Getting Ready for ASUG/Sapphire 2008

It is that time of year again, time for the ASUG/Sapphire Annual Spring Conference.  I've been able to go to this event the past few years, and I have really enjoyed it each year.  There is a lot of diverse content, and there is always something for everyone, from the developer, up to the CIOs.

This year will be a little different for me as I am not going as an SAP customer, but as an SAP employee, which means I don't have strict instructions to go to required sessions and report back to my company.  Instead, I will be free to explore other sessions that I would not normally go to as an ABAP developer and increase my knowledge scope.  This is something that I have strived to accomplish over the past several months, but have come up short in finding the time to do so.  I'm looking forward to walking the show floor, and checking out the various pod presentations. I will also be co-presenting a session with Leo as he has mentioned here.

Finally, I am looking forward to meeting up with old friends and maybe making some new ones in the process.  It would be really nice to meet some more of my SAP colleagues face to face as well.  Working from home 80% of the time does not allow for much office networking, so I plan to take advantage of the fact that I will be socializing with real people, and not virtually.

See you all in Orlando.

 

 

Economic Stimulus?

Maybe I'm one of the few, but giving me "free" money would hardly make me want to spend it as soon as I get it.  It is my understanding that there are a lot of people out there that wait all year to get their hands on their income tax refund, only to go out and blow it all in one day.  I would assume these same people are the target audience of the US government when announcing the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008.   But what will these people spend the money on?  One month's rent?  One month's mortgage payment?  Make a payment on a credit card?  A month's worth of gas?(ok so I'm exaggerating)   Or will they really go out and spend it on the newest LCD HDTV?  I for one, will most likely put it in my account and it will sit there earning interest(very little).  Twelve hundred is hardly enough to send me on a spending spree, yes I'm cheap like that.  I appreciate that Mr. Bush has acknowledged that there is a real problem with the economy in the US, but I have my doubts as to how much help the stimulus checks will provide.  I believe that there are other issues on the table which are dragging this economy down.  I am not a politician, nor do I care to be one, but we pay these politicians to do a job, are they doing it? 

A Quick Update.......

Tomorrow marks the end of development for the project I'm working on at SAP.  We were charged with the task of putting the SAP BPC product on NetWeaver(ABAP).  I actually finished my last piece this afternoon, so I'm done a little early.  It has been a long road since joining the team back in October, and the challenges we've faced and overcome were many.  I got all of my assignments done on time, and in good quality, so that is something to feel good about.  The next few weeks will be filled with bug fixes and testing.  I'm sure that new requirements will come into play  as well, but hopefully not too many.  I've had the opportunity to learn a lot these past months, and to use a lot of techniques that I had not used before in prior releases, so it has been a lot of fun as well.

Over the past five months, I regretfully haven't had the opportunity to contribute to SDN all that much,  but I plan to be more active in the forums and also post more technical blogs and/or articles in the near future.  To be honest, I have been checking the ABAP forum on a semi-regular basis, but the questions within are just not challenging anymore, its really the same old stuff, over and over again.  So really, it is not 100% lack of time which is keeping me from contributing, but the questions being asked is partially the reason as well.

Eight things you probably didn’t know about me

Well it appears that I have been tagged by Craig Cmehil for this blog entry, and believe it or not I just found it now, only 18 days past due. I'm probably missing something with these "tags" and what not, as I have not yet discovered all of the ins and outs of blogging.  Never-the-less, it is about 11:30pm on a Friday night, wife is in bed, so now is as good a time as any to share eight things that you probably didn't know about me.  Here goes.

1)  I am a junior.  That's right, my father's name is Richard as well.  I understand that I was very close to being named "Eric".  Actually that doesn't sound too bad.  I try not to use the "Jr" in my professional life and only use it for official documents.  I have just completed a 2 1/2 month struggle with getting "jr" removed from my email address at work. 

2) I am the biggest Seinfeld fan around.  I own all 9 seasons on DVD(which I don't watch, just have, to say "I have them").  Re-runs are on every weekday at 5:00pm, so I usually watch it then.  For those of you who haven't seen this show, it is a show that you either get, or you don't, which directly translates to you either love it, or you hate it.

