While I was in ADA lab, we had all sort of problems with running lam-mpi across our nodes. Anyway, it was worth it and was quiet fun sometimes to work with it.
You can find good tutorials here on their website, but even after reading these you may encounter some unexpected problems. How to solve theseproblems? Always Google them use Google search engine to find the solution.
As you know, if you know lam-mpi, you should “wipe” the mp-cloud clean if you want to stop it; or if you want to restart it. It uses RSH which is sometimes not very easy to deal with. I wrote some scripts to ease the start-up and cleaning process.
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Although I do not consider myself a consultant, but found this tech-tip from “Steve Friedl” on “Being a Consultant” very interesting and true. There are some points I find very very important:
- You must give the customer The Warm Fuzzy Feeling™
- Detail is comforting to a customer
- Your references are your reputation in the consulting world
- Be Easy to Fire [YES, it is very important]
- The customer is NOT always right, specially in Iran.
- Said by customers: “He was a great guy, but he was never available”. I do this mistake, alot.
- Your customers are buying your judgment, not just your time
- All programmers are optimists, and all projects run into unexpected roadblocks.
- Steve’s section on Billing is great. Read it once every week.
And there are some points I want to add:
- Be something, but be it! A student is not a real consultant, and is not a “real” office worker neither.
- A consultant must be cool and ready for difficulties when the customer is not
- You gain a lot of consultance requests for:
- what you have done before: “I’ve seen your job in ABC, and need same type of help here”
- references by your friends, co-workers, people working for former customers now moving to other companies and former customers
- as Steve says, your website! If you do not publish things on it, at least keep it tidy, well designed and up-to-date you will not be considered much of a techie guy.
- Always know more about what you have done, your timings and expenses and …, than your customer knows.
- Beware of the terrible customers coming right from `bazaar`. They think they can take advantage of you as they did from their poor clerks. You are not a clerk. YOU ARE NOT A CLERK!
- Be clean shaved(!) and dress like real people. A geeky outfit is not what most customers accept.
Note: Actually I had written it on Novembver 2005, but today recalled it once again and thought it was worth posting here.
