I’m going to be upfront – I’m about to do some gross back-dating of posts. This post is actually being written in January 2012 as I’ve been hopeless at blogging in the last couple of months of 2011 – not helped by having to re-instate a months worth of posts from Google’s cache when an enforced AWS reboot seemed to send my image back in time. Don’t expect volumes of text though: just a few words and an excuse to link to some photos. The one’s about the running race that I organised at work as part of the inter-departmental games. It was three laps adding up to (approximately) 5km. There was a good turnout, helped by the . I got a bit of stick for being too far out in front although still took 19:15 (the course did have a few hills). It actually transpired that I wasn’t far enough ahead as, having applied the World Masters 5k grading (my rules), I actually ended up back in 4th place. One way to look at it is that I don’t need to get faster – I just need to get older and not get slower! Andy Piper did a nice write-up on eightbar.

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…

20090929 Tri-Department Games GPX

Thankfully, once passed on the local desk-side support team they were quick to respond and even quicker to realise what the problem was. I’d put an old hard disk in the ultra-bay the previous evening in order to copy off some files and Windows, for some reason, had decided that it should now be trying to boot off that hard disk. A quick “fdisk /mbr” from a DOS floppy soon had everything up and running again. The suggestion was that in future, rather than booting with the second drive in, I should swap it in whilst the machine is suspended. That doesn’t work too well as extracting the DVD drive is sufficient to wake the machine! Making the change whilst the machine was hibernated seems to work well though.

Lastly, a thanks to David George who responded to my tweet on the subject as he’d had the problem previously.

I started on 5 October 1998, straight out of university (a degree in Engineering and Computer Science from Oxford University). This was a month later than the majority of that year’s graduate intake as I had been otherwise engaged with a leisurely crossing from New York up to Quebec and then across to Vancouver by Greyhound (the coach company that is, not the dog). I began work as a tester on Component Broker, IBM’s CORBA offering and a forerunner for much of what was to become WebSphere Application Server. It was only a few months before I’d managed to wheedle my way across in to the development team, initially fixing defects in the transactions component.

I then had my first brush with the world of messaging working on the MQSeries Application Adapter component. Next up was some work on the common Java client which was to be a sign of things to come. As IBM threw its weight behind Java, Component Broker sank beneath the waves (although I still drink for my CB mug) and WebSphere Application Server became the way forwards. I continued to work on the transactions service and related activity session service before starting to look at the integration of WebSphere MQ with Version 3.5 of the Application Server.

This (along with a part-time MSc in Software Engineering back at Oxford) kept me gainfully employed until someone had the bright idea of writing a new Java messaging provider for the Application Server from the ground up. I was originally slated to work on the mediation component of what was to become known as the Service Integration Bus but somehow that never happened. Instead, having successfully persuaded the powers that be that the J2EE Connector Architecture was the way to integrate the new JMS provider with the Application Server, I found myself owning the resource adapter component.

Once Version 6.0 had safely shipped I felt that, rather than making design decisions in the rarefied atmosphere of Hursley, I needed to get out and meet some customers. This saw me transfer across to the IBM Software Services for WebSphere organisation. I consequently had the dubious pleasure of explaining to customers that, yes, I had designed and coded that particular piece of function in the product and, no, I have no idea at the time how I was expecting people to use it!

My four years in Software Services culminated in a six month assignment to Norway about which you can read more elsewhere on this blog. I was getting travel weary though and, with a young family, sought a little more predictability in my schedule. Consequently I found myself back sitting not very far away from where I had sat when I left development but now working on WebSphere ESB. Two out of the three guys I originally shared a house with when I first joined IBM also work on the same product (the third having left IBM)!

When I joined IBM I had no great plans to still be a part of the company ten years later but I’ve enjoyed the variety of work, the Hursley location and, most importantly, the clever folks that I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with on a day-to-day basis. Who knows where I’ll be in another ten?!

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…

When I moved to a services role it was with the intention of gaining a better understanding of how IBM’s clients use our products and it has certainly provided me with that opportunity. I now hope to use that understanding to make those products better. And what about the technical posts on this blog? Well I won’t be revealing any upcoming functionality but still hope to find something useful to say about the products when they make it out in to the wild. And for those on the inside of the wall, I’ll be looking to restart my intranet blogging.

