Set the motivation straight! I targeted myself to achieve it within 4 weeks. Only because there’s no slot for exam and there was major upgrade on one of my systems, I had to postpone it for additional 2 weeks. 

1. Lesson Learned

Select a lesson learned as guidance, which can be from friend and available in many sites.

I choose: pmzilla.com. There are plenty of them in pmzilla.com => Forum => Lesson Learn, select which one that suite with your situation/need. An example: http://pmzilla.com/pmp-passed-lessons-and-study-plan

2. Reference:

I have many references, but I believe these ones below are the major ones: 

• I read Rita one time. I tried second time, but it’s never finish as it’s bit hard for my brain..  
• I skimmed PMBOK one time. 
• PMP Processes on single page by trunin. I skimmed through it many-many time, to get the overview on how the processes are connected to each other. I bring this one everywhere! 
• PMP Notes – Rajesh Nair (detail), can be downloaded from here. I read this at least twenty (30) times. 

3. Preparation

Made sure we focus and dedicate to the target time. I told everyone that you’re preparing an exam, and would limit some social life temporarily… No TV, No Facebook, No Twitter, etc  

• Subscribed PM Prepcast for USD 99. It is said USD 129, but you can get a discount. I need to get the 35 contact hours. I attended for some areas which I couldn’t understand from reading the book. 
• Did as many as possible of mock up tests. Did these ONLY after reading the references/book. There are many of them which are FREE: 
• Lehman online 75 questions 
• Lehman pdf file 175 questions
• PMStudy 15 & 200 questions
• PMperfect 10 question
• PMZilla 25 tough
• Cornelius: 3×30
• simplilearn: 200 questions
• headfirst
• reread the references in between doing mock up tests,  again and again to understand the material

4. Exam

The exam was in INFOCENTER. I arrived an hour before the exam, and bought a cup of coffee in its cafeteria. This was important, as it straights my brain functionality J

I did 200 questions in 3 hours, or roughly 1 question in 1 minute. The last 1 hour was used for reviewing the 40-ish marked questions.

Conclusion, the one that help me a lot is to stay “FOCUS” and lesson learns, both from website (e.g. pmzilla) and from colleagues.

Hope it is useful, Good luck!  

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

From what I understand, Indonesian Government demanded (1):

1. opened branches in Indonesia;
2. offers after servicing;
3. blocks negative content;
4. recruits Indonesian workers;
5. and cooperates with local content developers so as to use local software and components
6. open a data center in Indonesia
7. open access for wiretapping if their customers have allegedly been involved in a crime

I believe these originally were raised on early 2009, or could be mid 2008. Only after the government pushes them very hard, by threaten to ban the service several times(8).

On 8-Jul-2009(3) BlackBerry finally agreed to open service center. Only after the government force them to do so. Many Indonesian backed the Government on this (9). But, if we check to the BlackBerry website today(4), you may see that most (ALL?) are inside ‘boarding house’, which owned by operator or distributor. If you compare with Nokia(5), they use dedicated places. As per today, Indonesia is RIM’s biggest market outside North America(2). It’s very strange that RIM couldn’t offer dedicate service center.

In several news(1)(6), we read that government has clearly stated that RIM has to open data center in Indonesia. But, I’m not sure where the missing link is, as RIM blamed the govt(7).

As Indonesian who spent sometime in Europe and now living in Middle East, there’re other issues that make this become complex:

1. Most of Indonesians don’t trust their corrupt government. So, any policies are seen by most Indonesian as another way to do corruption, which is not necessarily true.
2. In Indonesia, customer is NOT the king. The after sales practice in Indonesia is very poor. It’s not easy to return/exchange a defect item back to its distributor. Compare to Europe, you can do that easily. Most of Indonesians are accustomed with this practice. That makes very easy for producer, like RIM, to exploit this Indonesian weakness.
3. Most westerner point of view, seeing it as a ‘ban of freedom’. It’s not always true. After 1998, Indonesian Reform, the press here is very open. It’s too open, I must say. The government and/or even the public couldn’t control them. You’ll see any news, from fact-based to rumor-based, are jamming the Indonesian news ways. Most of Indonesian news that I read, only show the ‘cut version’ of the news. Not the whole fact, nor context. So, it deliver wrong message to the reader un/intentionally.
4. Twitter and Facebook are the best way to express most Indonesian freedom. Many causes are successfully delivered through these media. It’s easy for most Indonesian to send any videos.
5. Wire tapping is double-edged sword. Indonesian Government can capture corruptors by doing so. But, as there’re corruptors inside the government itself, they can use it as a way to manipulate the data, and defame the clean ones. This made most Indonesian suspicious to the government move.
6. Comparing the Indonesian case with Middle East, is non-sense, as the culture and need are completely different. For most oil-rich Middle Eastern, job is not really the case. For Indonesian, there’re 100 million+ potential job seeker. Government has to bring more jobs to its citizen. The list of demands above is related to jobs. This is not unique case; even the US government tries to create jobs.

