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  • SQLAuthority News – Social Media Series – Facebook and Google+

    - by pinaldave
    Pinal on Facebook and Google+ Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few years, you know that Facebook is the first and last word in social networking.  Everyone has a Facebook account – from your local store to the 10-year old school child.  Because of this ability to be completely connected to everyone in your entire life, keeping a Facebook page for a professional business can be tricky. For the most part, I use Facebook strictly for personal matters.  I am friends only with friends I know in the “real” world (as opposed to my “virtual” online friends) and with family, of course.  I chat with friends on Facebook and upload personal photos to share with family who are far away.  I hope this doesn’t make readers from my professional life feel left out.  You can follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SQLAuth, but you should know that Twitter is probably the better place to find updates about SQL Server and my blog (you can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/pinaldave). There are definitely businesses who keep in touch with their clients using Facebook, but I felt the need to keep my personal and professional life separate.  That’s why I was so excited to find out Google was coming out with their own social media site, Google+.  On Google+ I post some personal things as well, and there is a lot of overlap between what I put on Facebook and what I put on Google+.  But since Google+ has become so popular amongst the “techie” crowd, I have found that it’s a good place to follow some of the stars of the Microsoft world, like Scott Hanselman and Buck Woody. If you are also a member of Google+, I am looking to expand my circle there.  You can find me at https://plus.google.com/104990425207662620918/posts.  Google+ is the newest face in the social media world, and it still hasn’t found a good footing between personal and professional yet.  That’s why I felt it would be a good idea to jump on the site early and help them determine which way to go.  Maybe someday it will be a place where business and personal can mix. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Social Media

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  • Oracle Launches Something Cool for CRM

    - by andrea.mulder
    By Esteban Kolsky, CRM Intelligence and Strategy, March 31 Remember CRM? That stuff we used to do before Social CRM? The stuff that most people still do and need to continue to improve? Oracle does. Today they announced three CRM things: Siebel OnDemand release 17 with some clever life sciences complements, additions to the Oracle eBusiness Suite, and the Social Services Suite for Governments (part of a Siebel 8.2 release). I used to cover CRM and Government in a past life and I know that Social Services delivery is very complicated. For additional insights, read here.

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  • On Turning 30&hellip;

    - by MOSSLover
    I know I am not a wise old sage like some people in the community.  I just turned 30 however I feel like all my years looking back have changed me.  My collective experiences and thoughts have given me a different perspective on life recently.  Seven months ago my head was in a gutter and since then a lot of things have happened.  I was always the weird kid in the corner reading Star Trek books.  When I was in elementary school I thought that kids would throw me birthday parties out of pity because I was the poor kid who everyone hated.  I am no longer that person.  I realized that during the worst possible period between my 29th and 30th year when I hit rock bottom.  You all know the insane story as I’ve told it two billion times over.  Honestly it was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life time, because many things would not have happened.  My friends came through for me at every given moment people from all over were checking up on me all over the world.  I fell and I landed on a bunch of people it was awesome.  I landed on family and friends who I thought I was never close enough to talk about these things.  They helped me realize I had a ton of unfulfilled dreams.  I got to move to New York City one of the greatest cities in the universe.  I got to do whatever I wanted without judgment from anyone.  I got to meet some great people at a few meetup groups in the past few months.  I got to meet an awesome person that I have been dating for 3 months.  I am trying to run for the 8 billionth time and keep up with it.  I got to go to Europe and next week for the first time New Orleans.  I got renewed for MVP for 2012.  I am grateful for all the people and things in my life.  I understand that sometimes when things seem bad you can always seek friends and family.  They will always help me.  I have to learn to lean on people sometimes just how they occasionally lean on me.  That is the biggest thing I have learned from the decade of 20 to 30.  I hope that 30 to 40 will be the best decade.  I hope that I can continue to grow.  I will catch you all later. Technorati Tags: Turning 30,Wisdom

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  • World Record Batch Rate on Oracle JD Edwards Consolidated Workload with SPARC T4-2

