Well, I don’t even have a system, and I’m already learning about all the extra things that are required to support it.  Normally, I wouldn’t mind learning new things, but some of this just isn’t what I want to be spending my time on.  Let me tell you a couple of the things I’m struggling with.

1.  Using Linux.  I’m sure this isn’t as bad as I’m guessing, but let’s face it.  I’ve used windows for nearly 20 years, and before that, I spent some time on Unix, but that part of my memory is hazy at best.  So, now I move from my comfortable, albeit sometimes annoying, windows environment, to Suse Linux.  Not the end of the world, but all the tasks I took for granted, will no require Google searches to solve.
2. Make sure you use the correct version.  Ok, so I went to Suse, downloaded the latest version, and found that it isn’t supported by Hana.  At least not yet.  This is a minor inconvenience, but mostly annoying because the version I downloaded is for SAP Enterprises.  You would think, with a title like that, it’s gotta work.  Well, think again.  I’m sure if I wait another month, it’ll be supported, but for now…  I need to download 8 GB of a different version.
3. VMWare.  I can see the benefits of using VMWare over Virtual Box, but there a few big things that are causing me grief.  VMWare is essentially, it’s own operating system.  So this means it formats off your original OS, in order to better utilize the hardware.  Ok, I get it.  The thing that sucks now is that if I want to manage it remotely, I can no longer use Chrome Remote Desktop (which now works great for all my other systems).  I don’t know if there is an iOS app or not to manage it, but in short, if I need to reboot or update a setting, I need to be at the machine, or install the rather large client on a bunch of different machines.  And of course, I have no idea how VMWare works, so I’m having to spend way more time than I’d like learning that too.
4. VMWare ain’t free. This is probably the biggest issue I have.  You get a 60 day trial, then you gotta pay close to $600 to use it.  That’s the cheapest plan I could find.  This is a far cry from Virtualbox.

So, all of this new learning curve, and I haven’t even got to the HANA system yet.  OH well, guess it’s the price you pay to keep up with the times.

Thanks for reading,

Well, today I’ve been testing some of my apps in EHP5.  From an ERP perspective, everything is pretty much the same, with no real changes.  Then I got to the Web Dynpro application, and suddenly, nothing would work.  I went into SE80, and looked at the Web Dynpro application, and for some reason the url was jacked up.  I did a little research, and found a pretty easy fix.  Please note, of the following, I only had to the first 2 parameters in the DEFAULT.PFL, but I’m including the rest, just in case this isn’t enough for you application.

Add the following lines to the file C:\usr\sap\NSP\SYS\profile\DEFAULT.PFL

icm/host_name_full = <machine_name>.com

icm/server_port_0 = PROT=HTTP,PORT=8000,TIMEOUT=3600,PROCTIMEOUT=3600

where <machine_name> is the value that’s assigned to existing parameters such as ‘rdisp/mshost’ and ‘SAPDBHOST’.

 

Add the following line to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

<my_ip_address> <machine_name>.com

where <my_ip_address> can be got from running ipconfig.exe at the command line (or using 10.10.0.10 if you’ve had to install the MS loopback adaptor thingy)

 

Also, run the report RSICF_SERVICE_ACTIVATION to set up Web Dynpro services (so you don’t need to do it all in SICF), with the following values in ‘Technical Name’:

WEB DYNPRO ABAP

WEB DYNPRO ABAP TEST APPS

WEB DYNPRO ABAP DESIGN TIME

and activate the following services in SICF:

/default_host/sap/public/icf_info

/default_host/sap/bc/wdvd

/default_host/sap/bc/echo

/default_host/sap/bc/error

I am really excited today.  I finally got the official word from Apple, and my newest app has been released.  The new Field Service Engineer is the first version of the application I always wanted to build.  This is the perfect application for your technicians in the field.  At a glance, it gives them all the details for every work order they are responsible for.  They can quickly see everything about the customer, including the address and contact people.  They can confirm time and materials, add notes and more.

If you get the change, please check it out.  There is a lot of functionality I plan to add in the near future…  so your feedback would be extremely helpful.

Field Service Engineer

I can’t wait to hear what you think…

Thanks for reading,

My friend Paul turned me onto a cool new collaborative tool, called Slack.  I haven’t fully embraced it yet, but I think I might start using it with all my contractors.  The idea behind Slack is that it’s an instant message that keeps the history of everything you’ve done in one place.  While at a glance, it’s not that much different than Skype, I like it because it’s easy to invite multiple people into a conversation, and very easy to see the full history of everything that happened.

