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..

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.

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..

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.

It doesn’t really matter which product is the best or not, it is a matter of preferences. If I can afford to buy a BMW, I would definitely owned one. Unfortunately, I can only afford a basic car at the moment but I can still dream of a BMW nevertheless. Back to my Oracle training of course. The training was held at Oracle’s HQ up in Level 38, Menara Citibank Kuala Lumpur. Check out their front desk:

I can only wish I am working with a huge corporation such as Oracle. It must be really tough trying to score a job there, don’t you think?

Anyway, my trainer is a guy name Sachin, I am guessing he’s from India from his thick Indian accent. Prior to this training, I have no idea what SOA or the longer version Service Oriented Architecture means. Even after reading Wikipedia, I still couldn’t picture what SOA is all about. My trainer tried to give some clue on what SOA is all about but all I see is a bunch application pool represented by jargon linking with each other. I must give credit to Sachin although his presentation was a bit bored, he’s quite a tech nerd when it comes to hands-on training which came in late in the afternoon since the Oracle JDeveloper installation file was almost 1GB and had to be copied manually from person to person. The requirement was 3GB of RAM for the training laptop just for the VMWare containing the SOA suite to run while I only have 1GB of RAM. Lucky there was an alternative.

The training class became more livelier when the hands-on approach began. With Nescafe coffee served, it was very enjoyable to crunch the tutorials given. Right up until my developed SOA scripts got corrupted and could not be deployed apart from the wireless networking changed setting. The journey continues tomorrow morning.

Since doing sales job is not one of my strongholds, I’ve always been interested to become a systems analyst. It may sound geeky but it is something that I like to look upon. Nevertheless, since I don’t have a diploma or degree in IT or Computer Science, I’d better stick with becoming at least an engineer role such as a web engineer role.

I just wanted to share with you some notes that I’ve gathered on what a job of a systems analysts is all about:

What are the responsibilities of the systems analysts?

Here are some of the responsibilities that System Analysts are expected to deliver:

• Provide creative source of ideas, solution to address problems to the existing implementations.
• Perform internal testing and debugging.
• Produce project progress reports, including project details, schedule, milestones and resource allocation.
• Ensure projects are implemented and completed successfully within schedule.
• Conduct technical feasibility studies, evaluate user requirements and recommends solutions and resolve issues.
• Prepare functional and technical specification and provide production support.
• Design, analyse and code programs for system development according to user specifications.
• Support user testing and be responsive to user queries, request for assistance.
• Participate in the full software development lifecycle (SDLC) including requirements study, analysis, design, coding, testing, documentation, implementation and user training.

What are the types of knowledge and skills possess by the systems analyst?

Knowledge and skill needed to be possessed:

• Up-to-date with the latest IT in specific areas of their scope
• A keen determination in problem solving
• Excellent communication skills with various level of management level

How are these knowledge and skills acquired by the systems analyst?

Knowledge and skills is normally acquired:

• During on-going job, tasks and projects
• Daily routine of work and communication internally and externally
• Internal training by senior personnel and top management
• Own effort of obtaining the latest information

Are the knowledge and skills possessed by the systems analyst adequate for him to perform his responsibility effectively?

Knowledge and skills are hard to be determined whether it is adequate or not. It is all depend on the individual performing their responsibility and the motivation and drive that they have.

If you are a job seeker, hope this information would be a good guide for you.

This year, not a single physical Hari Raya greeting card for me since I never sent one to anyone. Most probably because people are saving up for other stuff. The price of goods has risen drastically over a year and the economy for most people doesn’t look that good. Myself included I supposed. So, SMS wishes and Facebook are now the preferred option nowadays.

This year’s Raya would be my final year celebrating it as a single guy. Next year, hopefully I’ll be celebrating Hari Raya with my future wife or if lucky a child as well. There are also plans for next year’s Hari Raya, I would be celebrating it elsewhere instead of being stuck in KL all these years.

Okay, here’s my Hari Raya digital card for this year’s Hari Raya 2009:

Have a nice Hari Raya celebration, drive save and happy holiday!

I wished the event was held after the fasting month, this was because I could have enjoyed the drinks and meal that were provided. ;-) Anyway, since I arrived at the place early (The event was supposed to start at 9am but the majority of the people invited only came in at around 10pm), I’ve gotten myself one movie voucher at Cathay Cineplexes (Thanks ECS).

4 years ago, I had the opportunity to come an Oracle event also at Sunway. You can refer to my blog post here. That was like a long time ago when I was just started off in the technology area. Bringing back the memory, I wrote that I was going to get an IT degree. Well that didn’t happen because it was just too expensive at that time. My mother just last week asked me whether I did think about continuing my studies because my younger brother had plans for it. I replied to her that I wanted to get married first and later on think about it. Then again, what can I gain if I pursue for further studies when all I can get is a better paying job. The question remains, is it a fulfilling one?

Enough about my ramblings, let’s move on to my sales training yesterday. The title of the training was “Oracle Partner Demand Generation Training”. Confused? Me too. It sounded like a name of product but its not. The trainer was a guy from Oracle, Nick Tielman. Before that, we had the Oracle channel’s manager giving a brief of what how Oracle company and product doing these days.

Getting back to the training session. Nick did a great job at presenting his presentation. I really like the first part which is the Goal Setting. That is one aspect that most of us or mainly me neglect the most. The rest is just like the usual sales training but from the aspect of technology industry which I also found is interesting considering I haven’t been on a sales training for a very long time. Anyway, relating this training to my job. I wear many hats in the company that I work with. I can still recall the time when I was a telemarketer and failed badly (this was before I landed at this job right now), it was one of the most difficult job I had ever done. I never enjoyed a moment of it.

Basically what Nick presented was a refresher course for me. However, I love the part where the Customer Relation Management system usage that Oracle themselves are using. I’ve implemented an open source CRM but hardly use it. There’s no harm in trying after learning all of what the sales training has provided, right?

By the way, Nick is from the Oracle application business development unit and what he had said about Oracle’s product is fairly true, with all the 60 acquisitions within 4 years and humongous amount of applications under Oracle’s umbrella, there is no way a salesperson could remember all of them. What they can do is basically get the ball rolling by bringing in pre-sales, consultant and tech-guys into the picture before getting the sales transaction completed.

What I saw yesterday was only just to sell Oracle’s product as if it was a box of software being presented to the customer and we need to close the deal as fast as we can. I am more into looking on how the implementation and services that we can provide because a lot of the clients that I’ve seen doesn’t have a clue on how to operate the software. Apart from that, the services and implementation area are more profitable rather than making a small percentage of profit margins of the product itself. By doing that way, the cash flow business can be sustained longer and the effort can be justified. I am just writing what come into the top of my head here.

Anyway, the sales training is a good approach in knowing what Oracle businesses is. I wonder if entering into Oracle University would be a good move for me. I guess I’ll have to look more into it as I reorganize my own personal goal.

Behold!

Mercedes Benz E-Class Little Brother

Check out what it says at the rear end of the car:

Don’t you think this is amusing? Well I do.