Category Archives: Java/Java EE

Announcing: Our NEW Java OCA / OCP 8 Practice Test Book!

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pt-cover

Jeanne and I are thrilled and excited to announce that we are nearly done writing a brand new book for the OCA / OCP Java 8 Programmer exams!

The new book, OCA / OCP Java SE 8 Programmer Practice Tests, includes over 1000+ hand-crafted and peer reviewed questions. We’ve also created a new permanent Practice Tests OCA / OCP 8 book page on the blog to keep track of updates and news about the new book.

Jeanne and I wanted to say how thankful we are to our all of our readers of our first two books. Without your invaluable feedback and positive reviews, we never would have been offered this opportunity to expand our OCA and OCP subject matter. We promise to make this next book our best yet!

We are expecting to ship the book in March 2017. Stay tuned for additional news about the book!

FIRST robotics 2017 background check and social security number

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This year, when you register to volunteer with FIRST Robotics in VIMS, you get prompted to register in Verified Volunteers so they can do a background check. In particular to determine you don’t have a criminal history and aren’t a sex offender.  For the most part, this is straightforward. You give some minimal information about yourself. And FIRST pays the cost of the background check.US FIRST - V2

 

Wait? They want my Social Security Number?

The only thing in the background check that could be considered sensitive is your Social Security Number. FIRST doesn’t get this information if you choose to provide it. But Verified Volunteers does.

I have a “real” background check for my job. So I don’t have a problem with the concept of a background check. I’m not a big fan of providing unnecessary information though. Especially given the number of data breaches lately. Luckily, FIRST says you don’t have to provide it in their volunteer screening guide:

first-ssn

 

Wait, does this work?

Yes. I chose to check the “No SSN” button. I was screened within 48 hours.

How much does it cost?

As a volunteer, it costs nothing. It costs FIRST money though. $8 for the national screening. And since I am in New York State, they also paid $65 for a state one. This adds up fast. Which means FIRST is spending many thousands of dollars on background checks.

There is a thread on chief delphi about this. It’s hard to find the relevant info without reading the whole thread so putting up this blog post for easy reference.

where did the workspace go in jenkins pipelines

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I was encountering an odd problem and needed to see what files were in a Jenkins workspace. For a freestyle job, this is easy; you just click on “workspace.”

workspace-freestyle

Where did it go?

When using a pipeline, you can have multiple nodes in your pipeline so it isn’t that simple. As described in JENKINS-33839, this means you need to click around to get to it. While I did find it, this isn’t something I do often enough to remember so writing it up for my future self and anyone else who happens to read this. (Right after I wrote this, I saw JENKINS-34321 which does explain the steps well. Mine has pictures so might as well leave it.)

  1. First, go to the build run you are interested in and click “pipeline steps”.
    pipeline-1
  2. The click “allocate node: start”. If you have multiple nodes, you’ll need to do this more than once.
    pipeline-2
  3. Then you click the workspace link.
    pipeline-3

 

Implication #1 – wipe out workspace is gone

Since the workspace is no longer tied to the job, there’s also no “wipe out workspace” option. If you need to delete the workspace, you need to delete the entire run of the job. (Maybe someone had something in the build that they shouldn’t and you want it gone.) Ok. No big deal. You have to delete a bit more than before, but it isn’t as if it is something you need for posterity.

Implication #2 – multiple “workspaces”

Since you get to the workspace from within the build, I thought this meant there were multiple. And I was afraid for the disk space. Luckily, that is not the case. Within the same node, each build does re-use the same workspace. So if you go to an old build and look at the “workspace”, it is the workspace from the latest run. Which isn’t intuitive, but I’m glad it works that way.