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Scared of Santa

Sunday, December 13th, 2009

On Saturday we took Emma to see Santa in the clubhouse at work (obviously where he hangs out at weekends). There was a bit of a queue but the guys had done a good job of providing entertainment once you made it in to Santa’s grotto: snowing Christmas trees, dancing Santas – that sort of thing. Emma’s favourites were the toy trains. Unfortunately, when the moment came to meet the big man Emma’s nerves kicked in and she just cowered behind me.

I was suitably impressed by the monetary value of the presents that Santa was doling out although, given Emma’s present was aimed at 12 months – 3 years, you can imagine that it might not keep the attention of a bright 2.5 year old for a long time. Emma also wasn’t too impressed by the magician whose voice was blaring out of the speakers in the sports hall. They were also out of mince pies so we just retreated to the playground outside. Once we were safely at home Emma declared that she wouldn’t be so scared of Santa next time. We’ll find out on Wednesday as I believe he’s due to be visiting nursery then…

Posted in Family, Work | 2 Comments »

Tri-Department Games Running

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

Tuesday was the Tri-Department (MQ vs Transaction Processing vs the Rest) Games Running Race at work. Last year Sam Massey sprinted past me on the run-in and I was determined to get my revenge (although we’re actually on the same team!). The plan was to go out fast and put plenty of space behind me. I did start to stuggle on the inclines during the second lap of the site but had enough of a lead to keep Sam at bay, finishing the 2.7 mile course in 15:57. I’m glad to say that the MQ Mavericks also recorded a team victory for the event.
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Posted in Running, Work | No Comments »

Windows disk confusion

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

I wasn’t best pleased this morning to find that I couldn’t log on to my laptop. I’d get as far as the logon prompt at which point any key press would cause everything to freeze. The only other noticeable effect was that the backdrop was missing. Safe mode made no difference but I could boot happily off a Linux Live CD. Needless to say a call to IBM’s European Service Center (which most certainly isn’t in Europe) was suitably frustrating. Why, given my serial number, they can’t work out where I am and what my machine, is I’ll never know. I guess I should just be grateful that at least there was an option not to have any music whilst on hold!

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User Group Presentation

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

Yesterday I headed down to Bedfont with a  car load of IBMers to present at the WebSphere User Group meeting. I was presenting an update covering new function in WebSphere ESB and Process Server 6.2. After days of pulling together slides from all the various product architects I ditched my pitch in favour of a few minor modifications to an excellent presentation from one of the worldwide tech sales team. Obviously I know the WebSphere ESB material well enough but this was a good opportunity to brush up my knowledge of the new function in Process Server. I also went to a couple of interesting presentations on OSGI, JAX-RS and JPA as well as my colleague Brian Hulse’s detailed presentation on the Service Gateway and Policy support in 6.2. With attendance down on usual, I felt the large number of parallel tracks led to smaller than desirable audiences for many of the presentations. It was also a horrendous drive back home along the M3 through torrential rain.

Posted in WebSphere, Work | No Comments »

10 years on

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

Being presented with my “10 year pen” at a departmental meeting on Monday seems like a good excuse for a bit of a retrospective on my career with IBM…

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Posted in Travel, WebSphere, WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere ESB, WebSphere MQ, Work | No Comments »

No danger of CrackBerry addiction

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

As part of IBM UK’s transition from O2 to Vodafone we’re all being issued with new mobiles. I’m a bit behind the curve as most people were moved over whilst I was in Norway. Today, the SIM card for my new BlackBerry Pearl has finally been activated. Sadly, like most employees, IBM hasn’t given me a data service. This is considered a “personal option” and I could get it for £16pm (providing my department agreed to match that approximately to cover the server-side costs and support which is highly unlikely in the current climate). I largely understand that decision – I already have a data card for my laptop if I need to read e-mails on the move. What I don’t understand is the decision to give me a BlackBerry. It even says on the box “Vodafone Email Solutions”!

It’s also a shame that it’s only a Pearl 8100. If it had Wi-Fi support then at least I’d have some form of connectivity on the phone. As it is, I can’t even work out how I’m going to sync contacts from Thunderbird, Plaxo or Google Apps via the USB cable. No danger of me becoming a CrackBerry addict then…

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Changing jobs

Saturday, September 6th, 2008

No – I’m not about to leave IBM but, after nearly four years in IBM Software Services for WebSphere it’s time to hang up my travelling bag and, as in all good resignation speeches, spend some more time with my family. I’ve really enjoyed the chance to work closely with customers on some very interesting projects during that time and in many different countries (let’s see, from the top: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, UK, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and the US). I have also had the opportunity to work with some very talented and knowledgeable IBMers. I can’t really claim to have enjoyed the travelling – one business hotel looks much like another after a while – but for some reason customers insist of the consultant coming to them rather than vice-versa! The real killer though is not knowing where you’re going to be next week or perhaps even tomorrow.
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Posted in WebSphere ESB, Work | 8 Comments »

My first US patent

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

Last week I had my first US patent issued: #7218708. The patent describes the use of the J2EE Connector Architecture to integrate a Java Message Service provider with an application server. This is something that is actually very easy to do with JCA 1.5 given the restriction of one JMS session per connection introduced by J2EE 1.4. However this patent describes a mechanism to use JCA twice (once at the connection level and once at the session level) that doesn’t require this restriction. This was first used in WebSphere Application Server V5 and continues to be used for the WebSphere MQ and generic JMS provider support today.

Posted in WebSphere Application Server, Work | 2 Comments »

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