Month: June 2006

Swimming Etiquette…

During lane swimming, when using a lane marked as clockwise, do you:

  1. Float on your back in the middle of the lane.
  2. Walk a bit, swim a bit, then walk a bit more.
  3. Swim anti-clockwise.
  4. Swim up and down the middle of the lane, making it impossible for others to overtake.
  5. Swim diagonally.
  6. Stop and rest part way through the length.
  7. All of the above.

Judging by the actions of one woman today, number (7) seems to be the correct answer! 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

The man from Dell says no!

A Dell server goes bang. Dell send an engineer to swap the motherboard. The server still doesn’t work, but now the beep error code implies the memory is shot. Dell refuse to ship more parts and will only provide a complete kit swap. The estimated time for memory would be a couple of hours, compared to 6 and 14 days for the kit swap! As you can imagine we were not amused.

Cheers

Tim…

The heat is rising, the kit is dying…

The temperature in the UK has been pretty high recently, which has had an adverse affect on the temperature in our server room. It’s only taken three years of moaning, but I think the message is finally starting to sink in, helped by the fact that some of our kit is switching itself off with heat errors and one server has burnt out completely.

Why is it people will spend loads of money on fault tolerant kit, then think it’s OK to install it in a sauna?

I must admit to feling a certain amount of satisfaction whilst saying, “I told you so!” 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

SUSE doesn’t rock my world…

I installed SUSE Linux for the first time at the weekend and I was suprised at how unimpressed I was. That’s not to say there is anything wrong with it, I just expected a lot more after the good press it’s had over the years.

Back in the days when I first started playing with Linux (Red Hat 5.2), you couldn’t download the SUSE installation CDs for free, so I started to use Red Hat Linux and have pretty much stuck with it (RHEL, Fedora & CentOS) ever since. I’ve played briefly with other distributions (like Debian, Mandrake, Slackware and Ubuntu etc.) but never seen anything worth making me switch.

During a fit of idle curiosity I downloaded SUSE Linux 10.1 and installed it. Two things people often mention about SUSE are the great hardware detection and the ease of installation. I’ve never had a problem with the hardware detection using Red Hat, so I’m not in a position to comment on that, but the installation process doesn’t seem that wonderful to me. Once again, that’s not to say there is anything wrong with it, I just expected something neater and simpler than Anaconda, but what I got looked a little messier and certainly not simpler to use.

Once it was installed it was just like every other distribution, but with a different theme. Nothing to deal a knockout blow to any other distribution I’ve used.

In conclusion, I thought I would experience something better than a Red Hat offering, but I was left feeling rather apathetic about SUSE. If it was the market leader I would use it without any major complaints, but since it’s not I guess I will stick to a Red Hat clone until a new market leader is born.

Cheers

Tim…

Poseidon…

I went to see Poseidon last night. My thoughts include:

  • Visually cool, like Titanic.
  • A bit boring, like Titanic.
  • I didn’t feel any connection or empathy for the characters, like Titanic.
  • I wasn’t really bothered who lived or died, like Titanic.
  • The ship sunk, like Titanic.
  • Hopefully I’ll never see this film again, like Titanic.
  • Effects over substance, like Titanic.
  • People have the ability to function at their peak capacity, even in very cold water, like Titanic.

The characters were a little different to those in the Gene Hackman version, so some things I expected didn’t happen, which was probably a good thing for the older audience.

On reflection, I should have gone to see Xmen-3 for the third time 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Spider Update…

I recently discussed how I felt moderately less scared about spiders since my encounter with a tarantual. Just a little update on the situation…

The other day a very large house spider was sitting on my bathroom window sill. I was feeling rather brave so I attempted to pick it up, but as my hand got close, the spider made a run for it. As soon as the legs started to move at lightning speed, I yanked back my hand, screamed and generally went into convulsions for a few seconds. Out came the glass and the piece of paper. Both the spider and I lived through the ordeal, but the spider definitely came out on top.

Last night I was teaching Yoga to some friends and a small spider ran across the floor towards one of the girls. I placed my hand on the floor and the spider ran on to it. The whole operation wasn’t quite the success I hoped for, as the spider ran off my hand before I could get it out of the door. Even so, we both survived and I’m marking this down as a success.

I’m kinda scared of sharks too. If anyone would like to help me confront this fear by donating a “swimming with sharks” holiday, I would gladly accept 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

I need inspiration…

I usually have a list of things I’m mulling over, most of which end up as articles on my website, but at the moment that list is blank. I’m struggling to find inspiration. Usually, something at work or a forum question triggers a course of investigation, but at the moment I’m totally brain dead…

It would be nice if this was because I know everything, but in reality it’s a bit of summer apathy. I guess I better hit the manuals again and remind myself how little I really know about Oracle 🙂

Cheers

Tim…