I nipped in to the Holiday Inn to get a hand pushing the car out the way. Needless to say reception was staffed by a selection of dainty looking young girls. By the time we’d rounded up a couple of big strong men my car was surrounded by four of our finest Community Support officers. One of them helpfully suggested that we needed to move the car sideways on to the raised central reservation. Fortunately his colleague saw the sense of moving it out the way round the corner in to Dew Lane. Rather embarrassing for me was that he was about to call my mobile number from a piece of paper he’d retrieved from the glove box (presumably the central locking had failed as I rushed away). This was the note the RAC had given me detailing the problem with the alternator.

Many thanks to my colleague Chris Andrews who came to the rescue in his Land Rover. We retrieved the old battery (now fully recharged) from home and, with a jump start, this was sufficient to get me to the garage where the alternator was due to be replaced on Thursday. Although only £40 cheaper than Kings Seat, I decided to go with Independent Car Sales and Servicing in the local industrial estate. This was mainly because I felt we’d given Kings more than enough money in the past year but I wasn’t disappointed by the quality of the service that I received.

A quiet week on this blog generally means a busy week in real life and that was certainly the case over the past seven days. My brother was over visiting last weekend. We left him to do most of the tourist attractions on his own (indeed, he did a few that we haven’t yet) but we joined him for a couple of trips out as Christine has already reported.

My trip to Stavanger on Tuesday was extended to include Monday night when I found that I couldn’t get a flight out on Tuesday morning. It looks like Norwegian have now switched to their summer schedule with only four flights a day which presumably also puts more pressure on the SAS flights. On the plus side, this meant I didn’t have to get up at six in the morning. I was obviously still half asleep when I went through the airport though as I managed to leave my coat at security. It cost me 40kr to pick it up from lost property the next day.

On Wednesday it was a return to international travel with a two day trip down to Gothenburg. Everything worked out very well as, having flown down with Widerøe (on a Fokker 50 leased from the slightly dubiously named Denim Air), I stepped out of the airport and straight on to the bus in to the city centre. It was then just a few minutes walk from the terminus to the customer location, with the Radisson where I was staying the same distance in the other direction.

I had a couple of spare hours to wander round the city in the sunshine that evening. The centre itself is certainly very pleasant although its a shame that the wide streets seem to be quite so busy with cars, buses and trams. I have to confess to walking straight through "Scandinavia’s largest shopping mall", only stopping briefly to use a cash point. Also a shame that I didn’t have a little more notice of the trip and then I may have been able to take in a bit of the action at the Junior World Orienteering Champs.

Now looking forward to a relaxing weekend where Christine does all the running around…

With many Norwegians about to disappear on vacation for the next month it was time for Sommerfest at work. This involved a boat trip out on the fjord with a shrimp dinner. We stopped off on one of the islands for a few teams games. I think it’s fair to say that I did my part in ensuring that our team didn’t even make it in to the top half of the leader board! As we were heading back for shore there was a rumble of thunder overhead and the skies opened for what became a torrential downpour. Thankfully there was room for all undercover on the boat and as we pulled alongside the jetty the rain eased.

The different classes have start times staggered over a few hours and, with a changeover point just outside our apartment, we were able to sit on the balcony and watch the action unfold. Eventually it was my turn and I jogged down to Holmendammen to join the assembled crowd waiting for their incoming runner.

Fortunately, given that I had no idea who most of the other people in my team were, we had all been kitted out in some rather nice dark blue technical T-shirts replete with IBM logos. (Likely to be used more than most of the IBM merchandise dished out at last week’s conference!) This, combined with the race number, meant that I didn’t have too much trouble spotting Hege coming down the hill towards me.

Having spent about half of the previous 24 hours on a plane I was glad to discover that, despite being the longest leg at around 2.5km, it was pretty much all downhill. Having gathered a bit of momentum I was soon able to overtake some of the slower participants. The gentle incline to the handover in Frognerparken seemed like a mountain but in 7 minutes and 49 seconds it was all over and I had successfully passed the baton on to Merethe.

