The Heroes, Season 2

Hey, I think I have finished watching Heroes, Season 2, only 11 episodes this time, it was so short.

Now, I confused who is/are vallain(s) and who is/are the good ones, Peter has 'hooked up' with Tenshi, the immortal, aimed to save mankind by destroying the world with the deadly virus, Shanti, which could potentially kill 95% of the earth population. The virus was later destroyed by....Peter, when he realised what he had done.

Syler is slowly recovering his power, oops, the end.

Season 3 next....

Work and no play

There goes my leave plans for today, the tomorrow and probably the day after next. My work can't seem to finish, never ever!

Trying to find time to rest and have some fun outside work is tough, 2 more weeks and it's Christmas and new year. I just don't feel that holiday mood now, thinking about the work that I have to complete.

Let's see how, maybe I should try to squeeze some time and catch a movie on Wednesday, I got a free movie ticket.

Thought I could go on leave

Just when I thought I could clear my leaves from Thursday onwards, I was told we will be having a Disaster Recovery exercise to do.

The last 2 days at the DR site was terrible, had encountered a couple of issues, e.g. restoration failure due to incompatibility of tape drives/library. Problems that we did not see at our office surface. LTO2 tapes (HCART3) written using LTO3 tape drives (HCART3) cannot be restored from a LTO2 tape drive (HCART2), which is for Veritas Netbackup 6.0, tried to re-configure the LTO2 tape drive as HCART3, it didn't work!

Oh dear, guess don't think I can finish clearing my leaves by end of the year.

The Heroes

"Save the cheerleader, save the world!"

Hey, I have just finished watching the season 1 of The Hero's serial TV show. It took me almost five days and nights.

What's the fuss about this show? Well, it's about heroes who found out that they have special innate capabilities (in the show, they called it 'power') to fly, talk to machines, listen to other people's thoughts, mind control, self healing, turn invisible, etc.

Naturally, in such show, there will be the good and bad guys (or gals), but wait, the line between them is gray. There's this guy, Noah (played by Jack Coleman) who would pay any price (even killing) to protect his adopted cheerleader daughter, Claire (played by Hayden Panettiere) from harm. Good or bad? You guess.

Season 2 coming up....

Lost in translation

When I walk on the roads of this city, I no longer understands what people are talking about. It's seems to me when I pass-by someone or a group of people, the language used sounds so alien to me. No surprise that 1 out of 4 people here is a foreigner!

Everywhere you see Indians, Chinese, English, Japanese, French, Spanish, Chileans, Brazilians, Germans, koreans, Africans, Arabs, Russians, Indonesians, Thais, Malaysians, Australians, etc... the list goes on. Foreign people who are working, studying, holidaying, etc. here, each speaks a language most locals may not understand.

I hope I do not lose my way in this city, asking directions would probably be a difficult task. I think.

Memory, perishable and enduring

I would like to share something that I read...

"Memory, perishable and enduring, is the brain's archive. It is a marvel of neuronic circuitry..... It's loss can be cruel, but remember this: It is through memory that we hold on to those we love." - Chris Johns, Editor-in-Chief, National Geographic Society's Magazine (November 2007).

True enough, without memories, how could we still remember our love ones, or the things that we love, e.g. house, pets, food?

Side track, I have found out the reason why I have not been eating well. It is because of my tooth-ache. Still waiting for the dental clinic to call me to schedule an appointment with the dentist.

Don't feel good

Lately, I have been feeling very perturbed and uneased.

Just don't know why, too many thoughts are flowing through my mind, and waking up in the middle of the night is just not good. i don't think I am eating well for weeks, in fact, I don't feel like having my meals sometimes, have that tendency to eat more veggies and stays away from meat. Nope, I don't want to be a vegan, yet (not at least until I retire!). Also, I have started drinking Coffee, I don't used to do that, strange??

There is just something that is happening around me and is disturbing. Maybe something to do with my job, my life or it's something else....I really don't know.

Trying to configure Netbackup

For the past weeks, our team has been trying to setup the Netbackup for backing up DB2 database. It is really tough, and I simply couldn't find much information on the Internet in doing this.

