Demand Planner June 10, 2006
Posted by companyslacker in Demand Planning.1 comment so far
A little background….
My company has never taken sales forecasting seriously. When I took over 5 years or so ago, the only software we had was E/step Software’s shameful FGS which we got ‘free’ from our parent company when they dumped it. I spent most of my time engineering around it where possible and where not, automating most functions.
Last year, the worldwide group decided to buy a global system. They selected representatives from each country (none of them forecasters) and selected the best presented system – Manugistics. They then proceeded to configure it in such a way as to make it worthless. They didn’t even integrate the various countries – so we can’t share data. Now how stupid is that? Get’s worse! They only allowed a single model, multiple linear regression in weekly buckets but without any causal variables. The forecasts are horrendous!
After months of frustration I told my boss that I’d have to leave the company as this software performed worse than FGS (though not as difficult to use) and relegated the demand planner to database maintenance. Eventually, my vocal objections to the software earned me a label of ‘bad attitude’.
Then something wonderful happened. The inventory got so high and service so low that I was able to get the XE version of ForecastPro, the darling of the M3 competition, as a pilot for replacement of Manugistics Demand. This version has not database backend and is limited to 100 SKUs but from a professional standpoint it’s well worth the effort.
I’ve got mad skills with MS Access and office automation and I am a decent forecaster. Problem I have is that there is nobody else in the company whom I can talk to about anything that I do. My boss is clueless and co-workers have a techincal IQ of near zero. Not that they are stupid but they are content to use only the tools given to them.
OK, let’s get started.
Kubuntu June 10, 2006
Posted by companyslacker in My PC.add a comment
Dumped Mandriva 2006 in favor of this debian distro. Main reason was the inability to find rpms for recent versions and the subsequent dependency hell I would find myself in while trying to compile from source.
Had to compile MPlayer to get decent video support but otherwise I find that this an excellent distro.
Adventures in Windows (continued) February 15, 2006
Posted by companyslacker in My PC.add a comment
I grabbed an OEM version of Windows XP SP2 for $80 off EBay. Installation was pleasantly easy. Windows didn’t automatically configure my DSL as Linux will, but I was able to set it up easy enough.
Turned off the annoying windows firewall and replaced with Sygate with not a hitch. Installed CachemanXP as a replacement for AnalogX’s MaxMem, which I frankly am quite impressed with.
Since I’m using Firefox I’m not too worried about spyware but I still use Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware SE paired with the slow but reliable Clam Antivirus.
So damn nice playing my favorite games with the extra 512 MB ram!
Adventures with Windows February 1, 2006
Posted by companyslacker in My PC.add a comment
So, I recently bought a second 512 MB ram stick to use with windows 98 which I thought would help with the lag problems the wife experiences while playing WoW. This created quite a series of unforunate effects:
- When I opened the PC to insert the stick I found it to be incredibly dusty. So I pulled all of the components and gave it a good cleaning. Reassembled, re-booted and black screen. OK, didn’t get good POST so I figure something isn’t properly seated.
- Reseated everything and Lilo thankfully pops up. Boot into Mandriva and it runs smooth. Big relief. Re-boot into windows and it too runs ok.
- I fire up WoW and it appears to be faster. So I think I’m home free.
- The wife wants an old trouble maker installed, CD-Stomper, ’cause she just gots to have it. This damn thing is suspected to have spyware which is why I gave it the boot orginally. So I re-install just to prove to her that it’s crap.
- Windows crashes on the Wife during WoW. Naturally I think its the CD-Stomper so I try to un-fuck the system by removing it. However that doesn’t seem to help so I start tearing out my hair and beating on the keyboard.
- I say to myself, fuck it, and prepare for a re-install. Back up the critical data of both linux and windows onto a usb/IDE drive. I’ve got the partition info on a floppy and mandriva cd has a rescue disk. Which I will need because that damn windows installed over-writes the boot sector.
- Deleted the windows directory and popped in the win98 cd and rebooted. Holy crap it isn’t bootable and I don’t have a dos boot disk! After a furious search I find a boot disk.
- Installed with no problems and seems to run fine. Spent a few hours installing drivers and then re-boot with the mandriva cd to restire the bootloader.
- Oh shit, mandriva encounters an error. WTF!
- Fine! I’ll reformat the entire fucking drive and do re-installs of both O/S.
- Using the win98 fdisk I removed the existing partitions but ran into a snag because the disk size isn’t being recognized by fdisk. WTF!
- So I waste a bunch of time reading my Mueller book and fdisk tutorials. I find out that the win98 fdisk can’t handle large volumes. So know I have to boot into linux but not mandriva because its gone. Luckily I have both Puppy and Damn Small live CDs. I use one of their fdisks to partition the drive. I choose FAT 32 LBA for the whole disk because I know I can get mandriva to repartition when it installs. Cool!
- I do a re-install (Win98 reported a probloem with the disk but it ‘fixed it’ and procedded with install) get the updates, and install the WoW (takes about an hour just for that). But the damn windows starts doing its crashing thing again.
- My son reports that a friend of his says that windows 98 can’t handle more than 512 MB. I check this out and sure as shit it won’t. Crap!
- OK, I’ll grab an ISO of win2K off emule and give that a whirl. Found one with service pack 4 which burned out nicely.
- On install, win2k wants to use NTFS which I surely do not want as I want to read/write from within linux so it allows the FAT 32 and off we go. Get the updates and it seems to run fine.
- Re-install Mandriva which goes quite well. This time I install Grub as the boot loader. Cool!
- Back into windows 2K: I can’t get any of the three firewalls to allow the DSL connection software access to internet. WTF! Found fricking spyware in the WINNT directories. Shit, that’s what I get for using a cracked win2k iso.
- So I go back to win98 but when I do so I discover that the FAT 32 that I thought I had put on was now FAT 16. WTF? Could that have been the win2k problem after all. By this time I’m so through fucking with it. I correct the file system with the linux partition manager which I didn’t realize would also put on the filesystem. It did it in like 5 seconds. (Why then does it take DOS like 1/2 hour?)
- So win98 is now installed for the WoW sessions and I have an extra memory stick here on the desk.
Yesterday I bought a winXP disk on ebay and will take a crack at that this weekend maybe. Hope it’s not another fiasco.
My PC February 1, 2006
Posted by companyslacker in My PC.add a comment
I recently sold my old Atari Mega2+2 ST for $50 plus shipping which is about $1200 less than I originally paid for it. Amazing!
Currently have a home built system I’ve cobbled togther from an old E-machine and Tiger Direct. Here’s the specs:
- Soyo Dragon Plus v2 MB
- Sempron 3200
- 2 x 512 MB DDR PC3200 **
- AGP 8x Chaintech fx-5200
- 80 GB Maxtor
- 1 TDK CD-burner
- 1 Sony DVD/CD reader
- 1 100mb Zip drive
- a 3.5″ floppy without a cover and a buttton which falls out bit
- All in a nice case
Primary O/S is Mandriva 2006 with the very nice KDE 3.4
Secondary O/S is Windows 98 which is used for games.
- Total Annhilation
- World of Warcraft
** I actually bought the second 512 memory stick a week or so ago and have found that Win actually chokes on it. Damn shame because I only got it for WoW.