    - by Brian
    Oracle produced a World Record batch throughput for single system results on Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Day-in-the-Life benchmark using Oracle's SPARC T4-2 server running Oracle Solaris Containers and consolidating JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, Oracle WebLogic servers and the Oracle Database 11g Release 2. The workload includes both online and batch workload. The SPARC T4-2 server delivered a result of 8,000 online users while concurrently executing a mix of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Long and Short batch processes at 95.5 UBEs/min (Universal Batch Engines per minute). In order to obtain this record benchmark result, the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, Oracle WebLogic and Oracle Database 11g Release 2 servers were executed each in separate Oracle Solaris Containers which enabled optimal system resources distribution and performance together with scalable and manageable virtualization. One SPARC T4-2 server running Oracle Solaris Containers and consolidating JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, Oracle WebLogic servers and the Oracle Database 11g Release 2 utilized only 55% of the available CPU power. The Oracle DB server in a Shared Server configuration allows for optimized CPU resource utilization and significant memory savings on the SPARC T4-2 server without sacrificing performance. This configuration with SPARC T4-2 server has achieved 33% more Users/core, 47% more UBEs/min and 78% more Users/rack unit than the IBM Power 770 server. The SPARC T4-2 server with 2 processors ran the JD Edwards "Day-in-the-Life" benchmark and supported 8,000 concurrent online users while concurrently executing mixed batch workloads at 95.5 UBEs per minute. The IBM Power 770 server with twice as many processors supported only 12,000 concurrent online users while concurrently executing mixed batch workloads at only 65 UBEs per minute. This benchmark demonstrates more than 2x cost savings by consolidating the complete solution in a single SPARC T4-2 server compared to earlier published results of 10,000 users and 67 UBEs per minute on two SPARC T4-2 and SPARC T4-1. The Oracle DB server used mirrored (RAID 1) volumes for the database providing high availability for the data without impacting performance. Performance Landscape JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Day in the Life (DIL) Benchmark Consolidated Online with Batch Workload System Rack Units BatchRate(UBEs/m) Online Users Users /Units Users /Core Version SPARC T4-2 (2 x SPARC T4, 2.85 GHz) 3 95.5 8,000 2,667 500 9.0.2 IBM Power 770 (4 x POWER7, 3.3 GHz, 32 cores) 8 65 12,000 1,500 375 9.0.2 Batch Rate (UBEs/m) — Batch transaction rate in UBEs per minute Configuration Summary Hardware Configuration: 1 x SPARC T4-2 server with 2 x SPARC T4 processors, 2.85 GHz 256 GB memory 4 x 300 GB 10K RPM SAS internal disk 2 x 300 GB internal SSD 2 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Arrays Software Configuration: Oracle Solaris 10 Oracle Solaris Containers JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0.2 JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools (8.98.4.2) Oracle WebLogic Server 11g (10.3.4) Oracle HTTP Server 11g Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.1) Benchmark Description JD Edwards EnterpriseOne is an integrated applications suite of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. Oracle offers 70 JD Edwards EnterpriseOne application modules to support a diverse set of business operations. Oracle's Day in the Life (DIL) kit is a suite of scripts that exercises most common transactions of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne applications, including business processes such as payroll, sales order, purchase order, work order, and manufacturing processes, such as ship confirmation. These are labeled by industry acronyms such as SCM, CRM, HCM, SRM and FMS. The kit's scripts execute transactions typical of a mid-sized manufacturing company. The workload consists of online transactions and the UBE – Universal Business Engine workload of 61 short and 4 long UBEs. LoadRunner runs the DIL workload, collects the user’s transactions response times and reports the key metric of Combined Weighted Average Transaction Response time. The UBE processes workload runs from the JD Enterprise Application server. Oracle's UBE processes come as three flavors: Short UBEs < 1 minute engage in Business Report and Summary Analysis, Mid UBEs > 1 minute create a large report of Account, Balance, and Full Address, Long UBEs > 2 minutes simulate Payroll, Sales Order, night only jobs. The UBE workload generates large numbers of PDF files reports and log files. The UBE Queues are categorized as the QBATCHD, a single threaded queue for large and medium UBEs, and the QPROCESS queue for short UBEs run concurrently. Oracle's UBE process performance metric is Number of Maximum Concurrent UBE processes at transaction rate, UBEs/minute. Key Points and Best Practices Two JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Application Servers, two Oracle WebLogic Servers 11g Release 1 coupled with two Oracle Web Tier HTTP server instances and one Oracle Database 11g Release 2 database on a single SPARC T4-2 server were hosted in separate Oracle Solaris Containers bound to four processor sets to demonstrate consolidation of multiple applications, web servers and the database with best resource utilizations. Interrupt fencing was configured on all Oracle Solaris Containers to channel the interrupts to processors other than the processor sets used for the JD Edwards Application server, Oracle WebLogic servers and the database server. A Oracle WebLogic vertical cluster was configured on each WebServer Container with twelve managed instances each to load balance users' requests and to provide the infrastructure that enables scaling to high number of users with ease of deployment and high availability. The database log writer was run in the real time RT class and bound to a processor set. The database redo logs were configured on the raw disk partitions. The Oracle Solaris Container running the Enterprise Application server completed 61 Short UBEs, 4 Long UBEs concurrently as the mixed size batch workload. The mixed size UBEs ran concurrently from the Enterprise Application server with the 8,000 online users driven by the LoadRunner. See Also SPARC T4-2 Server oracle.com OTN JD Edwards EnterpriseOne oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition oracle.com OTN Oracle Fusion Middleware oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Results as of 09/30/2012.

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  • Any Good Cocos2d Pause Menu Library

    - by Mahbubur R Aaman
    Background : From http://code.google.com/p/cocos2d-iphone/issues/detail?id=173 Scenes/Nodes doesn't support the CocosNodeOpacity protocol. From http://playsnackgames.com/blog/2011/09/cocos2d-tutorial-creating-a-reusable-pause-layer/ Cocos2d offers a simple method to pause and resume itself, but these methods stop the CCDirector (the class that manages most aspects of a Cocos2d’s app lifetime) from running actions and lower the fps to 5 to conserve battery life. Related issues http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/forum/topic/4368 http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/forum/topic/151 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5852354/cocos2d-engine-pause-resume http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11878450/how-to-pause-a-layer-in-cocos2d-2-0 Question : Is there any Good Cocos2d Pause Menu Library solving these tricky issues? This will save many hours of Game Developer's life.

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  • Good news and Windows Cake!

    - by David Nudelman
    A lot of interesting things happed in my life recently. I won the “Windows @ Work Contest”  from IT Toolbox and as I was not eligible to get the prize I arranged a 500 US$ donation to Kidsave.org. April 1st was also a very special day in my life, not only it was April Fools days, but it was also when I first received my Microsoft MVP Award for Windows Desktop Experience. I had enough time to celebrate, but my boss went on vacations the day before. Today he came back to the office with a very nice surprise. Yes! His wife baked a Windows Cake for me, a nice personal recognition prize. Regards, David Nudelman Related articles: [How to] Not get the prize but make everyone happy!

