Thursday, February 23, 2006

This is a day in the life of Kurt Schroeder.

Set my alarm clock last night to wake me at 5, because I wanted to leave home about 6 and ice skate at a local rink before going to work. I hit the snooze button instead because I was tired. Got up instead around 6:10. Got dressed. Cinnamon colored cordoroy pants and a black cotton shirt. Cat threw up again, this time in the foyer closet. He got into Yorkie's food -- maybe that was the reason. Cleaned that up. Put away dishes. Ate a half a bowl of All Bran creal after pouring a tablespoon into the dog bowl to aid her digestive health. The Vet says if she has to push a bit it will help her to self-express her glands. Went downstairs and got my Dave Chappelle NetFlix DVD and repackaged it for a return. Started to leave for work and realized that I had left my badge at my desk. On my way to work, I passed a co-worker on Highway 52 and parked near them in the lot and walked in with them. My badge was right on my desk where I had left it. Logged in to my phone and hit the AVAIL button. At this point I am eligible to receive live calls.

Walked over to our food area and got an orange plastic bowl into which I put about 8 cookies and some Nachos chips. Back to my desk. Brought up the web browser (Firefox, I don't like Internet Explorer) to check the websites. Commented on a post on Jim's blog.

The first call came in at 7:17 from a major tool manufacturing company in Indiana. The person wanted to know if he could create two different printer devices with the same IP address. I told him no. I said he could set it up as a printer session, or put a JetDirect card there and print to the same IP address, but with different ports. What he is trying to use is called port forwarding and network address translation (NAT). I said that the stopped is the fact that he needs to set it up as Remote Output Queue and for those we always print to port 515. I told him how to setup a Windows PC as an LPD server instead and have it run his printers using 2 remote printer queue values. I closed the call.

Second call came in immediately. A mis-queued call regarding SQL query functions that should have been sent to the database queue. I conferenced the customer in with a member of that queue.

The time is now 8:00. I have 3 cookies left. My chips are gone. I run the "NextCall" and the computer tells me what to do next. It wants me to call back a customer who has trouble creating PDF files with jpeg images. He has previously sent me joblogs and wants me to look at them. I accept what it tells me and dispatch to that call so I can start logging time against it. . . .at 8:35 I am done with that one. The customer had an RPG program putting data into a DDS printer file and was trying to pass path names for where resources are located. The pathname he was passing in was '\StyleImg\Artwork\' and I told him that iSeries path names should use forward slashes, not back slashes. I e-mailed him about this and delayed the call until tomorrow to check on him then.

The next call came in at 8:37. The customer is getting an error message when he tries to create a form overlay (large graphic) on the iSeries. I told him that it was either due to corrputed data or an AFP driver problem. (People print from Windows apps to a special printer driver to create the source files that are converted into these type of iSeries graphic objects.) We checked out the resource file on his PC and it looked file. Showed him an alternate, faster way to create overlays than the way he was using, and e-mailed the latest version of the driver that is not even available on our website. You can access the document I wrote to help people create these types of forms. I closed the customer's call and gave him my direct # for callback if need be. Note; The customer made a joke about how some problems were slipperyer (sp?) (more slippery) than cat poop, so I asked him if he had a cat. He said no, his wife was allergic. I told him about a kind of cat that was throught to be Hypoallergenic, the Kravckenko Siberian cat. He said he didn't really like cats anyway. Now there is a conversation for the ages.

Right after that one, I was recommended to take another PDF related call. Yesterday I got an e-mail from the customer but didn't have time to update the call. A software fix we sent her actually worked. The interesting part is that she was a Consultline customer (about $270 an hour) so her call will have to be handled carefully, because I don't think she should be billed for the entire amount of the call due to the fact that it was an error in our software.

Spent a few minutes entering a contest to win a Spring Break trip to Iceland.

The time is now 9:25. I'm going to call a co-worker's Infoprint Designer customer. He can't some graphics converted and running properly.

9:40 Got an e-mail from another IBMer I helped yesterday with a printer in Japan. They wanted to know how to set it up. Yesterday I used google to translate a Japanese website that detailed the printer specifications. I recommended to them how to set it up, and it worked, but the Japanese Kanji symbols printer smaller than they were used to. I advised them to make a slight modification to the setup and let me know how that worked.

