Posts in category "IT"

Theres nothing worse than slaving away all day over a hot keyboard trying to coerce various pieces of software to synchronise a single customer record from one legacy system to another.

Of course, the mouth-watering and long awaited climax to a hard days graft (and knowledge transfer) finally arrives at 18.47 when you are tired, irritable and just want to go home.

This is it. This is your moment. Seize the day. You are poised of the edge of greatness, about to scale your own personal Everest.

There is only one thing stopping you. We have to choose a name for the 'customer'.

Your heart sinks as the integrator pauses for an eternity, pauses again, looks enquiringly and then suddenly types in:

Username: TESTUSER FirstName: TEST LastName: USER

You politely plead: 'That's really not a good name to use.' 'Why ? Oh wait. I get it. We will need more than one account for testing.' Your mood darkens still further as he modifies the data:

Username: TESTUSER1 FirstName: TEST LastName: USER1

You snap and the wafer thin veneer of professionalism and consulting is shattered. 'Excuse me. Can I drive for just one minute ?'

Username: MSTIPE FirstName: Michael LastName: Stipe

A small point admittedly but one that significantly increases the satisfaction levels for everyone concerned when that confounded customer finally appears on the other side.

All of which reminds me of another story.

When you are in a crisis meeting, and a consultant or project manager says We desperately need an intervention from ABC - now !, do you ever find yourself idly scribbling the lyrics from Interpols Say Hello To the Angels on your pristine pad of white paper ?

This is a concept This is a bracelet This isn't no intervention

Two hours later, in the same crisis meeting, when the same consultant or project manager forcefully asks 'Is Freddie Geekmeister from Advanced Technical Support engaged ?', are you ever tempted to reply 'No. As far as I know, Freddie Geekmeister is currently a bachelor of this parish'.

When the ratio of the combined letters of the To: and Cc: distributions lists divided by the number of letters in the email is high, do you ever find that the relevance and worth of the actual content is correspondingly low ?

When you say to someone, 'I got your mobile phone number off your .signature so thanks for that and they reply 'You're welcome', are you ever tempted to reply 'Well actually no I didn't because you don't have a .signature so I had to ask 8 different colleagues from 3 different companies which wasted 37 minutes before I finally tracked you down'.

And when the crisis meeting finally draws to a close, and the project manager spontaneously asks you to read out aloud, to all 17 attendees, those three, crucial, important, decisive actions that he has seen you jotting down on your A4 pad, which will immediately rectify the situation, do you ever find yourself in a mild state of panic ?

Or is it just me ?

When I visit customers, I am usually granted read-access to production servers. Mostly I am working closely with IT staff to explain what I am doing and why. I am not normally granted the passwords to administer the production system which is just the way I like it.

Otherwise, Siebel server CRMPROD1 which has been working fine for 2 years, unexpectedly core dumps, the call center is down, the business is losing 2 million dollars every minute and everyone is staring inquiringly in your direction.

Occasionally, the screensaver kicks in after a predefined interval. So the person has to unlock the screen. However, if the person is in a meeting or otherwise unavailable, the screen remains locked until he returns. This can waste valuable time so I prefer to keep the screen accessible at all times, if at all possible.

Consequently, I find myself acting like John Locke in 'Lost' who has to strike a key on the keyboard of a computer every 2 hours to avoid dire (yet unknown) consequences.

So, don't be surprised if you are working with an Oracle consultant who nervously keeps looking at his watch during a fascinating conversation about Siebel architecture. If he then rudely and abruptly terminates the dialog by hurtling back to his temporary desk and launches into a desperate, full length, athletic dive across the room to desperately hit a random key, that's why.

When you are trying to print something in a hurry, there is nothing worse than discovering that your work of art has just been queued behind a monster 764 page document.

As you are stood by the printer wondering whether to hang around, return to your desk or to submit the job to that printer on the fifth floor, the printer LED displays 'Attention: Out of Paper'. Naturally, there is no paper in the print room so you go to the stationery cupboard for more ammunition and load Trays 1, 2 and 5.

Excitement slowly builds as printing resumes and the job slowly advances to page 369. Your heart sinks as the confounded LED lights up again. Panic and manic depression set in as you see the words 'Attention: Paper Jam - Area 6C'. You press a few buttons and follow the online diagnostics which gently lead you step by step (with pictures) to the precise location.

You have to open various doors, lift various flaps and push various plastic, purple coloured levers to perform open heart surgery on the innards of the LaserJet. Unfortunately, you misinterpret Figure 3B and scald your hand on that metal bar that gets as hot as a blast furnace.

Finally, you manage to identify the cause of the paper jam in Area 6C and extract the offending sheet carefully. You gleefully fold it up and consign it to the blue recycling bin and hope page 412 wasn't that important. You are ecstatic.

The 764 page document finally completes followed by a slight delay while the printer pauses for breath. Finally your single page is ejected. Rather inconveniently, the printer decides to switch to A3 paper just in case the intended reader is short sighted but still.

You are about to triumphantly depart and soak your hand in freezing water. The owner of 'War & Peace' rather conveniently arrives at the printer to collect his tome and says 'Oh is that my document ? I hope it didn't hold you up. Thanks a lot.'

Someone recently asked me at a dinner party: So, Norman, tell me what you do in life ?. I spontaneously replied: I help people read books. The lady (for it was a she) exclaimed: Oh how absolutely fabulous. You are a teacher. Err, well, no. I actually work in IT. Oh I see. You work in training. Why didn't you just say so ?' 'Err, well no. I am a sort of IT consultant'.