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  • Welcome to Gotham High [Video]

    - by Asian Angel
    Goodbye Metropolis, hello insane asylum. That is the state of life for young Harley Quinn now that she has moved to Gotham. With only two high schools to choose between, her parents have decided to send her to Gotham High where life is anything but dull! Note: Video contains some language that may be considered inappropriate. Gotham High (2013) Dark Knight Batman PARODY! [via Neatorama] Why Does 64-Bit Windows Need a Separate “Program Files (x86)” Folder? Why Your Android Phone Isn’t Getting Operating System Updates and What You Can Do About It How To Delete, Move, or Rename Locked Files in Windows

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  • Workshops, online content show how Oracle infuses simplicity, mobility, extensibility into user experience

    - by mvaughan
    By Kathy Miedema & Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle has made a huge investment into the user experience of its many different software product families, and recent releases showcase big changes and features that aim to promote end user engagement and efficiency by streamlining navigation and simplifying the user interface. But making Oracle’s enterprise software great-looking and usable doesn’t stop when Oracle products go out the door. The Applications User Experience (UX) team recognizes that our customers may need to customize software to fit their work processes. And that’s why we provide tools such as user experience design patterns to help you maintain the Oracle user experience as you tailor your application to fit your business needs. Often, however, customers may need some context around user experience. How has the Oracle user experience been designed and constructed? Why is a good user experience important for users? How does understanding what goes into the user experience benefit the people who purchase the software for users? There’s a short answer to these questions, and you can read about it on Usable Apps. But truly understanding Oracle’s investment and seeing how it applies across product families occasionally requires a deeper dive into the Oracle user experience, especially if you’re an influencer or decision-maker about Oracle products. To help frame these decisions, the Communications & Outreach team has developed several targeted workshops that explore what Oracle means when it talks about user experience, and provides a roadmap into where the Oracle user experience is going. These workshops require non-disclosure agreements, and have been delivered to Oracle sales folks, Oracle partners, Oracle ACE Directors and ACEs, and a few customers. Some of these audience members have been developers or have a technical background; just as many did not. Here’s a breakdown of the kind of training you can get around the Oracle user experience from the OAUX Communications & Outreach team.For Partners: George Papazzian, Principal, Naviscent with Joyce Ohgi, Oracle Oracle Fusion Applications HCM Pre-Sales Seminar:  In concert with Worldwide Alliances  and  Channels under Applications Partner Enablement Director Jonathan Vinoskey’s guidance, the Applications User Experience team delivers a two-day workshop.  Day one focuses on Oracle Fusion Applications HCM and pre-sales strategy, and Day two focuses on positioning and leveraging Oracle’s investment in the Oracle Fusion Applications user experience.  The next workshops will occur on the following dates: December 4-5, 2013 @ Manchester, UK January 29-30, 2014 @ Reston, Virginia February 2014 @ Guadalajara, Mexico (email: Shannon Whiteman) March 11-12, 2014 @ Dubai, United Arab Emirates April 1-2, 2014 @ Chicago, Illinois Partner Advisory Board: A two-day board meeting in the U.S. and U.K. to discuss four main user experience areas for Oracle Fusion Applications: simplicity, visualization & analytics, mobility, & futures. This event is limited to Oracle Diamond Partners, UX bloggers, and key UX influencers and requires legal documentation.  We will be talking about the Oracle applications UX strategy and roadmap. Partner Implementation Training on User Interface: How to Build Great-Looking, Usable Apps:  In this two-day, hands-on workshop built around Oracle’s Application Development Framework, learn how to build desktop and mobile user interfaces and mobile user interfaces based on Oracle’s experience with Fusion Applications. This workshop is for partners with a technology background who are looking for ways to tailor Fusion Applications using ADF, or have built their own custom solutions using ADF. It includes an introduction to UX design patterns and provides tools to build usability-tested UX designs. Nov 5-6, 2013 @ Redwood Shores, CA, USA January 28-29th, 2014 @ Reston, Virginia, USA February 25-26, 2014 @ Guadalajara, Mexico March 9-10, 2014 @ Dubai, United Arab Emirates To register, contact [email protected] Simplified UI Customization & Extensibility:  Pilot workshop:  We will be reviewing the proposed content for communicating the user experience tool kit available with the next release of Oracle Fusion Applications.  Our core focus will be on what toolkit components our system implementors and independent software vendors will need to respond to customer demand, whether they are extending Fusion Applications, or building custom applications, that will need to leverage the simplified UI. Dec 11th, 2013 @ Reading, UK For information: contact [email protected] Private lab tour and demos: Interested in seeing what’s going on in the Apps UX Labs?  If you are headed to the San Francisco Bay Area, let us know. We can arrange a spin through our usability labs at headquarters. OAUX Expo: This open-house forum gives partners a look at what the UX team is working on, and showcases the next-generation user experiences in a demo environment where attendees can see and touch the applications. UX Direct: Use the same methods that Oracle uses to develop its own user experiences. We help you define your users and their needs, and then provide direction on how to tailor the best user experience you can for them. For CustomersAngela Johnston, Gozel Aamoth, Teena Singh, and Yen Chan, Oracle Lab tours: See demos of soon-to-be-released products, and take a spin on usability research equipment such as our eye-tracker. Watch this video to get an idea of what you’ll see. Get our newsletter: Learn about newly released products and see where you can meet us at user group conferences. Participate in a feedback session: Join a focus group or customer feedback session to get an early look at user experience designs for the next generation of software, and provide your thoughts on how well it will work. Join the OUAB: The Oracle Usability Advisory Board meets several times a year to discuss trends in the workforce and provide direction on user experience designs. UX Direct: Use the same methods that Oracle uses to develop its own user experiences. We help you define your users and their needs, and then provide direction on how to tailor the best user experience you can for them. For Developers (customers, partners, and consultants): Plinio Arbizu, SP Solutions, Richard Bingham, Oracle, Balaji Kamepalli, EiSTechnoogies, Praveen Pillalamarri, EiSTechnologies How to Build Great-Looking, Usable Apps: This workshop is for attendees with a strong technology background who are looking for ways to tailor customer software using ADF. It includes an introduction to UX design patterns and provides tools to build usability-tested UX designs.  See above for dates and times. UX design patterns web site: Cut the length of your project down by months. Use these patterns to build out the task flow you need to develop for your users. The patterns have already been usability-tested and represent the best practices that the Oracle UX research team has found in its studies. UX Direct: Use the same methods that Oracle uses to develop its own user experiences. We help you define your users and their needs, and then provide direction on how to tailor the best user experience you can for them. For Oracle Sales Mike Klein, Jeremy Ashley, Brent White, Oracle Contact your local sales person for more information about the Oracle user experience and the training available from the Applications User Experience Communications & Outreach team. See customer-friendly user experience collateral ranging from the new simplified UI in Oracle Fusion Applications Release 7, to E-Business Suite user experience highlights, to Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards user experience highlights.   Receive access to the same pre-sales and implementation training we provide to partners. For Oracle Sales only: Oracle-only training on the Oracle Fusion Applications UX Innovation Sales Kit.