3) I am a huge rock music fan.  I can still remember listening to my Dad's record collection every Saturday while rocking on the rocking chair for hours.  I can still remember the feeling that I got when I opened a Christmas present, and it was a cassette tape(remember those?) of the album "Songs from the Big Chair" by "Tears For Fears".  After a couple years I moved into the "Rap thing", starting out with the Beastie Boys, and some of the other gangster rap as well.  Then I can remember being introduced to Metallica, and the album "...And Justice For All".  That was it for me,  I basically pitched the rap, and moved into rock, which at about this time, the grunge thing was starting.  Since then music has been a very important part of my life, and I have been listening, and collecting ever since.  Also, I buy all my CDs, I do not download music from iTunes.  I like having the CD and looking at the insert. 

4) I was hit in the head with a baseball when I was around 10 or so, and I have a slight bump on my forehead which is still visible today.  I'm told that it is a calcium deposit which will never go away.  And no, I have no idea if it hurt or not, I was knocked out for a couple seconds and don't remember much from that day.

5) I was actually employed by two companies at the same time earning a paycheck at both for a week in 2006.  So I got an opportunity that year to work for a consulting firm which I accepted.  I left my former company, went on vacation to Disney World, and starting with the new company when I got back from vacation.  Pretty much as soon as I sat down at the client site, I knew that I had made a huge mistake.  The project was totally FUBAR, and the project management was a joke. I knew that I didn't want to have anything do to with it.  So I called up my former company and said, "so I hear your looking for a developer",  the next week I was back at the old company.  They had not even terminated me in the system yet, so instead of doing all that, we just applied my vacation time to that week as if I never left, so I got a check from them and from the consulting company for that week. I bought a HDTV with the extra funds.

6) I took four years of German in high school and can't speak/write a word of it today.  I did very well in the class for those four years, but never really applied myself enough to really take hold of the language.   Basically I'm kicking myself these days, now working for a German company.  It would have come in really handy.  So the lesson here is, don't ever tell your kids, "Oh don't worry about that, you'll never use that in life".

7) I started in the world of computing about 10 1/2 years ago as a computer operator.  I worked with the AS/400. Basically, my job was to print out reports and forms at certain times of the day and distribute them to the appropriate users.  Yes, this job was indeed boring, but it got me "a foot in the door" toward programming, which started 2 years later. I attended an RPG/IV class at a local institute for 4 hours a day, 5 days a week, and then went to work afterwards and the company paid for everything, which was nice.  I did about 2 years with RPG, and then moved into ABAP and SAP and the rest is history.

8) My favorite vacation spot is Disney World.  For the past 3 years, my family and I, have ventured south for a annual dose of the Disney magic.  The past two years, we did the land and sea vacation, which we did 3 days in the parks, and 4 on the Disney Wonder cruise ship.  This year we will be doing 7 days in the parks, and will take some time to relax this year as well.  You know, sometimes vacations aren't really vacations for the parents.   Regardless if you have kids or not, I highly recommend doing a Disney vacation.  They  really have there stuff together, and they make everything so easy. 

This was a fun blog to write, it gave me a chance to sit back and think about things, and reflect.  Very nice, it brought a smile to my face.  Sorry to say, it appears that all of the active bloggers that I know have already been tagged for this, so no tags from me.  

The First Two Months with SAP

This next week will wrap up my first two months of employment with SAP and I have to say that things are really going great.  I am really happy, much more so than when working for my former employer.  Not only in my work life, but in my family life as well.  I am having a better relationship with my kids, and my wife seems to be happier not having to call me and ask when I will be home for dinner.  Working from home definitely has its advantages in that way.  I was also able to take 15 minutes or so and go to my son's pre-school to see his Halloween parade.  Basically, it was a bunch of kids walking around in a circle with their costumes on.  Not really a big deal, but I felt good that I was able to do it, and I think my son may have appreciated it as well.   I'm also getting to know more about what my daughter is in to, although I don't really like discussing "boys". It's nice to talk to her about what's going on in school and stuff.  We really never had time to do this in the past, or never made the time for some reason.   I am seeing that there is quite a difference between 12 year olds now, and when I was 12.

