Another family tragedy has the effect of reuniting Jack with his brother Tom, the judge. It turns out Tom is not as squeaky clean has he appears and needs Jack’s help for something less than legal. As you can probably guess by now, it all turns sinister and mystical…

I’ve definitely become desensitized to the darkness now. Every time a new character is introduced, pretty much my first thought is, “I wonder how they will die?” It’s a bit like watching Star Trek and knowing the security officer (in the red top) you’ve never seen before is the one that’s going to eat lead/laser…

Cheers

Tim…

Anyway, I’m now rockin’ the latest version on both platforms. Happy days…

Cheers

Tim…

It’s probably been about 8 years since I’ve had a formal interview like this. I admit I was a little nervous going in, but it turned out to be pretty good fun.

It started with a 1 hour written exam. It’s been about 20 years since I’ve written more than a signature with a pen, so having to write with a pen for 1 hour was pretty terrifying. I’m not big on remembering syntax (that’s what the manuals are for ), but hopefully I showed that I understood what was going on. Some of the questions could have been answered with “Read this: www.oracle-base.com/articles/….”. Pity that wasn’t an option.

After the written exam came a regular interview. I like interviews. I like talking to people about technical stuff, so I had a good time. I hope they did too. Nobody fell asleep and I didn’t see any ears bleeding, so I guess I didn’t bore them too much. I get quite “enthusiastic” when I’m talking about technology. I guess that can be a little daunting to some people. I hope I didn’t scare anybody off.

I guess it’s now down to them to decide if I’m a good fit for the job or if one of the other candidates will fit in better. Time will tell.

It would be really neat to get the job, but I’m lucky in so much as if I don’t get it, it will not really impact on my life, so I’m not tense about the outcome. Whatever will be, will be.

Cheers

Tim…

I usually like Jason Statham in action films, but it’s hard to comment on his performance here because of the absolutely atrocious camera work. I’ve come to expect violent shaking of the camera during action scenes, because it seems the vast majority of Hollywood directors think attempting to give you epilepsy is the only way to make a film look exciting. It isn’t just the action scenes here though. It’s all over the bloody place. One minute you are staring at people’s feet as they walk down the stairs. There next minute there is just a blur on screen with the odd punch or kick (probably). Was anyone really proud of the camera work on this film? Did they go home thinking, “We did a good job today!”?

The story was OK. If this had been done by someone with a better eye I think I would have enjoyed it. It’s hard to judge what the fight scenes were like because I really couldn’t see much through the blur.

My recommendation would be to sit in front of any action film staring Jason Statham, make yourself go cross-eyed and shake your head as quick as possible, then tell all your friends you’ve seen Safe.

Cheers

Tim…

PS. Remember, if you go cross-eyed and the wind changes you’ll stay like that.

PPS. It’s probably not a good idea to actually go cross-eyed and shake your head violently while watching a film. You may feel sick, or get brain damage, or both…

One of Captain Support’s friends was having some problems trying to sign up to a bonsai mailing list because emails from the list were being rejected before they got to him. He used the special signal and Captain Support jumped into action. A little Googling revealed the Plusnet mail servers can be fussy about emails with too many people in the “To:”, “CC:” and “BCC:” lists. They apparently also get a bit cranky if emails contain lots of hyperlinks. Problem solved, so the bonsai world can sleep safe at night, surrounded by potted trees I guess…

I know what you are thinking. “Bonsai mailing list? Never!” It seems obvious to Captain Support this was just a clever ploy by those S.H.I.E.L.D. types to test his super powers before inviting him to join the team. Captain Support will be waiting by the phone for the call from Nick Fury…

Cheers

Captain Support…

• Linux Antivirus (clamav, freshclam, clamscan, clamtk)

Not surprisingly, scans revealed no viruses on any of my Fedora machines.

Cheers

Tim…

My MacBook Pro is a couple of years old, has traveled the world and been on countless networks during that time. With that in mind, a virus scan revealed a grant total of zero viruses. I doubt I would be able to say that for a Windows laptop with no AV used in similar circumstances.

Although Macs are still a small percentage of the total PC market, I guess the rise in iDevices and the lack of people running AV software on Macs makes them an attractive target. Time will tell if they become the attack vectors everyone is predicting.

Cheers

Tim…

I’m trying desperately not to sing “Kris Kross will make you jump, jump“. Failed.

Two quick fix-it jobs get very complicated. First Jack tries to help a Nun who is being blackmailed. Then a concerned mother asks him to find her missing son who has joined a cult. You would have though by now Jack would realize there is nothing like a simple fix-it.

I think I am being desensitized to the darkness of these books. I don’t think that is a good thing, but it does mean I can enjoy them without feeling the need to ring the doctor to get some Prozac.

Cheers

Tim…

• Fedora 17 (F17) Installation
• Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2) Installation On Fedora 17 (F17)

I’ll run through them again when the final release drops, then officially put them live.

Cheers

Tim…

Over the weekend I started to update a couple of articles that mentioned UDEV rules (here and here) and noticed the problem had dissapeared. I updated two VMs (OL5.8 and OL6.2) with the latest changes, including the UEK updates and ran the tests again and here’s what I got.

# cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.8 (Tikanga)
# uname -r
2.6.39-100.6.1.el5uek
# scsi_id -g -u -s /block/sda/sda1
SATA_VBOX_HARDDISK_VB535d493d-7a44eb0f_
#

# cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.2 (Santiago)
# uname -r
2.6.39-100.6.1.el6uek.x86_64
# /sbin/scsi_id -g -u /dev/sda1
1ATA_VBOX_HARDDISK_VB2b5dc561-4ae6e154
#

So it looked like normal service had been resumed. Unfortunately, the MOS Note 1438604.1 associated with this issue is still not public, so I couldn’t tell if this was a unilateral change in UEK, or part of a mainline fix for the previous change.

To check I fired up a CentOS 6.2 VM with the latest kernel updates and switched an Oracle Linux VM to the latest RHEL compatible kernel and did the test on both. As you can see, they both still don’t report the scsi_id for partitions.

# cat /etc/redhat-release
CentOS release 6.2 (Final)
# uname -r
2.6.32-220.13.1.el6.x86_64
# /sbin/scsi_id -g -u /dev/sda1
#

# cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.2 (Santiago)
# uname -r
2.6.32-220.13.1.el6.x86_64
# /sbin/scsi_id -g -u /dev/sda1
#

It could be the associated fix has not worked through the mainline to RHEL and CentOS yet. I’ll do a bit of digging around to see what is going on here.

Cheers

Tim…