For the past 1 year, I have been toying around with “Print On Demand (POD)” type of part time business. The business involves using any graphics editor software, resize an image to the right size, upload the graphics and finally place the item on a number of selected product. All of the activities mentioned are done using a computer with an internet connection. As simple as it may sound, being a person with no artistic background is kind of hard to adjust. Creating design is just too daunting for me. Copying on the other hand is so much easier. Anyway, there are too many downside of copying. Therefore I’ve decided to shy away from it and try to design stuff myself.

The best part about POD is this business model has produced a few extra hundred ringgits per month for me. It’s one of the easiest “making money on the internet” business model that I have ever tried. In matter of 2 weeks, I’ve already seeing some flow of money coming into my PayPal account. I can imagine if I strategically built some dedicated tasks without procrastinating, this business model has the potential to match my current monthly salary. My only issue is within me where I am not able to leave ‘the comfort zone’ and the habit of procrastinating.

Enough complaining. If you have ever heard of Cafepress, it is one of the most popular “Print On Demand” website on the internet. You can make your own design and have them shipped the product to yourself or anyone else. The best part about POD is, your product doesn’t have to be available right now for you to sell. Your job is just design and promote your custom made product virtually with no physical presence. How neat is that? Once your product is ready, the product will be sold over and over again every time someone purchased it online. Kind of a like a passive income once you reached certain level. But don’t get too excited, this is a part time business so if you work more, you earn more. If you are lazy or can’t get rid of procrastinating habit like me, you only get what you deserve..haha..

Here’s to my own T-Shirt store on Cafepress : “Aisy T-Shirt House”

P/S: This store is completely brand new. I have another online store which is currently making some money for me the past several months without too much effort needed. The idea and money is exciting but the work is not…I need some motivation though..

After my father’s passing last December, my family and I were left with a bunch of belongings of my late father. Apart from still trying to cope with our lost, we are still in the process to finish off a number of items related to my late father. This include 2 cars my father left, one is a 2004 Mitsubishi Storm L200 and the other is a 1995 Mercedes 230E (W124). I’ve been using the Mitsubishi Storm for a couple of months since the car almost got abandoned because it was a challenge for my late father having to maintain 2 cars at the same time.

My trustworthy red Proton Iswara Aeroback 1.3 is currently being used by my wife. I never drove the Mercedes when my father was around. Being the eldest son and the named driver based on the insurance policy of the Mercedes 230E, I was the most eligible person to take care of the car after my father’s passing. The car cannot be sold yet because it needs a trust handler’s authority to issue an authorization letter before changing changing ownership and being sold off. Because of that, I’ll be driving around with the car until all of the other stuff relating to my father’s death has been cleared.

Front view of the Mercedes 230E

Rear view of the Mercedes 230E

Some good review about this Mercedes Benz 230E, apart from being huge, it’s much more comfortable from the cars I’ve ever own. Since the car’s front hood is so long, I am guessing the Mercedes logo in front of the car is a good indicator about the length of the car’s front end, if not you’ll be kissing the bumper the car in front of you. The interior is roomy however, I seem to have trouble with the air conditioning being too cold. This car is has automatic transmission so driving short or long distance is a breeze to drive. Other than that, the raw engine power and the driving experience better than the Proton I’ve been so used to.

Interior view of the Mercedes 230E

The downside of having such a big car is the always, the fuel consumption and more money for both parts and car services. My Proton Iswara only consume around 15 – 17 cent a kilometer of fuel while the Mercedes would be using 20 – 24 cent a kilometer of fuel. That would translate to an extra RM15 – RM25 of fuel in a week since I drive to work almost 500km per week. If fuel consumption is not a problem, I would definitely keep this car for it continental driving experience. It reminded me of the old Volvo 240GL my father handed over to me when I was studying my Diploma in Mechanical (Automotive) Engineering.

I’m not a big fan of old cars anymore, therefore I would settle for a new car once I’ve finished off my car loan 2 more years to come.

On the 9th December 2009, something really sad happened which affected the lives of all who are in my family. My beloved father passed away after a really sudden heart attack. It all happened so fast, only my mother had the chance being with him during the final moment. I was fast asleep in my bed upstairs at 3.30am in the early morning only being awakened by my youngest brother who woke me up that time. I didn’t had a chance to meet him after getting back late from work the night before. He was already fast asleep.

Anyway, no one knows when or where your final moment would be so it might be best to accept fate that god had written.

Al-Fatihah to Syed Azizan Syed Hashim Al-Idrus..

There is a career fair happening at PWTC KL at the time I’m writing this blog post. It reminds me when I was still unemployed, really missed those good old days while doing job hunting. Anyway, my job hunting experience is rather different than any one else. I never attended any proper interview, one day I set an appointment to meet this person in charge of the company, the next thing I knew, I was offered the job. So far, I never rejected any job offering and I’m not looking for a new one at the moment.

