Lisa Giacchetti

A year ago our first Computing Division newsletter was being published. It was a very busy, exciting and in some cases, stressful time for us all. Vicky had just announced a major division reorg and we were all getting used to the new layout and possibly a new job or supervisor. CD Tracks was just a newborn! It took a few issues for us to get the right look and to pick a name from all the great ones that were submitted. Most importantly, it took us a while to develop a format that is enjoyable and meets the needs of division employees.

Marcia and I hope we have been successful in our efforts. We can truly say that we have a great time meeting so many people in the division and bringing their stories to you all. We also want to stress that the newsletter is most effective when people send ideas, news and feedback to us! Thanks to everyone who contributed or participated in any way.

As always, we look for you all to provide us with the substance for each issue, so keep that email coming! There is much more to cover, and we look forward bringing you another year of CD Tracks !

~ Lisa

Valena Sibley

What do Valena Sibley, Tom Selleck and Madonna have in common? They're all Detroit natives, of course. And Tom and Valena, at least, have been to Hawaii. But not together.

Valena came to Fermilab with a great deal of on-the-job experience. She worked for United Airlines for thirteen years. Following that, she worked in in real estate, first independently, then for Office Max.

A relatively new addition to Fermilab, Valena currently spends the majority of her time as Associate Project Manager for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Since SDSS will be completed next year, the greatest difficulty now is making sure everything is done when the project wraps up. This means Valena must keep the various facets of the project running on schedule, meet with those involved at Fermilab and beyond and figure out what people should work on when there's a delay in one part of the project.

Besides her work with SDSS, she assists Bill Boroski, Associate Division Head for Project Management and Quality Assurance with managing other projects within the division. She is especially active in the budget process and in summarizing the division's tactical plans.

Valena and her husband, Ray love to travel. Impressively, they've seen six of the seven continents (They aren't keen on seeing Antarctica any time soon.) and are looking forward to a trip to China next year. Valena especially loved New Zealand and Kenya because of the beautiful scenery.

The Sibleys have two daughters -- Alyssa, 9 and Jasmine, 6 – who undoubtedly help their mother practice her project management skills at home.

Valena's office is in Wilson Hall, 7East, so stop by and say "hello!"

The new CD website has four main sections. ABOUT includes general information about the division; SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING contains information about experiment support, grid facilities, LQCD, computing/networking research, etc.; SERVICES will link to all the services the division provides and how to get help; INTERNAL will host information for division employees. Click for larger image.

The Communications and Outreach group has been leading a project to redesign the CD web pages, which will soon go into production. The new system will enable the various organizations in the division to easily keep information up-to-date, to better organize their data and to have a cohesive look and feel. The redesign includes reorganization of the existing content structure and a new, professional look and feel of the pages.

The implementation takes advantage of a content management system back-end, the Xeno Media Management System (XMS). A built-in WYSIWYG editor will make it easy for those who don't know HTML to edit content, and there is flexibility to have news boxes or other organization-specific information editable from one location but viewable in multiple pages. XMS also keeps previous versions of web pages and records who edited them.

At the start of the project, a committee was formed including representatives from the four quadrants and the division office. The committee determined requirements for the web site that would address the needs of everyone with public web content, agreed on using XMS, approved the overall design of the site and approved the four major categories of web pages (see image at left).

There is a facility that allows content to be organized within a page in a tabbed folder format. Click for larger image.

Thus far, most of the information from the CD Internal web site has been copied to the the current site to the appropriate subcategory. Communications and Outreach has been or will be working with other organizations to migrate and update their content. Application web pages such as DocDB or effort reporting will remain outside the new structure, but new templates for use for these applications and for other pages that cannot move inside XMS will be available.

The roll out for the new web site is expected to happen in late January. All division information may not be moved at that time, but links to existing information will be maintained and no information will be missing. Please note: your bookmarks to the CD web site will be broken and will need to be updated.

~ Marcia Teckenbrock & Lisa Giacchetti

There ain't room for the both of 'em.  So there's a new coordinator in town...Waste Coordinator, that is. 

Alan Prosser has graciously accepted the role of CD's Waste Coordinator.  He is filling the shoes of Stewart Bledsoe, who for many years, has handled much of the division's hazardous and special waste.  Alan recently underwent training for this prestigious position, and is ready to take on your spent batteries, solvents, paints, etc.  You can email Alan with questions or concerns at aprosser@fnal.gov. So go ahead.  Make his day.