Page not found – Words of wisdom from the IBM i community https://imho.midrange.com Words of wisdom from the IBM i community Fri, 17 Jul 2020 19:11:45 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.0.7 https://imho.midrange.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/cropped-IBMi-32x32.png Page not found – Words of wisdom from the IBM i community https://imho.midrange.com 32 32 Requiem For A Software Company https://imho.midrange.com/2020/07/17/requiem-for-a-software-company/ https://imho.midrange.com/2020/07/17/requiem-for-a-software-company/#comments Sat, 18 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://imho.midrange.com/?p=894 Please note: The author of this article has requested to remain anonymous. They are NOT associated with midrange.com in any way.

Once upon a time a developer had a vision for making writing software easier. An entrepreneur could see this vision too, so paid for the developer to implement this vision. Thus, was a software product born.

Time passed and the vision grew. In the fullness of time there was a team of developers, testers, support people, documenters, marketers, sales people and services people who all shared the vision. More time passed and the software product grew, diversified and the vision prospered. But then as the entrepreneur aged they realised that the vision could not be totally fulfilled without more capital for marketing and more growth.

The entrepreneur was approached by a corporation that seemed to specialize in re-invigorating software products, and the entrepreneur was assured that the corporation would keep the vision alive and growing. So the entrepreneur, with heavy heart, decided to sell his vision to the corporation, yet happy in the knowledge that the vision was going to be nurtured.

The entrepreneur stayed on with his team for a little while, but ultimately left. This was almost the signal for the real intentions of the corporation to be revealed.

Seemingly by accident it was revealed that only a very small fraction of the various members of the team would be required ongoing. In parallel it was revealed that the nature of the work for the team was also going to change – from the original actual inception, coding, testing, integrating, documenting – to supervising low cost outsourced teams that would do these same things.

The original developer, after getting no answers from the corporation to questions arising from the accidental revelations of the corporation, resigned as they could see the vision dying. Other senior people, seeing what was going to happen with their jobs, also resigned.

The entrepreneur, being even more heartbroken at the treatment given to his shared vision, attempted to buy his vision back but it was not for sale.

The corporation has no room in its balance sheet or profit and loss statements for visions except inasmuch as they translate to customer loyalty, and customer loyalty can be maintained even when the vision has died, as long as a public semblance of the vision remains or the customers are truly locked in.

Unfortunately, this corporation, instead of specializing in re-invigorating software products as it proclaimed, had a playbook of buying up software companies that have a good large base of loyal and / or locked in customers, minimizing costs (read getting rid of most developers and outsourcing), and reeling in maintenance money that diminishes from year to year as customers realise that the semblance of a vision is not the same as an actual vision.

Also, unfortunately, the entrepreneur either was not aware of this playbook or was persuaded by the corporation that this time it would be different.

Thus, do visions die in this modern world.

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Asking Good Questions https://imho.midrange.com/2020/04/25/asking-good-questions/ https://imho.midrange.com/2020/04/25/asking-good-questions/#respond Sat, 25 Apr 2020 20:33:30 +0000 https://imho.midrange.com/?p=886
http://www.mynamesnotmommy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/question-mark.png

Warning: This blog post is going to be part rant and part educational.

Recently I’ve been dealing with a mailing list subscriber that does not understand how to ask good questions on mailing list.

He has a habit of posting overly broad questions that, at least in my opinion, demonstrate that he has not tried do any of his own research into the what he is trying to work on. His posts are often followed up, within a few hours, with a request for updates on his question.

He also tends to post questions to the wrong list. Just a few days ago he tried to post a message to RPG400-L that contained a bulleted list of 20 different questions related to system operations. The questions ranged from backup procedures, system operations, LPAR creation & managment, and performance tuning.

Nobody has actually seen any of these questions (at least recently) because I have moderated him. None of his posts are allowed on the list without moderator (me) approval.

To be clear, midrange.com lists are ABSOLUTELY the place to ask questions about problems you are encountering on IBM i. But in order to get people to answer your questions, you have to be asking something specific and show that you have done some of your own leg work.

Questions such as …

How do I do xyz?

… will not get the most positive response.

However …. if your post is something like this …

Folks:

I’m trying to accomplish xyz.

I’ve tried doing abc, def, and ghi, but I keep getting error QQQ1234 when the program runs. I thought it might be related to this, that, or the other thing.

Can anyone give me a pointer to where the QQQ1234 error might be coming from?

Thanks!

… people are going to be much more willing to help you. They will see what you are to acomplish, what you’ve tried, what you’re encountering, and that you are at least trying to understand the problem.

Not knowing, or understanding, something is absolutely fine. It’s to be expected. Not willing to put in some level of work to try and understand something isn’t fine.