In my view, this is as simple and complex as a normal company try to reduce cost and gain profit as much as possible. But, the main problem is, RIM always tries to push it further. And by looking back on how RIM treat its Indonesian customer:

• opened service centers only after the government push them very hard,
• and only resulting ‘boarding’ service center

RIM reputation is in the stake.

The main RIM advantage as global gadget company in North America, they have easy access to media all over the world. In contrary, Indonesian Government is only has access to local media which only publish the ‘cut version’ of the news. That’s too bad!

As Indonesian who works in IT world, I back my government to open the data center in Indonesia. It will not only open more jobs to my fellow Indonesian IT/Telco communities but also develop the human resource there. As of wiretapping, I believe many trust and clean officials are still exists within Indonesia government body. If I can’t trust my own government, then who else?

References:
1. http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/09/15/government-asks-rim-open-access-wiretap-blackberry-users.html
2. http://www.canada.com/technology/Indonesia+threatens+BlackBerry+data+service/5842346/story.html
3. http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/07/08/blackberry-maker-open-aftersales-service-center.html
4. http://id.blackberry.com/bec/location.jsp
5. http://www.nokia.co.id/dukungan/perbaikan-dan-daur-ulang/lokasi-care-center
6. http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/01/13/research-motion-expresses-commitment-ri-investment.html
7. http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/12/10/rim-blames-govt-not-giving-specific-advice-data-center.html
8. http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/12/09/govt-threatens-end-blackberry-messenger-service.html
9. http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/07/03/sms-blackberry-ban.html

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

What you need to do is to append the following to the .vmx file reside in you vmware guest directory.

RemoteDisplay.vnc.enabled = TRUE
RemoteDisplay.vnc.port = “5901"
RemoteDisplay.vnc.password = password

Then you start a vncviewer, and connect to “hostname:1″, and enter the password. That’s it!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

As quick an example, these steps will guide us to limit Landmark’s license feature:
1. Refer the configuration file in the license.dat

DAEMON licsrv C:\landmark\LAM5000\bin\licsrv C:\Landmark\LAM5000\licsrv.opt

# usage report
#REPORTLOG +C:\Landmark\LAM5000\licsrvreport.log
DEBUGLOG +C:\Landmark\LAM5000\licsrvdebug.log
 
# Configuration
GROUPCASEINSENSITIVE ON
 
# Define grouping, based on Computer name and/or User name
HOST_GROUP grpserver dohaserver
HOST_GROUP grpclient jakartaclient
GROUP grpadmin 32547 32548
 
# Reserve a license feature to particular group
RESERVE 1 EDM HOST_GROUP grpclient 
RESERVE 1 EDM HOST_GROUP grpserver
RESERVE 1 OPWPACKAGE GROUP grpadmin
 
# to limit a specific user/group
MAX 1 EDM GROUP grpadmin

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

To start the second instance of OpenWells, you may need to suffix additional parameter “/NEWINSTANCE” in the command line. For example:

C:\Landmark\EDT_5000.1\OpenWells\Bin\RunOpenWells.bat /NEWINSTANCE

The command above will start second OpenWells instance.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

What I do is:
1. Download the log4jdbc4-1.2alpha2.jar, and put into $PE_HOME/jars
2. Download from SL4J the compress file: slf4j-1.5.8.tar.gz. Extract slf4j-api-1.5.8.jar and slf4j-simple-1.5.8.jar from the compress file, and put into $PE_HOME/jars
3. Modify $PE_HOME/conf/pe_dic.props, remark the old value and change the line:

#pe_dic.Url=jdbc:oracle:thin:@myoraclemachine:1521:PHDIC
pe_dic.Url=jdbc:log4jdbc:oracle:thin:@myoraclemachine:1521:PHDIC
#pe_dic.Driver=oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver
pe_dic.Driver=net.sf.log4jdbc.DriverSpy

You’ll need to check your $PE_HOME/logs/pe_dic-server.log, to see the additional jdbc log messages.
Below is the snippet of the log file:

.........
11824 [main] INFO jdbc.audit - 1. Connection.isClosed() returned false
11824 [main] INFO jdbc.audit - 1. Statement.new Statement returned 
11824 [main] INFO jdbc.audit - 1. Connection.createStatement() returned net.sf.log4jdbc.StatementSpy@2e67cd84
11824 [main] INFO jdbc.sqlonly - SELECT upper(d.DATASTORE_NAME),c.DATABASE_S,c.DATABASE_NAME,c.TYPE,c.DRIVER,c.URL,c.TWO_TASK,c.SEQ_NAME,c.CLASS_NAME,c.PRIVATE 
FROM SLG_DATABASE c, SLG_DATASTORE d WHERE c.DATASTORE_S=d.DATASTORE_S ORDER BY d.DATASTORE_NAME,c.DATABASE_NAME 

