If filled out my ACE Director Annual Self Evaluation today. Between 1st June 2011 and now, which is about 10 months, I did the following:
- Over 40 new website articles (close to 1 a week). This does not include rewrites of existing articles, some of which I could legitimately claim as new articles, since they bear* little resemblance to the originals.
- Over 150 new blog posts (every other day, give or take).
- Over 3500 new forum posts (about 11 a day).
- 9 conference events.
- A random assortment of Twitter, G+, Facebook, LinkedIn and email messages.
It’s quite scary when you list it like that. 
Cheers
Tim…
* I had to check if it was bare or bear. How sad.
Unfortunately I’ve just had to pull out of the Austrian Oracle User Group conference in Vienna in June. It’s a one day conference and only one of my papers was selected. The ACED travel support requires that at least two* papers are selected before you can apply for approval, so that knocks me out of the running. Sorry for any inconvenience to the organizers. On the positive side, another slot has opened up in the schedule for someone else to present.
As a note to other ACEDs, make sure conference organizers are fully aware of the conditional nature of your application. I always try to remind people that I can only come if I get travel approval, but in this case that message got lost somewhere down the chain.
Cheers
Tim…
* This is not a recent change to the policy. It has been the case for as long as I can remember.
Just a couple of weeks after the last release, to make sure we didn’t think it was an April fools joke, Oracle waited until April 2nd to release VirtualBox 4.1.12 into the wild.
You can see the changelog here.
Happy upgrading.
Cheers
Tim…
Lenz Grimmer blogged today about the release of the “oracle-rdbms-server-11gR2-preinstall” package, the Oracle Linux 6 version of the “oracle-validated” package we know and love.
I did a run through of an installation using it and it does exactly what it says it will. I’ve modified my 11gR2 installation on OL6 article accordingly.
Cheers
Tim…
I tend to self host as much as possible, so the emphasis is always on me to keep on top of my backups. Like most DBAs, I’m a bit of a control freak, so relying on myself suits me. Having said that, there are some services I delegate to the cloud (mail, contacts, calendar). Yesterday I was thinking about how bummed out I would be if any of these services lost my data and I suddenly got the fear. This morning I’ve had a backup frenzy. The following notes from Google give suggestions for backing up mail, contacts and calendar entries.
I was wondering how many other people bother with this? Do people even consider the impact of a goof-up by their online mail provider?
Many moons ago I used to use Blogger and I used to export my posts on a regular basis. There are some awesome blogs out there and the thought of them being lost is a nightmare. I remember Mark Rittman had a problem with his blog many years ago. Are people who have blogs hosted by Blogger or WordPress bothering with backups?
So now I’m feeling a little more secure as my PC, NAS and Google will need to go bang for me to lose my data on the cloud.
Cheers
Tim…
PS. Notice how I managed to mention cloud a few times. Gosh I’m so relevant!
Over the last few months my browser usage switched from pure Chrome to a combination of Chrome, Firefox and Opera, all running on Fedora 16 (x86-64). This may sound a little odd, but when you see what I use them for it may not sound so wacky.
- Chrome: Used for anything Google (Gmail, Reader, Calendar, Google+ etc.) and general browsing.
- Firefox: Used for anything to do with administration of my website. I switched to Firefox because I found Chrome on Fedora to be a little glitchy when posting HTML forms. About 1 in 10 posts hang indefinitely. I don’t see this behaviour on Mac and I guess it doesn’t happen on Windows or I would have read about it, but it seems consistently annoying on Fedora. I thought at first it was something I had done, but it happens with phpBB, WordPress and my own admin pages. I get the same behaviour on multiple machines also. In contrast, Firefox performance seems very consistent.
- Opera: Since the whole Google social search stuff was introduced, I don’t really trust some Google searches when I’m logged in to my Google account. The search results seem too heavily weighted to my own website and those I visit on a regular basis. That’s fine if you never want to break out of your little circle of friends, but when I search I often want to venture into pastures new, not just keep visiting the same people. Since Chrome and Firefox are always logged in to my Google account, I use Opera as my impartial browser.
So now I’m a triple-browser guy.