I have been out to Palo Alto to meet with the rest of my team twice so far(going back next week), and I really like going out there. The area is very nice, and it is not so bad to get around, except if you are commuting when the kids are going to school.   Last week when I was out, it really hit home, that the people that I'm working with are really top-notch.  These guys are unbelievable when it comes to product knowledge.  I was blown away.  Hopefully one day I will be as knowledgeable as they are in this regard.  All of the people that I have met have been really nice.  My team even waited for me to arrive last week before going to lunch.  How nice is that.  If my team is the norm within SAP, then SAP is truly a great company.  They have made me feel right at home and the feeling is good, especially for someone that came from a very small company and was use to the "family" working environment.

My team had a trip to China a couple weeks ago, and I am still kicking myself in the butt for not going along.  I had some loose ends to tie up at home before venturing off to the other side of the world.  I understand that it was quite an experience, and they even took a tour of the "Great Wall" over the weekend.  Sounds like it was a blast,  and I will be joining them next time for sure.

Speaking of my former company, it appears that things may not be getting better, as I understand that the leader of the IT team there has since left the company for another position with a very large well-known SAP customer.  He had been a great boss and I'm sure that he will add a lot of value in his new role, so congratulations to him.  I'm glad that my former colleagues are seeing the writing on the wall and taking the appropriate steps.  One in particular,  who I've worked closely with for the past 6 years or so,  is on the way out as well.  This new opportunity will allow her to spread her wings a bit and try out the "end user" training side of the SAP world.  She is a very good business/technical analyst across a lot of different modules, and will excel as a senior consultant for a large SAP consulting firm.  Congratulations to her as well.

Nice Tool for Writing

I'm actually writing this blog post using the Windows Live Writer tool.  Since this is my first time using this software, I have not had a chance to dive deep into the  functionality quite yet,  but so far, I am pretty impressed.   Dan McWeeney turned me on to it during SAP TechEd in Las Vegas.   At that time, he showed me a couple of things that you can do with Live Writer that you could not do with the blog editor provided by SDN.   That was 3 weeks ago, and it is only now that I have found the time to get it installed.   I really like that when you start Live Writer, it walks you through the steps to connect to your blog provider, and actually pulls in the look and feel of your blog for previewing.  Also, this tool will be good for writing blogs while offline and 30k feet in the air.

Although SDN has implemented a WYSIWYG blog editor, and it is a huge jump from what we had before, I still feel that it is not quite there yet(I'm sure it will be in the future).   I'm wondering if this tool would work with SDN?  I guess there is only one way to find out!!

Since I'm testing the "Insert Picture" functionality as well,  I managed to insert a picture of my new home office.  This is where I'll be spending most of my days, when not traveling to Palo Alto.  Yes, that monitor is big and bulky, I am looking into getting a flat panel, just waiting for the right price.

My First Assignment

Today I started my first assignment as a developer with SAP Labs. The coding needed to be done is not all that difficult, but simply not knowing everything there is to know about the overall product, will prove to create some challenges when coding. Since all my SDN pals are in Munich for TechEd this week(and yes, am a little jealous), I plan to stay focused and try not to think about not being in Munich. Sometime, I'll make it over there.(sighing....) Hope everyone has a good time, although I understand that Ed had been MIA. ;)

I will be working on this assignment for the next few weeks, and the next assignment will be very challenging, deep transport stuff. The team is going to Shanghai in a couple weeks(which I declined to go along), so I will have a lot of time to focus on it.

Last week I went to Palo Alto to meet up with the rest of the team at SAP Labs. Everyone was really nice and the whole experience was really great. I can't say what a relief it was. And best of all, free lunch!!! Well, free to me, but someone is paying for it somewhere. ;)