Last Monday, after five or six years away from teaching, I helped out on a 1-day, introductory Websphere MQ course. The experience reminded me of the big difference between knowing enough to teach and knowing enough to do.
For instance, at one point, my colleague, Mark was explaining how to set up channels between two MQ Servers. From the back of the class, a network admin asked, “Can you have two channels connecting a pair of servers?”1 That’s a perfectly reasonable question, but not one that would have occured to me.
As a developer, I have gained a fairly deep knowledge of certain parts of MQ – those parts that are relevant to my project. As a teacher, however, a much broader knowledge is required to answer all the questions from all the students. The knowledge a teacher requires is so broad, that it would be rare to find a teacher who has actually done in-depth work with every topic discussed in a course like this, leading quickly to the aphorism, “Those who can do, do. Those who can’t do, teach.”
But the converse is also true. Just because you are good at doing something, doesn’t mean you are good at teaching it.
1 The answer is that you can have multiple channels, but only one (active) channel per transmission queue.2 Most systems require only a single transmission queue, and a single channel.
2 Except when running under CICS on z/OS, in which case you can have multiple active channels.
Thomas Heller’s ctypes module is turning out to be very useful for calling strange Windows SDK APIs. Despite not having Visual Studio (marked as required by the documentation) I’ve just kind-of installed the custom gccxml used by ctypes, and am recording the steps I took to do it, before I forget how.
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\7.1, and add a new string value named “InstallDir”. Set its value to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003 or wherever it was that you installed the C++ compiler.vc7 two directories above your Visual C++ installation. For me, this was C:\vc7.include directory to C:\vc7\include.C:\vc7\PlatforSDK\include.C:\Program Files\gccxml\install (assuming you installed gccxml to its default directory.)vcInstall . ”\Program Files\gccxml\bin”Now to find out whether or not it works enough to be usable…
Update Yes, it is usable, but gccxml seems chokes on the definition of the __nothrow macro, so I have to add -D—nothrow to the h2xml.py command line.
Update 2 Or alternatively, use the h2xml.cfg file, just like the doco says :).
The OSDC website has been updated, and OSDC is on again this year – 5th-7th December, 2005. Last year was a blast, and I’m definitely going this year, if at all possible.
I have an idea. If I worked for – say – a large, US-based manufacturer of enterprise telephony equipment, then I’d definitely take it to my manager and attempt to get a patent on it. However, since I work for a small consulting company that doesn’t have money to spend on IP lawyers, it’s probably better that I publish.
Bah. It’s probably already patented anyway.
OK. Here it is…
In call centers, an important statistic is the length of time customers are kept waiting in queue before somebody answers. One tactic already used by some call centers is to monitor the projected waiting time, and, if it exceeds a certain threshold, reject all incoming calls until the call length falls below another threshold. Rather than reject calls, I propose that newer callers be given Whitney Houston or Celine Dion for hold music.
The main advantage of this system is that callers desperate to speak to the call center will still be able to get through, while less persistent customers are encouraged to drop off.
How to find a hostname for your local machine, from DevX:
private String findHostName() {
try {
return InetAddress.getLocalHost().getHostName();
} catch (UnknownHostException e) {
return "unknown";
}
}
IT Conversations have a great presentation from Rob Curley, the man in charge of the Lawrence Journal’s web site, LJWorld.com.
This hour long talk is chock-a-block with interesting ideas for building websites that people want to use. I’m particularly impressed with the liberal use of “internology.” Highly recommended.