Sorry for not posting, I’m not dead. Just busy, New job.

I’m no longer working for Wells Fargo left there, and 3 weekslater started another Unix Admin job, trying to get up to speed in the new environment. Trying to be a productive employee, when you haven’t even figured out what systems you are responsible for can be very trying.

Of course the new job is ripe with challenges, The most important box I’m responsible for runs an OS I haven’t touched in over a decade, and even then I was just a user not an administrator. Of course I also have to deal with windows systems. Which bring there own challenges with them.

If you are looking for a cheap way to manage a bunch of systems, I recomend nagios, it really rocks spent at least a couple weeks updateing my new job’s nagious server. We currently have 80 servers, and we are monitoring 155 services, its nice when the process setting up monitoring leads to catching problems before they become major issues, like finding a drive on a production server that is 98.5% full.

Hard drives are getting cheaper all the time, I just got a 750GB sata drive that will go into my mythtv server I talked about in my last post, of course I have to dedicate some time to put it in, well not even in, since I ordered it with a sata/firewire/usb2.0 enclosure just need to mount the drive, connect, format and copy data, etc. I’ve had the drive for 2 days still can’t find the time.

I will try and post more, but no promises.

Finally completed this series and here at the last 8 taking us to the magic 50.
The last 8 things are numbers 43-50 and again they are not necessarily in any order of importance. As always please feedback things that I have missed or just let me know your thoughts.
Hope it has stimulated some thought.

43.You need a Quality Plan
Quality should be in everything you do but it is an important subject often taken lightly. Quality is about the use of best practice, adherence to standards and ensuring fitness for purpose. Having a quality plan will help you think about how you are going to deliver quality in all projects. It is effectively the instruction manual for achieving quality.

44. Model the Business
There is some advantage in considering tools that allow you to hold a model of the business. Often known as Case tools these hold company organisation/ structure/process etc. They provide a total picture of the business and can be useful particularly if making change and ensuring you understand the impact of that change (scenario planning). This is a time consuming and detailed piece of work and you should only consider this if you are prepared to invest the manpower not only in doing it but also in maintaining it.

45. Consulting
Become the consultant to the business on technology and process. To do this you need to get closer to the business and get involved in business decision making and client reviews. You need to input your ideas and thoughts in a positive and professional manner to ensure the business leaders recognise the value of your contribution. Eventually you will be called on to contribute as a natural part of the business process.

46. Maturity Models
Maturity models can be useful. They attempt to define different levels of maturity for different processes such as software development, project management etc (in fact I saw an article where somebody said there were over 30 different models!). By answering the questions for each level it determines your position within the model and then you can move up the maturity levels by implementing the missing pieces. A good way to determine where you are and to progress.

47. Remote and Mobile working
Make sure the business can operate externally whether that is from home, internet café, hotel or clients premises. Look at delivering a secure access solution to the business systems. The workforce is becoming more and more mobile and flexible working is becoming popular so this facility is a must in most businesses.

48. Gateway Reviews
Gateway reviews are a key management tool and decision point. They are used a lot by government and local authorities. Use them at various points in a project. They allow a review of the status of the project by peer groups who can question the value and potential success of the project. Because the peer group are not directly involved in the project they can often see things that the project group cant. If used properly they can halt a bad project or help to put it back on track. Beware of the politics.

49. Knowledge
As they say Knowledge is power. Look at your knowledge management strategy.
All businesses have masses of information often locked up in separate systems. This information is extremely valuable if used properly. There are a number of ways of seeking this out from specific products to using enterprise search tools. It could save your business time and also increase your competitiveness particularly if you consider sharing some knowledge with your clients.

50. New Ways of working
Keep up with new ways of working and review if they can benefit your business. Consider pilots/trials. Everything from Hotelling/hot desking to home working but maybe more obscure ideas. Be an innovator!

THE END

One of the hardest things is to tell the world (or at least the internal management) what you have done and what you are doing. Hard in two senses, one in finding time to break away from the ‘doing’ and secondly putting the story together in ‘non IT’ or business speak.
We are all doing some good and innovative projects as well as keeping the ‘lights on’ but if nobody knows about them, then it can be in vain. Lack of awareness doesn’t enhance our reputation and there is a danger that we are just seen as a support department rather than a strategic partner.
Of course there is no one solution and it needs many different approaches and constant attention.
One method I am trying is what I call the salesman’s approach (that is pre PowerPoint!)
This is based on an A4 landscape ring binder easel. (This sits on the desk and allows you to flip over A4 sheets.)
Now you need to develop an elevator speech on paper to put into business language what you have done, what you are doing and the road map going forward.
You should be able to talk to this for no more than 15 minutes.
Run it against a friendly non IT manager and if all goes well, set up a series of meetings with senior and middle managers, arrive with your A4 book, flip it open on the desk and go through the pitch.
This should help to ensure people know what is happening and they will all get the same message plus you may get some useful feedback as well.

I’ve mentioned previously that Siebel’s handling of phone numbers can cause havoc for EAI. The post on International Phone Formats outlines how Siebel stores phone numbers as a continuous string including the country code (+610298767654), appending a new line and format string to store special formats (+61041234567890<CR><LF>0000 0000 0000).

This fancy footwork works nicely in the UI, (mostly) displaying numbers in the expected format for the current country. However, imagine a standard Integration Object defined on business component Account, with a component field mapped to the Main Phone Number . Invoke an EAI Siebel Adapter Query for this integration object and the phone number result will be the database value – rather awkwardly including that unpleasant format string.

In older versions of Siebel, the only way around this ‘feature’ was to pass the integration object through a custom business service, stripping those format strings and rendering the phone number as desired: effectively, re-coding the function that Siebel apply at the UI. This was a pain.

Fortunately, Siebel 7.8 saw the introduction of the Integration Object User Property UseFormattedValues to force the EAI Siebel Adapter to use formatted values. If we add this undocumented user property to our Account Integration Object and set the value to Y, then the Siebel Adapter uses formatted values and Main Phone Number will contain exactly what you see in the UI. This eases the pain nicely.

If you’re more familiar with Siebel Scripting, this UseFormattedValues property forces the EAI Adapter to use Get/SetFormattedFieldValue-type requests, rather than Get/SetFieldValue. One restriction is that the User Property can only be applied to the whole Integration Object, not to individual fields – the property doesn’t work as an Integration Object Component User Property, nor as an Integration Object Component Field User Property. That’d be a feature request for future versions…

MetaLink mentions of UseFormattedValues are sparse, but there is a thin definition, plus a complaint about the inbound error handling.

Some members of Congress, backed by financial institutions, are trying to enact legislation that would stop the Treasury Department from adopting regulations to enforce a federal ban on Internet gambling. The 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act calls for criminal and civil penalties for banks, credit card companies and others that process payments to gambling web sites. But the Treasury Department is having a hard time writing the regulations and the banks are balking at having to enforce the law.

The financial institutions claim it would be a nightmare to be forced to use their computerized payment systems to determine which customer activities are legal and which are not and argue they don’t want to police the Internet. Legislation backed by Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services, would stop the Treasury from writing or implementing regulations to carry out the 2006 law.

For more on this dispute:
- Check out this InformationWeek article