Ho ho ho!

I received a letter today from the mail. It's been years since I've received letters via snail mail! It's one of the best presents for Christmas - getting to know how friends are doing, friends who I don't get to talk to much normally. Ah that's what I like about this festive season!

Freaked out

3PM, all three developers from the same project (the only ones working on that project) came over and asked if I was running anything against their client-test database. I haven't been in Oracle all day and no one else in our team was running anything either. Problem is, 2 tables mysterioulsy appeared in the main schema, created at 3:08PM. One was called "New Table" and the style of the create script is not the standard we use in Oracle. OK so I believe the developers that it wasn't one of them who did it. Checked the database and there were no suspicious login accounts in the sessions list. Had a look at the history for SQL statements executed. Wola there it was, executed by the application's system account! But everyone who knows the password said they didn't executed the statements..

The table name gave it away that it was created by a GUI tool and defaults the name to "New Table". So which tool? Access doesn't - it calls it Table1. But MS SQL Enterprise Manager does! No jobs on our servers ran any transfers at 3, and the only server with a link to the Oracle database is dvel. But for someone to create a table via linked server, they will need to know the password to the account, which is a different account from the one that executed the statement.

Turns out that the developer who did it (by mistake) is on another project, and who doesn't know any of the passwords in question. How? He copied a DTS in dvel that connects to the Oracle client-test database and modified it. That way the connection details are still intact and he could do whatever the account details in the DTS package allows. He didn't mean no harm. So it wasn't a hack which is a big relief. Tomorrow we'll be doing so spring cleaning to clear out any undesirable DTS packages and server logins.

I'm back!

Hey everyone I'm back. Well actually I've been back for just over a week but I've been so swamped with work that I didn't have time to catch up.

The trip was great. We were in Italy for 12 days, then Paris for 4 night with a day trip to London, then 2 nights in Dubai. It's difficult to pick one favourite place because they're all so beautiful. But I think I would go back to Florence again if I can. I didn't get to go into the Uffizi gallery to see Galileo's telescope and the 'real' David. The queues were too long (about 2 hours each). We just didn't have the time and really couldn't be bothered. Yes I met Helen for lunch in London. It was so good to see a friend when I'm away from home! It was a little chilly but Helen has obviously climatised, as you will see in the picutre... speaking of which I will post some of those to the optusnet web space shortly. OK time for bed. Ciaoooo.

Just popping in

I just felt like leaving a message. Don't much to say though.
Hmmm been quite busy lately getting ready for my trip.

Voluntary redundancies

I can't believe so many academic staff took VR at QUT, even people that I thought would be there forever! I think I will miss Ernesto (level 6 assignment counter). He is always good to talk to. I shall pay them a visit before they go.

Canberra

Went to Canberra last week. It was warm and beautiful with the tree lined streets and pink blossoms. Yes the weather was abnormal when I got there but that's good for me.

Deb took me up to Mt Ainslie at night and the view was beautiful. Pity I didn't take a decent picture because my hands were shaking so much (partly from the rain and wind). The ones I did take looks like there were fireworks going on.

I did a few things I've never done before when I was down there. Taking a proper browse inside a second hand book store was one.

I think I would've liked to study at ANU. Canberra is so quiet and laid back (I was there on a weekend, can't really tell what the weekdays are like). I can get so focused there.

The ACS conferece was excellent with top speakers from the high end of town. I'll have a lot of work to do for the Brisbane one now that there is a benchmark set. I've also been given some pressure already to get 250-300 delegates hmmmm...

New talent

I have discovered that I can sort of keep a conversation going even when I am half asleep - two people can attest to that now. Although I would try and avoid that because my responses, though would come out as well formed sentences and relevant to the topic, can make the other side go huh?!

Things I like about Brisbane

I love fireworks. It's one of the few things that I make such bold statements about. It's not just the colours in the sky. It's the fact that fireworks is a symbol of celebration. It has the power to unite and gather people to focus on the one thing. It's also a sign of peace. It reminds me how lucky I am to be here.