Anyway, after an embarassing stony silence, thankfully I managed to steer the conversation to the safer domain of the wide range of choices for secondary school education in our locality. This fascinating subject occupied us right through until the desert and coffee were served.

But the point I was trying to make was that Siebel and Oracle are incredibly large, complicated, wide ranging software products. I have worked with Siebel for three years and Oracle for a little longer but there are still so many areas and modules in both products that I have no practical experience of whatsoever.

I remember once reading Tom Kyte stating that he did not have access to the Oracle source code nor did he did not have a hotline to RDBMS engineering. The basis of his wealth of extensive Oracle knowledge was primarily the documentation set. I remember being hugely impressed by this simple statement. [ Sorry I did look but failed to locate the reference ]

I am a Siebel 'consultant' trying to help people use Siebel more effectively. Most of the information needed to help customers use Siebel more effectively is actually contained in the documentation. The only problem is that the 'documentation' is simply overwhelming as it includes the manuals, FAQ's, Alerts, Release Notes, Service Requests etc etc.

I have a couple of advantages: Firstly, I am continually exposed to a wide variety of different Siebel related issues day after day so I so have a degree of experience of real-world problems (and hopefully the resolution).

Secondly, and more importantly, I do have access to a network of highly talented, intelligent individuals with far more experience and intelligence than yours truly. Now this wouldn't be an advantage unless that group of people were prepared to share their knowledge and I am pleased to say that they are. This isn't necessarily true at all companies I have worked for.

Normally, I lug my heavy laptop, hanging over my shoulder, attached to my body like a young helpless infant, all around Europe. Today I was in Stockholm and the weather was unusually hot (30'C). To reach the office, I had to take a train and a tube in the morning rush hour. Consequently, I left the laptop behind in the hotel and arrived onsite free from back pain and feeling blissfully liberated.

I told the customer that we would purely be using the public documentation that is freely available to me and him. No hidden cheat-sheets, no private internal emails, no top tips from engineering. He was impressed (I think).

Then, of course, inevitably, we hit a very obtuse, bizarre problem, neither of us had encountered before so it was time to make another call on that network.

Back in 1995, I was a software engineer for Ingres, working on the OS/2 port. A merchant bank had a serious, intermittent, non-reproducible problem and Computer Associates kindly bought me a ticket to New York to go and help them.

The ticket was an open return. I thought 'That's nice. That's so I can extend my stay for a lovely weekend city break with my wife'. The truth was that it was an open return as I was staying onsite until the problem was resolved [ PH was right. I am naive ]

I duly took a black briefcase with a magnetic tape with the complete source code, an umbrella and a bowler hat. The tape was slightly too big for the briefcase and it was a struggle to shut it. Halfway through the flight, I decided to read some of the background to the long standing issue. The briefcase wouldn't open. It was jammed. I was petrified that US Customs were going to ask me to open it. Thankfully, they didn't.

When I arrived at the plush offices of the prestigious merchant bank, I was greeted like royalty. The client was very impressed that an 'engineer all the way from London' had come to visit them. They offered me tea, coffee or water and looked perplexed when I said 'Err - have you got a Swiss Army Knife ?'. A suitable tool was produced and they looked on in amazement as I butchered the lock and held the mag tape aloft. Come to think of it, I didn't have a laptop so I must have compiled the Ingres product on their server.

My other memories of this trip are going to a cinema in Times Square to watch 'Pulp Fiction' in an effort to stay awake and beat jet lag. Somehow, this seemed to enhance the cinematic experience further.

Then I called home, trying to find out the United score against Crystal Palace. People kept telling me 'Oh you haven't heard about Cantona. God it was absolutely unbelievable. He was sent off, leapt into the crowd and attacked a Palace fan with a Kung Fu kick'. I didn't believe a word of it and never got to find out the actual score (1-1) until I returned home.

And the actual bug - it was a one liner. A race condition introduced by a misplaced #ifdef.

Maybe its just me but I have a slight unease about sitting next to a stranger who is reading email. Obviously, I try to avert my gaze but sometimes you cant help but read the words on the screen, no matter how banal.

Mind you, some people might consider it slightly rude to be even scanning email on a training course where the instructor is spending time and energy trying to teach you.

InterWeb.

I think I first heard the term used, while working for a small Internet company, by an Aussie. I cant recall whether we were laughing at him or he was laughing at us.

Anyway, I now use 'InterWeb' at dinner parties, hotels and even in the work environment. People used to stare quizzically but, sadly, no longer. The term is now in common usage which somehow just makes it all the more amusing.

I spurned my first few invitations to linkedin.com as I already get plenty of spam email.

However, I finally succumbed but now I am very fearful that someone, someday will receive the following endorsement from me so please, please don't ever connect to my network.

"Simply the best technical consultant, called Norman, who lives in Inverness, I have ever had the pleasure of working with. Mr. N. Brightside has an awesome and exceptional knowledge of PowerPoint internals. Definitely a member of my A-Team. PS. Always stands his round too which is also important."

I have a Linksys Wireless Broadband router (WRT54G).

I have a Linksys Wireless USB network adapter (WUSB54G).

The adapter is located 15 feet from the router in clear line of sight.

The strength of the signal is 70%.

There is also a (unsecured) wireless network detected with a strength of 73%.

Where is this wireless network ? In the ceiling directly above my head ?