following up

The site is complete and live as of this afternoon. The stakeholders chose my completely overhauled version of the site over the existing site with minor revisions.

Here it is: http://smartsolutionsonline.com/

Today my sponsor offered me a paid position at Smart Solutions, and I plan to start next week. Success!

Airdate

My story on Cleveland Flameouts will air tomorrow night, June 2, at 10:45 pm on WUAB 43's Sports Extra show. It's a 3 minute and 30 second story that I'm going to introduce, and also features me on the voice over. If you miss it, I'll also play it on Friday for my presentation.

-Myles

Part 2 of Project: Boston

My time in Boston has definitely been a very different experience than that with ReCreation. I have spent my time with a family friend who is an otolaryngologist, head and neck surgeon, as well as a plastic surgeon. He has 2 offices, one affiliated with the Mass Eye and Ear hospital where he primarily sees his head and neck patients and the other is a private office for the cosmetic part of his practice. I was able to follow him at both offices during his days where he sees patients. It was interesting to see the differentiation in patients between the two practices. Most patients were willing to allow me to observe and very nice. On the day I went to his cosmetic office, some of those patients were a little more private, however many of the procedures are the same, so once I observed a couple I got the big picture. In his otolaryngology practice many of his patients suffer from allergies, head colds, hearing problems and some other mainstream ear, nose, and throat problems. However, Dr. Lazor does a lot with head and neck cancers and septoplastys. A septoplasty is basically when someone breaks their nose and the main portion of the cartilage is moved, which causes trouble breathing. Many of his patients have the surgery because of breathing problems as sometimes one side of their nose can be almost completely blocked. A rhinoplasty is similar except that it usually involves some type of cosmetic portion besides fixing the septum. I was able to observe in the OR with him a septoplasty, a rhinoplasty, as well as a cancer cell removal from the nose and a skin graft. All of the surgeries were interesting to watch, sometimes a little gruesome at some points but I was not grossed out. Watching them use the mallet to break/move the cartilage etc was probably the worst part. The last day I spent with his wife who is an anesthesiologist. That day she was working at a surgery center on the team with an orthopedic surgeon. These surgeries were all arthroscopic shoulder and knee surgeries. It was very interesting to watch this as it was much different from the rhinoplastys etc. Watching the surgeries from her point of view also gave me a different perspective. Although I obviously was not allowed to do anything pertaining to the patients care, I was able to help her load many of the drugs and antibiotics into the syringes and attach the needles. Overall I’m really happy that I explored this part of my project as it gave me more insight into the medical field.

Business & Web Development at Smart Solutions Week 3

So for the past week on project I've been doing... exactly what I was doing the previous week. Oh boy! But I can't say it was boring, I enjoy the type of work I'm doing. Just no game-changers or anything happened this week. The upside? Ten days of uninterrupted work, I got stuff done.

So the site is (basically) complete. I keep tweaking it, but in my opinion it has been suitable to go live since Sunday, when I went through and made sure the page would render correctly in all* major browsers.

* “Internet Explorer 6.0”? What's that?

There has been one small problem however... the site won't load at all on computers networked to the Smart Solutions office. It's a server issue and not my fault, but it means the employees -and my sponsor- have yet to see any of what I've done! The only exception being when they glance over my shoulder from a short distance. Did I mention I'm doing the whole project on a netbook with a ten inch screen?

So with the bulk of the work out of the way, now I have to sell the thing to the higher-ups, then if all goes well I can implement it incorporating their feedback. Following that, I will (finally) be able to link to the site from here.

- John K.

P.S. Seeing as I can't provide anything until my project is done, I will give a quick example of something I can do with HTML and CSS. If you look to your right, you will notice that you are now being watched.

An American Revolution or Revelation?

I'm going to switch things up a bit in this blog post. My Senior Project Sponsor and I went to the GM plant in Lordstown to sell the employees there tickets to Geauga Lake. Although this doesn't really pertain to the water park industry, my visit to GM was an eye opening experience and I thought it would be worth blogging about.

We've all seen how the US auto industry has been a hot topic lately. The three big Detroit automakers have all had their share of financial woes, even requiring US taxpayers to bail them out. Plus, the quality of American made automobiles has long since been a question.

The first thing you notice when pulling up to the plant is the lack of foreign made automobiles. You won't see a single Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, etc. anywhere in sight (which took some getting used to). In fact, there are even signs posted on Union property that foreign made automobiles are required to park in parking lots across the street (and this rule is actively enforced).

Upon entering the factory, I was exposed to a very different working environment. To be blunt, I after my visit I am not surprised the auto industry is in the state it is in. When talking to employees about what they like best about working at the plant, they openly brag about the fact that they get great pay without having to do much work.

During my time sitting at our table trying to sell tickets, I seemed to keep seeing the same workers over and over. They kept coming back and forth. Upon inquiring why the same people kept passing by, I was informed how rampant absenteeism and other attendance abuse is. The workers have scheduled breaks throughout the day. However, a worker is essentially able to declare a break whenever he or she wants. If you need to be excused from your station (i.e. to use the restroom or get a snack) you have to call over your overseer who takes your place on the assembly line while you are gone. Again, workers openly bragged to us how they abuse this privilege. I was told that in order to "get back" at an unpopular overseer, workers will work together to take as many breaks as they can throughout the day in order to keep their overseer as busy as possible.

