Dilbert's take on employee engagement

Comic for August 12, 2012:

The value of methods in an agile world

Interesting definition of an agile method from this article.

A method is the way a team works to accomplish its goals. It describes how responsibilities are identified and assigned, what techniques are applied, and how success criteria are identified and achieved.

Documented methods enable an organization to:

• Define clear responsibilities and critical sequences of events
  As teams become highly distributed, it becomes important to have information available at all times and from all places in some documented form. There isn't time to wait for an explanation, and we can't afford to be confused about what needs to be done, by whom, and when.
• Capture and promote the organization's best practices
  To stay competitive, organizations must use industry-standard best practices and learn from their mistakes and their successes.
• Baseline and measure the effect of changes
  If you do not establish a baseline method, what do you improve? Documentation helps you implement the agile principle of continuous improvement based on retrospectives.
• Address compliance and audits
  CMMi, DO-178B, ITIL, COBIT, SOX, for example. Compliance can be a challenge. Documenting the method is typically necessary to achieve compliance and as evidence to demonstrate compliance.
• Quickly start projects with a method that fits project characteristics

S.L.I.Q PenDrive

Benchmark for 16G S.L.I.Q PenDrive.
Got it for only RM27.90

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo

                           Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/

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* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

           Sequential Read :    16.521 MB/s

          Sequential Write :    10.884 MB/s

         Random Read 512KB :    15.926 MB/s

        Random Write 512KB :     0.841 MB/s

    Random Read 4KB (QD=1) :     2.411 MB/s [   588.5 IOPS]

   Random Write 4KB (QD=1) :     0.005 MB/s [     1.3 IOPS]

   Random Read 4KB (QD=32) :     2.529 MB/s [   617.4 IOPS]

  Random Write 4KB (QD=32) :     0.007 MB/s [     1.8 IOPS]

  Test : 1000 MB [E: 0.0% (0.0/14.9 GB)] (x5)

  Date : 2012/07/19 12:57:10

    OS : Windows 7  SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

 

Remember to shutdown your database

I was working on a project which uses Spring, Jdbc, Jpa and HSQLDB.

It is meant to be executed as a batch program from command line with multi threaded support.

After a while, I noticed that my final few commits to the database is never captured properly by the database. After checking to see if my threads, jpa or spring context is closed properly, I finally figured out it is because I never shutdown my HSQLDB properly. Even though I am using it as a file based database, I must still issue a shutdown command.

For those of you trying to work with embedded database, do remember to shut it down when your program exits.

Hopes this kind reminder will safe you hours of debugging.

Only Jackasses beg for treats

Only Jackasses beg for treats, originally uploaded by Suki♥!.

wedding fever

wedding fever., originally uploaded by Kim Cartmell.

Beautiful photo by Kim Cartmell on 10 Oct 10.

Dream home with dream pet

Few things you need to know about Ilulissat - Two, originally uploaded by ColBacco.

NIKE WRITE THE FUTURE - FULL LENGTH VERSION

Onwards and upwards

Onwards and upwards, originally uploaded by squacco.

Really thought the zebra pulled her up from the water

Collar stays

When I bought shirts, it sometimes comes with few pieces of small plastics strips. I always wondered what it was and thought it is some logos or branding for the shirt. Today I found out it is something known as collar stays.

Now if only someone will tell me how to use it.

Documentum DQL to retrieve latest version of an object

To find the latest version of a dm_document from documentum based on r_object_id, use the following dql.

select r_object_id from dm_document where i_chronicle_id in (select i_chronicle_id from dm_document(all) where r_object_id = '?')

Beautifully Imperfect

329 Balloons Launch from Flickr

The largest mass ascent of hot air balloons took place recently at the biennial Lorraine Mondial Air Ballons rally in Chambley, France. Pilots from around the world lifted off in 329 balloons on 26 July. So beautiful, just like a scene from bed time stories.

Joachim de Posada says, Don't eat the marshmallow yet

In this short talk from TED U, Joachim de Posada shares a landmark experiment on delayed gratification -- and how it can predict future success. With priceless video of kids trying their hardest not to eat the marshmallow.

Configuring SSO with LTPA

I had just wasted a few hours of my life because of some careless mistake made by our computer engineers.

I was tasked to configure single sign on for two servers, a Websphere Application Server v6 and a Websphere Portal Server v6. I configured my application server to use the same LDAP configuration as the portal. Export the LTPA key from Websphere Portal and import it to WAS.

