Thursday, May 24, 2007

Challenge: How nerd are you?!

Whoa...
I took the survey that was suggested some of the BEA guys.
The survey tells me that I am 99%, a Nerd God!. Could you imagine that?
I am nerdier than 99% of the population.

This must be caused in some part because of the SunOS part :D
How's your score?

I am nerdier than 99% of all people. Are you a nerd? Click here to find out!

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

XServer Configuration in MiNevada Fixed!


Lintang and Adhari from Open Solaris User Group Indonesia (OSUG-ID) has answered my question in the Open Solaris User Group. The answer is referring to previous post sometimes ago by Adhari (thanks to Lintang for the pointer and thanks to Adhari for the resourceful answer). I posted the answer here just in case the Google Groups link is available no more.

Mungkin ada yang mengalami problem yang sama ketika configure Xserver di VMWare. Sedikit berbagi trick ketika configure XServer pakai Xsun provider Solaris 10 di atas VMWare. Beberapa hari coba-coba install Solaris 10 di VMWare, inginnya mau start XServer dengan resolusi 1024x768. Problem muncul, konfigurasi sudah benar pakai 1024x768 tapi output selalu produce resolusi 800x600.
Step konfigurasi:
1. Jalankan kdmconfig di single user mode (init level 1)
2. Pilih Xsun
3. Pilih Change Video Device/Monitor
4. Pilih XF86-VMWARE VMWare Inc vmware0405
5. Pilih MultiFreq 56khz (up to 1280x1024 interlaced)
6. Pilih 17"
7. Pilih 1024x768 - 16M colors
8. Continue dan test
9. Jika tampil dengan benar pilih Yes
10. Kembali ke Init Level 3

No worry if you don't understand Bahasa, I'll translate it for you.
May be there are people who experience the same problem when configuring the Xserver on VMWare. I want to share a little trick to configure the XServer using Sun Solaris 10 Xsun provider on VMWare. After days of trial and errors installing Solaris 10 in VMWare, I just wanted to start XServer using the 1024x768 resolution. The problem occurs, though the configuration is for 1024x768 but the output always produces the 800x600 resolution.
This is my configuration step by step:
1. Run kdmconfig in single user mode (init level 1)
2. Choose Xsun
3. Choose Change Video Device/Monitor
4. Choose XF86-VMWARE VMWare Inc vmware0405
5. Choose MultiFreq 56khz (up to 1280x1024 interlaced)
6. Choose 17"
7. Choose 1024x768 - 16M colors
8. Continue and test
9. If it shows correctly then choose Yes
10. Back to Init Level 3

The article itself does not directly answer my question, because I don't know whether the vmware solution applies to me which uses different vm (that is Microsoft Virtual PC). But I believe this article is a highly resourceful one, because it gives me idea on what to try.

So, this is what I actually did:
Crawling through the broken graphics, try to locate and click the [Command line login].

Change to single user mode:
# init 1

Try to run the kdmconfig
# kdmconfig

Not working, because the term is not recognized. I eventually managed to find a working terminal type (remember those good ol' they when ANSI terminals are luxurious stuffs).

# export TERM=ansi
# kdmconfig

Choose Xsun, continue.
Change Video device/Monitor, continue.
Notebook LCD XGA 48kHz (1024x768 @60Hz), continue.
15-inch, continue.
1024x768 - 256 colors @60 MHz, continue.
No changes needed - Test/Save and Exit, continue.
Test.
If you can see the display, click the [OK] button.
Voila, it works!!!

Back to init level 3.

# init 3

Yipeeee!

Saturday, May 19, 2007

PayPal Account Verification

Some times ago, PayPal doesn't allow any users from Indonesia to register. I hate it each time I bumped into site which requires transactions through PayPal accounts. I don't have the account! I can not register an account as well!
Several months ago I heard somebody told me that now Indonesians may have the PayPal account as well. I tried to check it out through the registration page, to see whether it is confirmed or not. I saw "Indonesia" in the combo box. But at that time I had not had enough time and need to join PayPal. Today I try it again and registered successfully.
Somehow the site now have 2 layer of verification.
First one they screen the valid credit card data. Yet, your send limit is USD 100, unless you have gone through the second screening.
Second screening, they will ask your permission to debit your account for a small amount of money. Because of the bill, there is some (credit card) merchant entry in your billing statement. They smartly put a verification code in your billing item, either you have it electronically or printed on monthly basis. Then you must enter the verification code to the website. The amount will be credit into your account back after the registration has been completed. Wow, this is two-fold, because it also proves that PayPal could send money to us too.
I found this as a nice feature, since you don't have to burn the house (market for tens of millions of Indonesian Internet users) to get rid of mice (Indonesian carders). The mice need to work harder to find their cheese...

