Chris Mee, 1984 - 1992
Not long after graduating from Western, I was lucky to meet Chris and be hired by him to implement the new microcomputer technology that became available. I first worked with him at Western and when he moved to the Ministry of Health as the Regional Director, I followed him to implement microcomputers there to replace an aging minicomputer. From working with him, I gained the confidence to take more risks with my career.
Chief Administrative Officer
Dean's Office, Faculty of Medicine, University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario
Southwestern Ontario Regional Director
Ontario Ministry of Health
London, Ontario
1984 - 1988 Top
Systems Analyst
Programmer
Database Administrator
Computer Support and Training
Network Administrator
Dean's Office, Faculty of Medicine
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario
Technologies Used:
MS-DOS
Waterloo Port Networking Software
Customized RAM Cards that enabled Waterloo Port to run in the added memory
40 Intel based computers (pc's, xt's, at's) networked together
dBase II
dBase III
dBase III plus multi-user version
WordPerfect
Lotus 1-2-3
Reported directly to Chief Administrative Officer - Chris Mee.
When I started in 1984, there was one IBM PC with two 360K floppy drives, a copy of dBase II and the job was just for that summer. The job, with a barebones concept of what Chris wanted, was to create a faculty and staff database. 4 years later when I left, there were 40 networked computers, a networked dBase application and off-the-shelf software.
Some numbers about the Faculty:
30 clerical and management staff in the Dean's Office itself
500 Faculty & Staff in the Faculty itself
20 Departmens in the Faculty
$30 million Annual Budget for the Faculty
The application tracked:
The reports were few with the most important being a breakdown by department of funds used for salaries. Salaries could be paid from:
Worked closely with clerical and management staff in the user interface design and the data design to create a program that was effective to use.
I included a routine to verify Social Insurance Numbers (SIN) at data entry because if a SIN was entered incorrectly it caused significant delays in the processing of salary arrangements in the central University administration. I was to learn in later positions that this check algorithm was not commonly known and used.
When I left in December/1988, 4 years later, there were 40 networked pc's: a mixture of XT's, 286's, and 386's. The Faculty and Staff Management Program had been migrated through dBase III to dBase III plus. The Program was now running as a multiuser system using dBase III plus's multiuser abilities.
During the 4 years, the network cabling was installed by University electricians. I created and installed a few short runs of network cabling. I set up the microcomputers to be used as the workstations and servers by installing the network cards and special RAM cards. The special RAM cards allowed the Waterloo Port network operating system to load itself up out of the 640K RAM to which pc's in general were limited to at that time. I installed hard drives. I set up the network printers.
Managed the network itself:
Disaster Recovery
The disaster contingency plan was actually very simple. The Dean's Office was spread over two buildings. The
network could be divided into two groups because of this situation. Each group was located in a separate building
and had its own servers. There was a network link between the two groups. The backup of data for one group
was directed to servers in the other group. Thus if there was a complete wipe out in one group, the data for that group
was available in the other group. The odds of both groups being wiped out at the same time were very long so this was
a satisfactory setup.
Purchasing
Managed the purchasing of computers, printers, computer furniture, and other computer accessories.
Training
Provided training and support to 30 clerical and management staff. I taught them how to use the software and
programs I had written. I encouraged them to use the email facilities of the network.
Medical Student Selectives Program
Used dBase III plus to create a program to track medical student selectives. This simply kept track of the students
and their selectives allowing changes to be made quickly since there were many over a short period of time.
1989 - 1992 Top
Ontario Ministry of Health
Southwestern Ontario Region
London, Ontario
Technologies Used:
MS-DOS
dBase III
QuickSilver (compiler for dBase)
When Chris became the Regional Director for Southwestern Ontario, he came to me to see about creating a program that allowed microcomputers to replace an aging minicomputer that was being used in the London Regional Office.
At that time, when a patient visited a doctor, in order for a doctor to be paid by OHIP, a card containing information about the visit was completed. The doctor would then send these cards to regional centres where the information on the cards would be entered by data entry operators and stored on magnetic tape. Once a week these magnetic tapes would be sent to Kingston, Ontario, for processing in order for the doctors to be paid.
Worked with the IT and data entry people to design a data entry screen that mimiced the layout of the information on the cards.
Added in checksum algorithms to verify the validity of the doctor's assigned number and a patient's OHIP number at the time they were entered - if either was not valid a doctor would not be paid for that visit.
The minicomputer program did not check for valid doctor or OHIP numbers - whether as a result of data entry error or wrong information on the card itself - so as a consequence claims would be sent to Kingston and if either number was invalid, the claim would be rejected and the information would have to be resubmitted again - causing several weeks delay for the doctor to be paid for that visit.
Set up text files that contained the information in the format required by Kingston.
Had a local developer write a customized utility program to allow a normal PC keyboard to emulate dumb terminal numeric pad layouts and a data entry operator could choose one of several layouts to do their data entry - whichever was comfortable for them.
Solved installation and training glitches. Travelled to Sudbury Regional Centre to oversee installation of the program there. Program installed in all 4 Regional centres.
Wrote the User's and Programmer's manuals.