I’m still learning about it…  but I have found one glitch, it doesn’t play well with Firefox.  It seems to work just fine with Explore and even Edge, haven’t tried it Chrome or Safari.  So be sure to avoid using it Firefox, as it crashed my browser several times.  The iOS app is great.  Unlike Skype, I get every message as soon as it comes.  I’ll probably continue to play with it, and i just invited another of my programmers to join.

Give it a shot.  it’s a pretty nice to collaborate.

Thanks for reading,

Well, apparently life has been too boring for my wife taking care of 2 kids under the age of five, not to mention keeping me line.  So as of a week ago, we got ourselves a new doggy.  Ellie is a 1 year Weimaranier, and full of energy.  Needless to say, life is a little more hectic.  I’ve never trained a puppy, I’ve only had dogs 5 years or older.  So this is all new to me.

The upside is that she is incredibly sweet.  The downside is that she has an incredible amount of energy and still likes to use her paws and teeth to get everyone’s attention.  We have lots to do…  so on top of everything else going on in the Piehl house, we’ve added puppy training to the list 🙂  For any of my good friends, you might notice the incredible resemblance to our doggy, Fargo.  Ellie is smaller, but at a glance, sure does look like the ole’ boy.  Anyway, wanted to share the new addition to our family.  Thanks for reading…

 

Well, after almost 6 weeks from my original purchase of hardware, I finally have a working box.  While I still haven’t been refunded for the original machine, at least I have a working machine.  I ended finding a company that specializes in gaming machines.  I came to an interesting conclusion.  If you aren’t going to start investing in a true high end “server”, the next best thing is a gaming machine.  I’ve found that gaming machines are the most powerful machines that the average person ever needs.  This puts them into the affordable range, without investing in servers.

Now, I did do a little homework this time around.  First off, gaming machines need to be current technology, rather than 2007 like the Dell T7400 I tried.  All the components are easily purchased on my own.  In fact, I could have made the machine for roughly $300 less, but having someone else build it, warranty it and test it, was well worth the $300 to me.  And this is coming from someone that used to build machines.

The good news it that I’ve been able to hand the machine over to my contract with a barebones SUSE operating system.  Now the real fun will begin.  I have no Linux experience, and no HANA experience…  let the good times roll.

Thanks for reading,

Well, as always, I learn things the hard way.  I decided to deal with a new company to get my server.  ICompNY to be exact.  They had a server with a lot of memory, for $1000.  This really should’ve been my first red flag.  But I figured, what the hell.  So I ordered it (over a month ago).  After some slow shipping, I finally get it after about 8 days.  Maybe I’m just spoiled from Amazon prime, but 8 days is pretty crazy.  Well, this thing is 50 lbs.  No joke.  I put it on the scale.  I carried this thing to far corner of my house, unpacked the “unorthodox” packaging, Red Flag #2, and attempted to set it up.   When I say unorthodox, it’s truly a big box, with some random stuffing in there to fill it up.  No original packaging (except for the keyboard).

Well, much to my dismay, it only has DVI outputs for the monitor.  I’ve been dealing with computers for a long time and this is the first time I’ve ever had not 1, but 2 video cards that only had DVI.  Red flag #3.  Well, I wait for amazon to deliver me an adapter…  that doesn’t work, so I wait for a new video card.  I get that installed, and finally I’m feeling good.  I go through my day long process of updating all the windows updates, Norton, dropbox, and everything else I need to get loaded to start using this beast.  I go to bed while a big batch of updates are processing.  I wake up the next morning and the damn thing won’t turn on.  I deal with tech support for a while, and they offer to send me a replacement.  I reluctantly accept.  Afterall, they offered to upgrade my processor for my trouble.  Which helped, since the beast was slower than my 3 year old laptop to run Windows, Red Flag #4.

I get the new machine (it takes another 8 days, and when it arrives, I’m vacation, so I’m delayed even further).  On Monday, I spend the rest of the day getting everything setup.  It’s marginally faster than the first, but still slow considering it has 64GB of RAM and an SSHD.  Well, I wake up the next morning, and the same thing happened.  This time, the power button flashes when I use it.  So I do some online hunting.  I try a couple of easy fixes, works for an hour, then shuts down again.  The only remaining fixes talk about a faulty power supply or bad memory.  Now here’s where I royally screwed up.  I didn’t do my homework to realize just how old this machine was.  It was originally built in 2007.  Doom on Me, and go figure, power supplies were a common issue.

