Chris Saul's Blog

Monday March 07, 2005

Blogging and house buying Blogging So, what's the point of this blog? I've decided the principle reasons for its existence are the following, in order of importance - - To vent – a useful cathartic process to get things off my chest. - To inform – random tech, Dubai and other stuff may get picked up by Google some day and be useful for someone. - To entertain – I actually quite enjoy reading some other blogs out there, such as Jon Masters' and a few others. Maybe people might enjoy mine? Personal stuff will stay out of it in general, but perhaps someone else might enjoy my ramblings. I must set up Thunderbird to read the RSS feeds from the interesting blogs I do like to read – hope they'll be readable in offline mode... House buying I've signed the draft copy of our contract for the place we've bougt in the Old Town, Burj Dubai. I was a bit surprised to be told that it would take four weeks for the official contract to be available. All that's needed is a signature from someone at Emaar. It's problematic, as the mortgage company should be paying the second installation, which is due in less than four weeks and they need at least a week to set up payments with Emaar after I pass the official contract to them. I'm assured various steps will be taken to get this sorted out, but it's another bizarre part of buying a place in Dubai apparently, up there with mysterious service charges that aren't mentioned anywhere, contracts that don't mean anything as they can be changed at any time and the fact that the law allowing you to buy property in Dubai hasn't even been passed yet... I hate this kind of thing, but I think we're doing the right thing and am putting my trust in the various organisations that things will work out well. Based on past experience this is probably a foolish thing to do, but there you go. That's enough for now, bye from 38,000 feet (will cut and paste this from OpenOffice later - no Internet on Emirates yet :) ) ( Mar 07 2005, 09:50:18 PM GST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Solaris on the laptop finally Solaris x86 is now happily installed. Steps I took, inefficiently - Laptop had a Windows C and D drive, Linux root and Linux swap When installing Solaris, the install process could only see the Windows C drive and the Linux parttitions, so I deleted the Linux partitions using fdisk from the JDS install CD to see if it made any difference. Solaris still only saw the Windows C drive. Since all I had was some downloads and other stuff that was backed up elsewhere I installed Solaris, recreating a 35GB D partition in fdisk, aloong with a 10GB partition as part of the install. I used text mode as I'd read somewhere that the graphical install didn't allow you to use fdisk to create partitions – not sure if that's true or not. After installation Windows saw a D drive but didn't recognise it as FAT and wanted to format it. XP will only let you format with NTFS, which would be no good for cross mounting it to Solaris to use it as a shared data drive between the two Oses. Based on advice from one of the Solaris x86 install fest guys at CEC I downloaded a Linux system rescue CD and used the QT based partition tool to format the drive with FAT. I can now access it from both Solaris and Windows. Still on the list are sorting out Solaris running at full 1400x1050 resolution on the Toshiba Tecra I have. There's an internal site with xorg,conf settings I need to play with. After that I just need to install the Solaris 10 companion software and set up pkg-get ot get anything else I need. Seeing Solaris on my own laptop and seeing everyone installing it on their laptops at CEC was incredible when you think that only recently there was such a question mark hanging over Soalris x86. I'm looking forward ot using it as my default desktop OS and playing with zones and other nice stuff when I have spare moments sitting in planes. To make things perfect there's apparently a beta version of a driver for the Tecra's wireless card somewhere on SWAN, which should mean I can use Solaris pretty much exclusively. ( Mar 07 2005, 09:47:00 PM GST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Off to Warsaw Tavelling again, this time to Warsaw to meet with the local D&M team. Very excited to use my new 'in ear' headphones. They do make a big difference and I can actually use them on this flight as Emirates provide a standard socket... I've managed to bag row 25 on the Airbus 300 we're in, which is next to the emergency exists – I haven't got the fable seat 25J, which has lots of legroom, but I have managed to sit in the middle aisle at least, so I can use the laptop. I've discovered the Thunderbird extension which allows you to work offline in a sensible way, so I've been able to put the time sitting around the airport and in the plane to good use, filing about 300 mails out of the inbox and reading up on a load of stuff that got shoved to the bottom of the to-do list. I've now gone from having zero Skywards miles to well over 25, 000 tier miles in two months, which I quite impressive I think! I'm looking forward to jumping the queue and maybe the odd upgrade here and there. Are you listening Emirates? :) When I'm on these trips it amazes me how much more pleasant it is for me that it was for my father, who was travelling to various countries behind the iron curtain in the 70s, Europe and Oz in the 80s and to Eastern Europe in the 90s. Limited in flight entertainment, no portable computers to do your work on, no Internet to allow you to call home for nothing and for entertainment when you're stuck in your hotel room. Even in the late 90s the mobile phone was for emergencies – no texting home to say hello. It makes me wonder how much further things will go. I'd like to see the following things that would make my life easier - Laptop power sockets by default in each seat, including economy. Laptop batter power lasting much longer. Good speed Internet access from the plane, affordably priced. No mobile phones on planes, please, ever! Or on the London Underground either for that matter. Ability to switch my mobile phone on, withouth the phone part benig activated, presuming it continues to be banned on planes. That way I can play mini-golf without making the plane's navigation system fly us to Mongolia instead of Munich. Decent capacity mp3 player as part of my mobile phone. 20GB at least please so I can use it stuff like Solaris and JDS iso to drop off at customers. Wireless Internet throughout the hotels, not just on 'executive' floors. Come on, you make money when people access it, so why only allow it on the fourth floor of the Holiday Inn South, Vienna? ( Mar 07 2005, 09:45:46 PM GST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Me In the unlikely event that anyone stumbles across this blog and finds it interesting, I work for Sun as an engagement architect/practice manager for Sun'd desktop and mobility practice. I cover the SEE region, which is something like 12 Sun offices and 101 countries – all of Africa, Gulf, Turkey, Greece, central and eastern Europe and various CIS states. So far it's great, but a lot of travelling. ( Mar 07 2005, 09:44:25 PM GST ) Permalink Comments [2]

