Blogrilla

(this is a belated post from Tuesday…)

I bet you’re on the edge of your seat wondering what route I took to get to the Boston Convetion Center.

Well, pretend.

I got up and showered and fed the dog before hopping on my bike and
going the 1 mile to the Oak Grove T-stop. I locked up my bike with my
new Kryptonite U-shaped lock. Like a dope, I left a bag attached to the
seat with my gloves and some bike tools in it.

I got on the orange line and it took, like 20 minutes to get in to
Downtown Crossing! I guess that’s how long it always takes — it just
felt much longer today. I got off the orange line and switched to the
red. As I approached the platform the train arrived.

PERFECT!

I went one stop to South Station where I changed to the silver line.
When I approached the platform there was a goofy-ass bus waiting for
me!
PERFECT!

The convention center was a short walk from the T-stop. The
registration process went smoothly. they gave me a big nylon brief case
to hold all my swag in.
It seems like everyone wants to get me on their mailing list. to tempt
me they tell me they want to sign me up for a drawing where I could win
an iPod or something else. But there’s always an iPod to give away.

I competed in a day-time debugging competition. The competitors are
given an SAP that’s been tampered with and told to put it back in
working order in under 30 minutes. I didn’t make it, but I still got a
t-shirt and giant book on learning DB2 just for competing.

They fed us a decent breakfast. I had time to put together my schedule
for the day. I watched the keynote address at 10am by Shai Agassi.

I bumped in to a consultant that we use a lot. I like him and was happy
to see him. I got to see a couple of the vendors at the vendor fair
before having a great lunch (steak & shrimp). I hung around at the
SAP Developers Network “Clubhouse” and sipped capuccino. They had a
gamecube and an X-Box connected to some nice plasma screens. I liked it
up there. I got a chance to talk to them about some of the projects
they’re working on. It was interesting stuff.

I bumped in to an old friend named Al from my Siemens Nixdorf days. He
was running a booth for another company and appeared ot still be doing
well.

I attended an amazingly boring class on SAP’s integrated Internet
Transaction server. What are the advantages of integrating it in to the
netweaver application? Hmmm… I guess I did learn something because I
know a couple of reasons to integrate them. Nonetheless, it was awful.

Still, the next one was all about Single Sign On in a heterogeneous
environment.
And as interesting as that title sounds, the presenter managed to suck
every drop of life out of it. I dozed off while they were presenting.
On the upside, I understand I was only one of about 30 people who fell
asleep.

I was hoping to get more out of these sessions than I did.

I took the T home and brought some flowers for Liz.

I got home and found my stairs had been mostly rebuilt!! happy days!
For the first time EVER the stairs didn’t creek as I climbed them. I
understand there were painters and carpenters crawling all over the
place for much of the day. Tomorrow they will work some more on the
stairs and should be complete on Thursday. The floor-guy will come on
Friday and will replace the floor in the main hallway.

Tomorrow I go to the office for the first half the day. My first class
of the day isn’t until 2pm so I think I’ll go and root around the
vendor fair and see what kind of stuff I can find.

I did actually see a couple of products my company could use. One
company invited me to a party they’re having at a local hotel tomorrow
night. I don’t think I can possibly make it but its nice to be invited.

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This morning I
busted my hump keeping my team’s responsibilities moving forward.
Everyone on my team is working on serious production problems but not
every issue was completed when tech ed started.

Yeesh. I’m glad that’s over.

I got out of the office so late that I didn’t have time to take my bike in so I had to drive in.

Barely made it.

Luckily I have 4 hours of “User Mgt. & Auth’s in detail”!

Whew!

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Holy
cow. The major league baseball playoffs aren’t even here yet, but we’re
down to the last week and Boston is all tied up with the hated Yankees.
Don’t ask why they’re hated — it shows that you’re not a Red Sox fan.

It
seems like every couple of days they switch places: now they’re tied.
Last week the Yankees were in first. A week before that the Red Sox
were in first.

Cleveland used to have the wildcard slot locked up — now? who knows?