After a week of learning all there is from the SOA/ADF Oracle training, I found this job advertised by a big multi-national company that matches what I have learned so far. Before I write about it more, I wanted to share with you some screenshots of what I’ve learned from the Oracle training I attended, here you go:

What you see above is a screenshot of Oracle Jdeveloper tool in designing a work flow of a credit card process. At first, following the step by step instruction in the tutorial was easy. Not until the end part when you have to test to see if the work flow application you’ve just created could run or not. It was sort of a relief when it run successfully. But when you see an error message appears, there is where you start to scratch your head opening up every little components which you’ve thought was so simple and realized it has become so complex. It’s like doing math problems during school but with some visuals added to it. For those people who loves the challenge, this is an ideal job for you. I can’t really say it is for me although I do like it once in a while.

This is a view of Oracle Enterprise Manager. It’s a heavyweight application which I believe involves BEA Weblogic application server. My laptop couldn’t take that application therefore I had to connect to the instructor’s laptop to view. If you are familiar with online dashboard, PHPmyadmin or others, you’ll get the hang of it. All of these activities I’ve shown to you requires a lot of ‘experiencing’. It’s not something you could just read and digest. So if you are lazy ‘doing’ but love to just ‘read’, this is not something for you. I love experimenting (up to a level where I don’t see too much disappointing error messages) so this might be a suitable task for me.

Alright, enough about my ranting, here is the job description of a Oracle BEA Weblogic Portal Consultants:

Job Description

Systems Integration Consulting professionals are responsible for delivering large-scale, complex programs that marry processes with technology to help our clients achieve high performance.

Oracle Weblogic professionals design, implement and deploy Oracle Weblogic Portal and Oracle Weblogic Integration solutions to achieve defined business goals. They maintain skills in Oracle Weblogic Portal and WLI solution architecture, design, configuration, development, integration, testing and deployment; and Oracle Weblogic Portal and WLI technical architecture.

Key responsibilities may include:

• Supervising functional and technical design activities
• Creating functional requirements as an input to application design
• Developing and testing detailed functional designs for business solution components and prototypes
• Supervising application build, test, and deploy activities
• Planning and executing data conversion activities (e.g., test data)
• Driving test planning and execution

Qualifications

Well versed with Oracle Weblogic Portal skills.

1. Portlets, Page Flow, Web Flows
2. Weblogic Portal Configuration, Administration and Performance Tuning
3. Weblogic Portal Clustering Design and Implementation
4. Web Services Integration
5. Portal Content repositories
6. Content integration and management
7. Access Management Integration or Single Sign-On
8. Rules-based personalization
9. RIA technologies such as AJAX / Adobe Flex

Well versed with Oracle Weblogic Integration skills.

1. WLI Clustering Design and Implementation
2. WLI Configuration, Administration and Performance Tuning
3. Human Workflow Design and Implementation
4. Process Integration Design and Implementation
5. Synchronous (e.g. SOAP, Web Services, EJB, RMI, CORBA) Integration Architecture, Design and Implementation
6. Asynchronous (e.g. JMS, MQ) Integration Architecture, Design and Implementation
7. Batch Integration Architecture, Design and Implementation
8. Canonical Data Model and Data Transformation including XML, XSD, XPath and XQuery
9. Service Orientated Architecture
10. Oracle Database Integration (JDBC, SQL)

Other Related Skill Requirements

• Knowledge and experience in implementation of Oracle WebLogic Server based solution
• Knowledge and experience in implementation of Java Open Source Framework (e.g. Spring)
• Knowledge and experience in full application development and implementation lifecycle
• Recognized Degree from good universities

Experience Preferred

1. Manager: 8 years and above of relevant experience including Project Management and Solution Architect roles
2. Consultant: 4 years and above of relevant experience including Team Management and Web Architect roles

Professional Skill Requirements

• Proven success in contributing to a team-oriented environment
• Proven ability to work creatively and analytically in a problem-solving environment
• Desire to work in an information systems environment
• Excellent leadership, communication (written and oral) and interpersonal skills

Phew!! That’s just too much to handle for me. I can’t imagine myself learning all those skills just to become an Oracle BEA Weblogic Portal Consultants. I know that this job can offer triple or more the salary I’m earning right now. However, I am missing a lot of requirement in becoming one for instance, a degree. So I guess my only option at the moment is to work closely with my company to maybe provide services for this role. Although my boss would not probably give me triple salary earning, at least I can still make use of what I have learned so far.

By the way, the product line my company is selling can be used with BEA Weblogic server. I think I’ll try and find some time to fiddle around with that one first. Hope you get an insight of what my job is at the moment.

Have a nice day everyone.