Travelling Now that I'm travelling so much, I'm slowly learning how to do it more efficiently and enjoyably. Some things I 've found invaluable, or need to get - USB charger for the mobile phone. This is invaluable! I've finally found one that'll work with my Sony Ericsson, bought here in duty free at JFK. Decent in-ear headphones. I've just bought these and will use them on this flight. Should mean I can hear the film and not the background noise for a change A decent mp3 player. Can't decide on this one. An iPod would be cool, an iPod photo even cooler, but the iRiver things look tempting too. Top travel tips - Bring cash with you if you're transferring to a domestic US flgiht for the last leg of your journey. I got on the AA plane at JFK to discover that I wasn't able to use Visa to buy something to eat, which was a bit irritating, to say the least. Luckily a kindly Sun person leant me some cash for a delicious tortilla wrap. If you're transferring via a city that's in the midst of winter, make sure you pack some warm clothes for when you miss your flight and are forced to stand in the sub zero car park being snowed on waiting for the shuttle to your travel tavern. If you're flying from Dubai to San Francisco, leave a day or so either side to recover and get some work done and meet with people it's hard to get in touch with. Arriving Thurs evening and flying out Monday morning was a mistake. It was only on Monday morning that I finally felt normal and I was back in a plane again. Hotel taps - Both the hotels I was in on this trip had bizarre ways of getting the shower to work. I had to call 'guest services' in each one to ask how to use them, which was a bit embarrassing. One needed the tap to be pulled out to get water flowing, the other had an easy enough tap, but a hidden button to press to get the shower going. I felt incredibly silly ringing up and asking what to do. America I've enjoyed both my trips ot the States this year. What always surprises me is the average age of a lot of the people doing service jobs and how a lot of people seem to be existing rather than living. In the conference centre, for example, most of the people serving food, clearning up and so on wrere in their fifties at least. In the UK they'd all be students or younger people temping. I was also surprised to walk out of the front entrance of the Hilton I was in and be in what appeared to be quite a dodgy area, just a few metres aways from a five start hotel. Once moment I was sitting in the suite I was given, the next I was surrounded by massage parlours and some pretty aggressive beggars. The number of beggars and homeless people was surprising too. You get homeless people in London of course, but in San Francisco is really stood out that everyone begging was male, black and reasonably young and healthy looking. Food is always disappointing in the States. Portions are large but tasteless and bland. Tipping culture always annoys me here too. You can't claim the 10-15% back on expenses and if you don't have any cash on you, you end up not being able to pay what's effectively an obligatory supplement to the salary of whoever's served you in a restaurant, driven the taxi, etc. Airport design I hate it when there are no restaurants after going through security and immigration. I think Dubai have it right – you go through all the hassle, after which you've got all the cafes and shops you need before going to your gate. Smoking – there should be decent non-smoking areas that don't 'leak' into the non-smoking area, but I feel there should equally be al least one small smoking area. Sitting on your plane next to a nicoting starved smoker isn't very nice. ( Mar 07 2005, 09:43:41 PM GST ) Permalink Comments [0]

