midrange.com – In My Humble Opinion

Words of wisdom and insight from the IBM i (System i / iSeries / AS400) community

Browsing Posts published by David Gibbs

Al Barsa Scholarship Nominations

February 6, 2011 No comments

I‘m posting this on behalf of the COMMON Education Foundation board (of which I am a member).

In 2008, after the untimely passing of Al Barsa, The COMMON Education Foundation established The Al Barsa Memorial Scholarship in honor and remembrance of Al. This allows the many people affected by Al’s life to honor him and continue his legacy through the support of education. Providing education, one of Al’s great passions, seems a fitting tribute to this great man.

In the esteem of doing for others in the i community, this award of a plaque and conference registration to the 2011 COMMON Annual Meeting will go to a recipient who exemplifies Al’s commitment and dedication to the i community.

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Advocacy, COMMON , ,

Downtime

January 5, 2011 2 comments

Trevor has an interesting post on his i4everyone site titled “What Downtime?”

I suggest that “Downtime” is important … it’s crucial in fact.

All systems need downtime … a chance to relax, stretch the legs, have a siesta, etc.

The important question with downtime is: Who decides when it happens? The system or the users?

A more appropriate caption for the image would be “What UNPLANNED downtime?”

Trevor and I have an ongoing discussion about how long marketing blurbs should be.


Advocacy ,

IBM i Marketing

December 28, 2010 No comments

Trevor Perry has been creating, and collecting, a number of marketing ideas for IBM i.

Check out his IBM i for Everyone site.

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Advocacy , ,

‘Twas the night….

December 24, 2010 No comments

An ‘original’ poem by Larry Bolhuis …

‘Twas the night before Christmas in the IBM i house
Not an admin was worried nor even a spouse.

Their systems ran smoothly not so much as a care.
Secure in the knowledge no virus would hit theirs.

The sysops were talking about gifts of toy sleds
While visions of happiness danced in their heads.

When down in the rack there arose such a clatter,
The sysops went running to see what’s the matter.

It was windows they saw, gone down in a crash,
A screen full of blue made them mad in a flash.

The blue that they saw lit the whole server row
screen after screen they were all in a glow.

They called in the expert, begged him to appear,
he came in quite quickly for he had been near.

He opened his bag, whipped out a key-stick
Stuck it into a server and booted it quick.

He watched for the drivers calling each one by name
Memory Disk, video LAN, each in turn up it came

One by one each was started and it loaded them all
But the server yet failed and the tech hit the wall.

He turned to the sysops and asked what all was down?
They looked at each other and checked all around.

Each thing after the other was working just fine
So happy they were that they toasted with wine!

The tech he was puzzled. “It’s all working, But why?”
The sysops all in chorus: “Because we run IBM i!”

“Those things with blue screens run unimportant stuff now
We’ve learned not to trust them as they oft’ let us down.”

He shook his head slowly as as he walked out the door.
The sysops they taunted which frustrated him more.

“On iStar on sStar, on POWER, on Blades!
The best ever selection of servers we made!”

Yet they they heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.”

(with apologies to Clement Clarke Moore)

Humor none

Al Barsa Scholarship Challenge 2010 Wrapup

December 24, 2010 No comments

I’m please to announce that the Al Barsa Scholarship Challenge 2010 was a great success. $1,260 was raised with an additional $1600 in matching grants for a total of $2,860!

Thanks to the following members of the IBM i community who donated:

  • David Vasta
  • Brad Stone
  • Norm Dennis
  • Michael Smith
  • Carl Novit
  • Wayne Evans
  • Bryce Martin
  • Scott Ingvaldson
  • Philip Seay
  • Jerry Adams
  • Jim Franz
  • Marty Acks

With a special thanks to my fellow matching grantors:

Special thanks to Michelle August, Executive Director of the COMMON Education Foundation, for helping me make this a success.

COMMON ,

COMMON Board Elections 2011

December 8, 2010 No comments

Recently COMMON sent out an email blast notifying people announcing the candidates for the next board of directors election.

Running for the three board positions available are …

  • Jeff Carey
  • Robert Krzceczowski
  • Phil McCullough
  • Russell Meyer

As I did last year, I’ve offered each of the candidates a guest author spot on this blog. As usual, it can be about anything “i” related … but the intention is that it would be about COMMON and what they can bring to the organization.

So far I’ve received commitments from Jeff, Russ, and Phil to contribute to this blog.

Watch this space in the next few months.

Thanks to Ralph Gervasi for conveying my invitation to the candidates.

COMMON BoD , ,

Al Barsa Scholarship Challenge 2010

November 24, 2010 2 comments

As many of you know, the COMMON Education Foundation’s Al Barsa Memorial Scholarship is very important to me.

A discussion thread on MIDRANGE-L was the impetus for the scholarship and midrange.com has made a yearly contribution.

This year, however, I want to try something different.

I’m going to borrow something from public broadcasting … and do a CHALLENGE grant.

A challenge grant is pretty simple … for every dollar contributed by other people, midrange.com will also contribute a dollar (up to a maximum of $300). This challenge is going to run today until December 24th.

Because this is somewhat spur of the moment, I wasn’t able to setup a formal mechanism to handle this … so I’m going to use the honor method of verifying contribution. Email me directly and tell me how much you are going to contribute and midrange.com will match it.

If you have any questions, feel free to comment on this post or email me directly.

Duane Christen had a great idea also …

I would like to suggest that if anyone else is so inclined, to contribute to the Al Barsa Scholarship in memory of Lukas Beeler and /or Simon Coulter, two exceptional contributors to the IBM i community, and midrange.com specifically, who passed away this year.

Small disclaimer … I am, at least in theory, on the board of the COMMON Education Foundation.

Thanks to my brother Mitch (who happens to be non-profit charitable giving expert) for the idea.
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COMMON , ,

ExtendedIOException in Java

November 8, 2010 1 comment

If your java application starts encountering a ExtendedIOException error while trying to access files in the IFS, check to see if you’ve got a 3rd party security exit program in place.

I just had a rather frustrating diagnostic problem with a customer … they installed a recent upgrade to our product and the java application server wouldn’t start anymore.

After adding a JT400 trace to the servers start-up I saw that the ExtendedIOException we were getting had a reason code of 4636. Unfortunately, the JT400 routine didn’t deal with that code.

After a bit of digging around we determined that the security exit program (Power Lock in this case) was blocking the application server’s user id from accessing the ‘file server’ server.

We added an exception to the Power Lock configuration and it started working fine.

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Tips and Techniques , , ,

IBM Power System Technical University

October 19, 2010 5 comments

I’m currently at the IBM Power System Technical University conference in Las Vegas.

Originally I wasn’t going … but a scheduling problem with another person in my office came up and I got tagged to pinch hit for him.

So far the conference is going well … although I’m only here for the “Solution Center” expo (no sessions) … I’m enjoying it.

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Conferences , ,

Simon Coulter

October 15, 2010 No comments

This is a very sad month for the IBM i community … First Lukas passed away … and today I learned that Simon Coulter, also a frequent contributor to many midrange.com lists, passed away after a rather short battle with cancer.

Simon had remarkable insight & intelligence … and was always willing to help solve a problem.

You will be missed, Simon.

People , ,
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