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  • Application to display battery info

    - by Nik
    First of all, I am not sure the title of this question is the most appropriate however this is what I meant to say, There are many ways to extend the life of a laptop battery. One way is by not connecting it to the AC adapter all the time which will overcharge it. I read that in this website. Is there an application which automatically prevents the charging of the battery once it has reached 80% charged? I mean that is such a cool feature. Sometimes people tend to forget to remove the AC adapter and this could diminish the capacity and reduce the life time of the battery. Does the battery indicator in ubuntu display info or pop-up when the battery is almost dead (dead not in the sense of usage time) but rather a degraded battery?

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  • The incomplete list of impolite WP7 user feature requests

    When I first moved from the combination of a dumb phone and a separate music player, I had modest requirements: phone calls, MP3 playback, calendar notifications, contact management, email, camera and solitaire. Even asking for only these seven things, my first smart phone was as life changing as my first laptop. I could do a great deal of my work while out and about, allowing me to have a much more productive work/personal life balance.   When I was first married, the word “love”...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • Test driven vs Business requirements constant changing

    - by James Lin
    One of the new requirement of our dev team set by the CTO/CIO is to become test driven development, however I don't think the rest of the business is going to help because they have no sense of development life cycles, and requirements get changed all the time within a single sprint. Which gets me frustrated about wasting time writing 10 test cases and will become useless tomorrow. We have suggested setting up processes to dodge those requirement changes and educate the business about development life cycles. What if the business fails to get the idea? What would you do?

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  • More Changes...

    - by MOSSLover
    Stuff has changed drastically for me in the past two to three years.  I moved over 1000 miles from Saint Louis.  I go outside and I get up in front of crowds with less issues.  Now I'm changing jobs again.  I'm not really sure what to say here.  I was obviously unhappy and I needed to do something different.  So quit two days ago and I guess it worked out that I end with B&R this Friday, then head to TEC and SPS Huntsville and a week from this Monday I start my new job at Gig Werks.  I'm not sure what to expect or where I'm heading, but I think it's a step in the right direction.  I won't really know what kind of impact this will have on my life for at least another 6 months to a year. For some reason I can't sleep tonight and I think it's really a reflection of my last day.  Tomorrow is an ending and a beginning at the same time.  So it's both kind of sad and exciting.  I don't know why I'm really excited to go to Disney Land for the second time ever in my life time.  I get to ride the Teacups.  For the longest time when I was a kid I wanted to go to Disney Land.  I wanted to ride the teacups.  In 2007, at the age of 25, I rode the teacups for my first ever visit to LA.  That was the start of finally syncing up with my childhood goals.  I wanted to live near a major city.  I wanted to visit all the major cities in the world.  I wanted to see everything and meet everyone.  This job change will probably turn into something great I just don't know it yet.  I'm walking again outside my comfort zone and stepping into uncharted territory.  In 2-3 years I'll probably write another blog post how this week lead to something great.  It just stinks when you have to leave behind something you know and love.  I will miss all my current colleagues, but I'm sure I'll gain some new ones and keep in touch with the old.  To 2010 being a great year for change and hopefully by the end of the year I can say I went to Europe.  To reaching my goals and my dreams.  Don't let anyone stop you from getting what you want in life (unless you are axe murderer please don't kill anyone that's just wrong).  Have a good weekend everyone!

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  • Simple heart container script for 2D game (Unity)?

    - by N1ghtshade3
    I'm attempting to create a simple mobile game (C#) that involves a simple three-heart life system. After searching for hours online, many of the solutions use OnGUI (which is apparently horrible for performance) and the rest are too complicated for me to understand and add to my code. The other solutions involve using a single texture and just hiding part of it when damage is taken. In my game, however, the player should be able to go over three hearts (for example, every 100 points). Sebastian Lague's Zelda-Style Health is what I'm looking for, but even though it's a tutorial there is way too much going on that I don't need or can't customize to fit in mine. What I have so far is a script called HealthScript.cs which contains a variable lives. I have another script, PlayerPhysics.cs which calls HealthScript and subtracts a life when an enemy is hit. The part I don't get is actually drawing the hearts. I think I understand what needs to happen, I just am not experienced enough with Unity to know how. The Start function should draw three (or whatever lives is set to) hearts in the top right corner. Since the game should be resolution-independent to accommodate the various sizes of Android devices, I'd rather use scaling rather than PixelInset. When the player hits an enemy as detected by PlayerPhysics.cs, it should subtract from lives. I think that I have this working using this.GetComponent<HealthScript>().lives -= 1 but I'm not sure if it actually works. This should trigger a redraw of the hearts so that there are now two hearts. The same principle would apply for adding hearts when a score is reached, except when lives > maxHeartsPerRow, the new hearts should be drawn below the old ones. I realise I don't have much code to show but believe me; I've tried for quite some time to figure this out and have little to show for it. Any help at all would be welcome; it seems like it shouldn't take that much code to put an image on the screen for each life there is, but I haven't found anything yet. Thanks!