I've never been in a war or any disaster. The closest contact I have with those are through the news. I can't imagine what life would be like if I have to watch out for mines wherever I go, or not step out of the house at all for fear of being shot, or have to stay at some refugee camp because I don't even have a home to go to. Things like these are happening in America, the self proclaimed world police and supposedly the most advanced nation. The lawlessness at New Orleans right now showed the true face of the people there. If Brisbane is in the middle of a natural disaster like that in New Orleans, I am confident that it won't be like that.

I'm grateful to be here. How many other cities have fireworks for no apparent reason but to celebrate the fact that there is a river!

Spammed?

Check out the two comments left by people in my previous post. Was I just spammed? In my blog? I have a real dodgy feeling that the two posts were left by the same person...

Lazy day, cake day

I took a day off today because I had reached the maximum amount of toil that I can accumulate. I think flex time is the best bit about my job.

I baked a mud cake last night and it didn't turn out good. See it went really well, from preparing all the ingredients, mixing them all together and getting a smooth batter and then to the cake tin. The problem came after 10 minutes it's been in the oven. I started smelling chocolate burning. I opened the oven and the edges around my cake was black. Why? I got my sister to turn the oven on to preheat it. She had it at 230C. I put the cake in and didn't re-adjust it back to 160C. The center of the cake was still soft so I turned the oven down and let it bake for the rest of the next 20 minutes that it's suppose to be in there. The center started to rise like a sponge cake (it shouldn't) and batter oozed out of it. I followed the rest of the receipe and let it cool and stuck it in the fridge. The next time I see it, the center had collapsed and sunk in like a giant crater. The thing wasn't cooked completely still, but I ate bits of it anyway and made my parents tried it (which they did unwillingly). It's still edible as all that's in it is utter, sugar, chocolate, eggs and flour, in descending order of quantity. Our whole family doesn't go through that much butter in 3 months!

Anyway 3/4 of the cake is still in the fridge. I didn't bother to ice it. It's just waiting to go in the bin. At least I had my sugar fix for the whole day.

Workaholic

Some people start early. I just found this one person who started his IT career when he was back in high school. He didn't go to uni, not from what I can tell. He just started working and because it was during the dot com boom, he got some vendor certification and kicked it off from there. By the time he's in his early 20s, he's already a MVP, a team lead, and has written a book on his specialty. It is a scary thought indeed. Oh, and did I mention his $1 million property portfolio?

no work for a week

Well that's not entirely true. I have training for the whole of next week so technically I won't be going to work, but it will be hard work. I got the workbooks I'll have to go through and they are pretty thick.

Long time no blog

Ah it's been a while. So what's been happening lately. Let me think.

Caught up with a few friends for lunch and had a nice dinner at Toowong with Thanh (the organiser), Jared, Jeremy, Anna, Chandni, Sana, Peta, Alan and Mohammad. Yes it's been a while since we've had a get together like this one. The fish I had was beautiful. I'm not a fish fan but I have to give it a thumbs up.

I am not going to the Pancake Manor for lunch ever again. The service was absolutely horrible.

Had our first meeting with the staff at the ACS branch office. Got the nod from them for our ideas. Hopefully we can get the ball rolling soon.

I still have Biztalk coming out of my ears at work. We're getting a M$ consultant in for $2000 a day. Yes, a day! Now I can see being a consultant as a prospective occupation in the next few years.

And speaking of M$, I sat my exam today. It was at Queen St and scheduled at 12:30. I got to Queen St at around 12:15 and starting heading down the road looking for number 549. Got to number 379 and that was it. The next building along the road is on Eagle St. I got to the end of the street and there was no number 549. It was 12:25 then. I called for help. Lucky Jeremy wasn't busy and looked up the map and the phone number for the place for me. I rang up and got directions on how to get there. It was all the way down towards the valley. The first half of the exam was really hard and I thought damn I'm going to fail again. Then I started the second half and it was a lot better. Got right to the end before time was up this time. Passed by a comfortable margin :) I don't think I'll be doing another one of those exams for some time... not until I feel masochistic again.

Happy camper

Yeah my Biztalk server finally works. But I am getting some weird performance issues that seem to apply only to my W2k3 servers. More reading tomorrow.

500 Internal Server Error

Don't you just hate it when things chuck an error that says nothing more but that an error has occurred?