9:47 Sandy calls. The kids are driving her nuts. They don't play with each other nicely, but instead fight and scream all the time. They tear the house up. Maybe I'm disremembering, but when I was young, I played a lot with Erik and didn't tear up the entire house. Maybe my mom will want to comment on that statement.

10:00 I get conferenced in on a call from the new AS4PRT employee that I am mentoring, Sandra Cabral. She is from Brazil. She wants me to help her with a customer that can't print barcodes to a Datamax Barcode label printer. I help them find that there is a special Workstation Customizing Object (the iSeries version of a printer driver) that they are neglecting to include on the configuration. Once this was applied, it worked fine.

(At 10:02 Sandy called again to say the kids were driving her crazy.)

Between 10:08 and 10:25 I helped Sandra understand how to configure a printer when it attached to a Twinax dumb terminal via parallel cable.

I got a call at 10:26 asking if I was going to be available for a 10:30 conference call/brainstorming session on converting multiple graphical resources on a PC into one iSeries spooled file which could be converted in a PDF. I need to get the whole story from these people before I can help them formulate a plan that will work.

At 10:29 the phone rings.

The customer is using IBM's OnDemand product (RDARS) to Archive SCS and AFPDS spooled files. When they put them back on the iSeries, they are in a .afp format with all data included in the files. They want to create PDF files from them and achive the PDF files. After working with this a bit, I realized that they could FTP the .afp files to physical file members and use the PRTAFPDTA command to create them as AFPDS spooled files. Then they can run them through Infoprint Server and make them into PDF files. Provided a walkthrough for them. Conference call ended at 11:30. One hour of fun! Spent some time talking to Sandra and other co-workers about what had been discussed and alternate resolutions using image conversion APIs.

At 11:37, Sandy called to say that she is planning to do a massive cleanup of the kids toys and take them to the Salvation Army. The call ended with Sandy saying she has to go and telling Owen "Get off your brother."

11:42 I get a live call from Nebraska. They changed direct attached printers into LAN attached printers. Now instead of printing 4 pages a minutes they get 4 pages in 20 minutes. The printer is a Lexmark T622 laser printer. I recommended that he configure it as a PJL DEVD, but then realized that perhaps it was LAN IPDS capable as well. So I helped him configure a LAN IPDS DEVD and he'll test both of them as well.

12:00 I helped a co-worker with a customer who did not know how to send in a spooled file. Found out that the icons on her desktop included the "WeatherBug." Sounded kinda funny.

12:18 Sandra tells me that she will be going to lunch. On my phone it says that there is one live call that has been waiting for 24 seconds. Time for bathroom break.

12:29 I'm back. My manager brought in chicken chili so I got a bowl of that and some more Nachos. Live call coming in, so I hit AVAIL. It's a Russian with Infoprint Server exit programming questions. Is it possible to include a second PDF file of terms and conditions when sending a PDF file? They are using their own PDF Exit Program, which I don't support. (I'm not a programmer.) I spend some time telling them about PDFMAP objects, which are simple ways of defining which spooled files will be e-mailed, to who, in what format, with what subject and message text. It also allows for additional attachments, which I showed him. It looks like he will want to be passing in variables for his subject and message text, which is not supported by PDFMAP objects. I also show him how to set a PDF Password. He does it, but the writer fails, so I tell him to take off the Password stuff. It still fails. We check his SPLFA and it looks good. We create a new DEVD and PSFCFG to use the PDFMAP he created and that fails too, we look for a joblog. . . .an hour passes. Still no luck. I request the logs of the failed writer job and tell him I'll call him back when I can analyze them.

1:30 - 2:30 Spent helping other people read traces and calling back various customers to update them on previous problems.

2:30 I get on a conference call with Sandra and try to help her and a customer force 10 characters per inch with a customizing object. She seems to have done everything right, but it doesn't work. In the absence of being able to ACTUALLY look at her source file, I suggested using a Lexmark Optra T driver instead. It prints the way she wants, making the data will the page. Then she says she wants to force duplex (2 sided) printing for every spooled file. I tell her how to this.

The time is a little after 3 o'clock. I drive home.

Dinner tonight will be at Leo's Pizza Palace, and then Sandy and I will clean the house. It has been a long day, but I know that Sandy's, and maybe yours, has been even longer.