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  • Breaking up the Workday– Overcoming the Workaholic Syndrome

    - by dwahlin
    Hi, my name’s Dan Wahlin and I’m a workaholic – I admit it. It’s good from the standpoint that I get a lot done but it also has a lot of cons associated with it as well that I’m not proud of. I literally can’t watch TV without feeling like I should be doing something more productive (although I have no problem going to see movies at a theater or watching sporting events – that’s my escape I guess). On vacation it’s sometimes difficult the first few days to just “let go” of work and enjoy the time with my family. I always feel like I should be checking email and following up with different business projects. Fortunately, my wife knows me really well after 17 years of marriage and “gently” restricts my usage of laptops and other gadgets while we’re out. She also reminds me that constantly burying my face in gadgets just isn’t cool and shows a distinct lack of self control. On a given day I typically put in between 12 (at a minimum) up to 16-18 hours working on projects. My company does .NET consulting (ASP.NET/jQuery, SharePoint and Silverlight) but we also do a lot in the training space so there’s always a client project, some new courseware or some other deliverable that has to be worked on. My normal process for handling that is to just work my butt off and see how much I can get done. That process has worked well for a long time but when you start realizing that your happiness comes from how much work you accomplished that day then you have a problem. That’s especially true if you have kids (which I do….two awesome boys). It’s almost as if working more hours feels like I’m more successful or something which is of course ridiculous. It may actually mean that I’m too distracted or disorganized. Lately I’ve realized that while I’m still productive and always meet my deadlines, I’m really burnt out by the afternoon and have lost some of the excitement I used to have. Part of that’s normal I think given that I’ve been doing this for close to 15 years now, but in thinking through it more I realized that I just need to get away from the desk and take a break. By far, the happiest time of my life was my childhood. Part of that was due to having awesome parents, having far less responsibility (a big factor I suspect), being able to hang-out with friends at school, playing sports, games, etc. but I think a big part of the overall happiness came from being outside a lot. I lived on my bike as a little kid and as I grew up I shared time between riding an ATV all over the place, shooting hoops on the basketball court, playing golf and working on a golf course (all outside work of course).  Being a software developer and trainer I generally spend 95% or more of my day indoors and only see the sun when driving from place to place or by looking out the window (that’s sad because I live in a suburb of Phoenix, AZ where it’s nearly always sunny). I haven’t looked into any scientific studies on the matter, but I’d be willing to bet there’s a direct correlation between overall productivity/happiness and being outside some throughout the day (sunny or not). But, I wasn’t sure what to do about it since I do have a lot of deadlines I need to meet after all. While talking with my wife last night I mentioned how I feel like I’m in a rut and want to get the “fun” back that I used to have. She immediately said that I need to start making time for breaks (a real quick fact – she’s a lot smarter than me and nearly always right). Of course my first thought was that I’d be less productive taking breaks. If I spend 2 hours just relaxing then I’m losing 2 hours of work. But, I thought about it more and realized that I’m probably less productive when I work 10+ hours and only take less than 30 minutes for a lunch break to relax a little. I bet my brain is screaming, “Please let me relax a little so I can figure out these problems you’re trying to resolve!”. So, starting today I’m going to try to break the workaholic habit and spend time outside of the office. That could mean sitting around outside, working out, golfing, or whatever. I’ve decided that no gadgets are allowed during that time and that I shouldn’t work for more than 4 hours straight without taking a break. I have no idea how my little “break the workaholic syndrome” experiment will go or how long it will last, but I’d be very interested in hearing from others on how they keep fresh and focused without working yourself to death. If you have any specific ideas, techniques or practices you follow please share them. There’s a lot more to life than work and some of us (and I’m thinking of myself specifically) need to take a long, hard look at what kind of balance we currently have. I’d hate to look back at my life when I’m 80 years old and say, “The only thing I did was work – I missed out on life!”.

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  • Power & Sleep Management

    - by Espressofa
    I'm running 12.10 with xmonad. Trying to ensure that the right things happen when I close laptop lid, etc. I see Internet search results for similar issues that mostly point towards gnome-power-manager. I have the package installed, but gnome-power-manager is not in my path anywhere. The behavior I'm looking for is as following: Sleep on lid close Awaken on lid open Turn off screen after 10 idle minutes Most importantly, have better battery life. I'm supposed to be getting 9 hours and I haven't seen the battery life estimate above 2.5 hours yet. Any tips on where to look or how to configure this would be much appreciated.

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  • Samsung Sells 10 Million Galaxy S Smartphones

    - by Gopinath
    Since it’s launch in June 2010, Samsung managed to sell 10 million Galaxy S smartphones around the world. Out of the 10 million units sold, US sales accounted for 4 million units and Europe 2.5 million units. JK Shin, President and Head Of Mobile communications at Samsung says: The Galaxy S is the result of our 22 year heritage in the mobile industry. It is the realization of our concept of ‘the Smart Life’ – we wanted to makes users’ lives more convenient, more exciting, and more integrated. Today’s milestone shows that we have succeeded: 10 million Galaxy S users around the world are living the Smart Life. Samsung Galaxy is one of the most popular Android phone launched in 2010. This article titled,Samsung Sells 10 Million Galaxy S Smartphones, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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  • Your Next IT Job

