James Burke-Frazier

The remodel is coming along slowly, but progress is being seen.
The new cabinets are in, butcher block is in, and we are awaiting some electrical, plumbing and the countertops.

Its sad that I once was a pretty hands on guy, but I just can;t feel comfortable messing with electrical and plumbing.  The risk is too high for error and mistake in relation to the damage that can be done.  Sure a little wood working that goes bad can cause some head aches, but nothing compared to plumbing and electrical.
I'll post some pics when the job is done.  10 more days till we are back to normal is my guess.

Have any of you survived remodels? I swear its like you enter a slight depressive state.

I know its going to look great, I am sure when every thing is done we are going to be happy.
BUT
Last night while talking about it some doubt about the process entered Contente's and my discussion.  Its just that we will have a destroyed kitchen for 2 weeks, along with a fridge in the living room, no kitchen sink, and everything creates a small cloud of dust we have to chase down.

I'll post pictures when it done, but we are only a few days in.

First and foremost thanks the SMUG committee, they worked hard to get the CU's and vendors working together to have a great conference.

Secondly .... special thanks to PM Systems and CU Defender.  After embarrassing myself doing a rolling stones guitar hero song they let me put in my biz card for the drawing.  And BAM ....... oh ya.    JBF is a winner.  Greg Varnell was in the back complaining about my good fortune, but that is his usual muttering.

I am now at O'Hare .... at the mercy of the airline fates.  I have never .. I repeat never left O'Hare on time.  I am usually lucky enough to be going direct from here so it can be painful but I do make it home.  On the 36 minute flight from Ft Wayne we spent 12 mins parked on the tarmac waiting for a gate to free up and another 8 minutes for them to try and get us parked in the stall.  Almost as much time rolling around than actual air time.

 

If you have not been able to attend one of his seesion, make sure you check the calendar of upcoming Users Groups, it will be worth the effort trust me.

Trace Security does the big hacking efforts, but they find attacking the company at the people level.  

Jim shared an example of using a scripted attacks, hinding it within in Hallmark greting card.   It is amazing the way they have it setup to spoof ecards to targeted companies they are paid to attack.  He shared how they could take over machines that have web cams on them and actually see from it within the a target facility.  Also how no 'real' hacker hacks at 3am in the morning.  You do it during the day at busy times within the network, make the admins work for the traces. 

Are you aware of Vishing?  Evil Do'ers call your members and leave a message ask for them to call back at 800 number then force them to verify themselves to the caller. 

What can u do?  Member Awareness, don't send phone numbers in email, Shred Shred Shred.  Jim's wisdom of the day: if your staff has to walk more than a few steps to shred, there is always a chance they aren't.

 

Symitar VIP - Ted Bilke/Valerie Smith

Wow Ted's been at Symitar 2.5 years?

Round 2 items, a continuation of the slides he ended with at the last presenation.  26 new Cu's last fiscal year, in process of converting them.  Of 26, 12 in the last quarter.   Added 7 ppl in the conversion area.   Donna Steston has joined Symitar as of jan 1, to help expand the Customer realtionship Manager role.  I am happy see more client loyality efforts being ramped up at Symitar.  If I had to ask for expansion in areas its always R&D and always Client Management.

SMA-OpCon/xps doing well.  Installed in OUtlink Symitar center.  16 inhouse customers and 8 installed live at Cu's.  Auto Batch is optional.

Failover - BCP   tranlog on Linus working well, remote poster installs continuing Failover Certifications (service offered) Coming soon: Backup to server (should speed up nightly processing), batch job reversal capabilities,  ECP Assessment and plan building for redundancy.

Episys virtualization - SANs now being sold and supported, Blade servers (use for JHA sube products like Yellow Hammer, Biz Analytics, etc), LPAR, P6 certification, AIX 6.1 certification.  Ted hopes to Demo it SEC in August 08.  If you are an Ops person this alone will be worth the trip for you to come to Diego.  Get it on your budget and calendar now.

Parameterization - CRS added to the paramterization project.  In 2008 Online ATM card blocking, do it yourself CARDFM, maintainable card edits. 

Support - Extended Support, standardization in hours for productsm standard service targets, etc.

Encryption - NeoScale has been pended and move to nCipher.  New reseller agreement signed and Symitar is ready to relaunch in 30days.

VIP program update.   Allowing clients to step back from the middle ground between Symitar and a vendor to get the info needed related to integration.

