Oracloid Blog

I just wondering how people have time for that twittering, flickering, blogging, facebooking, del.icio.us-ing, listing, and other 42 types whatnot-web-two-point-zero-ing, and still getting some work done and keeping family happy.

I’m definitely doing something wrong here. :-\
I guess I’m just too slow…

Google TiSP. Brilliant. GFlush your toilet and you have free broadband internet.

The weather was excellent last weekend. I was on-call but, fortunately, the world is not without nice people. My colleague Virgil was very kind to cover me for couple hours so that we could enjoy our first skating experience in Ottawa.

There were impressive number of people:

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My son Alex is a hero. He spent couple hours outside and by the time I could finally force him to go home the temperature went down to -15 with light breeze and somewhat high humidity. According to the local weather network it felt like 25 below zero.
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While going through my Google Reader today I noticed this post on StorageMojo referencing Washington-Post article. Can anyone believe that someone could actually forget about those hi quality tapes for years? Impossible.

Plenty of sources claiming this was a fake landing I especially like this page with the image:

… and “9 space oddities” from just mentioned site:

1. Apollo 14 astronaut Allen Shepard played golf on the Moon. In front of a worldwide TV audience, Mission Control teased him about slicing the ball to the right. Yet a slice is caused by uneven air flow over the ball. The Moon has no atmosphere and no air.
2. A camera panned upwards to catch Apollo 16’s Lunar Lander lifting off the Moon. Who did the filming?
3. One NASA picture from Apollo 11 is looking up at Neil Armstrong about to take his giant step for mankind. The photographer must have been lying on the planet surface. If Armstrong was the first man on the Moon, then who took the shot?
4. The pressure inside a space suit was greater than inside a football. The astronauts should have been puffed out like the Michelin Man, but were seen freely bending their joints.
5. The Moon landings took place during the Cold War. Why didn’t America make a signal on the moon that could be seen from earth? The PR would have been phenomenal and it could have been easily done with magnesium flares.
6. Text from pictures in the article said that only two men walked on the Moon during the Apollo 12 mission. Yet the astronaut reflected in the visor has no camera. Who took the shot?
7. The flags shadow goes behind the rock so doesn’t match the dark line in the foreground, which looks like a line cord. So the shadow to the lower right of the spaceman must be the flag. Where is his shadow? And why is the flag fluttering if there is no air or wind on the moon?
8. How can the flag be brightly lit when its side is to the light? And where, in all of these shots, are the stars?
9. The Lander weighed 17 tons yet the astronauts feet seem to have made a bigger dent in the dust. The powerful booster rocket at the base of the Lunar Lander was fired to slow descent to the moons service. Yet it has left no traces of blasting on the dust underneath. It should have created a small crater, yet the booster looks like it’s never been fired.

Couple weeks ago we went skiing for the first time in Canada. We choose Camp Fortune for few hours of night skiing - it’s only 15 minutes from downtown Ottawa.

I’ve got one shot to share. It’s not the best but hey my Olympus C-5060 is quite old. I guess I have to think about proper SLR camera at some point.

The mountain is not comparable to European Alps in Austria - it’s more like hills but location is very handy for couple hours skiing. I noticed that -10 C in the evening feels way colder than -20 С during the day in Alps.

This weekend the weather is excellent here in Ottawa - a bit below zero and sunny. Perfect time for skiing and skating especially now that Rideau Canal is fully open. Unfortunately, our whole family is a little sick and outdoor activities are no go for the next few days.

Today we had a “bye-bye Doug” dinner at Lone Star Texas Grill. From left to right - Alex Jr., me, Paul, Nicole, Olga and Doug (already switched to UK time zone as you can see):

They have excellent Fajitas. Of course, they serve Corona which is my second favorite beer after… eh… well, you know. They even keep pepper and salt in Corona bottles:
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It looks like finally the weather is “nice” enough for skiing. Recalling our skiing trips in Austrian Alps last year I can’t stop thinking about my favorite food there - Knoblauchrahmsuppe. Yum-Yum! I think I can translate it like garlic cream soup. I had to find some local substitutes here in Canada. Nevertheless, it tasted really good just like back in Austria.

My last hours in Germany… While I enjoyed Munich a lot, it’s time to move. It was a pleasure to work for Amadeus but I am looking forward to my new company. Next time I will write from Canada.

By the way, now you understand why I wasn’t much active last weeks.

Update: Fixed some wording…

Big news - I’ve got an exciting opportunity in Ottawa, Canada and finaly we decided to move. Quite a change as we were thinking for few years already to move to… Sydney! So quite an opposite place in the end with rather opposite climate. Once again I can see that my family is the best - they give me so much support here that no some are only dreaming about! Thanks to my wife Olga and my dear son Alex.

Alex Jr. is quite excited as he seems to be quite sure that bears are walking on the streets in Canada and he is going to ride bears overthere… also promise of snow, ice skating, skiing and etc. played the key role in his decision.
For me it was a very difficult decision as I really love my current company and the team I work in but this is an opportunity I couldn’t pass by. The interview (if you can call it that way) was quite a difference from what I usually would expect and I had an opportunity to chat with my future collegues and even customers! So I didn’t even start working but I already like the place. I couldn’t be mistaken - I know that feeling!
So I am looking forward to work with brilliant people at the new company on very interesting projects. I haven’t got much time recently to write here and probably going to have even less in the coming couple month.

My recent passion was installing two nodes RAC on Solaris on VMware - apparently this is quite a mission. I was thinking to combine my experience in a how-to document on installing Oracle 10g RAC on Solaris x86 with VMware. My current problem is performance - for some reason crsd.bin is spinning on CPU like crazy and I need to see why. So far shared storage issues are resolved, CRS is running happilly on two nodes, and Oracle installer is “hanging” in linking phase (well, all CPU is eaten by crsd.bin). I have already good start on the how-to document so I hope to have it ready some day.