I thought it will work. But it didn't. I thought I configured it wrongly thus tweak here and there. Tried every single thing I could imagine. I was also careless as I forgot to consult the log files. I just thought the LTPA token was not propagated properly.

I finally remembered to read the logs and found the following.

[8/2/07 21:55:35:047 PDT] 0000001d LTPAServerObj W SECJ0371W: Validation of the LTPA token failed because the token expired with the following info: Token expiration Date: Thu Aug 02 08:54:41 PDT 2007, current Date: Thu Aug 02 21:55:35 PDT 2007.

Finally I check the server date time settings. Guess what I found. The Portal server is just beginning to wake up at 6 in the morning. The WAS has the same time as my machine, 9:55 p.m., but it is somewhere in US. The engineer who setup the server didn't change the regional settings back to my country and it is still following US timezone.

I wonder who should I be screaming at when this type of things happens. I guess this is what happens when you are not surrounded by geniuses.

Show current Windows Media Player music status in Google Talk

My Google Talk is not showing the current music I am playing in Windows Media Player even though I had enabled the show current music status. After consulting Google Talk Help, I found the following tips. So, the following is for the convenience of those who faced the same problem as me.

Windows Media Player is designed to disable all plug-ins (including the Google Talk music status plug-in) whenever Windows Media Player or your Windows desktop crashes. To re-enable the Google Talk plug-in:

1. Open Windows Media Player.
2. From the View menu, select Plug-ins > Options...
3. From the Category section of the Plug-ins tab, select Background.
4. Select the Google Talk Music Plugin checkbox.
5. Click OK.

You'll need to close and restart Windows Media Player for your change to take effect.

All Was Well

(might contain what some consider as spoilers on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

I got my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows from a nearby Tesco around 7.00 am. Since there was news that our hypermarkets will run out of the special priced books around noon, I thought it is better to grab it early.

Initially, I planned to purchase the book from Kinokuniya as they were offering a 30% discount for readers with The Star cut out coupon. However, the special price by our hypermarkets is really too tempting to resist.

Anyway, I finished the book early Monday morning with quite a number of breaks in between for shopping malls, food, drinks, Germany F1, etc. The summary of the story is per expected, Harry survives and lived happily ever after :)

One thing I really miss from this final book is Hogwarts. There is very little mention of Hogwarts. The main reason I really like the story is not because of Harry but because of Hogwarts, the stories of young witches and wizards growing up in a magical boarding school.

For those who had not read it, go get a copy. However, if you try to read only the last book, you might be very disappointed as the stories picks up from the previous books and you will not be able to comprehend a lot of it. So, to thoroughly enjoy it, start reading from book one.

I am sleep deprived and is in a zombie like state now. I think I am no longer young enough to finish 600 pages in two days.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sales boycott

It seems like four major bookstore chains in Malaysia will refuse to sell Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows tomorrow. They having this boycott to protest against a few Malaysian hypermarkets which are planning to sell at a special promotion price which is way cheaper than the selling price at the bookstores.

The recommended retail price of the book is RM109.90. Most bookstores are giving on average of 10-20% discounts for pre-orders and their members. The hypermarkets are planning to sell at RM69.90 which are more than 35% cheaper than the recommended retail price.

Even without this boycott, I think most Harry Potter fans will be getting their copies of the book from hypermarkets.

I wonder what will happen to those who pre-order the book now that the bookstores are refusing to sell. Or will the publisher disallow the hypermarkets to sell below the recommended retail price? All I want tomorrow is to be able to get my copy of the book at RM69.90, no matter who is selling it.

The story of Kitt & Cherry

The story about how my friend met his wife, dated, proposed and lived happily ever after. Enjoy the music video at the second half of the clip.

Updated: The photos from their wedding dinner.

How to get Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

For those of you who have not pre-order your Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, fear not, as you can always get it from the bookstores on 21st July 2007 itself. The book can only be sold after 7.00 am Malaysian time on that day.

I will most probably get mine from Kinokuniya KLCC as they current give the best offer on that book. They are giving a 20% discount only on 21st July 2007 on a while stock last basis. I got a few of my previous Harry Potter books from them too as they really give the best price compared to the other book stores in KL. Most other bookstores will require you to pre-order or be members of their bookstore to enjoy the promotional prices.

For those of you planning to get from the other bookstores, I heard that they give 10% discounts to their members and also offer breakfast for the early arrivals.

Read more about the Kinokuniya Harry Potter promotion here.

Updates: Seems like you can get Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for a promotional price of RM69.90 from our friendly hypermarkets, Carrefour and Tesco.