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Erik Gfesser

📍 Greater Chicago Area

New Release: IBM DB2 10

While doing some research for a recent client, I came across a press release that announces the planned release of DB2 10 later this month (April 2012). At another previous client a couple years ago, I used DB2 9.5, and have not needed (or necessarily wanted) to look into

New Book Review: "Strategy and the Fat Smoker"

New book review for Strategy and the Fat Smoker: Doing What's Obvious But Not Easy, by David H. Maister, The Spangle Press, 2008, reposted here: When I first saw this title, I was inclined to think that the author had intended the phrase "fat smoker" to

New Book Review: "Hadoop in Action"

New book review for Hadoop in Action, by Chuck Lam, Manning Publications, 2010, reposted here: After checking out reviews of what O'Reilly and Apress had to offer with regard to Hadoop, I ended up purchasing this book based on positive reviews, my past positive experiences with the Manning

New Book Review: "Confessions of a Public Speaker"

New book review for Confessions of a Public Speaker, by Scott Berkun, O'Reilly, 2011, reposted here: About a year ago, shortly after one of the directors at the consulting firm with which I am currently employed recommended that I look into speaking on a more formal basis, partially

From the Trenches: IBM WebSphere WMB, WTX, MQ

At the moment, I am resurfacing after having spent nearly the last 6 months in the trenches of IBM WebSphere Message Broker (WMB) 6.1.0.9, IBM WebSphere Transformation Extender (WTX) 8.2.0.4, and IBM WebSphere MQ 6.0, a set of products that were inherent constraints

Personal Reading List: 2Q2012

My personal reading list for April, May, and June 2012. Color Key: Special Notes, Currently Queued, Completed Reading. Updated throughout the Quarter. Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques (Third Edition), by Ian H. Witten, Eibe Frank, and Mark A. Hall, Morgan Kaufmann, 2011. By invitation from Amazon. Everyday

Domain Finally Captured: erikonsoftware.com

A couple months ago, I noticed that registration for domain erikonsoftware.com was finally set to expire, so I put the domain on backorder with the hope of capturing it. Notification that this domain was captured was received today, which is great news for this blog after nearly three years

New Book Review: "Patent, Copyright & Trademark"

New book review for Patent, Copyright & Trademark: An Intellectual Property Desk Reference (11th Edition), by Attorney Richard Stim, NOLO, 2010, reposted here: Good introduction to intellectual property law, which consists of four separate and overlapping legal disciplines: (1) patent law, (2) copyright law, (3) trademark law, and (4) trade

Past Book Review (July 6, 2007): "Inventing Software"

Past book review (i.e. posted prior to starting this blog) for Inventing Software: The Rise of "Computer-Related" Patents, by Kenneth Nichols, Quorum Books, 1998, reposted here: From the first lines of the preface of this work by Kenneth Nichols, it is apparent that what was initially planned

New Book Review: "To the Cloud"

New book review for To the Cloud: Cloud Powering the Enterprise, by Pankaj Arora, Raj Biyani, and Salil Dave, McGraw-Hill, 2012, reposted here: The authors of this text rightly explain in their introduction that the path to cloud adoption is bound to be different for every firm. Because much of