11833 [main] INFO jdbc.sqltiming - SELECT upper(d.DATASTORE_NAME),c.DATABASE_S,c.DATABASE_NAME,c.TYPE,c.DRIVER,c.URL,c.TWO_TASK,c.SEQ_NAME,c.CLASS_NAME,c.PRIVATE 
FROM SLG_DATABASE c, SLG_DATASTORE d WHERE c.DATASTORE_S=d.DATASTORE_S ORDER BY d.DATASTORE_NAME,c.DATABASE_NAME 
 {executed in 9 msec}
11833 [main] INFO jdbc.resultset - 1. ResultSet.new ResultSet returned 
11833 [main] INFO jdbc.audit - 1. Statement.executeQuery(SELECT upper(d.DATASTORE_NAME),c.DATABASE_S,c.DATABASE_NAME,c.TYPE,c.DRIVER,c.URL,c.TWO_TASK,c.SEQ_NAME,c.CLASS_NAME,c.PRIVATE FROM SLG_DATABASE c, SLG_DATASTORE d WHERE c.DATASTORE_S=d.DATASTORE_S ORDER BY d.DATASTORE_NAME,c.DATABASE_NAME) returned net.sf.log4jdbc.ResultSetSpy@20e5ace9
11833 [main] INFO jdbc.resultset - 1. ResultSet.next() returned true
11833 [main] INFO jdbc.resultset - 1. ResultSet.getString(1) returned AOI_SHAPEFILE
11833 [main] INFO jdbc.resultset - 1. ResultSet.getString(2) returned 1263
11833 [main] INFO jdbc.resultset - 1. ResultSet.getString(3) returned AOI_SHAPEFILE
11833 [main] INFO jdbc.resultset - 1. ResultSet.getString(4) returned shapefile
11833 [main] INFO jdbc.resultset - 1. ResultSet.getString(5) returned dummy
11833 [main] INFO jdbc.resultset - 1. ResultSet.getString(6) returned dummy
11833 [main] INFO jdbc.resultset - 1. ResultSet.getString(7) returned dummy
11833 [main] INFO jdbc.resultset - 1. ResultSet.getString(8) returned seq
11833 [main] INFO jdbc.resultset - 1. ResultSet.getString(9) returned null
11833 [main] INFO jdbc.resultset - 1. ResultSet.getString(10) returned N
11833 [main] INFO jdbc.resultset - 1. ResultSet.next() returned true
.............

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

export OW_DEFAULT_DISTRICT=OWSIDEAST

2. OW_ADMIN_UTILS_PW
You will need to set the value of this environment variable, if you change the password of OW_ADMIN_UTILS.

export OW_ADMIN_UTILS_PW=owadminutilspassword

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

The problem happen when we try to install as a user which its home directory is not mounted. We tried to set the HOME to other directory by setting up HOME environment variable. But, we got:
No module find error

Then we try to debug the installation by:
sh -x setup.bin
It come back with a lot of debug messages, and at the end we will see a line with:
CLASSPATH=/tmp/install.829388/jar/...
exec /tmp/install.829388/jre/bin/java ....

What we did is to manipulate the user home by
$export CLASSPATH=/tmp/install.829388/jar/...
/tmp/install.829388/jre/bin/java -Duser.home=/tmp/tmpdir ...
This way, we will force the installer to use different HOME directory

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

As a reminder to myself, the LD_ASSUME_KERNEL should be set as:
# Set the LD_ASSUME_KERNEL environment variable only for Red Hat 9,
# RHEL AS 3, and RHEL AS 4 !!
# Use the "Linuxthreads with floating stacks" implementation instead of NPTL:
export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.1 # for RH 9 and RHEL AS 3
export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.19 # for RHEL AS 4
Honestly, I don’t know why we have to set differently between RH9 & RHEL AS 3 vs RHEL AS 4. I’ll do it anyway.

As I read from the Red Hat Release Notes, it says:
export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.19 — Linuxthreads with floating stacks
export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5 — Linuxthreads without floating stacks

Once we set the environment, we can check which thread library that active, we can use ‘getconf GNU_LIBPTHREAD_VERSION’ command as follow:
bash-3.00$ unset LD_ASSUME_KERNEL
bash-3.00$ getconf GNU_LIBPTHREAD_VERSION
NPTL 2.3.4
bash-3.00$ export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.1
bash-3.00$ getconf GNU_LIBPTHREAD_VERSION
linuxthreads-0.10
bash-3.00$ export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.19
bash-3.00$ getconf GNU_LIBPTHREAD_VERSION
linuxthreads-0.10
bash-3.00$ export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.5.2
bash-3.00$ getconf GNU_LIBPTHREAD_VERSION
NPTL 2.3.4
bash-3.00$ unset LD_ASSUME_KERNEL
bash-3.00$ getconf GNU_LIBPTHREAD_VERSION
NPTL 2.3.4

Information about NPTL can be found in wikipedia.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

I download it, and nail it in my office desk wall. So, it’ll remind and guide me how my work should like.

I wonder if there’s such form (knowledge on a page) for other department. Could you please let me know if you find it?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.