That happened today with our Biztalk test app. It drove me nuts.

500 Internal Server Error was all I got. I've looked everywhere - application event logs, security event logs, system event logs, web server logs, SQL Server logs and turned on all things that I can possibly log but nothing, NOTHING tells me what is going wrong.

Obviously the developer says it works on his machine so he's not changing his orchestration.

I can see myself doing some serious googling on Monday. And with 2 people being away on Monday, it's gonna be a hell of a day.

Irish Technology

After digging to a depth of 100 metres last year, Russian scientists found
traces of copper wire dating back 1000 years and came to the conclusion
that their ancestors already had a telephone network one thousand years
ago.

So, not to be outdone, in the weeks that followed, American scientists dug
200 metres and headlines in the US papers read: "US scientists have found
traces of 2000 year old optical fibres and have concluded that their
ancestors already had advanced high-tech digital telephone 1000 years
earlier than the Russians".

One week later, an Irish newspaper reported the following: "After digging
as deep as 500 metres, Irish scientists have found absolutely nothing. They
have concluded that 5000 years ago, their ancestors were already using
wireless technology".

Dirty Tricks for Training Software Engineers

From an email I got today. These were originally from a paper from an international SE conference. Yes the reality can be harsh...

1. Change the deadlines: The students should be told part way through that the customer requires the product at a date earlier than initially specified. There should be room for negotiation on scope, with only some [of the functionality ] to be delivered. However the students should not be offered any compromise in the first instance, all flexibility coming only through negotiation.

2. Present a 'different truth': The customer should say one thing one day and something else the next and deny that anything different has been said.

3. Present customers with different personalities: ...
In the [industry] training projects, one customer would be very enthusiastic, readily accepting any suggestion put forward [by the team] while another would be very reluctant to deviate from his original ideas. Of the two, experience has shown that it can be the enthusiastic customer who gives the most problems, leading the students into commitments they could never achieve with statements such as "Oh yes, that is a good idea and we could do the same thing with X,Y and Z too, couldn't we?" The students can be drawn into commitments well beyond their abilities to deliver.

4. Crash the Hardware: This may be a trick held in reserve in case any project team is doing too well....

5. Swap 1 or 2 team members across team - in the middle of the project.

AUSCERT

Went to AUSCERT. It was great! Over 900 delegates turned up and I got to meet a lot of interesting people and some old friends, like Ben and this guy from computer forensics class who got a job at AUSCERT straight after he graduated. How I envy him!

Most of the speakers that I listened to were good, some were great, like Bruce Schneier, Simon Singh and Jesper Johansson. There was one really interesting speaker that I have to talk about. She nearly picked a fight with another speaker at the panel session, but she is one smart cookie; she's in her mid 30s (I think), had 15 years of experience in IT, started her own company (research based at a uni) 10 years ago and got her PhD in 94. But the most funny thing about her is how fast she talks. She told us how she was at another conference and the person doing the transcription is one of the best and can keep up with the fastest talkers. That person couldn't keep up with her and she was clocked at 280 words per minutes. That's roughly 4.5 words per second!

Apart from the talks, there seems to be an endless supply of food there. All-can-eat ice-creams, nice lunches, morning/afternoon teas, and an abundance of alcohol at night. And then there were the freebies and competitions. No wonder why the lecturers want to publish papers because they get to go for mini holidays.

Pity I have to go to work tomorrow. The conference finishes on Thursday. It was a great experience and I would love to go there again next year. (Not for the eats and drinks of course :P )

May the farm be with you, Cuke Skywalker

Takes a while to load, but it's worth the wait. Go to download the movie if you don't like the pauses while it loads.

http://www.storewars.org/flash/index.html

This reminds me of an older production - The Meatrix

More friends are leaving

Went to dinner with Martin and co and Michael. Make a complete micky out of myself by thinking that dinner was at 8:30.

6:20
Got home from work

6:30
Started dinner as I was starving.

6:45
Phone rang.
Mike: Cindy where are you?
Me: At home.
Mike: We're waiting for you.
Me: What dinner's at 8:30!?
Mike: No it's 6:30.
Me: 6:30!! (Dad laughing out real loud in the background)
Mike: When can you get here?
Me: Ummm 30 minutes...