 

 

 

NTMC and GoDough - Villalobos

Now .. nothing against Richard, but I do so much Stephen G's accent, it made me forget at time that the platform was on an AIX platform, and used letterfiles for parameter management.

It sure has come a long way, from the first MCW.ACCOUNT.SUMMARY.   The new phase allows the inclusion of 3 interactive specfiles to be targeted at the home page.  You know its layout looks a lot like WRG, DI and others with the split sections by product type.    The are talking about a Hosted environment leveraging Lenexa (sp?)  It seems like they have taken many of the base features that was always pushed onto the CU (check images, color coding of debits/credits, etc) and added them as basic features that are parameter driven. 

The look is cleaner a lot less formated text and more use of standard web layout designs.  I wonder how much control you have over the site for editing when its hosted?  I'll ask a few smaller shops to find out, or please post me a response and let me know.

It is always rough to demo something when the connection speed is really slow.  I know the pain, waiting for your pages to load ...you can only say 'sorry its taking so long' so many times before its just frustrating.

First Phase end of June, first week of July. 

Phase 2 will be end of December with Alerts and Cash Management.   So the creation of a second skin/version for the CU to release for Cash Management clients.

I wonder if this new version will cost?  anyone out there in the CU Blog-o-sphere heard of a number?  you can always post it anonymously.

Cash Management allows clients to create a payroll, a nice feature for small business.  Nacha, csv, etc creation format.    Requires files uploads to be balanced (a nice feature to keep mistakes from happening)  Tax payments will be added in the future.    Wire capability, so biz clients can originate wires thru the CU.   Addition of dual controls on some of the features.  Positive pay file, adds some fraud prevention and process management.

I wonder if we could add a positive pay file to normal home banking.  would make it easy for members to avoid fraud if the system had an expectation of checks that should be clearing.

 

GoDough must leverage NTMC, since the password access follows the same format.  Bill Pay thru GoDough leverages I-Pay.  Accoutn activation is setup with the NTMC pieces.  ties into RSA Cyota watermark piece.   The product  is a browser based solution, has the base feaures of Alerts, view accounts, transfer and pay Bills (with I-pay relationship)  It does allow drill down to transaction within the share/loan selected.

Carl Barlow kicked us off with an update of Symitar Efforts.

Here is a quick break down.

Member-Centric , 360 is working well and has been well reeived from the CU's.  <since it was free the adoption rate has grown faster than many had thought imho>

Name Address project coming along <this still troubles me but not sure why, might be that I am just an old fuddy-dutty>  It could be a big deal if the field changes are not well managed.  So trying to move to a relationship style dataset.  Non-Share and Non-Loan transactions (safe deposit, ticket purchases)  SPRING RELEASE - Member work area to view a member without entering the account area.  2008.01 is the non-share/loan transactions will be available.  might be useful for our HB enviroment.   the release will creaet Member records for all our Name records, parameter for to trigger its usage.  *Danger* fieldnumbers changing, all dates (lat updated) will be calculated fields.  Name record area will change -if you are not using screen definitions-.    Member work Area ... could be useful.  FM History will be changing to Member Record (fall release for more clarity).  WRG will need to be aware of this process as our products that create/revise Member Data might be greatly impacted if the Client changes to the new format.  Some serious reading and analyst work might be needed.  I volunteer Chopkins. 

SQL extract they are updating the extract to make the mactro's better and allow 2005 usage <WRG has a great idea for this but we are stalled on a few items>

Symitar Explorer, Xperience, jXchange - Oh my.  Where to start.  Explorer .... moving on. 

AIX 6.1, 5.3 etc on various harware platforms.  pSeries, etc. 

Single usage SQL across many products, Profit Stars, Yellow Hammer, etc.   the mention of XML format instead of extracts out to macros?  Odd

JHA and Symtitar sharing design and formating between roll outs of new products.  Business services, teller capture, etc.

High Availability.  I would love to see this dragged across the start line.  Not even thinking about wishing for a finish, but really seeing a full plan, white paper on the vision and assumptions needed.

 

I have a lot of skills, IT skills, Bo Skills, wood cutting skills, but I still feel under skilled when facing my kitchen remodel.  So many small details, the hidden costs of hardware, an odd cut for the cabinets, or paying 200* for a hole where my sink will set.  Damn
I'll post some photo
Before and After
for your enjoyment.

I went into the game not cheering for either team, spending my time just hoping for an interesting game.  I have not enjoyed a Super bowl as much in years.  Great plays, hard hits and unscripted outcome.

Marvelous

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Sadly people are more threatened by my beliefs than I am of theirs.