    - by BuckWoody
    Some data professionals have worked (and plan to work) in the same place for a long time. In organizations large and small, the turnover rate just isn’t that high. This has not been my experience. About every 3-5 years I’ve changed either roles or companies. That might be due to the IT environment or my personality (or a mix of the two), but the point is that I’ve had many roles and worked for many companies large and small throughout my 27+ years in IT. At one point this might have been a detriment – a prospective employer looks at the resume and says “it seems you’ve moved around quite a bit.” But I haven’t found that to be the case all the time –in fact, in some cases the variety of jobs I’ve held has been an asset because I’ve seen what works (and doesn’t) in other environments, which can save time and money. So if you’re in the first camp – great! Stay where you are, and continue doing the work you love. but if you’re in the second, then this post might be useful. If you are planning on making a change, or perhaps you’ve hit a wall at your current location, you might start looking around for a better paying job – and there’s nothing wrong with that. We all try to make our lives better, and for some that involves more money. Money, however, isn’t always the primary motivator. I’ve gone to another job that doesn’t have as many benefits or has the same salary as the current job I’m working to gain more experience, get a better work/life balance and so on. It’s a mix of factors that only you know about. So I thought I would lay out a few advantages and disadvantages in the shops I’ve worked at. This post isn’t aimed at a single employer, but represents a mix of what I’ve experienced, and of course the opinions here are my own. You will most certainly have a different take – if so, please post a response! I also won’t mention a specific industry – I’ve worked everywhere from medical firms, legal offices, retail, billing centers, manufacturing, government, even to NASA. I’m focusing here mostly on size and composition. And I’m making some very broad generalizations here – I am fully aware that a small company might have great benefits and a large company might allow a lot of role flexibility.  your mileage may vary – and again, post those comments! Small Company To me a “small company” means around 100 people or less – sometimes a lot less. These can be really fun, frustrating places to to work. Advantages: a great deal of flexibility, a wide range of roles (often at the same time), a large degree of responsibility, immediate feedback, close relationships with co-workers, work directly with your customer. Disadvantages: Too much responsibility, little work/life balance, immature political structure, few (if any) benefits. If the business is family-owned, they can easily violate work/life boundaries. Medium Size company In my experience the next size company I would work for involves from a few hundred people to around five thousand. Advantages: Good mobility – fairly easy to get promoted, acceptable benefits, more defined responsibilities, better work/life balance, balanced load for expertise, but still the organizational structure is fairly simple to understand. Disadvantages: Pay is not always highest, rapid changes in structure as the organization grows, transient workforce. You may not be given the opportunity to work with another technology if someone already “owns” it. Politics are painful at this level as people try to learn how to do it. Large Company When you get into the tens of thousands of folks employed around the world, you’re in a large company. Advantages: Lots of room to move around – sometimes you can work (as I have) multiple jobs through the years and yet stay at the same company, building time for benefits, very defined roles, trained managers (yes, I know some of them are still awful – trust me – I DO know that), higher-end benefits, long careers possible, discounts at retailers and other “soft” benefits, prestige. For some, a higher level of politics (done professionally) is a good thing. Disadvantages: You could become another faceless name in the crowd, might not allow a great deal of flexibility,  large organizational changes might take away any control you have of your career. I’ve also seen large layoffs happen, and good people get let go while “dead weight” is retained. For some, a higher level of politics is distasteful. So what are your experiences? Share with the group! Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • Why We Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love Millennials

    - by HCM-Oracle
    By Christine Mellon Much is said and written about the new generations of employees entering our workforce, as though they are a strange specimen, a mysterious life form to be “figured out,” accommodated and engaged – at a safe distance, of course.  At its worst, this talk takes a critical and disapproving tone, with baby boomer employees adamantly refusing to validate this new breed of worker, let alone determine how to help them succeed and achieve their potential.   The irony of our baby-boomer resentments and suspicions is that they belie the fact that we created the very vision that younger employees are striving to achieve.  From our frustrations with empty careers that did not fulfill us, from our opposition to “the man,” from our sharp memories of our parents’ toiling for 30 years just for the right to retire, from the simple desire not to live our lives in a state of invisibility, came the seeds of hope for something better. One characteristic of Millennial workers that grew from these seeds is the desire to experience as much as possible.  They are the “Experiential Employee”, with a passion for growing in diverse ways and expanding personal and professional horizons.  Rather than rooting themselves in a single company for a career, or even in a single career path, these employees are committed to building a broad portfolio of experiences and capabilities that will enable them to make a difference and to leave a mark of significance in the world.  How much richer is the organization that nurtures and leverages this inclination?  Our curmudgeonly ways must be surrendered and our focus redirected toward building the next generation of talent ecosystems, if we are to optimize what future generations have to offer.   Accelerating Professional Development In spite of our Boomer grumblings about Millennials’ “unrealistic” expectations, the truth is that we have a well-matched set of circumstances.  We have executives-in-waiting who want to learn quickly and a concurrent, urgent need to ramp up their development time, based on anticipated high levels of retirement in the next 10+ years.  