Monday February 21, 2005

Two walks around two villages

As I had been expecting to fly to Singapore on Saturday my wife had organised to meet a friend in London but as the trip was cancelled I was then left to amuse myself. The house could do with a clean so I started the day doing that. I wonder wether people still "spring clean" their houses as they did years ago. Probabley not.

Meanwhile after then I decided to do a walk around the southern side of our village that according to our walk book we last did in March 1997. The four mile walk takes you along a one mile stretch of the river Loddon which is where I joined the walk near where we live. The house which is by this point on the walk is called Whistley Bridge house. The Doomesday book recorded a mill at Whistley valued at five shillings and 250 eels ! On the opposite bank are gravel workings which are still in use. On leaving the river I passed by Dinton Pastures an old gravel workings which has been nicely turned into a golf course, sailing club and rambling area around the main lake. I then continued across a field to Hurst first passing its Church and then the pub where we had Sunday lunch the other week.

Passing through the rest of the village I then had my lunch at The Green Man where I had a respectable sausage baguette. I then went through a couple more fields returning back to the house.

On Sunday reunited we did a walk that started in Sonning. This was the home of Dick Turpin's aunt. The cottage has his name on it.

The walk took us out from the village across fields facing the ever increasingly stiff cold east wind. We then joined the Thames and walked back to the village. Before getting back to the start we passed by Sonning's famous eleven arches under its brick bridge. As the walk book says the designers could have never forseen the traffic volume that bridge has to endure being one of the rare routes across the river in these parts. By the bridge is the Sonning theatre where you can dine and then be entertained in the small theatre. I think they also have jazz nights.

Friday February 18, 2005

Tips for bloggers I do it this way...

Jonathan wants Sun employees to blog. The title on the blogs.sun.com page says

"Welcome to Blogs.sun.com! This space is accessible to any Sun employee to write about anything."

It really is true. I do not get reminder or requests from anyone that I must write wonderful things about Sun, increase my technical content and not to write about random things that no one has any interest in. I think the interesting thing is to read what others write. I knew Chris was a keen cyclist but Trevor a runner ? If these people have these interests in a company of 30,000 employees that will mean there are lot more people out there wanting to read peoples thoughts on their own subjects of interest.

However for those that do not write weblogs and want to here is how I do it. I tend to do mine in advance and use the drafting feature of the tool we use. I usually just start with the subject in the title to remind me of the idea. As the week rolls on I add to each article and then decide when to publish it. This means I can easily write up articles when I have spare time at home or during lunch breaks at work.

Of course I find the whole experience very rewarding especially when I get comments or people talk to me about what I write.

It is good to train

I have just completed running a series of half hour mandatory courses on the lab relating to the health and safety, features of it, what you can and cannot do and where things are etc.

I am not someone who finds it easy to talk in public. But we knew that the engineers had to be trained on the above else an accident could occur or someone would do the wrong thing in the wrong place. I think if you do training on an ad hoc basis you can derive a lot of pleasure from it. I got a lot of positive feedback and for some engineers who had never talked to me before here was a chance to be introduced (we have recently enlarged the lab user base) . It has certainly started a dialog with many of them who now know who to talk to and that we are here to help.

I think when you do training you also learn things yourself. I had to be sure I knew safety information I gave was accurate as I am giving people information that will lead them to make a correct decision in the event of a incident.

At the end of each session I reminded them to ask if they do not understand, let us know when something is broken and tell us of things we could do that we do not do now.

The final challenge for us now is to give the salient points of this course to remote users the next stage of this training.

Thursday February 17, 2005

CV's and how to apply for jobs..

Every year we contact universities about one year placements we have in the UK. We describe the job and what skills we want the students to have prior to working with us. Linux or Unix. We also ask for a covering letter asking them to tell us how their current skills would make them good candidates and also why they want to work for Sun.

It is a REAL shame as we get some responses that fall short of what we want. I do not know if it is the students or the work experience folks at their universities who are to blame.

Here are some points that stop us considering candidates any further..

