Welcome to my CS 467 capstone project blog.

I have been waiting and preparing for this course for over a year. doing research and planning. But what I am missing is a partner. And now I am wondering if anyone else will be as excited about it as I am. I have put out some feelers, but no one has asked me about it. So I am feeling nervous.

Some acquaintances of mine own a micro business that is in desperate need of help for some of their core business IT systems. Noteable they manage random drug testing programs for small and medium sized companies. They don’t do the actual testing, but the manage the selection process and report the test results. Who do they report these results to you might ask? Well in many cases it is government agencies like the Department Of Transportation (DOT) or the FAA. Yes, aren’t you glad someone tests those pilots in the front of the plane, or perhaps the person putting jet fuel in the tanks. So now you know how important this seemly mundane thing could be to you or loved ones.

In this case, the business is operating on a database system that was written to run on Windows XP and Win 7. Needless to say it is out of date and needs some attention. The owners / operators do not have expertise in such systems but want to have something that they can support and adapt to their specific needs. They already use MS Access for certain basic functions and would like to migrate the older program into this format that they understand.

Great. So I have been working with them to understand their needs and wants and have volunteered to take this on as my capstone project. Now my biggest concern is finding a partner that also thinks this will be a worthwhile endeavor. My general impression is many people want to be core developers and want to work on sexy high profile projects or they want to make games. Having been working in industry for 30 years I have first hand experience that the fun projects are out there, but most are not moon shots, but are very necessary. Experience and ability to learn is the name of the game , and that’s what most employers want.

I hope you might be interested enough to ask some questions. Send me a Teams message, and we can talk.

brinklyri@oregonstate.edu

Here is the project link : https://eecs.oregonstate.edu/capstone/submission/pages/viewSingleProject.php?id=PlLm1LrqmZcmlqxR