Archive for March, 2010

Does “Consultant” mean “Between Jobs”?

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

There are lots of people that are “consultants”. It’s easy to become a consultant — you just add the word “Consulting” to the end of your name, and “George Nobody Consulting” is born. You might incorporate for the tax and liability benefits, thereby adding a “Inc.” or “LLC”.

A lot of people become consultants as a way to make some money and develop contacts after being laid off. Another job comes along, and they’re not consultants anymore. It’s sad to see them let the contact list rot in a drawer until they’re laid off again.

It’s hard to stay a consultant. In order to get work, you have to be willing to sell your services. And that means taking risks like talking to strangers. If you can’t do that, you won’t survive as a “real” consultant.

I was trained as an engineer. Nothing in engineering school teaches you how to sell. But you are selling, even if it’s just convincing your client to do the right thing. If you want to be more effective in your job, some sales training might be a good thing.

Me? I’ve been a consultant for 17 years. I’m not “between jobs” — I’m a real consultant.

P.S. My parents still think I need to get a “real job”. *sigh*

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Another successful CHARON-VAX migration

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

I can’t show you the name, but here’s an email I received on March 22nd from a customer. For information on CHARON-VAX, check out http://www.stanq.com/charon-vax.html.

Subject: BEANIE MOVE COMPLETE in ERIE PA
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2010 11:04:46 -0400

BEANIE$ sho mem
System Memory Resources on 22-MAR-2010 11:01:59.03

Physical Memory Usage (pages): Total Free In Use Modified
Main Memory (128.00Mb) 262144 26089 216652 19403

Virtual I/O Cache Usage (pages): Total Free In Use Maximum
Cache Memory 15997 871 15126 167677

Slot Usage (slots): Total Free Resident Swapped
Process Entry Slots 284 178 96 10
Balance Set Slots 280 184 94 2

Dynamic Memory Usage (bytes): Total Free In Use Largest
Nonpaged Dynamic Memory 16000000 10547584 5452416 10421888
Paged Dynamic Memory 8000000 6670048 1329952 6666368

Paging File Usage (pages): Free Reservable Total
PSWAP:[BEANIE]SWAPFILE.SYS;1 994472 994472 999992
DISK$VAXVMSRL5:[SYS0.SYSEXE]PAGEFILE.SYS 4819 -480 5000
PSWAP:[BEANIE]PAGEFILE.SYS;1 907387 610340 999992

Of the physical pages in use, 62343 pages are permanently allocated to OpenVMS.

and a total success…. Here it is with most people logged in and only a bit of swapping and all is well. Remember, the original system had 384MB but this system is fitting fine in 128 using the VMS OS to do what it knows what to do best, handling virtual address space.

But, since I know you would want to know, I did have a problem yesterday that I think I resolved. It was that sometimes you couldn’t log in while it got hung up in a RWMBXW but then cleared itself.
Here is my buddy, Steve Hoffman’s take on this:
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/wizard/group3/384.html

However, I resolved it by doing something else that I think was causing the MBX waits… setting PFRATL page trimmer back to ZERO, where I think I will leave it.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/docs/openvms_notes_system_tuning.html
3rd paragraph under AWSA, I realized I should NOT have this trimming as the processes on this box never grow to be very large anyway, as we now can see how little is swapped.
It was trimming and then things grew and it a kind of thrashing situation on a bored system (not-loaded at all). Now that PFRATL=0 all is well, I get no RWMBX delays anymore.

I had to leave the system as a VAX-CLUSTER even though it is now only one member as thet CLUSTER alias is used in PROXY (no password) access to PDP-11s. Don’t even ask. I could use Charon-PDPs!!!

Just thought you might want to know that it is virtually complete. :)

OH by the way, remember, I had to place the VAX NIC on windows to 10/half and left it there. I now get no COLLISION DETECT CHECK FAILURES in LANCP, which I got alot of when I had it set to 100full.
BEANIE$ mcr lancp show dev eza/count
0 Collision detect check failure
0 Unrecognized frame destination
0 System buffer unavailable
0 User buffer unavailable

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“Big Bang Theory” show is right — visiting CERN is a big deal!

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

My wife and I watch the “Big Bang Theory” show on CBS. I get all the physics jokes, and Di can feel that a nerd like me could be even worse (like Sheldon).

In the particular episode, Leonard earns an opportunity to visit CERN’s LHC (Large Hadron Collider) here in Geneva. He decides to take his girlfriend, Penny, but Sheldon invokes a clause in their “roommate agreement” that requires Leonard to take Sheldon. The end result is that both Penny and Sheldon come down with the flu, so Leonard takes Rajesh. But Leonard forgets to cancel the “romantic” suite.

My opportunity to visit CERN was a little less dramatic. I’m here on a business trip, and today was a free day. I set up a visit when I learned that I’d be available while here.

I didn’t get to see the LHC in person — they are getting ready to run again, which takes several months of preparation, so only essential personnel are allowed down in the tunnel. My Physics degree doesn’t carry any clout, it seems.

But I did have a good time. Some of the tour group were totally lost, but a few had some good questions. The tour guide was fine, although he was stumped by some of our questions. We saw one of the control rooms, conveniently glassed-off so we visitors can’t disturb the researchers. I wonder what it’s like to work in a glass bowl with new groups coming by every hour or two?

It was interesting to hear the discussion about the Higgs Boson — which is a recurring theme on Numb3rs, which we also watch…

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Hello from Switzerland!

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

I’m in Geneva, Switzerland this week on a business trip. At the moment, I’m sitting in a cafe on the banks of the Rhone river. Night has fallen and it’s beautiful out with the buildings all lit up. I had the guts to order all by myself (okay, I cheated because French for cheeseburger is cheeseburger). The family couldn’t come, but I’m bringing back about 30 pounds of chocolate compensate.

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