Everyone's orders were ready by the time I got there.

Anyway, Martin's leaving Brissy for Sydney in search for a better job. So there's going to be one less s701er hanging around. Our times at s701 were undoutedly the best at uni - the scribbles on the board, the music that Eason plays, Ben's debate on politics in Kenya, CyberCity, chatting on MSN while we were all within 3 meters from each other... We even set up our own print servers and gave them names. And who can forget our own "multimedia presentation" that went through the night. For those who were there, there was also the story of the little red ball.

Those were good times and they will stay with me for years to come. I'm sure it's the same for all that were there.

First aider Cindy

Finished my first aid course today. Couldn't help but fall asleep on a few occasions.

I don't think I can remember much of what I am taught if something does happen, but most of the time, common sense should suffice. I think I am particularly bad at reviving babies. Baby Anne would have been a lot better without me if she was alive :P

I'm still only half way through my reading for the M$ exam. Will be doing lots of cramming tomorrow and over the next week.

Italy

Got the bookings all sorted today. Yay!!

Big bug

Leopards stage 2 is now in its final days of testing and as usual, there's a mad rush to get as many defects out before all the contractors go away.

Yesterday I devoted myself completely to deployment. I did 8 builds/migrations and am pretty sure that I have broken the record. I have also come to the conclusion that we are in great need of a better, more efficient process.

Today is mostly UAT so only one build was done. But just as I was planning to go home early today (at 5pm) , I got a request for one more build, at 4pm. Now that really ruined my afternoon! So off I went and got started. Then about 5 minutes into it, I heard someone talking about a big bug in the testing pod. I was instantly gratified, because that meant I can leave the build till the bug gets fixed and that won't be until tomorrow. Yay! Poor M though cause he had to stay and get it fixed before he goes home on a plane on Saturday.

Sitar

Another project is coming to an end at work. To celebrate, we had dinner at Sitar and it was the most beautiful Indian food I've tasted.

This time I discovered chicken tikka (or something like that). It was a mild curry with a heavy tomato flavour to it. At first I thought it was going to be hot as it was fairly reddish in colour, but it wasn't at all. In fact, "mild" really meant no chilli and to me that was good. I can't take chilli hot. It burns my tongue and throat and won't go away even if I drown myself with water. I didn't touch that vindaloo when offered.

We had Indian contractors at the dinner and I noticed that they only eat with their right hand, even when they're breaking up naan bread. I wonder if there's some cultural background to that. We tried eating like them and it did taste better... or maybe it was our imagination, we did after all had a few drinks across the road before we had dinner.

Exam

Busy after work. Studying for exam.

I knew there was a reason why I went to uni

More workstation woes over the past few days at work. It seemed that I have been doing nothing but fixing people's machines over the last week.

The machine that wouldn't boot into windows after I've put down the ghost image, well it's finally working. After two calls to operations and two support calls from the vendor (which involved two changes to the hard disk, and a brand new motherboard), the machine just won't boot from C:\.

Having exhausted all our options, I decided to try and install the OS from a CD. After the first few screens, fragments of my ITN533 practical sessions just popped out of nowhere and told me to poke around in the recovery console. The system files seem to be there and look alright, so the image should have gone down ok. Then a whole heap of words came into mind, like ntldr, boot.ini, fixboot, fixmbr... I don't really remember what they are, but I get a pretty good idea from their names. Eventually I tried fixmbr and got asked the usual "are you sure you want to do this" question. Well the machine wasn't doing much anyway so it was worth a try. Ran with it and rebooted and it worked, just like that! It was a big relief as I no longer have the contractor scavenging for a computer everyday.

So I didn't waste my time at uni after all, that going to uni wasn't just a social exercise. I actually did learn something and remembered what I learnt.

Ah a long weekend

It's been nice today; a bit windy yet sunny for most of the day. Got up at around 10:30, had breakfast, did the dishes, got the wardrobe ready for winter, had lunch and it's now 4:40.