I
caught the end of last night’s game, which didn’t end well for us, but
due to a win earlier in the day it wasn’t a disaster either.

Its going to be another nail-biter!

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I bet you’re on the edge of your seat wondering what route I took to get to the Boston Convetion Center.

Well, pretend.

I got up and showered and fed the dog before hopping on my bike and
going the 1 mile to the Oak Grove T-stop. I locked up my bike with my
new Kryptonite U-shaped lock. Like a dope, I left a bag attached to the
seat with my gloves and some bike tools in it.

I got on the orange line and it took, like 20 minutes to get in to
Downtown Crossing! I guess that’s how long it always takes — it just
felt much longer today. I got off the orange line and switched to the
red. As I approached the platform the train arrived.

PERFECT!

I went one stop to South Station where I changed to the silver line.
When I approached the platform there was a goofy-ass bus waiting for me!

PERFECT!

The convention center was a short walk from the T-stop. The
registration process went smoothly. they gave me a big nylon brief case
to hold all my swag in.

It seems like everyone wants to get me on their mailing list. to tempt
me they tell me they want to sign me up for a drawing where I could win
an iPod or something else. But there’s always an iPod to give away.

I competed in a day-time debugging competition. The competitors are
given an SAP that’s been tampered with and told to put it back in
working order in under 30 minutes. I didn’t make it, but I still got a
t-shirt and giant book on learning DB2 just for competing.

They fed us a decent breakfast. I had time to put together my schedule
for the day. I watched the keynote address at 10am by Shai Agassi.

I bumped in to a consultant that we use a lot. I like him and was happy
to see him. I got to see a couple of the vendors at the vendor fair
before having a great lunch (steak & shrimp). I hung around at the
SAP Developers Network “Clubhouse” and sipped capuccino. They had a
gamecube and an X-Box connected to some nice plasma screens. I liked it
up there. I got a chance to talk to them about some of the projects
they’re working on. It was interesting stuff.

I bumped in to an old friend named Al from my Siemens Nixdorf days. He
was running a booth for another company and appeared ot still be doing
well.

I attended an amazingly boring class on SAP’s integrated Internet
Transaction server. What are the advantages of integrating it in to the
netweaver application? Hmmm… I guess I did learn something because I
know a couple of reasons to integrate them. Nonetheless, it was awful.

Still, the next one was all about Single Sign On in a heterogeneous environment.

And as interesting as that title sounds, the presenter managed to suck
every drop of life out of it. I dozed off while they were presenting.
On the upside, I understand I was only one of about 30 people who fell
asleep.

I was hoping to get more out of these sessions than I did.

I took the T home and brought some flowers for Liz.

I got home and found my stairs had been mostly rebuilt!! happy days!
For the first time EVER the stairs didn’t creek as I climbed them. I
understand there were painters and carpenters crawling all over the
place for much of the day. Tomorrow they will work some more on the
stairs and should be complete on Thursday. The floor-guy will come on
Friday and will replace the floor in the main hallway.

Tomorrow I go to the office for the first half the day. My first class
of the day isn’t until 2pm so I think I’ll go and root around the
vendor fair and see what kind of stuff I can find.

I did actually see a couple of products my company could use. One
company invited me to a party they’re having at a local hotel tomorrow
night. I don’t think I can possibly make it but its nice to be invited.

Tags: Uncategorized by Private Idaho
No Comments »

I bet you’re on the edge of your seat wondering what route I took to get to the Boston Convetion Center.

Well, pretend.

I got up and showered and fed the dog before hopping on my bike and going the 1 mile to the Oak Grove T-stop. I locked up my bike with my new Kryptonite U-shaped lock. Like a dope, I left a bag attached to the seat with my gloves and some bike tools in it.

I got on the orange line and it took, like 20 minutes to get in to Downtown Crossing! I guess that’s how long it always takes — it just felt much longer today. I got off the orange line and switched to the red. As I approached the platform the train arrived.

PERFECT!

I went one stop to South Station where I changed to the silver line. When I approached the platform there was a goofy-ass bus waiting for me!

