Sunday, January 26, 2003
Saturday 25th
This is going to be a long one.
One more day to implementation. I got a call from Boon Nam while I was driving to work (it was already 830am and I was still on the PIE around Bedok) and he told me that he's on MC and that I have to cover for him as Ag UH. When I reached the office Nor was already there looking as if she's been up all night. She gave me some tasks to do, the server portion was almost complete for her testing so I gladly helped out wherever I could. What I couldnt take was surprises. Jing Liang and Rebecca came to my cube and suddenly asked whether we have tested the portion of using MQ client to push cases from the UDB server to the Websphere. Hmmm Dilip and I have tested thoroughly the portion from the checkpoints to the UDB server, the ftp from the mainframe to the server, and the uploading of cases to the database. I wasnt involved in the MQ portion, not one bit. But Nor was extremely busy with the program migration, Kok Ching and Leh Choon was waiting for her. So she just asked me whether I can help out. Just minutes ago she had a shouting match with Lip Meng on the phone, apparently he didnt answer her numerous pages so she called Boon Nam about it. And Boon Nam called him. Not wanting to add to her stress, I went over to Geok Hoon with Jing Liang to discuss about the MQ portion.
She asked me some questions, I was stumped. I know nobody installed MQ Client on my server, so I told her, no the server does NOT have MQ client, it only has java programs to invoke MQ on the Websphere. And there was the mistake (or not so). She went on and on about how Nor should test it much earlier and not the last minute (we've been testing from Dilip's PC which is in the HDB LAN. My server is in its own DMZ which goes through a firewall). Then when I went back to my cube, I found out that my server IS the MQ client. Fuck man. Wee Wah helped out a lot, he had gone through one complete cycle similar to mine. He even talked to Geok Hoon on the phone and told her not to scold me. I felt stupid. But am I to blame? Never mind.. I clarified to Geok Hoon and she was very nice, she gave me the CD to install the client. To cut a looong story short, I pushed for Nor to test out the MQ portion asap, cos its Saturday and everybody's going home soon. With Dilip busy helping her, I managed to get Shekar to help me out. We tested for about 3 hours! And it couldnt work, tried with many different version of MQ and Com.jar, installed the MQ client, thought it was the firewall blocking it, paged for Jing Liang and even got Wee Hing to add some firewall rules.. Nor panicked and asked whether we should postpone everything. I told her to give me some time to think. Sent an sms to KC telling him that maybe tonight I might not be free to meet him.
And it hit me after looking again at the properties file. Bam! Duh! They have coded the Hostname to connect to as 'HDBWAST01'. Thinking that my server would recognise that hostname and will know which IP address to connect to. But my server is in a DMZ and would NOT recognise HDB's DNS entry. So I added in the hostname definition in the local hosts file and it worked! Able to connect to Websphere, then to mainframe using MQ. I was so relieved I ran back to Nor and Dilip and said, DUH! It was so easy and everybody had to look outside but not something so obvious for the solution. So they went full steam ahead and called on Leh Choon and Kok Ching to do program migration (not after solving some minor problems). They left at about 4pm. I stayed back to cleanup the server and taught Nor how to make use of the Task Scheduler. Mervin called and said that KC asked him whether he was busy and he said yes and after that there was no follow-up on KC's part. I was too stressed to hear about that. What a nitpick.
Left the office at 7pm. Nor and Dilip was still coding. Dropped Saul at Nicoll Highway opp Suntec then I went on to pick Mervin up at Johnson's house. Got my first call from Dilip then, something about the UDB. We had dinner at Boy Accident Area, Nasi Lemak, Mee Goreng, Fried Chicken.. I was famished! Didnt even have time to eat breakfast of lunch earlier. After that we went to Frankel to meet up with KC and Sofian. We talked about Bintan trip, Sofian managed to get 2 girls to go with us. Heh. Chinese. Well. Hello! Out of curiousity I sms Poh asking him whether he wanna join us and he replied saying that Audrey went to a dinner and that he had to look after his son and all that. So I asked him whether we can go to his house after dinner. And he replied with a "Of course! Come come come!"
