Tuesday, April 29, 2008

ReiserFS guy crazy, depressing.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/04/28/no.body.case.ap/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Reiser, known in programming circles as creator of the ReiserFS computer file system, testified for several days in the six-month trial, often giving rambling answers and getting scolded by the judge for arguing with the prosecutor.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Star Wars according to a 3 year old

The cutest thing ever!

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Working on a new music track

I've been working on a new trance/techno track.

The computer rebooted. Lost the project file. Can't re-create it. For the most part this is the final mix. But a few thing were needing change. It is shaping up nicely. Once it is fixed , I will post a link to it.

Do you work on any music? Do you make it available online? Is it free?

What a Project Manager!

So the project manager for my project has been somewhat distant. Sort of asking for things (demanding) when he feels like and simply not realizing that he's a project manager and not the manager. He is responsible for keeping the project schedule not dictating the resource's (individuals) schedule.

Today I included him in the loop about an issue where he woud like to know the progress and this task has been in the works for a little over couple of weeks and I thought he'd like to be involved. Also he might be able to use that PMP certification to some use. Instead of trying to be project manager and trying to get the things that the team needs, he chose to be confrontantional. Insinuating the I'm not doing enough to get this resolved. He starting sending emails CC'ing others asking if this was done or that was done. Whether a certain thing was tried. Little does he know that people in the lower ranks, where work gets done, actually know what they're doing. Otherwise, they would've have been promoted to middle management years ago. In the end the task was done, but a lesson was learnt: never include the project manager unless wasting the time is one's intention.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Yahoo to Microsoft....

Microsoft is obviously desperate to gain Yahoo audience or else they wouldn't have offered 62% premium on Yahoo stock. This may not necessarily indicate that Microsoft is in desperate need to get into search engine business. They're doing alright, believe it or not. Microsoft may be more interested in acquiring a better ad revenue system.

That's a very interesting concept. Where Yahoo decided to throw exteremely annoying smiling-girl dating commercials in the mailboxes and browsers of their users, Google took a more educated approach. They decided to target the content for the user. In other words, the user is not seeing a dating commercial if they're shopping for memory in a page.

While Yahoo hasn't changed their ad model (well they have probably made the banners bigger), Microsoft may have decided that this is a good time to get the Yahoo userbase and set up a good and profitable ad revenue model. This will be good for Microsoft and the users. And the uses might appreciate the ads a lot more if they're invested in the ad business.

However, Yahoo's response was to act like a big company and refuse. They're asking the Microsoft pay even more! Another 13 billion!

Wow, that's a lot of money! Microsoft has the option to directly take the deal to Yahoo shareholders. Well, Microsoft shouldn't pay the extra money. Already the bid is pretty decent.

Saturday, February 09, 2008

Site Layout

Spent a lot of time finding site layouts. Finally, made this one and like it enough to keep it.

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Sending UDP messages in C#

How to send a UDP message to a UDP server in C#.


string mHost="hostname";
int mPort="1111";
string mMessage="message";

try {
mClient=new UdpClient();
IPAddress mIPAddress=Dns.GetHostEntry(mHost).AddressList[0];
mRemoteEndPoint=new IPEndPoint(mIPAddress, mPort);

mClient.Connect(mRemoteEndPoint);
}
catch(Exception mEX) {
MessageBox.Show(mEX.Message);
}

mClient.Send(Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(mMessage), Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(mMessage).Length);

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Jessica Simpson

So Jessica Simpsons hasn't made the news lately.

By lately, the meaning is in the last one week. Why was her relationship with Romo so doomed. Why was everyone so upset with them vacationing? I don't understand it. What was the problem with it?

Poor girl has been making the news lately for all these different relationships. Hopefully, she'll make the album and focus on music. She can sing pretty well.

Just reading the news today it dawned on me that Jessica hadn't been mentioned for a while.

Monday, February 04, 2008

Beautiful Monday

First smell of summer. Well it's still winter but it smells like those fine spring days. The temperature is warmer and the day is dry. No sunshine but it's just fine.

Work is not all that enjoyable in a weather like this. This is an outdoorsy weather. Something to do outdoors would be nice.

Been posting a lot of YouTube vids lately. Will try to post more blogs posts with something fun to read.

Friday, February 01, 2008

Raindrops

What a cool song. Good to cheer you up!

Thursday, January 31, 2008

New mammal species found!