Since we need to rapidly skill up these heirs to the corporate kingdom, isn’t it a fortunate coincidence that they are hungry to learn, develop and move fluidly throughout our organizations??  So our challenge now is to efficiently operationalize the wisdom we have acquired about effective learning and development.   We have already evolved from classroom-based models to diverse instructional methods.  The next step is to find the best approaches to help younger employees learn quickly and apply new learnings in an impactful way.   Creating temporary or even permanent functional partnerships among Millennial employees is one way to maximize outcomes.  This might take the form of 2 or more employees owning aspects of what once fell under a single role.  While one might argue this would mean duplication of resources, it could be a short term cost while employees come up to speed.  And the potential benefits would be numerous:  leveraging and validating the inherent sense of community of new generations, creating cross-functional skills with broad applicability, yielding additional perspectives and approaches to traditional work outcomes, and accelerating the performance curve for incumbents through Cooperative Learning (Johnson, D. and Johnson R., 1989, 1999).  This well-researched teaching strategy, where students support each other in the absorption and application of new information, has been shown to deliver faster, more efficient learning, and greater retention. Alternately, perhaps short term contracts with exiting retirees, or former retirees, to help facilitate the development of following generations may have merit.  Again, a short term cost, certainly.  However, the gains realized in shortening the learning curve, and strengthening engagement are substantial and lasting. Ultimately, there needs to be creative thinking applied for each organization on how to accelerate the capabilities of our future leaders in unique ways that mesh with current culture. The manner in which performance is evaluated must finally shift as well.  Employees will need to be assessed on how well they have developed key skills and capabilities vs. end-to-end mastery of functional positions they have no interest in keeping for an entire career. As we become more comfortable in placing greater and greater weight on competencies vs. tasks, we will realize increased organizational agility via this new generation of workers, which will be further enhanced by their natural flexibility and appetite for change. Revisiting Succession  For many years, organizations have failed to deliver desired succession planning outcomes.  According to CEB’s 2013 research, only 28% of current leaders were pre-identified in a succession plan. These disappointing results, along with the entrance of the experiential, Millennial employee into the workforce, may just provide the needed impetus for HR to reinvent succession processes.   We have recognized that the best professional development efforts are not always linear, and the time has come to fully adopt this philosophy in regard to succession as well.  Paths to specific organizational roles will not look the same for newer generations who seek out unique learning opportunities, without consideration of a singular career destination.  Rather than charting particular jobs as precursors for key positions, the experiences and skills behind what makes an incumbent successful must become essential in succession mapping.  And the multitude of ways in which those experiences and skills may be acquired must be factored into the process, along with the individual employee’s level of learning agility. While this may seem daunting, it is necessary and long overdue.  We have talked about the criticality of competency-based succession, however, we have not lived up to our own rhetoric.  Many Boomers have experienced the same frustration in our careers; knowing we are capable of shining in a particular role, but being denied the opportunity due to how our career history lined up, on paper, with documented job requirements.  These requirements usually emphasized past jobs/titles and specific tasks, versus capabilities, drive and willingness (let alone determination) to learn new things.  How satisfying would it be for us to leave a legacy where such narrow thinking no longer applies and potential is amplified? Realizing Diversity Another bloom from the seeds we Boomers have tried to plant over the past decades is a completely evolved view of diversity.  Millennial employees assume a diverse workforce, and are startled by anything less.  Their social tolerance, nurtured by wide and diverse networks, is unprecedented.  College graduates expect a similar landscape in the “real world” to what they experienced throughout their lives.  They appreciate and seek out divergent points of view and experiences without needing any persuasion.  The face of our U.S. workforce will likely see dramatic change as Millennials apply their fresh take on hiring and building strong teams, with an inherent sense of inclusion.  This wonderful aspect of the Millennial wave should be celebrated and strongly encouraged, as it is the fulfillment of our own aspirations. Future Perfect The Experiential Employee is operating more as a free agent than a long term player, and their commitment will essentially last as long as meaningful organizational culture and personal/professional opportunities keep their interest.  As Boomers, we have laid the foundation for this new, spirited employment attitude, and we should take pride in knowing that.  Generations to come will challenge organizations to excel in how they identify, manage and nurture talent. Let’s support and revel in the future that we’ve helped invent, rather than lament what we think has been lost.  After all, the future is always connected to the past.  And as so eloquently phrased by Antoine Lavoisier, French nobleman, chemist and politico:  “Nothing is Lost, Nothing is Created, and Everything is Transformed.” Christine has over 25 years of diverse HR experience.  She has held HR consulting and corporate roles, including CHRO positions for Echostar in Denver, a 6,000+ employee global engineering firm, and Aepona, a startup software firm, successfully acquired by Intel. Christine is a resource to Oracle clients, to assist in Human Capital Management strategy development and implementation, compensation practices, talent development initiatives, employee engagement, global HR management, and integrated HR systems and processes that support the full employee lifecycle. 