:)
So off we all went to his house and surprisingly Joshua was not there. Poh said that he's at his mother's. Hmm. *WHAT*ever. Ijust wanted to talk to him, it has been so long. But the mood just wasnt right, we talked other things like my impending unemployment, Soccer, travelling, etc. He has grown, sideways. Nose is still as big though. Said our goodbyes and left his house at 1130. Everybody agreed to go have a drink so we went to Geylang Lor 9 for soyabean curd. Talked some more cock and then before we left, KC paid for the bill and then Mervin gave his share to him. (Earlier at Frankel KC gave back Mervin tea money which Mervin paid for). This might sound very trivial, well, it IS very trivial, but on the ride home Mervin bitched on and on about how KC shouldnt accept the money and said "No no its on me" or something. I got very upset and tried hard not to show it. What the hell is this? If you wanna zoom in on little details so that you can have the luxury and pleasure of showing to me that a person is of a highly questionable moral standing, then for goodness sake solve it on the spot and tell him what you think. Why keep bothering me with your unhappiness about litle things and making it stressful? Shouldnt it be simple? What does he want me to do? I dont see any problems, KC and me are just like normal. Mervin is making it as if KC fucked my little sister or something.
Hey, if you want us to pick, boy we can pick a lot about you also. I mean, I know he has my best interest at heart and that me and him are OK, but you wont like it either if I constantly talk to you about your friends as if you want me to make enemies of them. Sorry, I am fine with everybody. To quote a Wuxia wisdom taken from the dud movie Hero:
"The supreme achievement of swordsmanship is that you no longer have the sword in your hand or in your heart. You seek peace".
Oh, Dilip and Nor called me up like 4 times throughout that night. They are having problems connecting to the UDB. I have to be in the office at about 730.
I better go to bed now. 4 more hours till 7am.
PEACE
This is going to be a long one.
One more day to implementation. I got a call from Boon Nam while I was driving to work (it was already 830am and I was still on the PIE around Bedok) and he told me that he's on MC and that I have to cover for him as Ag UH. When I reached the office Nor was already there looking as if she's been up all night. She gave me some tasks to do, the server portion was almost complete for her testing so I gladly helped out wherever I could. What I couldnt take was surprises. Jing Liang and Rebecca came to my cube and suddenly asked whether we have tested the portion of using MQ client to push cases from the UDB server to the Websphere. Hmmm Dilip and I have tested thoroughly the portion from the checkpoints to the UDB server, the ftp from the mainframe to the server, and the uploading of cases to the database. I wasnt involved in the MQ portion, not one bit. But Nor was extremely busy with the program migration, Kok Ching and Leh Choon was waiting for her. So she just asked me whether I can help out. Just minutes ago she had a shouting match with Lip Meng on the phone, apparently he didnt answer her numerous pages so she called Boon Nam about it. And Boon Nam called him. Not wanting to add to her stress, I went over to Geok Hoon with Jing Liang to discuss about the MQ portion.
She asked me some questions, I was stumped. I know nobody installed MQ Client on my server, so I told her, no the server does NOT have MQ client, it only has java programs to invoke MQ on the Websphere. And there was the mistake (or not so). She went on and on about how Nor should test it much earlier and not the last minute (we've been testing from Dilip's PC which is in the HDB LAN. My server is in its own DMZ which goes through a firewall). Then when I went back to my cube, I found out that my server IS the MQ client. Fuck man. Wee Wah helped out a lot, he had gone through one complete cycle similar to mine. He even talked to Geok Hoon on the phone and told her not to scold me. I felt stupid. But am I to blame? Never mind.. I clarified to Geok Hoon and she was very nice, she gave me the CD to install the client. To cut a looong story short, I pushed for Nor to test out the MQ portion asap, cos its Saturday and everybody's going home soon. With Dilip busy helping her, I managed to get Shekar to help me out. We tested for about 3 hours! And it couldnt work, tried with many different version of MQ and Com.jar, installed the MQ client, thought it was the firewall blocking it, paged for Jing Liang and even got Wee Hing to add some firewall rules.. Nor panicked and asked whether we should postpone everything. I told her to give me some time to think. Sent an sms to KC telling him that maybe tonight I might not be free to meet him.