Sadly the jetlag kicked in a couple of hours later and I didn’t have the energy to join the rest of the team for the evening session (the reason I suspect most employees agree to take part!). There were just under 500 teams in our class and the results show us in a respectable 234th place. Unfortunately the GBS team had surpassed us finishing 190th but there were still two further IBM teams behind us. Looking at the results for our team I don’t think I can be said to have let anyone down.

In the slot before lunch I went to Shane Claussen’s WPS/WESB/WID Technical Futures presentation. As the name probably suggests, that was all IBM Confidential so nothing I can divulge here.

With Project Zero finally set to hit the streets at the end of June as WebSphere sMash  I thought it was high time to see how things have changed in the past year. Consequently, after lunch I headed along to a lab entitled "RESTful Services with Project Zero". I have to confess that I was slightly disappointed to discover that aspects of the programming model are still changing and that the lab wasn’t running on the latest code base but understand that the material has to be submitted well in advance of the conference. That said, when sMash (not a name that I like – in the UK at least it is a brand of instant mashed potato) hits the streets then things should stabilise.

Then it was time for my final presentation of the week – rather grandly titled "Architecting Solutions with the Default Messaging Provider". This detailed a whole host of considerations that need to be taken in to account when it comes to both functionality and performance. I’ll not say too much here as it’s slated for a developerWorks article (if I ever find some time to write it!).

The evening brought the conference networking dinner and, more importantly, the chance to watch some colleagues jamming on stage with a local band. Surprisingly un-cringeworthy – some real talent out there. Had to stay up to watch the Scotland’s very own Gaby Telerman (occasionally of the BMX Bandits).

I was then helping out with a WebSphere ESB lab put together by Russ Newcombe from the AIM Early Programs (a man whose path I first crossed back in the Component Broker days). This looked at the new service invoke and fan-out/fan-in primitives as well as the retry capability. For more information on the fan-out/fan-in primitives, both he and I would heartily recommend the series currently running on developerWorks. I know Russ has the lab in the format used by IBM Education Assistant so hopefully it will be available for you to try in the comfort of your own home at some point soon.

Other than that, there was just time up to catch up with a few folks in the corridors and at the Worldwide Tech Practice meeting/dinner this evening. I’m presenting again first thing tomorrow though so bed is calling now…

Emma was remarkably well behaved on the flight. Perhaps this had something to do with getting her lunch followed by large quantities of raisins as she started to get a bit edgy on the descent. As we touched down at a sunny Gardemoen airport it all finally seemed real – we had made it to Norway!

The guy behind the Hertz desk took one look at our luggage and obligingly found us the largest C class car on their books. Despite being parked in space 007, I don’t think James Bond would be seen dead in a Skoda Roomster! As the rather unimaginative name suggests though, what it lacks in looks, the car certainly makes up with in space and it swallowed our luggage without difficulty.

From there it was a 45 minute drive, giving Emma just enough time to adjust to the novelty of a forward facing car seat and then drop off to sleep. We were met by a smiling landlord who had made our furnished apartment very welcoming with a couple of vases of yellow tulips and a bowl of fruit and chocolates (although he had left me to hang one of his new pictures on the wall!). It then wasn’t long before we had spoilt the clean modern look of the accommodation by scattering our belongings everywhere.

I went in to the IBM office yesterday which was pretty deserted. In addition to Good Friday and Easter Monday, Norwegians also have Maundy Thursday as a public holiday and, with many businesses shutting at lunchtime on Wednesday, a lot of people just take the whole week leading up to Easter off. This is nice in that it means I can spend some time settling in with Christine and Emma but it has meant that our shipping, which touched down yesterday afternoon, didn’t make it through customs in time to be delivered today. We’ll now have to survive until next Tuesday with what we brought with us. An obligatory trip to IKEA this morning filled some gaps but we will, for example, still be balancing Emma on ours knees for mealtimes until next week. We also won’t have the baby carrier for any exploring we might do this weekend.

The hotel parking made me glad I only have a compact car. The steep entrance ramp is curved and only two metres wide and it was only when leaving the car that I realised that this was also the pedestrian access and exit. Makes me want to take my chances parking on the street. Driving hasn’t been too stressful, partly due to my new sat-nav (of which more in another post) and mainly because I’ve been heading in the opposite direction (out of the city in the morning and back at night) to the huge queues on the E18.