IBM – Page 7 – Famous last words of Marius

I hate packing!

Posted on 18 May 2007 by Marius — No Comments ↓

My trip to IBM Denmark is just a bit too long to just take a small suitcase that will go through as hand luggage. On top of that Denmark is moving from winter to summer so the weather can be anything from below 10 degrees to over 20. This means one have to pack for both mild and cold weather.

I hate all this permutations … I am one of those travelers that like to throw something in a suitcase a hour or so before I am due to leave for the airport. Do not think it is going to work this time. Firstly I have to leave for the airport while I am halve asleep and I do not want to take the change that I leave halve of what I should take behind. Since this is a business trip I should actually put some thought into what I will wear. I believe the Danish people dress way more formally than us to work. So more formal pants than just a couple of jeans which is what I wear to work here in SA.

Technorati Tags: travel, ibm, denmark, packing

Denmark trip – Update

Posted on 17 May 2007 by Marius — No Comments ↓

I have eventually received my Visa this morning after the 3rd try and it is valid and correct. Luckily it has now been issued for a whole year so any travel to Europe over the next year will be a bit easier. The travel agent did manage to screw up my travel date so now I will be traveling a day earlier (Sunday, 20th) and stay one day longer in Copenhagen. Will have to work in some sightseeing.

I have to be at the airport at some un-godly hour on Sunday morning — 7am flight out of Cape Town. And I am landing back in Cape Town at just an un-godly hour. Saturday morning at 5am.

Technorati Tags: denmark, visa, travel, copenhagen

Thinkpad T61 — I want!!

Posted on 13 May 2007 by Marius — 3 Comments ↓

I want one of these babies. I am due for a new laptop and since I now work for IBM it will be a Thinkpad. Think I have to hold on bit with my old one and wait till the T61 arrive here in South Africa.

Technorati Tags: ibm, thinkpad, t61

Danish embassy and Visa problems

Posted on 2 May 2007 by Marius — No Comments ↓

I was suppose to travel to Denmark on Monday the 7th, in fact originally planned for 23 April. Last Wednesday, 25 April, my Visa was issued just to find out that it was issued for the period 23 April to 28 April … in the past from the issue date. How can somebody issue a Visa knowing that has already expired? They then had to re-issue the Visa and today I found out that it will only be ready next Tuesday, 8 May — a day after I am suppose to leave.

This mean that I have no option but to postpone my trip to Denmark. I am now planning to travel to Denmark on 21 May but the way things are going who knows if I will ever get to Denmark.

Technorati Tags: ibm, denmark, embassy, visa, travel

Trip to Denmark

Posted on 22 April 2007 by Marius — No Comments ↓

My trip to Denmark has been postponed by 2 weeks. This is mainly due to the Danish embassy not capable of issuing a visa in a couple of days. The good thing that came out of this is that I can now attend the 27dinner on Friday evening the 27th. Now I can eventually meet people like Max face-to-face.

Technorati Tags: denmark, 27dinner, trip

IBM SA wins new contracts

Posted on 14 April 2007 by Marius — No Comments ↓

Over the past couple of weeks IBM has won 2 major contracts in South Africa. One in access of R1 million with ABSA and another with SAB.

This is great news for IBM South Africa and shows again the value of IBM SA as part of the greater IBM worldwide.

I would have loved to see more of an Application Development component in these contracts since that is the area where I operate in and provide value to the bigger IBM.

Technorati Tags: ABSA, SAB, ibm, application development, contract

In search of a digital camera!

Posted on 21 March 2007 by Marius — No Comments ↓

I am traveling overseas in a couple of weeks time – for work to IBM Denmark but will hopefully have some spare time for some sightseeing. Will be my first trip to Denmark. I probably need to invest in a digital camera before that and looking for suggestions. I am not a photographic professional like Andy so do not need anything fancy and complex.

Mainly looking for something that can take decent pictures, have good zoom capabilities and is fairly small with a fair size memory card.

While I am at it, I will also appreciate advice on things to see and do when in Denmark — I am mainly going to Copenhagen. And what type of clothes to take — probably will go there the first or second week of April — what is the weather like then?

Any advice will be appreciated.

Technorati Tags: digital, camera, denmark, ibm, copenhagen, weather, sightseeing

IBM Software Live!

Posted on 7 March 2007 by Marius — No Comments ↓

Spend the whole of yesterday at an IBM Software Live! day presented by 2 of my American coleagues – Doug Spencer and Jeff Reynolds (Kelly, you probably know Jeff since he also originated from Rational)

As fairly new to IBM it was good to see the range of IBM software products and wow what a range .. Covered from Tivoli on the monitoring side, Lotus on the people side, Websphere on the middleware side, Rational on the development side and then Information Management on content/data side.

Also good to see IBM’s direction with Web 2.0 and products like Connections and Quickr. And then the support for open standards and open source.

The venue was great (Mount Nelson hotel in Cape Town) and the food was great. Oh and a customer of mine walked away with an Apple iPod Nano in a lucky draw. Good for you Simon. Yes, us IBMers were not allowed to throw our business cards into the bowl 🙂

Technorati Tags: ibm, software, live, open, tivoli, webshere, rational, lotus, quickr, connections, information management

This realy shows my age … the world of IBM mainframes

Posted on 4 March 2007 by Marius — 5 Comments ↓

I just read an entry by Mark Cathcart called Looking back, Unix System Services, Linux et al.

I started my computing life on VM systems way way back, and the fact that I actually know all the acronyms and terms that Mark was using, say’s a lot. This trip down memory lane gave a very good insight into how IBM looked at Unix and then in the later years Linux on their big systems. I still do not know whether I totally agree or like with the i, x, p and z Series names for IBM’s hardware. I so much more liked it when it was called 360 Systems, 390’s, 9375’s etc and OS/390 or MVS, VM etc.

Every year I hear somebody say that the mainframe is dying but it just goes from strength to strength. When it comes to reliability, scalability and pure cost/performance then nothing beats it … even if you throw a multi CPU clustered Intel or AMD machine at it.

When looking at how IBM implement and innovate around Linux, I am confident that in years to come Linux will play an integral role in helping business in optimizing their computing requirements. As an Open Source and Linux supporter, I will use these solutions more and more in my dealings with my customers and clients.

Lastly, I am so glad that the WIN32 API was never implemented and used in the IBM software stack. Just imagine the situation IBM might have been in today …

Technorati Tags: ibm, VM, OS/390, UNIX, Linux, USS, zSeries, ESA, mainframe, MVS

I am one of 355766

Posted on 3 March 2007 by Marius — No Comments ↓

IBM must be doing something right if you look at the increase in employees. At the end of 2006, IBM worldwide had 355766 employees with around 52000 in India alone. Wonder what the figures is for South Africa .. I would think somewhere between 2500 and 3000 and growing.

Technorati Tags: ibm, employees, worldwide, india, south africa, workforce