I’ve always been a fan of Eric Raymon’s How To Ask Questions The Smart Way.

In the case of the person I’m currently dealing with, I’ve tried to explain to him how to ask questions on the midrange.com list. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to comprehend what I’ve said (numerous times). I’m sure that english is not his first language, but there are people on the lists for whom english is a 2nd language also.

I’ve also explained to him (again, numerous times) that all his posts will be held for moderator approval until he demonstrates a pattern of asking good questions that demonstrate that he is at least trying to do his own research.

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Migration Phase 3 https://imho.midrange.com/2019/01/13/migration-phase-3/ https://imho.midrange.com/2019/01/13/migration-phase-3/#respond Mon, 14 Jan 2019 01:25:59 +0000 https://imho.midrange.com/?p=868 The final list, MIDRANGE-L, has been migrated to the Amazon AWS Lightsail server.

The migration has a bit rocky, but I think it’s been successful.

When I say the migration was rocky … the issues were not of a technical nature. The technical migration went extraordinarily smoothly. The issues came from email providers blocking or delaying email delivery.

Special thanks to all those who helped test the migration … especially those who helped with the initial technical testing: Jon Paris, Mark Waterbury, Richard Schoen, and Bruce Vining.

Because moving the lists to the AWS servers, I’m able to shut down much of the hardware running in my basement. I just have one machine left running … and that will probably be shut down in a week or so.

I’ll also be able to discontinue the Comcast Business internet service, which was rather expensive.

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Migration Phase 2 https://imho.midrange.com/2019/01/08/migration-phase-2/ https://imho.midrange.com/2019/01/08/migration-phase-2/#respond Wed, 09 Jan 2019 01:33:03 +0000 https://imho.midrange.com/?p=866 The migration of the mailing list server from in house machines to Amazon AWS hosted VM’s continues.

Tonight the following lists were migrated…

  • RPG400-L
  • JAVA400-L
  • LINUX5250
  • MAPICS-L
  • BPCS-L

This leaves only MIDRANGE-L to be migrated … this will be done this weekend (1/12).

As a reminder: If you have made any modifications to your firewall or email spam service to allow midrange.com mail through, you will have to update it again with the new information.

Host namelists.midrange.com
IP35.153.110.174

Note: The new list server has SPF records published, mail is signed with DKIM, and DMARC policies are published.

Also, if you are using the ‘List-Id’ header in messages for filtering purposes, you will need to update the compare value to include the new server name.

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Migration Phase 1 https://imho.midrange.com/2019/01/06/migration-phase-1/ Mon, 07 Jan 2019 01:31:40 +0000 https://imho.midrange.com/?p=862 I’ve started the process of migrating lists to the new list server host.

Because Yahoo wants me to ‘warm up’ the new sending IP address, I’ve decided to migrate the lists in phases.

The first batch were active, but relatively low traffic lists…

  • pctech
  • c400-l
  • cobol400-l
  • consult400
  • domino400
  • midrange-jobs
  • midrange-nontech
  • web400
  • wdsci-l
  • opensource

In order to accomplish the phased approach, I had to do some Apache config & rsync gymnastics so that the migrated lists would be handled by the new host while the unmigrated lists were handled by the old host.

So far everything appears to be working OK.

The next batch of lists will be migrated on Tuesday, January 8th. This includes…

  • RPG400-L
  • JAVA400-L
  • LINUX5250
  • MAPICS-L
  • BPCS-L

Finally, next weekend (1/12), I’ll migrate the biggest & most active list: MIDRANGE-L.

If you have made any modifications to your firewall or email spam service to allow midrange.com mail through, you will have to update it again with the new information.

Host namelists.midrange.com
IP35.153.110.174

Note: The new list server has SPF records published, mail is signed with DKIM, and DMARC policies are published.

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Fix The Problem https://imho.midrange.com/2018/12/26/fix-the-problem/ https://imho.midrange.com/2018/12/26/fix-the-problem/#respond Wed, 26 Dec 2018 16:01:50 +0000 http://imho-midrange.bloggersanonymo.us/?p=839 This blog post was started a LONG time ago … after moving the blog from my in-house server to an external server, I’ve decided to finish it.

This may sound like a no brainer … but I’ve found this bit of advice is sometimes ignored…

Fix the problem, not the symptom!

I’ve been struggling with a bug fix for the past few days, trying to figure out what was going wrong.

The difficulty I’m having is: a previous change had been made to fix a customer reported bug … but I can’t figure out WHY this particular approach was used.

After debugging the problem I’m trying to solve, on the customers system, I figured out what was going wrong.  It’s actually pretty straight forward.

But looking at the previous fix, the best I can determine is that the change that was made was to fix a very specific symptom.

