19 Years

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…

SOPA / PIPA Blackout

Update 16-Jan-2012: Looks like the SOPA bill has been killed in the house, although the senate version is still alive.  We will still be observing the blackout on the 18th. Just a word of warning … on January 18th, between the hours of 8am and 8pm, the midrange.com mailing list archives will be observing a…

We’re Number 2!

For some reason that just doesn’t have the right ring to it … oh well. None the less, this blog has been listed as number two in The Four Hundred’s “Best i Blog Bets: A Top 10 List” (by Alex Woodie). This seems to be the month for honors and recognition.

Nothing has changed …

Today I was reminded of one of my favorite catch phrases … If nothing has changed, and something doesn’t work the same as it did before, than something has changed. This happens very often when I’m assisting support with a problem … the customer will claim that nothing has changed, but the application doesn’t work…

IBM i vs. MySQL: a Performance Test

A few years ago, I expressed on the midrange-l mailing list some frustration I was having regarding database performance on an AS/400. I recall saying something like … MySQL vastly outperforms the AS/400. For the tests I was doing, it appeared that MySQL was indeed faster. My tests weren’t very rigorous, however. My posts caught…

IBM i in the Cloud?

Aaron Bartell posted an interesting link to a new Frankeni Technology pursuit: IBM i Personal Development in the cloud (leaked by iGor, aka Jim Oberholtzer, on the WEB400 list). This should be VERY interesting … watch that space.

New Years, CEF, & Al Barsa

The year end is approaching fast … and now is the time to get those pesky charitable contributions sent in in order to be considered for 2009. The COMMON Education Foundation’s Al Barsa scholarship is a charity I consider well worth an investment … and I encourage you to send what you can. midrange.com has…

Mail delivery problems with Yahoo

For quite a while now Yahoo has been temporarily rejecting connections from my mail servers ‘due to user complaints’. I joined their Abuse Feedback Loop program so I would be informed of these user complaints. Unfortunately, the feedback loop isn’t working that well … as my server’s connections are still being deferred, but I’m not…

New System

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…

Justify Refactoring

We’ve all experienced this: you’re working on some code … probably code that was written a long time ago … and you realize that, with all the experience you’ve accumulated since the code was originally written, you could re-write (or refactor) the code so it would be much better. The question is … how do…