Linux or Unix is mandatory - so why apply if you do not mention it in your CV.

No covering letter- when one is requested

The candidates just state Linux in the CV without expanding in any way their knowledge of it. A computer company that has a Unix operating environment as ones of its foundations is clearly going to be interested in how much you know on the subject..

The letter or the CV has typos in it.

The CV is either too long, too short or short on content

It is a sad fact of life but we get fifty to eighty CV's for six positions so a CV has to catch our eye for further consideration. For a student the CV should be two sides no more. The front page has to sell you to us. All the salient details on the front page please. The fact you can drive can wait till page two.

On the covering letter - always do one. Show some interest in the company. Try and find out their latest product releases. Try and find out about the part of the company you are applying to work for. In our case Sunservices. Look at your CV and tailor it for the job/company. Get someone who cares to double proof read it and do not trust spellcheckers. Spellcheckers won't spot mouse against mousse.

I applied for a job many many years ago. I did not get past the first interview. I was shown my application form and I got some very forthright feedback on its content. I looked at it and realised they were right, it was down right shoddy. You have one chance to make an impact do not waste it.

I am writing the above as an example. It is just some ideas on how to approach applying for work from someone who sees CVs'...

Da Vinci book and film

I have just finished reading The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown . I enjoyed the book and it is light reading and would make a good holday read I think. The story is about an American ( Robert Langdon) who gets caught up in a tale of intrigue mostly set in Paris and with help from a French crptologist follows an ever increasingly complicated trail of clues which may or may not lead to the ultimate religous artifact. He also is being pursued by the French police for attempted (framed) murder.

Dan Brown has other books in print and the next one I will get also has Robert Langdon in it which is called Angels and Demons. The Da Vinci book is to be filmed with Tom Hanks who will play Langdon I guess.

Wednesday February 16, 2005

Imperial Leather soap - a tip...

We both like this soap.

But the bar has a foil motif and as the bar is used the foil prevents that part of the soap being worn away so you get a funny shaped bar which becomes harder to use over time. I am sure I am not the first to think of the solution, peel the foil off before using the bar the first time.

Bob Dylan singer or poet ?

Bob Dylan is one of those artists who like marmite you either love or hate. I think he has done some excellent stuff and some of his lyrics are brilliant. His musical talents are ok but less inpiring. I will probably get bad comments for saying that...

His album list is pretty long and apart from an era when he went 'religous' most are not duds. In fact the new stuff is very good like "Love and Theft" and "Time out of Mind".

Some of my favourite tracks are, Bob Dylan's 115th dream , Lay lady lay and Positively 4th street . But there are so many more that are my favourites..

Blood on the Tracks has to be his best all round album. Desire is also excellent and Street Legal which was released when he came over here and I saw him.

I saw him at a concert in Blackbush aerodrome when I still lived in Cambridge. This place is a mile or so away from the Sun office where I now work.

I do not know how true it was but I was told at the time this was his first concert since he came over here and played with an electric guitar. This was not well received at the time.

If you want to read more about him this is a great resource. I think his music have been covered by more people than anyone elses. Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Manfred Mann and more.. If you want an album to get you started I can recommend the Essential Bob Dylan double CD.

Tuesday February 15, 2005

White Chocolate Mouse in a box or a Valentine's meal

A year or so ago I saw Friends for dinner where a woman made this amazing dessert. The description does not sound so wonderful but I have been itching to try it. So for Valentines day I had a days holiday to make a three course meal for my wife. We started with Thai fish cakes and a small side salad. I then cheated buying one of Lloyd Grossman's green thai sauces putting chicken and prawns in it. The Thai sauces are excellent the Italian/Indian ones less so. A tip here if you make any meal that has sauce in it eg spagetti, curry etc cook it twenty four hours before you eat it. The time it spends in the fridge the flavours develop and become more intense.

