IBM i Videos on YouTube
June 23rd, 2009
There are a few IBM i related videos that were created by IBM (during COMMON in Reno) starring various community luminaries.
Business Cards
May 6th, 2009
OK, time for a minor gripe.
I just got back from the COMMON conference in Reno and, as usual, I collected a fair number of business cards of the people I met.
Problem is: Some of the business cards are absolutely useless.
COMMON 2009 Pictures
May 2nd, 2009
I’ve uploaded a number of pictures from COMMON 2009 to Flickr.
The URL is http://www.flickr.com/groups/common2009
If you’ve got any, feel free to contribute.
COMMON 2009 Review
May 1st, 2009
Well, I just got home from COMMON 2009 in Reno Nevada. This was a pretty significant conference … and for many reasons.
Read more…
Configurations
April 23rd, 2009
We temporarily interrupt this blog for a little levity & humor.
Some IBM CE’s are called out to a advanced science research lab to fix a problem with a system.
They are directed to the “Anti-Gravity Research” department.
They enter the computer room to find the machine they are supposed to fix floating in the middle of the air. The scientists explain they needed a subject to test their latest invention on … and ask if the techs can fix the machine.
Are you educating yourself?
April 21st, 2009
Are you going to COMMON?
If not, why not?
OK, yeah, COMMON is kind of pricey. Add air fare, hotel, & food to the conference fee and you’re talking real money (not quite $100M though <grin/>).
Next question: Do you attend your local user group meetings? What about their technical conferences?
Word of advice: If you don’t go to either, you absolutely SHOULD GO!
Document Decision
April 13th, 2009
As developers, it’s been drilled into our heads that we must provide documentation for our programs … both inside the code, as comments, and for end user’s use.
One thing I’ve noticed that we tend to neglect, however, is to document the DECISIONS we make. Why did we select one implementation over another.
SEU in the age of Twitter
April 6th, 2009
I was having a conversation on Twitter, and… hm? Yes, Twitter’s one of those new-fangled thingies that nobody can really explain to you why you should be bothered with it. Yes, email works perfectly well, as do the telephone and the telegraph. This opinion piece isn’t about Twitter; it’s about why I think SEU is a wonderful, useful tool. Just like the telegraph.
COMMON 2009 & Al Barsa
March 26th, 2009
The annual COMMON conference is just around the corner … this time in Reno Nevada.
Three significant things of note for this conference …
Al Barsa Memorial Scholarship
This is the first conference where the Al Barsa Memorial Scholarship will be awarded. While I don’t know who was selected, I have been told by Michelle August (Ex Director of the COMMON Education Foundation) that the recipient has been selected and will announced during the opening session. midrange.com contributed $500 to the scholarship.
Board of Directors Elections
There are three open positions on the COMMON Board of Directors. There are five candidates for the positions … all of whom are well known to midrange.com subscribers (more information on the candidates can be found at the COMMON website):
- Bruce “Hoss” Collins
- Richard Dolewski
- Léo Lefebvre
- Pete Massiello
- Trevor Perry
Presenting Sessions
This is the first conference where yours truly will be presenting sessions … and I’m jumping in with both feet. I’m presenting three sessions.
- Introduction to WDSC/RDi Plug-in Development (52MK)
- Email Security Techniques (55CI)
- Blogging (51MJ, along with Trevor Perry)
If you’re attending COMMON, feel free to stop by the sessions. Also, I’ll be manning the MKS booth (#525) in the expo. You can pick up a midrange.com button there.
I’ll also have a small supply of midrange.com ball caps with me … which I will be giving out to a few deserving souls.
See you there.
New System
March 2nd, 2009
While I was on my vacation, they installed a new IBM i model M25 at work for development.
It’s quite nice … and significantly faster than the previous 820 we had.
It reminds me of my last job … when we upgraded from a D35 to one of the new “RISC” systems (they had just come out). After the upgrade was complete (long and very painful process, due to a vendor lying to us), I was getting panicked reports from users about their important jobs ending abnormally.
When we were running the D35, reports and various processes took a very long time to complete. If the user received a ‘Job 000123/USERID/JOBNAME completed normally on 03/02/09 at 09:49:22.’ message too soon after they submitted the job, they knew it had failed.
Well, because the new system was so much faster than the old system AND the problems we had during the upgrade, they were assuming that their jobs had failed.
I asked them to check the output of their jobs to see if everything looked right. Oddly enough, everything did look fine. I took 2 or 3 similar calls from each department before the word got out that the system was going to perform a lot better than it used to.
None the less, one VP insisted that I investigate why things were finishing so much faster than they used to. It took about 20 minutes for my boss and I to explain to him that this is exactly what we paid all that money to IBM for.
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