scenario where the group member just doesn't show up for class. Now that we're all keyed in, though, I think things will go a little more smoothly and we'll be able to hold each other accountable.

Room for improvement: Having looked ahead to next week's group project components, it looks as though we'll be working with assigning specific group members to take ownership of specific artifacts from the product backlog. I believe this will help with improving performance, as will cut out the ineffective wait-time where we all hover and make sure each group member has weighed in on every topic.

Practical uses: My professional life does not currently have any context for Scrum, as my current role works on a day-to-day performance to judge our metrics. We don't have any projects to implement at my current job grade. In the future, once I finish my degree and transition into a Software Development role, I anticipate that this will change, and these Scrum principles will be much more relevant. In the meantime, I can foresee these being useful in the context of my roles on staff for various conventions, using each year's convention as the scope of a single project.

Course 9 (Operating Systems Theory & Design) Final Project - Summary Blog Post

 OS Theory Concept Map

Jesse Neubauer

Ashford University/University of Arizona Global Campus

CPT304: Operating Systems Theory & Design (IND2121A)

Bret Konsavage, instructor

June 21st, 2021

For the final section of your project, you will provide a summary blog post to share any new insights you have gained about operating systems theory throughout the course and to resolve this focus question: What are the fundamental concepts that underlie operating systems?

Describe features of contemporary operating systems and their structures:

Features - 

Can bring a computer from unpowered to operational

Can render an interface between the user and the computer, either graphically or via terminal prompts

Can accept inputted data/signals and produce new data/signals for output

Can save data in non-volatile storage

Can pull data into accessible memory for use

Can process program executions - multiple simultaneously

Can allocate available resources (processors, power, bandwidth, memory space, and more)

Can prioritize the usage of resources

Can protect system from corruption and unintentional overwriting

Can secure system from external threats

Structures -

Bootstrap program

Kernel

System programs/middleware/subsystems:

• Input/Output subsystem
• Disk subsystem 
• Network daemon
• File system management
• Access matrix

Discuss how operating systems enable processes to share and exchange information:

Operating systems maintain an access matrix, which determines which domains have which types of access to which objects. Processes are considered a domain, and information would be considered objects. Processes may access information if they have read/write capabilities for it. Processes may share and exchange information by using common resources like physical memory addresses, and by coordinating with each other through methods like the Critical Section solution, controlled by the control unit and process control blocks.

Explain how main memory and virtual memory can solve memory management issues.

Memory management often runs into the issue of not having enough room to hold all required data in memory at a time. Main memory is added on to the cache memory of a CPU's registers, thus providing much larger capacities of volatile memory. Virtual memory allows for large programs to hold only the relevant piece of instruction in memory at a time, so that main memory does not have to be as large as many large, contemporary programs.

Explain how files, mass storage, and I/O are handled in a modern computer system:

Mass storage is a type of non-volatile memory, usually on a magnetic disk hard drive or flash-memory solid-state drive. The reading device for the storage is controlled by the operating system, which will instruct it to navigate to the physical storage locations of requested data. Files are kept in the mass storage, and are the user-interface representation of physical storage locations. Files also have a corresponding address location, such as "K:\Pictures\Drawings" which is a local-only unique address, similar to a URL for a website. Input/Output is handled through the I/O subsystem, which is part of the OS kernel. Each type of hardware connected to the CPU must have a corresponding set of drivers, device-specific software designed to make sense of the signals they receive from the device's controller, the hardware responsible for receiving the signals transmitted from the main body of each device.

Outline the mechanisms necessary to control the access of programs or users to the resources defined by a computer system:

As mentioned earlier, the main mechanism to control access is known as an access matrix. Both programs/processes and users are considered to be domains, and resources are among the many objects considered in the access matrix.

There will be a default level of access for each object, which will be higher for some than for others. The more integral/important an object is, the more secure it will be kept, and the less access it will keep as its default level.

Recommend how you will use these concepts about operating systems theory in future courses and/or future jobs:

I don't yet know, as I haven't learned enough about the context for these concepts or the content of future jobs to have any idea how these concepts will become relevant. I really wish this course (and the course preceding it, CPT 301 Computer Organization & Architecture, had been much later in the degree curriculum, so that students like me would have more context and familiarity with their use and inclusion. I still don't even know what the big deal is about Linux!

Screenshots pulled from:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ukkf80phR8L5fTEnhS8z7yzMTTG5wZ3S/view?usp=sharing

This was a triumph!

 I'm making a note here:

Learn about Classes.

https://portfolium.com/entry/course-5-week-5-assignment-3-final-project

Today I learned:

 

Transitional step: Reducing work hours (without reducing income)

 I came across this article while researching for my current assignment:

https://www-proquest-com.proxy-library.ashford.edu/docview/2454188717?accountid=32521

I'm doubtful that it's accessible to the public, so here's the transcript:

Grassroots: Ecosia and Sunrise Movement

I was browsing through the guilds and challenges in Habitica (http://habitica.com/), when I saw two separate mentions of Ecosia (https://info.ecosia.org/mobile). It seems to be a replacement browser/search engine- it does all the same things that Google does, except it uses the ad revenue to plant trees. So I downloaded it.

Then, while poking around the Ecosia blog (https://blog.ecosia.org/how-you-can-save-the-green-new-deals/), I saw mention of the Sunrise Movement (https://www.sunrisemovement.org/?ms=SunriseMovement). There were Sunrise reps present at the rally at the statehouse on 11/07/20, and I was impressed by them enough that I'd intended to look into it more later on.

On Sunrise Movement https://mobilize.us/s/FIvCTV

So that's cool! It's looking like Sunrise is a bit of a double-sided approach, though I have a lot more reading to do. For Top Down solutions, they are utilizing methods used in the abolition era to get policymakers to listen and act. For Bottom Up solutions, I'm not sure yet. More to come later.

Last updated 11/09/20

An important concept: Determine the property's potential value

 https://hbr.org/2020/07/what-should-we-do-with-45000-half-empty-public-buildings

I'm neck-deep in research for a school assignment. The course? Scientific and Technical Writing. The final project? A formal Recommendation Report. My chosen topic? Telecommuting. There's a lot to say, and strange as it may sound, here's one idea that didn't occur to me until I stumbled across this article, written by Sheila Botting, the Americas President of Professional Services at Canadian commercial real estate firm Avison Young. 

Botting writes that many Canadian governments have cut loose the buildings no longer in use during the pandemic, choosing instead to sell them to the private sector for affordable housing purposes to help with government budget deficits. She proposes that American governments could easily benefit from following in these footsteps. And while the passing of property from public hands to private ones seems (to me) to be a step in the wrong direction, based in desperation and entrenched in late-stage corporate capitalism and corruption, the initiative to turn underutilized properties and facilities into much-needed resources for housing the homeless and the underpaid 99% is the trend we need to emphasize.

Think about it. All those sprawling shopping malls, movie theaters, corporate offices, and other non-residential buildings, now sitting empty and abandoned? Most of them already equipped with climate control, plumbing, high-speed internet, and varying levels of division into sub-units? How easily could those be turned into residential units for families and households in need?

Determining the potential value of these properties is one of many steps needed for the distribution of this particular resource- land/real estate/property/living space. This is going to be one of the muddiest and most hotly-contested topics, folks, as it likely skirts very close to actual scarcity... Moreso than almost any other resource out there. More development to come on that later.