Well, now I’m back to square 1.  I’m hunting for reasonable systems that I can plug and play or quickly build, that won’t break my bank.  AFter all of this, I’m starting to wonder if the AWS isn’t a better approach.  At least I won’t be dealing with these headaches…  Anyway, back to shopping.

Thanks for reading,

After reading more of the book Traction, I find myself in a typical position…  how do I possibly keep up with everything I need to be doing?  Between the day job of consulting, running the night business, and still finding time for family and maybe even a hint of social life, it doesn’t leave much time for sleep.

Well, after reading more, I’m finding that the idea isn’t to accomplish everything.  It’s to accomplish the most important things.  I know I’ve written on it before, but I often need a reminder.  You have to prioritize and only worry about the top priorities.  Of course, this gets more complicated when you can’t decide what is the most important.  Obviously, the day job and family have to come first.  So that leaves limited hours to get the other stuff done.  So if you only have 3 hours a day to work on your business, what should you do?

Well, I’m learning, even though it’s painful, that sales and marketing has to be job one.  If you have someone else taking care of that for you, good for you.  But if much of that burden falls on you (like it does me), it means that emails, calls, if you are lucky, maybe even face to face appointments have to be the top priority.  After that, then comes the highest priorities to support sales.  For me, it’s currently setting up the free trial groundwork.  This means some coding, LOTS of testing, and of course legal paperwork.  But, I have to remember, above all, make those touches to m prospects.  Without customers, it’s just a hobby.  And I want to have a successful business.  At the end of the day, don’t worry about getting everything done.  Just worry about getting the important things done.  Everything else will either move up in priority, or will fall off the list because it wasn’t really that critical.

Thanks for reading,

In my quest to start running my business like a business, one of the steps to define your processes and document them.  I originally thought this would be easy.  But after a couple of hours, I quickly realized that the volume of processes my small business has is much larger than I originally guessed.  Now, the exercise was supposed to start at the high level.  I just starting documenting all of the things I do on a weekly, monthly or yearly basis.  Even capturing the steps at a high level, quickly caught me off guard.

So, why is it so important to document your steps?  There are actually quite a few reasons.  The first and most important is that if things are documented, everyone is following the same process.  This becomes the gold standard for your business because with documented processes, you can quickly find what step was missed or done incorrectly whenever an issue comes up.  Then to make it better, you can analyze your steps to find the best way to avoid the issue from coming up again.  The next major thing you get is a repeatable process.  This is exactly what someone else is looking for when you would like to sell your business.  If you can hand over processes that are documented, and followed, that means someone else might be willing to pay you big for you business.

Last, but certainly not least, is that you get to start taking yourself out of the business.  Now maybe you love being the go-to person, having all the answers, and being able to get things done fast.  But wouldn’t you rather let someone else be that person, and give yourself time to handle the big issues your company is facing?  I know I would.  So regardless of your size, document your processes.  You can’t lose by doing this.

thanks for reading,

Well, today I’m going to talk about a recent experience that forced me change my own security.  I recently did a roadtrip with my 2 little kids (almost 5 and 2).  Well, we spent the night in a hotel, and long story short, my little boy hid my ipad under some furniture, and I didn’t know it was gone until we had driven about 3 hours away.  Well, the IPad didn’t have a password, didn’t have find my phone enabled, and also had my dropbox account, email, etc…

Well, I got my ipad back, but after that scare I realized that I was very lazy in my password selection.  My good friend Justin reminded me that my password could get hacked at any site…  and with one password, criminals out there will try every other site to see if the same password works.  Well, I was using the same password for everything.  (I know, I know…  I’m a little slow).  Thanks to Justin, I spent a day setting up a new Application called 1 Password, and resetting all of my important passwords, then I started moving onto everything else.

This is no small endeavor, but totally worth the time and effort.  Now I’m smart enough to have unique passwords for everything.  It doesn’t mean an account of mine won’t get hacked… but at least it’s not easy for someone to hack ALL of my accounts.

Thanks for reading,