PERFECT!

The convention center was a short walk from the T-stop. The registration process went smoothly. they gave me a big nylon brief case to hold all my swag in.

It seems like everyone wants to get me on their mailing list. to tempt me they tell me they want to sign me up for a drawing where I could win an iPod or something else. But there’s always an iPod to give away.

I competed in a day-time debugging competition. The competitors are given an SAP that’s been tampered with and told to put it back in working order in under 30 minutes. I didn’t make it, but I still got a t-shirt and giant book on learning DB2 just for competing.

They fed us a decent breakfast. I had time to put together my schedule for the day. I watched the keynote address at 10am by Shai Agassi.

I bumped in to a consultant that we use a lot. I like him and was happy to see him. I got to see a couple of the vendors at the vendor fair before having a great lunch (steak & shrimp). I hung around at the SAP Developers Network “Clubhouse” and sipped capuccino. They had a gamecube and an X-Box connected to some nice plasma screens. I liked it up there. I got a chance to talk to them about some of the projects they’re working on. It was interesting stuff.

I bumped in to an old friend named Al from my Siemens Nixdorf days. He was running a booth for another company and appeared ot still be doing well.

I attended an amazingly boring class on SAP’s integrated Internet Transaction server. What are the advantages of integrating it in to the netweaver application? Hmmm… I guess I did learn something because I know a couple of reasons to integrate them. Nonetheless, it was awful.

Still, the next one was all about Single Sign On in a heterogeneous environment.

And as interesting as that title sounds, the presenter managed to suck every drop of life out of it. I dozed off while they were presenting. On the upside, I understand I was only one of about 30 people who fell asleep.

I was hoping to get more out of these sessions than I did.

I took the T home and brought some flowers for Liz.

I got home and found my stairs had been mostly rebuilt!! happy days! For the first time EVER the stairs didn’t creek as I climbed them. I understand there were painters and carpenters crawling all over the place for much of the day. Tomorrow they will work some more on the stairs and should be complete on Thursday. The floor-guy will come on Friday and will replace the floor in the main hallway.

Tomorrow I go to the office for the first half the day. My first class of the day isn’t until 2pm so I think I’ll go and root around the vendor fair and see what kind of stuff I can find.

I did actually see a couple of products my company could use. One company invited me to a party they’re having at a local hotel tomorrow night. I don’t think I can possibly make it but its nice to be invited.

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I’m at a discussion of SAP’s stand alone ITS vs. the integrated ITS.

holy shit. this guy is SO boring he is sucking the life out of an already shockingly dull topic!

Attendees are fleeing like rats from a sinking ship!

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So tomorrow starts three or four days of SAP TechEd.
It’s a conference that’s being held in Boston and has a very
technical slant. There are several big conferences related to SAP,
including ASUG and Sapphire.
The point of ASUG is to allow different customers of SAP to get
together and share solutions to common problems and to influence future
development of SAP. Sapphire is really more of a marketing event so its
for executives and decision makers.

Tech Ed is the one that I’ve
been dying to get to for years. Because its technical the conference
sessions are really workshops about how to make something happen in
SAP. Yes, there’s a vendor section as well where you can fill up on
all manner of swag and I’ve tried going there before but it doesn’t
interest me much. This year I’ve decided that I’ll donate all my
swag to my kids. So even if something looks silly and like I couldn’t
possibly find space for something so stupid, I’ll probably still get
one.

The first session I want to go to is called “Single-Sign-On in Heterogeneous Landscapes via SAP NetWeaverâ€. Cool, eh?

Shut up. It is too.

Next on my list is “Identity Management – Streamlining the User Provisioning Process Between HR, LDAP, and CUAâ€!!! I’m also interested in “The Basics of Web Dynpro for ABAPâ€.

There will be a ton of regular lectures from ASUG and SAP Developers’ Network, as well. I don’t do a lot of
development, but I do some. And more importantly I need to be aware of
how things are done so I can fix our system when someone else screws it
up.

