Things seem to have finally gotten productive for me WRT this project. I can't seem to put it down. In some ways this is good, but in others this is bad... It means that I spend all of my time (including many nights/mornings untill 4am) working on it. From this project's perspective, thats good, but WRT my other classes and commitments, its bad. I end up putting them off more than I should, which has started to hurt me more than I want it to. Fortunately, I think I'm at a point where I can start to slow down and possibly focus on some of my other work.
So... What have I gotten done? Well, I have all but one or two of the UML diagrams completed. This means, that I am fairly close to writing some code. I've also finished all of the charts that lead up to those diagrams. For those of you who are familiar with the development process, I'm currently stuck on the Sequence Diagrams for the various stages of my project. The part that is holding me up is the fact that most of what my program does is act as glue to tie together a database and multiple network configuration servers (DNS, DHCP, NetBIOS & Radius). The examples in the book don't really go into much of the detail explaining how the Sequence Diagrams depict how the sytem interacts with programs/utilities outside of itself. Since this is the majority of what my program does, I can't figure out how to do that, and therefor haven't been able to draw the diagrams. With luck, Jim can explain to me how I might go about that. Since I have relatively no clue, any insight would be helpful.
On Monday, Jim and I discussed what it was that would get me what grade for this project. He and I agreed that finishing the spec, paper and presenting it would fairly earn me a B. If I were able to complete some of the code and have it to a presentable stage, then that would most likely qualify for an A. I still don't know if I can get any of the code written between now and December 5th, but I'll try. I have one other research paper due between now and then, along with some back homework that I need to finish for Parallel Computation, which is probably going to be what takes up most of my time (besides writing this paper and preparing the presentation) for the next few weeks. I'm hoping to get some of the other research paper completed over the upcomming Thanks-Giving Break, but taking into account my past record for completing things while at home on break, I don't know if I'll come close to making the progress I want to on it.