Archived from my home page

• LAN - All small business aspects covered.
• VPN - IPsec / OpenVPN - Connecting networks securely.
• Troubleshooting.
• IPv6
• All the usual protocols, smtp, http, https, spdy, ftp, websockets, etc.

Other

• POS peripherals - receipt printers, msr, barcode readers, touch screens - configuring, testing, low level stuff like ESC/POS etc, mPOS
• Writing detailed issue reports that vendors can't dismiss. They always try to tell that there is nothing wrong with their product.
• Operating environment using Apache Tomcat, MySQL, MSSQL, Windows Server 2000, 2003, 2008, 2012, virtual servers
• Field work: Installing and servicing POS systems and everything related and non-related to it.
• Documentation: Writing troubleshooting guides for helpdesk.
• Taking care of all small business IT needs.
• Excellent Point Of Sale knowledge. Customer requirements, including their needs and use of product.
• Virtual work groups, globally distributed teams - Since 1996.

Programming

• Standalone Java application with modular design which allows easy extending to fill different customer needs.
  • Format options include csv, which is used directly for my first ERP integration. Maintenance still continues.
• Few ERP integrations using Python.
• Many small utility programs & scripts, those are needed all the time. Mostly using Python or Java.
• Unfortunately I have other higher priority tasks. I still really do love programming.

What have I learned?

• Main goal: Increase profits, reduce costs. That's what why we got this business. Working in small business, it's very easy to learn, that if there isn't profit. There won't be salary. It won't take years to before small business runs out of money. Focus is super important. In some companies, you can do for ever non-profitable work and nobody cares about that.
• Don't trust user or 3rd party reports. - Always re-check everything before changing important things.
• If user input can be checked by software, do it. Otherwise there will be continuous data entry errors. It's also very important to design UI so that it guides users and reduces mishaps.
• It's much better to make proper plan and complete solution design. Making quick'n'dirty leads for trouble later. At that point exteding, fixing and extending system outside original design scope causes interesting issues. Which unfortunately happens quite often. It's called dynamic growth.
• Preventing future problems by proper robust design and implementation. If things work only most of time, it's not good enough and leads to big problems later. Especially if real reason behind the issues isn't getting fixed.
• Always pursue the best outcome for the customer as whole. Don't just consider own part of the project, but include all parties, partners, their strengths and weaknesses and complete customer needs.
• Efficiency comes through scale benefits, automation and finely tuned work and process flows while using optimized tools for given task.
• UX - User Experience is very important. It doesn't matter if you have great or unique product, if nobody wants to use it due bad usability, design issues or other annoying factors.

Strengths

• Truly understanding customer needs and knowing how those needs can be best fulfilled.
• Skill of spotting design issues and implementation problems at very early stage.
• I seem to detect projects that are going to fail for sure before anyone else.
• Long generic experience of operating systems, applications and networking.
• The guy who is sent when others fail.

Weaknesses

• Get involved with too many interesting tasks, which then causes prioritization questions, overload and stress.

Personal interests

I have been very interested in technology for all my life. Maybe even bit too interested?

List of something I do

• Follow technology and economy news and trends.
• When ever find something interesting, I'll do deeper digging and some background research.
• I would like to know enough, that I know what I don't know.
• General interest toward system & software architecture.
  • Even if it's something like monetary system.
• I prefer reading technical documentation and watching documentaries instead of fiction or movies.
• I often thoroughly test products, systems and web-services that I use or buy.
  • I love fully exploring and exploiting documented and undocumented features and configuration possiblities.
  • As you might have guessed, I also happen to write quite many development/error reports.
• Using self assembled computer with Ubuntu (GNU/Linux).
• Being active user on several community support sites.
• I usually walk to work and back. It's a good thing to get some fresh air in the morning.
• I really do like biking in summer.
• My Blog.
• Check out my projects page.

History

• I've been spending practically all of my free time next to computer since 1986.
• I've developed a a few freeware DOS games back in 199X.
  • Also many other small command-line utilities and demo / intro like apps using Borland's Turbo Pascal.
• Member of Net Generation (demo group) around 199X. Group was globally distributed group and all communication was done over IRC (Internet Relay Chat).
• A Member of a local computer club (Mikroilijat ry) from 1988 to 1999.
  • Roles: active member, helpdesk operator, Bulletin Board System (BBS) administrator, board member and vice-chairman.
• Active Internet user since 1992.
• Personal web pages since 1993.
• Java programming since 1996.
• Python programming since 2006.

Compact interest list: distributed networking applications, SaaS (Current CC product), PaaS (GAE), IaaS (EC2 / UpCloud, etc), DaaS ASP, cloud services, virtualization, real-time economy, anonymous networking (tor, freenet, gnunet), DHT (distributed hash table), TCP/IP, IPv6, ObsTCP, SPF, DKIM, SMTP, FTP, HTTPS, TLSv1.2, DNS, SPDY, SDCH, HTTP/1.1 (caching, etag, expires, cache-control, pipelining), and many other internet protocols, file systems, internet security, public key and symmetric encryption, multi-threading, multiprocessing, hosting, integration, HTML5, Pyjamas (pyjs), virtual work groups, remote work, JSON, web services, wsgi, uwsgi, SQLite, RDM Server, MySQL, ePOS, mPOS, Mobile POS, business intelligence, multi-tenant, multitenant, multi-instance, windows server 2008 r2, python3, hospitality technology, windows server 2012, information security, infosec.

KW: Lehtinen Sami, home page, pages, site, cv, curriculum vitae, resume, background, info, information, samilehtinen, lehtinensami, samleh