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  • laptop-mode-tools and harddrive spinoff

    - by sagarchalise
    So I wanted to extend my laptop battery life. After googleing a lot I found many tips and tricks. Some even in this site as well. Then I found this package in synaptic as well laptop-mode-tools. Now I am not well aware of what harddrive spinoffs are, so I have a dilemma of installing this package as it seems to remove acpi support as well. So my question is, how reliable is this package in battery life extension and what configurations should I use with it ? Also I stumbled upon some posts saying spinoffs may kill the harddrive as well. So can anyone clearify with some configuration tips especially for laptop-mode-tools. Thanks in advance

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  • Software development is (mostly) a trade, and what to do about it

    - by Jeff
    (This is another cross-post from my personal blog. I don’t even remember when I first started to write it, but I feel like my opinion is well enough baked to share.) I've been sitting on this for a long time, particularly as my opinion has changed dramatically over the last few years. That I've encountered more crappy code than maintainable, quality code in my career as a software developer only reinforces what I'm about to say. Software development is just a trade for most, and not a huge academic endeavor. For those of you with computer science degrees readying your pitchforks and collecting your algorithm interview questions, let me explain. This is not an assault on your way of life, and if you've been around, you know I'm right about the quality problem. You also know the HR problem is very real, or we wouldn't be paying top dollar for mediocre developers and importing people from all over the world to fill the jobs we can't fill. I'm going to try and outline what I see as some of the problems, and hopefully offer my views on how to address them. The recruiting problem I think a lot of companies are doing it wrong. Over the years, I've had two kinds of interview experiences. The first, and right, kind of experience involves talking about real life achievements, followed by some variation on white boarding in pseudo-code, drafting some basic system architecture, or even sitting down at a comprooder and pecking out some basic code to tackle a real problem. I can honestly say that I've had a job offer for every interview like this, save for one, because the task was to debug something and they didn't like me asking where to look ("everyone else in the company died in a plane crash"). The other interview experience, the wrong one, involves the classic torture test designed to make the candidate feel stupid and do things they never have, and never will do in their job. First they will question you about obscure academic material you've never seen, or don't care to remember. Then they'll ask you to white board some ridiculous algorithm involving prime numbers or some kind of string manipulation no one would ever do. In fact, if you had to do something like this, you'd Google for a solution instead of waste time on a solved problem. Some will tell you that the academic gauntlet interview is useful to see how people respond to pressure, how they engage in complex logic, etc. That might be true, unless of course you have someone who brushed up on the solutions to the silly puzzles, and they're playing you. But here's the real reason why the second experience is wrong: You're evaluating for things that aren't the job. These might have been useful tactics when you had to hire people to write machine language or C++, but in a world dominated by managed code in C#, or Java, people aren't managing memory or trying to be smarter than the compilers. They're using well known design patterns and techniques to deliver software. More to the point, these puzzle gauntlets don't evaluate things that really matter. They don't get into code design, issues of loose coupling and testability, knowledge of the basics around HTTP, or anything else that relates to building supportable and maintainable software. The first situation, involving real life problems, gives you an immediate idea of how the candidate will work out. One of my favorite experiences as an interviewee was with a guy who literally brought his work from that day and asked me how to deal with his problem. I had to demonstrate how I would design a class, make sure the unit testing coverage was solid, etc. I worked at that company for two years. So stop looking for algorithm puzzle crunchers, because a guy who can crush a Fibonacci sequence might also be a guy who writes a class with 5,000 lines of untestable code. Fashion your interview process on ways to reveal a developer who can write supportable and maintainable code. I would even go so far as to let them use the Google. If they want to cut-and-paste code, pass on them, but if they're looking for context or straight class references, hire them, because they're going to be life-long learners. The contractor problem I doubt anyone has ever worked in a place where contractors weren't used. The use of contractors seems like an obvious way to control costs. You can hire someone for just as long as you need them and then let them go. You can even give them the work that no one else wants to do. In practice, most places I've worked have retained and budgeted for the contractor year-round, meaning that the $90+ per hour they're paying (of which half goes to the person) would have been better spent on a full-time person with a $100k salary and benefits. But it's not even the cost that is an issue. It's the quality of work delivered. The accountability of a contractor is totally transient. They only need to deliver for as long as you keep them around, and chances are they'll never again touch the code. There's no incentive for them to get things right, there's little incentive to understand your system or learn anything. At the risk of making an unfair generalization, craftsmanship doesn't matter to most contractors. The education problem I don't know what they teach in college CS courses. I've believed for most of my adult life that a college degree was an essential part of being successful. Of course I would hold that bias, since I did it, and have the paper to show for it in a box somewhere in the basement. My first clue that maybe this wasn't a fully qualified opinion comes from the fact that I double-majored in journalism and radio/TV, not computer science. Eventually I worked with people who skipped college entirely, many of them at Microsoft. Then I worked with people who had a masters degree who sucked at writing code, next to the high school diploma types that rock it every day. I still think there's a lot to be said for the social development of someone who has the on-campus experience, but for software developers, college might not matter. As I mentioned before, most of us are not writing compilers, and we never will. It's actually surprising to find how many people are self-taught in the art of software development, and that should reveal some interesting truths about how we learn. The first truth is that we learn largely out of necessity. There's something that we want to achieve, so we do what I call just-in-time learning to meet those goals. We acquire knowledge when we need it. So what about the gaps in our knowledge? That's where the most valuable education occurs, via our mentors. They're the people we work next to and the people who write blogs. They are critical to our professional development. They don't need to be an encyclopedia of jargon, but they understand the craft. Even at this stage of my career, I probably can't tell you what SOLID stands for, but you can bet that I practice the principles behind that acronym every day. That comes from experience, augmented by my peers. I'm hell bent on passing that experience to others. Process issues If you're a manager type and don't do much in the way of writing code these days (shame on you for not messing around at least), then your job is to isolate your tradespeople from nonsense, while bringing your business into the realm of modern software development. That doesn't mean you slap up a white board with sticky notes and start calling yourself agile, it means getting all of your stakeholders to understand that frequent delivery of quality software is the best way to deal with change and evolving expectations. It also means that you have to play technical overlord to make sure the education and quality issues are dealt with. That's why I make the crack about sticky notes, because without the right technique being practiced among your code monkeys, you're just a guy with sticky notes. You're asking your business to accept frequent and iterative delivery, now make sure that the folks writing the code can handle the same thing. This means unit testing, the right instrumentation, integration tests, automated builds and deployments... all of the stuff that makes it easy to see when change breaks stuff. The prognosis I strongly believe that education is the most important part of what we do. I'm encouraged by things like The Starter League, and it's the kind of thing I'd love to see more of. I would go as far as to say I'd love to start something like this internally at an existing company. Most of all though, I can't emphasize enough how important it is that we mentor each other and share our knowledge. If you have people on your staff who don't want to learn, fire them. Seriously, get rid of them. A few months working with someone really good, who understands the craftsmanship required to build supportable and maintainable code, will change that person forever and increase their value immeasurably.

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  • Learning Programming, Suggestions for a roadmap

    - by RisingSun
    Hi, Some background first- I am new to programming and have discovered it rather late in life; Like many hobbyists, my introduction to the subject has been through php/jquery (yes, i know the popular mood around here... they-are-not-real-programminng-languages ;-) ). I like to believe that I am reasonably competent at what I do in my other life and this developing addiction to coding has taken a very heavy toll on my professional prospects. This is the question: What programming languages next? (No plans to ditch php in the immediate future, that will involve rewriting much of my code) Any absolutely essential books I must read? Is it necessary to join a college/university course? Do I need to ditch my other profession to continue serious learning? My goals are: Develop a solid understanding of the science and art of programming. Continue to work on my own web application (Hands on learning suits me best) I am something of a generalist interested in everything from UI to database performance

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  • EJB Lifecycle and Relation to WARs

    - by Adam Tannon
    I've been reading up on EJBs (3.x) and believe I understand the basics. This question is a "call for confirmation" that I have interpreted the Java EE docs correctly and that I understand these fundamental concepts: An EJB is to an App Container as a Web App (WAR) is to a Web Container Just like you deploy a WAR to a Web Container, and that container manages your WAR's life cycle, you deploy an EJB to an App Container, and the container manages your EJB's life cycle When the App Container fires up and deploys an EJB, it is given a unique "identifier" and URL that can be used by JNDI to look up the EJB from another tier (like the web tier) So, when your web app wants to invoke one of your EJB's methods, it looks the EJB up using some kind of service locator (JNDI) and invoke the method that way Am I on-track or way off-base here? Please correct me & clarify for me if any of these are incorrect. Thanks in advance!

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