So a new species is found. That is so cool. People want to explore space and all that and it is fine, but there's an entire planet that hasn't been fully explored yet! That is so amazing that God has made so many different things!

http://news.id.msn.com/topstories/article.aspx?cp-documentid=1217509

In a rare discovery of a new species of mammal, zoologists on Thursday said
they had identified a shrew-like creature called a grey-faced sengi living
in a small community in remote Tanzania.

Sengis -- small, furry, insect-eating mammals that live on forest floors -- are also called elephant-shrews.

Until now, only 15 species of sengis were known, but this one is truly exceptional, the
proud investigators said.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Sweep Picking Fast Solos

This definitely sounds really cool.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Cute baby eating mango

Funny Baby!

Monday, January 28, 2008

The best Database Server

Moving stuff to Oracle from SQL Server. Well, Oracle certainly has come a long way to nowhere. It is still cumbersome to use and in it's own little world. But at least Oracle would be happy because they think that they are the more robust database.

In today's world where people really don't have mass amounts of data, Oracle's supposed egde doesn't make much of a bargaining chip. SQL Server does more than fine for all the corporate needs. Most companies aren't in business long enough to have a database big enough to really cause problems. Others have backups and rollovers and database syncs and server farms to solve problems. And many really huge ones still use mainframes. So what is the point of Oracle? It has it's place but they're making it hard to let other people use the database system. By making simple things hard, they exclude a big group of people.

The TNS thing alone is a big nuisance. Any client that needs to connect must use TNS names. There's a cases where people have been able to make connections without using the TNS names entries and the oracle client. Mostly, the oracle client needs to be isntalled with all of it's MB (disk space) eating additions. Plus it needs to be configured. In a world where 2000 workstations need to do database stuff, it's not always easy to deploy the Oracle client and configure it remotely. Not to mention updates are not very easy to implement.

On the other hand if you want to hire someone who can write instructions to Oracle in bad english, and use PL/SQL instead of plain SQL or T-SQL then you'd want Oracle. If you want to have snobby DBAs who can hold up everything to their schedule, you really want Oracle.

Fun work day

What a Monday! Another day full of not much done. Great day to be doing work.

Other than that it was great.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Cold Weather

The weather has been so cold lately that getting out has not been fun. Normally, one could go out to a restaurant over the weekend or go watching a movie, but this cold has made it hard to want to leave the warm indoors.

This has also taken a toll on other fun activities. On the plus side, it has allowed me to stay home and play some guitar and get some recording done. I was actually able to record some stuff during the day with the amp mic'd instead of being DI'd.

Fun stuff, really. I wonder how cold is it in the bahamas right now. Or the other tropical places. I wonder if many people go this time of year. Maybe holidays but beginning of the year sounds a little hard since most work place would be eager to get to start working. To make money.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Heavy Music

Been looking at how to play some thrash/power metal styles. Been playing guitar for a while without focusing on any particular genre. Now been wanting to play heavy and realizing that I dont' really know how to play heavy aside from getting the heavy sounding equipment. Sure the guitar sounds like it but the playing does not. So in attempting to learn a little more, been searching proper playing styles. Want to focus more on thrash and power metal. A cool band playing pretty power metal is Skillet.

Skillet has been around for a while and only improving. Check it out http://www.skillet.com/enter.php.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Another day in paradise.

It's a beautiful day. It's a shame it has to be spent working on some random project. Beautiful day regardless.

Some of us are working form home. Others have to work from the office. With each passing day the number of fellow employees grows smaller. The smiles on the faces turn more political and the words more charged.

Fun Times. Really!

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

What a day!

No, there is no need to start singing What a Feeling!

The day is just moving slowly. The oracle issues just don't stop. Somebody should tell oracle to move into the current century with the products.

On the other hand, the good news is that it's not raining. It's cold but not raining. Cold is still but rain is not as enjoyable. Mostly, because running to and from the car to buildings gets you a little wet. If working from home, the rain is actually quite enjoyable.

To quote a whole country: Ciao!

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

SQL Server vs. Oracle

So we wrote some pretty involved code for a project. It was using SQL Server 2000. There was all kinds of .NET controls that use the SQLDataSource component. All of a sudden at the last minute the requirement was changed to use Oracle 9.2. Now you would think simply changing the connection string would good to set all things pointing to Oracle.

Well! You'd be wrong!

The SQLDataSource component need to be specifically told the client type is Sql.OracleClient and it won't just read the correct configuration from the config file.

So all the code needs to re-examined. All test cases need to re-run.

Not to mention all schemas need to be regenerated in Oracle. And of course, Oracle doesn't do anything the easy or nice way. So that'll be who knows how long spent trying to fix this.

SQL Server 2000/5 have it so much better. Any thougths?