Friday, May 18, 2007

Problem with Solaris 11 x86 resolution

After successfully passed through the disk layout problem, last night I managed to try running my Solaris 11/Nevada on Microsoft Virtual PC (it's free to use, really!) again. Here I encountered a problem, that is the OS requires a higher resolution than my notebook can support. Probably because I allowed the virtual machine to be set to any requested resolution. The installer requested the highest resolution.
After the installation finishes the OS demands the-too-high-resolution which doesn't display well on my notebook screen.
I'll try to find out whether those guys in Open Solaris User Group could help me on this thing.

Confident and Secure Clients: Good Communication

There are at least 2 things we need to have when we work as consultant in our IT consulting business.
  • deliver the agreed tasks
  • while the project is still going on we must give the client enough secure feeling that the tasks not yet accomplished will be accomplished
As a technical people, we tend to focus on the first point and forget the second one. The second one suppose to be the job of project managers, business owners, etc. But as you become more of senior members of the consultants, you will eventually be expected to provide the second thing more than the first one. The first one should be done by juniors under your supervision. You are in the project to help the juniors deliver the tasks; hence in some way give the client the feeling of security.

I am in a project where we found that the client's project manager is so worry that we will be dragging the schedule far behind. What I perceive as 'lacking confidence'. Then they will run after the management to give pressure to the project management, which in turn will try to push or motivate the team. Sometimes it just isn't working. Yes, I know that there are some tasks that needs directions, motivations and pressures. But I would also like to assert that 'lacking confidence' should not be the major driving force of doing this.

Some part of the delays are caused by the customers and some by us (vendors). But I know that somehow we also didn't feed them with enough information to give them more secure feeling on the completion of this project. That we have missed within last 2 weeks. We don't update the issue tracker very often. Sometimes they just feel that the response time is very bad. There were so many pending issues, if only that our developers care to take 1 hour a day to update the issues, there wouldn't be so much pending issues during the weekly meeting.

What I wanted to highlight today is :
Good communication is part of our consulting job. We should not neglect providing the client with reasons why they still trust us to accomplish the tasks. Failure in providing this for a long period of time will have greater impact on good will as well as financial matters.
Although we are technical people, we are part of the bigger team which in turn has to deliver and to maintain our customer's trust and secure feeling.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Nevada and then XmlBeans

This early morning, I managed to boot my MiNevada Solaris. It says something that recommends you to boot using Solaris failsafe, because it seems that it wasn't restarted gracefully.
Actually there's some terms I need to find out, because Solaris has different terms for disk stuffs some of them are cylinder groups/CG and slices.

Currently it is a high time for our (our and our clients') project, because we are somewhere half way to the completion of the SIT (System Integration Test). There are some problems that dragged our schedule, especially the slow and unstable network connection. Some of the SMSC (Short Messaging System Center) was also reported to fail on bindings/connection. The problems seemed to be irreproducible easily, because there were no changes on the binaries we deployed. It has been working before, now it doesn't work.

Last week I offered myself to present this topic: Apache Xmlbeans for the next Java Meeting Up (JaMU) on June 2007. I will not be able to attend this month's JaMU as I will be here in Cyberjaya until beginning of next month. I was lucky to experience it since I was assigned for the Galaxy customer care application until my latest project. Both WebLogic Platforms (8.1 and 9.2) heavily use the Apache Xmlbeans framework. I think the hardest think to learn at first is the XSD file. For me the XSD structure is obscure. I am not getting used to XML parsing other than using the Apache Commons Digester library. That's the way Struts digest the struts-config.xml file, and I think that was more than enough.
But since I am exposed to a project that heavily uses web services, I need a more sophisticated framework to map XML to Bean and vice versa. That was the time when I found this XML Bean mapping framework. The nice thing about it is that it offers the full functionality of XML while it is easily usable using ordinary Java Bean accessor methods.

Friday, May 11, 2007

Mi Nevada Nueva: Solaris 5.11 x86


I have tried to install Solaris x86 on a Microsoft Virtual PC since 2 months ago, but I almost gave up. The main problem is that: the installer just didn't accept its default disk layout.
I tried to some manual layout myself, but it failed as well.

Last night, I gave some more try, and eventually this did I succed!!!

My Configuration is:
RAM 1MB (they said in the milis at least you need 620MB or so).
16 GB disk.

I use this disk layout:
slice (for 16GB virtual disk)

0 / 4855
1 swap 525
2 overlap 16355
3 /var 1027
4 /usr 9922

Yipee!