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?