Back to dessert. The whole thing as can be seen is a biscuit box which is a devil to make. The pastry is cooked with score lines in it so after cooking it can be broken into the pieces that make the box. Fondant icing is meant to be used to hold it together but I could not find any so my neighbour made me an alternative with icing sugar and egg white. The amounts of ingredients listed made me six of these cases. It has to be said about a third of the pieces fell apart on dividing so I had a high failure rate. I found in the end the best way of dividing them is to do so as soon as you can hold the biscuit in your had after it comes out of the oven.

The funny part is I produced a menu for the meal to show my wife when she came to the table. Of course I missed the typo I had done. Mouse instead of mousse. The first meal I cooked her years ago I did exactly the same thing. I should have told her it was deliberate...

The other cool thing to say is the picture above was loaded from my Canon IXUS camera at work. We are running JDS, Solar10 and Sunray version 3.0. I plugged the camera into a USB port on my Sunray, cranked up the Multi media Camera browser, selected my camera and up the pictures came. This is just as it should be !

First setting of the new year...

Last weekend I set the first of this years crops in the allotment. Although the winter has been mild it is about the right time to set shallots and garlic. The shallots are simply pressed into the ground with a foot between rows and perhaps nine inches between each bulb. As the bulbs are bigger than standard onions they do not suffer the same problem of birds pulling them up thinking the brown top might be useful addition to their nests. When setting the shallots disgard any that feel soft, they are going to rot on you.

The garlic is buried two to three inches deep with the pointed end upwards. Both will be ready as soon as the tops die back usually August. Never use supermarket garlic always buy proper bulbs. Each bulb is broken up into individual cloves before planting.

Back home my potatoes are in the garage 'chitting' which means they are on a tray and will sprout and then be put into the ground when it is much warmer. The chitting brings them on and speeds up the time it takes before they appear after being planted.

Next week I will be sowing my leek seeds and to avoid 'damp off' problems I should spray them with water with a small amount of copper sulphate added once they germinate.

I have finally cleared my ponds of debris like old lily pads etc which I should have done in the autumn when the pond water was warm after the summer. It is now very cold and a rake and net saved me having to dip my hands in the freezing water.

Monday February 14, 2005

History boys...

Saw The History Boys a new play by Alan Bennett at the National Theatre Saturday. An excellent production which we all enjoyed. The story is about a school which is trying to get all of one class into Oxbridge has an anarchic teacher played by Richard Griffiths who actually teaches the kids more than anyone realises. Frances de la Tour is his understanding peer and Geoffrey Streatfeild who plays Irwin who is brought in as a 'straight' supply teacher to ensure 100% success at Oxbridge.

It does not take Irwin long to realise Hector ( played by Griffiths) is actually doing a rather good job but matters are quickly taken out of his hands by a indiscreet moment by Hector. The class are all played by young actors who are all excellent. The punchy one liners were often missed by me and the short acts are punctuated by music from the 1980's and film projected on the rear of the stage of the actors at a 'real' school, while the stage is rearranged for the next act.

( Feb 14 2005, 04:00:39 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]

My home box running Solaris10... ready to be Live upgraded again soon...

I have an Ultra5 at home that I use for work. It was running Solaris9 and is now running Solaris10. I planned a cunning upgrade I had wanted to use Live upgrade but had not setup my disk to do this. So I booked an Ultra5 in the lab and loaded Solaris10 using a custom install so my disk had two slices for Solaris. All went well but I ignored package warnings about dependendies - big mistake. I then loaded the VPN client software we use onto the box - including instructions and then copied my small home directory from home onto it. I then took the machine home on Friday

I powered the box up, and realised soon that dtlogin was not going to appear. After checking with work dtlogin is not started by SMF we saw the rc2.d/S99dtlogin was missing. I was tempted to give up and take the box into work. But I soldiered on and got VPN going and mounted the Solaris10 FCS image from work onto the Ultra5 and worked out what SUNWdt packages were not loaded. A very small time later I had a running desktop environment. Thank goodness for a one megabit ADSL line..