I’m all about fixing problems.

One thing I’m hoping to come
away with is a plan on implementing SAP’s new job scheduling
software, designed and developed by Redwood Software. It looks like it
could be an enterprise-wide scheduling tool that would be able to
launch programs on remote systems (UNIX, linux, Windows or mainframes)
after certain times or events have happened. Right now we use AutoSys,
which is a pretty great tool, but it’s also priced accordingly. I
could save my company a lot of money if I can come up with a way to
rely only on the new scheduling software which is distributed to anyone
with a Netweaver license rather than the super expensive Computer Associates’ AutoSys.

I also want to
link/synchronize all of our user records in all of our systems so they
all have the same information with different security. This will cut
down on the amount of redundant work my group has to perform.

I’m sure more opportunities
will come up. I’m pretty excited about this whole event. It will also
be my first opportunity to commute in to Boston and I need to figure out the best way to get to the new Boston Convention Center.

Right now it looks like I’ll take the orange line from Oak Grove in to Downtown Crossing where I’ll switch to the red line.
With that I’ll go one stop (or so) to South Station. This is the
station where all of the trains from south-of-Boston (incl. Amtrak)
arrive. It’s also the place where the silver line buses depart. The partially completed silver line is a very efficient bus that runs through underground tunnels out to the convention center, world trade center and air port.

What bugs me about this route is that it is a lot of transfers and it sounds like a headache. The MBTA has a nice trip planner
that also suggests I should go to Downtown Crossing then leave the
station and walk the 0.16 miles to the convention center. Only, I’m
sure it is closer to 1 mile than 0.16. Maybe their program screwed up
the decimal point. And if I’m going to the trouble of taking public
transportation to get to the conference I might as well actually take
it to the conference!

On Thursday evening there’s a party
that looks like fun. I want to take Liz to it. Our babysitter said she
could be at our house by 7pm. That puts us an hour late, but I think it
will be enough fun that it will be worth it.

On Friday night we’re having
the team I work with over for Mexican food. Well, no, although Liz is a
great cook Mexican isn’t really her forte. But we have a Mexican
woman on the team who has been criticizing our local Mexican cuisine
for years. (100% in jest – not mean-spirited or anything) I can’t
argue with her because frankly our local Mexican fare isn’t so good.
Nonetheless she’s up here and wanted to be able to show up what real Mexican
food is like but she has no kitchen in her hotel room. So Liz
volunteered to (or let me talk her in to) provide her kitchen for the
event.

So we’ll have a little get-together after work on Friday. It promises to be a VERY busy week, I think.

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The weekend turned out well. I took all
four of the kids to Portland to visit a friend of the family up there.
Their little six year old girl was having a birthday party and really
wanted Chloe there. I was tickled pink because it meant we got to go
and visit some friends we don’t get to see nearly enough of.
We got there before 11am on Saturday bearing gifts, including
piggy-ears for the dogs. The party came off without a hitch. Nobody
cried and nobody got hurt. In my book that counts as a pretty good
event. I sat up late talking with my friends while the kids snoozed
peacefully in their beds.
We visited a fort and a park on the coast south of Portland before we
came home. I have to confess that I thought that was really cool. I
think it was called Williams Fort Park.
The views were outstanding. There were sizable waves crashing on the
beach with lots of boulders and weather worn rocks nearby. The scenery
was gorgeous and the atmosphere was outstanding. There was a WWII
bunker built nearby and a collapsing mansion as well.
It took us a couple of hours to get home because we stopped for lunch,
but it was a pretty good weekend, I have to say. They were good hosts
and I like them and their kids and they seem to like me and my kids.

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I am posting this from our sleep-over at our friends’ house in Portland.

we had a very good day visiting. We went to a playground and enjoyed a birthday party for 6-year-old Gracie. It was a horse-themed party with a horse-cake and pin-the-tail-on-the-horse. they really had quite a nice little party. Poor Grace had a meltdown after all the excitement. Now the kids are listening to a story read by Danielle.

Long day. must sleep soon!

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