Went and saw a play last night with Peta and Chandni. It was great! It was about a child care worker's first day. I'm glad I'm in IT. I guess I don't mind working with kids, it's the parents that are the problem.

Had my first dose of office politics yesterday. Didn't like it at all.

What a day!

Work was horrible today, nothing seemed to work. I HATE BUILDING WORKSTATIONS! And I had to build 2 today.

First there was Gaye's which won't compile VB projects after last week's rebuild (which thankfully I didn't have to do). After some series google searching for an hour we decided to scrap the whole thing and do a fresh reinstall. WinXP went down alright so I started installing components like IIS. As usual, it asked for the CD but this time it asked for the SP2 CD. And guess what, we only have the SP1 one. How can operations not have told us that they've upgraded the SOE, especially with something major like that! Reluctantly I lodged a help desk call and some guy eventually came 3 hours later.

Then there was Rebecca's machine. It had a warranty call this morning and got a new hard drive so it too needed to be built. After loading the ghost image of the OS, the thing just won't boot into Windows! It just stayed at a blank screen with a blinking cursor. It would do POST alright so nothing's wrong with the hardware. So off I went and called help desk again. They eventually called back at 4:30 saying someone will come tomorrow morning. Rebeeca is a contractor and she charges by the hour, what am I supposed to do! She won't have a PC for at least half the day and there won't be a spare PC for her to use tomorrow.

But then not everything was so bad. The highlight of the day was at lunch. Jared and Thanh announced that they're engaged. They are so sweet and I am so happy for them. Sana, being the only person who didn't know about it before lunch today was clearly surprised. She was overjoyed, a bit like how I felt when I found out on Saturday. Ah the wonders of MSN messenger. I can't wait till the wedding now. The first thing that came to Jeremy's mind seemed to be what food we will be served at the reception. That's so typical of him. But then he asked whether he'll get invited...

Gibberish literature

Interesting news for the day: Students from MIT computer-generated a conference paper that makes no sense but yet was accepted by World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI), scheduled to be held July 10-13 in Orlando, Florida. Now no wonder why some conference papers are harder to comprehend than others!

Google Maps

Google now has a mapping service where you can find locations of businesses, directions on how to get there, as well as satellite views of the location. Try doing the search "Statue of Liberty in New York" and google will take you to the map near the building. It won't point to the building because it's not a business. Zoom in a little and you should see Liberty State Park in the middle. Keep zooming in on Liberty Island and then switch to satellite view. The link is at the top right corner. And you have the Statue of Liberty. How cool is that!


Unfortunately the search is only limited to the States and Canada. I can't wait till maps are out on the rest of the world. I know I'll be doing a search on where I live when the Brisbane map comes out.

My supervisor for my honours wanted me to do some research with her that extends on what I did. She suggested that I should go to this weekly meeting their research group has. And so I went today.


It was weird - there were about 12 people and apparently there were a few new faces too so we had to introduce ourselves, and guess what I was the only one who neither work or study there. Didn't I felt out of place, and over-dressed too. High heels and suit jacket just don't go with research groups.


The guy presented today is starting his phd. I recognise him from my research methodology subject. He has now finished his masters and decided to do more research. He must've loved it, otherwise he wouldn't be back for more. As for me, I was there because Richi said I should.


I don't feel like I'm 100% committed to this yet. A large part of me is excited that I can build on what I have started, but another part reminded me of what angst I had during my honours. You know the feeling when you desperately needed help but knowing the only person who can help you just can't help you anymore because she needed help herself. I don't want to go through that again! I can't blame her - she was heavily pregnant and a little depressed. Even she admits it when she talks to me now. Hopefully things will be different this time with Richi being back to her normal self and me not putting any pressure on myself. If the research doesn't go anywhere, then so be it.

Something slithery

While my mum was looking for a lost key on the weekend, she saw something moved in the grass.

It was a huge python, probably soaking up some sun to help it digest whatever it just ate. I filmed it moving if you're interested. It made its way to our neighbours, who just happened to be a snake catcher. Go figure. Lucky our chicken is still well and alive.

A new home for my blog

I've finally got around to setting up a new blog! The old one at blog-city was rather limited. I've decided not to port my old posts - not that there wasn't anything interesting there...