Had the programmer who did the first fix spent a bit more time on the issue, I confident the actual problem would have become apparent.  I suspect that the pressure of a customer waiting on a fix was the impetus to fix the symptom instead of the problem.

Nonetheless, it’s far better to spend a bit more time trying to determine what’s causing the issue rather than getting a fix for the specific symptom out quickly.

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Happy Birthday IBM i https://imho.midrange.com/2013/06/21/happy-birthday-ibm-i/ https://imho.midrange.com/2013/06/21/happy-birthday-ibm-i/#respond Fri, 21 Jun 2013 19:43:12 +0000 http://imho-midrange.bloggersanonymo.us/?p=830 Happy Birthday IBM i!

This video was taken during the 2013 COMMON Annual Meeting & Conference in Austin.


Unfortunately they didn’t include my wishing IBM i a Happy Birthday (where I promised not to sing).

I have to say, IBM i (formerly System i, iSeries, & AS/400) has been extraordinarily good to me and my career.

I got involved in the IBM ‘midrange’ platform while working for my uncle’s company (ALP Lighting) reporting to my dad, who was the IT manager, as a Jr. Programmer.

From there I worked as a developer for a number of companies … starting on the S/36 and advancing to the AS/400 almost as soon as it was released.  I remember going to the product announcement event down town at (I think) the Blackstone Theater.  The “Silverlake” was such a poorly kept secret, they started the event by playing Marvin Gaye’s “I heard it through the grape vine”.

As it happens, midrange.com will be 20 years old this September.

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Power Systems Job Board https://imho.midrange.com/2013/04/16/power-systems-job-board/ https://imho.midrange.com/2013/04/16/power-systems-job-board/#respond Tue, 16 Apr 2013 20:21:15 +0000 http://imho-midrange.bloggersanonymo.us/?p=824 Recently the Power Systems Academic Initiative launched a Power Systems Job Board featuring entry level and internship positions:  powersystemsjobs.com.

If you are a Job Seeker you will find a list of computer-related technology jobs available today in business, health care, government, and other organizations that are looking for skills to satisfy their Information Technology needs. Each posting clearly defines the opportunity, requirements and preferred contact information. Our IBM Power Systems Academic Initiative staff updates the page daily.

If you are an employer we encourage you to list your IBM Power Systems/IT-related job opportunities with us.  The IBM Power System Academic Initiative membership in North America includes over 50 colleges and universities teaching IBM i, AIX and Linux skills. Students learning these skills are eager to reach out to you and become part of your business team. Job posting is very simple – no registration, no membership, no password, and no fees. Simply contact our IBM Power Systems Academic Initiative staff and we’ll do all the work involved.

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19 Years https://imho.midrange.com/2012/10/27/19-years/ https://imho.midrange.com/2012/10/27/19-years/#comments Sat, 27 Oct 2012 17:00:51 +0000 http://imho-midrange.bloggersanonymo.us/?p=806 Today is midrange.com’s 19th birthday (using the domain registration date).

Next year will (obviously) be 20 years that midrange.com will have been providing free resources to the IBM i (System i, iSeries, & AS/400) community.

We need something to mark the event.

I’ve got some ideas … but would be interested in hearing what the community thinks.

Post your ideas in the comments section.

 

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Command Defaults https://imho.midrange.com/2012/10/26/command-defaults/ https://imho.midrange.com/2012/10/26/command-defaults/#comments Fri, 26 Oct 2012 20:13:05 +0000 http://imho-midrange.bloggersanonymo.us/?p=814 This may seem to be a no-brainer … but it’s very important to NOT change command parameter defaults on commands in the QSYS library.

This is especially true if you use 3rd party software that may not expect your commands to have different defaults.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been struggling to help a customer with a particularly tough problem.

I won’t go into the gory details … but suffice it to say, a program that was running a very benign command ended up behaving in a completely unexpected way … which caused a major failure.

It was very hard to nail down … we even involved IBM support … they were baffled too.

After countless emails and a few conference calls, we identified what we thought might be the culprit … asked the customer to remove the modified command default, and the program worked fine.

The best way to have commands with different default values is to duplicate the command into your own version of QSYS and change the parameter defaults on the duplicated command. You then put the library with the modified commands higher than QSYS on your system library list (either changing the QSYSLIBL system value or executing a CHGSYSLIBL command when users sign on).

This way, when you don’t want the customized default values, all you have to do is remove the library from the system library list.

It has the added benefit of documenting the commands that have altered defaults … so you can clearly identify unexpected command behavior.

You can tell if a command has had it’s defaults changed by doing a DSPOBJD on it, displaying the *SERVICE information, and looking at the APAR ID field.  If it contains “CHGDFT”, then the parameter defaults have been changed.

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