Interested to know:
- Has anyone else seen this hanging issue on Chrome? I’ve Googled for answers, but anything that sounds remotely relevant seems to relate to bugs in old versions.
- Has anyone got a clever solution for the Google account issue? I don’t want to repeatedly log out and in, but if there is a more obvious solution I would like to hear it.
Cheers
Tim…
Update: Colin ‘t Hart mentioned the Incognito Window in Google Chrome. It does seem to give the correct (non-social) serach results, but it is a separate window, so not sure if it is a better approach than running Opera. Kinda like the complete separate of running Opera, but worth thinking about though.
One of my friends used to own a sandwich bar. He knew the exact profit margin on each product. He knew the impact of a price change from one supplier on each of the products he sold, as well as the overall affect on his profits.
So compare that situation with your average IT department, where to be frank, nobody has a bloody clue about costs. Yes, we all know the headline grabbers like licensing cost for Oracle and you can probably find the bit of paper that tells you the yearly hardware maintenance fee, but I’ve not encountered many companies that have a handle on the real cost of projects. If a company can’t say, “Project X cost £Y to complete and costs £Z a year to maintain and this is the breakdown of costs”, with a reasonable level of accuracy then they’ve failed.
You need this sort of data in order to make a valid judgement about new projects. When someone starts extolling the virtues of the latest and greatest database/language/framework, how can you make a judgement on the relative savings you can make if you don’t know your true costs? Free software is not free if you have to pay people to integrate it into your existing systems and hire/train staff with the relevant skills. Conversely, paying ridiculous licensing costs may not be sensible compared to hiring/training skills to allow you to use cheaper alternatives.
I sometimes feel the IT industry is like some cowboy building firm. When someone asks for a price you scratch your chin, suck in some air then pull a random figure out of the ether. Don’t even get me started on the sales people, with their astronomical list prices that nobody ever pays, just so they can make you feel like you’ve got a “good deal”. It’s an industry in dire need of a change.
[/RANT]
Cheers
Tim…
I’ve just put another batch of Linux articles live.
As before, they are focussing on the RHCSA exam objectives, so a lot of it is pretty basic information.
The Firewall and SELinux objectives are the only ones left now. These two objectives were the main reasons I decided to start this process. I left them until last because I figured if I started with them, I might never get round to doing the other articles.
As far as the Linux firewall goes, if it can’t be done with the point and click GUI (or TUI), I don’t do it, so taking a look at iptables from the command line has been on my list for a very long time. The RHCSA objective suggests using the GUI/TUI interface should be sufficient, since it says, “using system-config-firewall or iptables”. In contrast, the RHCE objectives explicitly mention iptables, possibly suggesting tasks that may not be possible from the GUI? The question is, how much do I trust my own judgement on this matter? I would prefer go in to the RHCSA exam with too much information, rather than not enough, so I guess I’ll take a look at iptables from the command line before attempting the RHCSA exam.
I know even less about SELinux than I do about the firewall. For Oracle installations I typically disable it. So I guess this objective is going to be a magical mystery tour.
If anyone has sat the RHCSA exam for RHEL6, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the Firewall and SELinux objectives. I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on the other objectives, but I’m kinda shooting in the dark with these two. It would be a shame to waste £400 on a failed exam.
Cheers
Tim…
I can hardly believe it. It’s finally happened!!!
Check out the story here.
The certification matrix on MOS is not updated yet, and those on RHEL kernel will have to wait a few more days (90), but at last we have some firm commitment.
From now on, the Oracle Linux errata are available free from http://public-yum.oracle.com. In the past only the updates (5.6, 5.7 etc.) were available. This makes OL even more useful than before.
Thank you!
Cheers
Tim…
Update: Remember, if you apply the errata to OL6.2, you will have the same scsi_id issue I saw with 5.8.
All The Rage is the fourth book in the Repairman Jack series by F. Paul Wilson.
There is a new designer drug in town. In the right dose it makes you assertive and confident. Too much and you become a savage killer. What seems like an innocent case for Jack, turns into a life or death situation for him and the people he loves.
A pretty neat romp that follows on quite nicely from the previous books…
Cheers
Tim…