We were also told how each worker is allotted a certain amount of time in the plant's medical facility per week, and that workers tend to utilize all of this time even if medical attention isn't really required. In addition, we were openly told that workers tend to do their jobs as slowly as possible in order to minimize how much they do on any given day. For example, one job entails driving finished cars from the factory out to a storage lot where they will be prepped for shipping. Again, workers openly boasted how they would drive the cars as slowly as possible to minimize the amount they had to move.

Some workers were also openly talking about how they hoped to get laid off, because as per the current agreement, laid off workers still receive a large sum of their salary. All the while, we could overhear constant bickering and complaining about seniority, and how it wasn't fair how this person was assigned to this part of the assembly line and not that part, etc.

When I decided to walk through the plant I didn't see much improvement. I saw numerous people sitting reading a newspaper or talking, etc. And yet no matter how poor an employee performs, it is nearly impossible to fire them (unless they kill someone or commit a felony). Upon asking a few of the employees, they openly admitted that there were a lot of "poor performers" around that the company simply isn't able to get rid of. All the while these employees are getting incredible benefits and excellent pay.

This is only a small sampling of what I saw on my visit. I have to say I was pretty shocked how employees so gleefully and openly abuse their employment situation. It seems no wonder now why American automakers are having such a difficult time competing right now, because you can clearly see the kind of overhead costs they have weighing them down. Don't get me wrong - I met a lot of nice people. But in an environment where you hear so often about people working as hard as they can just trying to avoid being laid off, it was somewhat strange to see quite the opposite...

-Andrew

(Sorry, but we weren't allowed to take any photos within the plant)

Week Three With the SHPD

This past week at the Shaker Heights Police Department has actually been less exciting than previous weeks. Halle and I did a bunch of filing last week: traffic tickets, gun permits, other documents. But we've been really lucky to have all the cool experiences that we have had so far, so we can't complain.

Although two days were devoted specifically to filing, we still managed to get out on ride-a-longs last week. Halle and I are usually scheduled for ride-a-longs on the same day, but we alternate traffic and shift; if Halle's on a traffic ride-a-long, then I'm on shift. Traffic ride-a-longs are pretty self-explanatory, and those officers will respond to accidents, write accident reports, and run radar. Shift officers respond to 911 calls, alarms, etc. I rode with four different officers this past week (one traffic, three shift), and the officers I was with responded to a dog incident, an accident, a few alarms, and reports of stolen items. I actually got to witness another arrest today!! We almost got two more in the afternoon, but some issues got in the way (for one, the warrant was active in Berea, and the Berea police were not going to come to Shaker; for the other, the warrant was for some outstanding court fees (I think?), and the woman claimed she was on the way to the courthouse, so the officer compromised and just followed her back to the court).

Halle and I also had another K-9 demonstration last week, and this time I put on the bite sleeve. The bite sleeve is a hard plastic sleeve that comes all the way up to your shoulder, and it's wrapped in some carpet material. The sleeve doesn't have an opening for a hand; it instead has a metal bar inside that you hold on to. Anyways, the whole contraption is used for the police dog training. On the officer's command, the dog leaps, grabs ahold of the sleeve, and does not let go at any cost. Eventually, the bite sleeve wearer lets go of the metal bar inside, letting the sleeve slip off, and the dog will run off with it still in its mouth. So, I gotta say it was a bit frightening having a massive German Shepherd come at you pretty quickly. You don't feel a thing in the sleeve, but the dog is incredibly strong.

Halle and I have court and the dispatch center tomorrow. I think we have two more ride-a-longs total before the end of project. I think we'll also wind up in the detective bureau sometime this week as well. But needless to say, we're both having a blast, and I think we'll both be sad to see our project coming to a close.

Hope everyone is well,

Becky

Week 3 at CMNH

Today I took Clover (one of the museums educational animals) for a walk as enrichment for her. We ran into a lot of school groups and most of the kids were very nervous about her until I assured them that she had been descented then they completely surrounded Clover and I. They all wanted to pet her and ask questions about her and how we care for her and her sister Chrissy. Clover really enjoyed the walk she was running all over smelling everything.
Last week I helped to mulch part of the deer pen which is not as fun as it sounds. I kept sinking in the mud and when I tried to walk my foot kept coming out of my boot. So basically I was a hot mess. I also scrubbed old perches that had been in the raptor center.
Sadly one of the boa constrictors Brooklyn died she had a 1 1/2 inch mass in her trachea. But we moved some of the snakes around so now they are all in bigger cages which made them happy.
Eddy the groundhog almost escaped from one the the bigger cages we rotate the animals through. There was a gap near the top and he had managed to get his head out. I of course began to panic but was able to get him down and distract him by giving him a dried apricot.