The lab system then needed to give up its disk to my home system and then a reboot to check all was well. A few more packages had to be loaded from the Companion CD for CD burning etc and I was back up and running. I now need to teach myself all the good things in Solaris10 and try and catch up with the students. Next time Live upgrade will be my friend. I am ready for that now

PS One of my guys rebooted enospc our main nfs server off a Live Upgrade Boot environment over the weekend. So it is now running Solaris10 too. It came up like a charm. Our primary motivation is of course to be running the latest Solaris we can and if we run into any problems we will be logging bugs as we should. Thanks for doing that DC.

Friday February 11, 2005

Plastic bottles what a waste

My grumpy old man topic today is plastic bottles. I counted the number I use; that is two, a hair shampoo bottle and a face wash. I know that the female of the species use many more potions and our house has its share. The ones I use a plain bottles and I can get the majority of the stuff out of the bottle before cleaning it out and popping it in the recycle bin.

My wife's selection of bottles are a different matter. The shapes which are part of the product marketing of course seem to be designed to only allow removal of half or less of the contents.

Years ago we looked over a house that had one of these in the bathroom. Perhaps one could be designed to deal with these designer bottles...

Morecambe and Wise..

I grew up with these folks on our black and white TV screen. It was part of the saturday night ritual and of course everyone looked to their Xmas specials to brighten up the otherwise dreary Xmas TV with the usual motley selections it had to offer ( and still has ..).

The number of people including Des O'Conner who happily become the subject of the on screen jokes, other comedy scenes and in Ernie's plays etc was amazing. I think several people had their careers restarted by an appearance on a Eric and Ernie show. The classic must be when Eric played a piece in front of Andre 'Preview' who then chastised him for an awful rendition of the Grieg's Piano Concert. Eric replied "All the right notes, just not necessarily in the right order". Brilliant.

Their time at the BBC was their best I think.

Recently there was a documentary about Eric Morecambe as his wife had opened up his study she had left locked up since his death. It showed him as someone who was very passionate about his craft and sought perfection and praise for his work.

The best scene they did must be the breakfast scene .

Thursday February 10, 2005

Another tool in the lab the jumpstart tool

Today I am writing about the tool we use to install an operating system onto our lab systems. We call this tool js_config.

It allows us to install on any Sun platform any of the Solaris or the Linux releases we support. Engineers can pick the release they want and of course we have all the 'dated' Solaris releases like 9-904, 9-404 and so on. We also pull new builds of the current Solaris being developed for testing etc.

Although Solaris jumpstart offers the ability to do hands off installs we need to do more than just this. Often we get an explorer file of a system and we need to match it exactley patch for patch, add on packages etc. The tool we have does this. We have a enormous filesystem, just under a terabyte that stores every revision of Sun patches from the year dot. The engineers just point the explorer data to js_config and do a boot net - install and let it get on with it.

Js_config also rebuilds Solstice logical volume manager or Veritas Volumes as per the explorer data when asked to do so. It allows specific Solaris package clusters to be installed and also select and size the boot disk.

Now we support a larger x86 platform base we also have to support the PXE boot found on the newer x86 boxes we sell. Js_config also sets up up other things for the engineers like name service, xntpd and other lab localalisations like ipv6. Finally (although I not have gone through all the options ) it also supports the use of optional post processing for specific customisations engineers wish to do.

The good news is that all Solution centre labs now use this common tool and other Sun customer support groups. Which will hopefully mean more Request For Enhancements so we can continue to make this tool do more and turn around customer issues even faster than we do now.

Road hogs time to give way...

During my drive to work I pass through many towns and villages. Not surprisingly a lot of these roads have cars or other obstructions on them. When I was taught to drive when I met an obstruction I was to wait until the other side of the road was clear and then pass by the obstruction. It appears that this old fashioned politeness is now no longer part of road etiquette.

Very often when I see an obstruction on the other side of the road and as I approach it a vehicle on that side of the road will barge his way through and then wave a thanks for me letting them pass! Sometimes they will even speed up to ensure they get past before I get to that part of the road. Driving through Hurst the other day two cars barged through and were then followed by a lorry. The driver of the lorry looked down at me as I was gesticulating. Next time I will give them the single finger salute F1 drivers do...