CEC I really enjoyed CEC. It's hard to put a dollar value on these kind of meet ups, but pretty much everyone I spoke to was enthusiastic about the event. I particularly enjoyed seeing Aaron Kerr from Sun OZ present on the steps tehy'd taken towards a consumer PC style soltuion with their local ISP. The idea was to rent a Sun Ray to consumers who didn't have a PC, connected over their DSL conncetions to central Sun Ray servers. The presentation confirmed to me what I've thought for a while – Sun Ray won't work as a cheap consumer PC. It could work as a 'work from home' device though – businesses can afford the router or VPN kit that'd be required and they'd put up with the limitations in return for the advantages. No multimedia, but access to 'core' apps to allow remote working. I can imagine a 'remote call centre' set up. Recruit the mums who are at home during the day, Sun Ray in the spare room, access to the call centre app. ISP rents the devices and handles the connection, business hosts the app on Windows/Unix/Linux/whatever at their site, Sun Ray servers run the appropriate Citrix or Tarantella client to provide access. Andy Bechtolsheim's new boxes look incredible. Customers should think so and so should air conditioning vendors. A four way V40z meets the needs of most of the Oracle customers I've seen in the Middle East and with the new boxes he's talking about due soon, along with Oracle on Solaris x86 I think we've got a great product. I was a little disappointed with David Yen's presentation. I've have liked ot have seen some more concrete messages to take to customers as I've seen all the CMT presentations already. I felt enthuised about the AMD story, less so about the new Sparc kit. Jonathan Schwartz was excellent. He's very good at articulating how Sun are meeting the various issues customers are facing. There was a real buzz after his presentation/QA session. Sadly I missed Scott as I had to head to the airport. My plane landed an hour or so late, meaning I missed my connecting flight to Dubai. I was furious that the plane didn't wait for latecomers. The Emirates guy did a good job at calming me down. Works stuff aside, it was great to see lots of people I knew from the UK. I spent the night in a local Hilton, got some work done and wandered around a dismal shopping mall today, before watching Hotel Rwanda in a shabby cinema. Quite emotionally draining stuff. ( Mar 07 2005, 09:42:02 PM GST ) Permalink Comments [0]

Thoughts from JFK After missing my flight on the way back from CEC, I've got some time sitting in JFK waiting for Emirates to take me back to Dubai. On the ubiquitous TV, Hugh Laurie appears to have found a career boosting role in some US TV drama series called 'House MD'. I'm not qualifed to judge the quality of his American accent, but he seems to be quite goot ad playing the overworked doctor who cares about his staff underneath the gruff exterior. I think the young Aussie doctor who's keen to prove his worth in the hospital whilst repair the relationship with a previously absent father used to be in Neighbours. ( Mar 07 2005, 09:40:11 PM GST ) Permalink Comments [0]