Thursday, June 30, 2005

CII Again

Welcome to a special edition of my blog… I’m writing this as I’m riding in the back of a Jeep Liberty climbing up the east side of Snoqualie Pass on my way back into Seattle. I’ve been so busy lately with work and personal stuff, that I just haven’t had the time to write on the blog. So, I’m using the same method that Vincent uses. I'm going to write 4 or 5 posts... but I'm going to spread them out over the next week or so.

The first thing to write about is the fact that I am going to be doing my CII idea. And, the way its going to be set up, it could theortically be on a Connexion-enabled flight in a couple months. I think Connexion uses J2EE JSPs for their dynamic web pages, so I’ve got to learn a new language… but, the cool thing about doing JSP is that I think we use it in my Masters Program to develop online services. So, by learning J2EE JSP stuff, I’m killing a couple birds with one stone. Plus, learning JSP shouldn’t be too bad, because I know vanilla Java fairly well.

I really can’t believe that this is actually going to happen. It’s still in the planning phase, but its happening! It feels cool that even a behemoth of a company (a la Boeing) has cool programs like the CII that promote small business innovations.

Saturday, June 11, 2005

Not-so...

I've been in class all week for Oracle 10g New Features (more about this later), and yesterday we got out early... so I logged into the work network. I don't remember who IM'd me the link about today's topic, but... someone did... and it may have ruined me for a day or 2.
There was a 5K "fun-run" in Fremont yesterday. I figured I could handle it because I had been running a couple miles after work 3 or 4 days a week. I roped Ray into going with me... and we met up at his apartment, and walked down to the start line. Ray and I chat a little bit, and then we're deciding which group we should be in... and I figured we should probably be in the 9:00 minute mile group. Luckily for Ray, he's in shape... and a 9 minute mile sounds like a leisurely stroll through Fremont. Unluckily for me, I'm a fat lard... and a 9 minute mile sounds like death. So, 9 minutes was the perfect compromise.
As it turns out, Ray and I both brought MP3 players... so we hardly even talked to each other during the run. And, he took off after about 100 yards.

Here is the list of my shames during the run:
  • I got passed by a guy that was at least 100 years old
  • I got passed by a guy running with a backpack full of speakers, batteries and MP3s.
  • I got passed by lots of girls. lots. (I'm not going to lie... this wasn't always a bad thing)
  • I got passed by a guy SPEED WALKING!
  • I got passed by many 10 year old children.
I finished in 29 minutes (or 9:20 miles per minute). Ray finished in 25:22 (8:10) miles per minute. He left me in the metaphorical dust.

Then... we had to walk back to Ray's apartment. It was uphill. It was death.

Friday, June 10, 2005

Its funny because its true

Someone forwarded me an article yesterday and I just finally got around to reading it. This article is probably only funny if you're a DBA, or a developer who works with a DBA.

http://www.dbta.com/columnists/craig_mullins/current.html

Someone asked me why I like being a DBA, and I thought about it for a little bit... and honestly, my favorite part is when something breaks. It's kind of funny... but I definitely get a hit of adrenaline whenever something goes wrong with a production database, and it has to be fixed NOW.

Friday, June 03, 2005

Boeing VS Airbus


Boeing VS Airbus
Originally uploaded by adamb0mb.
SO, I recently discovered IceRocket.com... which had made me realize that I really appreciate the fact that there are people out there that are way smarter than I am.

So, when you do a normal search on IR, it will pull a screenshot of the webpage up. Which, may seem mostly useless... but its re-freakin-diculously cool.

The thing I really appreciate about it though, is the fact that it will create these graphs of searchs over time. So, everytime Boeing gets referenced in a blog entry (this graph is only for blog posts) it gets logged on this graph. How sweet is that?

I don't know about you... but the first time I run into a new search engine, I ALWAYS do a "vanity search"... and IR definitely satisfied my ego. I think may start using it more often.

Skipping a Meeting

Remember way back, when you were still in College? There were basically 2 types of people: people who attended class regularly (almost religiously), and the people who skipped class as much as they went.
Are meetings at work the same?