And it hit me after looking again at the properties file. Bam! Duh! They have coded the Hostname to connect to as 'HDBWAST01'. Thinking that my server would recognise that hostname and will know which IP address to connect to. But my server is in a DMZ and would NOT recognise HDB's DNS entry. So I added in the hostname definition in the local hosts file and it worked! Able to connect to Websphere, then to mainframe using MQ. I was so relieved I ran back to Nor and Dilip and said, DUH! It was so easy and everybody had to look outside but not something so obvious for the solution. So they went full steam ahead and called on Leh Choon and Kok Ching to do program migration (not after solving some minor problems). They left at about 4pm. I stayed back to cleanup the server and taught Nor how to make use of the Task Scheduler. Mervin called and said that KC asked him whether he was busy and he said yes and after that there was no follow-up on KC's part. I was too stressed to hear about that. What a nitpick.
Left the office at 7pm. Nor and Dilip was still coding. Dropped Saul at Nicoll Highway opp Suntec then I went on to pick Mervin up at Johnson's house. Got my first call from Dilip then, something about the UDB. We had dinner at Boy Accident Area, Nasi Lemak, Mee Goreng, Fried Chicken.. I was famished! Didnt even have time to eat breakfast of lunch earlier. After that we went to Frankel to meet up with KC and Sofian. We talked about Bintan trip, Sofian managed to get 2 girls to go with us. Heh. Chinese. Well. Hello! Out of curiousity I sms Poh asking him whether he wanna join us and he replied saying that Audrey went to a dinner and that he had to look after his son and all that. So I asked him whether we can go to his house after dinner. And he replied with a "Of course! Come come come!"
:)
So off we all went to his house and surprisingly Joshua was not there. Poh said that he's at his mother's. Hmm. *WHAT*ever. Ijust wanted to talk to him, it has been so long. But the mood just wasnt right, we talked other things like my impending unemployment, Soccer, travelling, etc. He has grown, sideways. Nose is still as big though. Said our goodbyes and left his house at 1130. Everybody agreed to go have a drink so we went to Geylang Lor 9 for soyabean curd. Talked some more cock and then before we left, KC paid for the bill and then Mervin gave his share to him. (Earlier at Frankel KC gave back Mervin tea money which Mervin paid for). This might sound very trivial, well, it IS very trivial, but on the ride home Mervin bitched on and on about how KC shouldnt accept the money and said "No no its on me" or something. I got very upset and tried hard not to show it. What the hell is this? If you wanna zoom in on little details so that you can have the luxury and pleasure of showing to me that a person is of a highly questionable moral standing, then for goodness sake solve it on the spot and tell him what you think. Why keep bothering me with your unhappiness about litle things and making it stressful? Shouldnt it be simple? What does he want me to do? I dont see any problems, KC and me are just like normal. Mervin is making it as if KC fucked my little sister or something.
Hey, if you want us to pick, boy we can pick a lot about you also. I mean, I know he has my best interest at heart and that me and him are OK, but you wont like it either if I constantly talk to you about your friends as if you want me to make enemies of them. Sorry, I am fine with everybody. To quote a Wuxia wisdom taken from the dud movie Hero:
"The supreme achievement of swordsmanship is that you no longer have the sword in your hand or in your heart. You seek peace".
Oh, Dilip and Nor called me up like 4 times throughout that night. They are having problems connecting to the UDB. I have to be in the office at about 730.
I better go to bed now. 4 more hours till 7am.
PEACE