We had to get the Veritas (or Symantec) technical support to help, frankly, it is not easy, but, we finally got it working, doing backup (restore not tested yet!).

Well, just to share, if you are using Netbackup version 6.0, and requires the 'Backup, Archive and Restore' (BAR) GUI to browse the DB2 instance and objects, you will need at least MP5. When logon to BAR GUI, you have to use the DB2 system ID, e.g. db2inst1. These are not stated in the official Documents. You can create templates with the GUI, you know what I am talking about, right? By the way, we are using scripts.

One note, however, the GUI does not allow you to browse previous backups, already stated in the documents, we are trying to find out more for Veritas support on this. The last thing we would want to do is to use commands, not many people like to do that, including us!

Roller-skating

A month plus into learning to roller-skate, it seems to have bear fruits. At the very least, I have learned how to stand up on the skates and able to skate!

Initially, wanted to take up a inline skating course at one of the community clubs, 70+ dollars for a couple of lessons, but, guess they couldn't get enough headcount to start a class. So, I was on my own.

Armed with the skates, protective gears, i.e. elbow and knee guards, helmet, I began skating around my neighbourhood.

Just yesterday, I lost focus and fell backwards, two little girls laughed. Well, lesson for new skaters, falling down is ok, don't worry and don't be embarrassed, it happens.

One more guy leaving...

We are going to lose another DBA soon. He got an offer to work in Europe, and a huge jump in his salary. The weird thing is that his wife and baby have recently just join him in this country, he's non-citizen here, by the way.

I guess many foreigners are just using their work experience here as a step board to venture out for a more lucrative career after working here for a while.

Well, if anybody out there is interested to work as a DBA, messing and playing with Oracle, MS SQL, Sybase, DB2, etc, send me your CV only if you are interested to work in this part of the world where I am in. Let me warn you, we don't pay as good as European or US companies, and working at unexpected hours is expected.

Yet another exercise

Went down to the DR site with the Unix admin who is supposed to take over my duty soon.

Day 1, not so bad, although encountered a problem with the setup, the system was unable to detect the tape (use 'mt stat') in the tape drive. Managed to get the site's DR specialist to help swap the drive connection to another SCSI port on the server. It worked! This issue took us almost 5hrs to resolve.

Day 2 ahead tomorrow, heard one of the customer's senior officers will be there....

Free, free, free from toxic wastes

The other time, I wrote about detox, cleansing the body of toxic wastes, and at the same time can lose some weight. The best program that I have found in the Internet so far is from chet Day's 21-day program. It can be downloaded from here --> http://chetday.com/21day.html

Actually, I don't want to lose weight, so, I have not start on this program, but, for the past few weeks, I have to trying out something different, a change in my eating habit.

In the morning, I will have a glass of Soya bean milk and two pieces of white bread, giving me about 600mg of Calcium ( daily recommended is 800mg). I ate a least 2 shares of fruits, apple, orange, pear, etc. and 2 shares of vegetables a day. I also try to have a light lunch, staying away from fried food.

I just want to take better care of myself......

Hand-over!

It's time. What time?

It's time for me to hand-over the HP Unix systems that I have been helping to managed for the past 2 months. Not that I am sick of them, but, I just can't manage it anymore, too much work, too much stress. Haha...

What did I say? I love my job, do my very best, but, I am not perfect. If people respect and treat me well, I am willing to put in that effort to help. Well, probably you have guessed it! Sometimes, it's just not worth it helping some people, they don't know how to appreciate it.

I'm currently researching into Shares investments, may be, in the next few weeks, I will share some of my experience in trading shares....

DataProtector Backup

Recently, I was being roped in to troubleshoot a DataProtector backup issue at one of the customer's site. The day I went there, I was already presented with the problem, I don't even know the software well, not even a bit. This is the type of situation you would sweat (not swear!) and didn't know what to do, and people were just waiting for you, looking at you, to solve the problem.

How in earth am I doing here? I thought. If the resident Engineer couldn't even resolve the issue for weeks already, how could I? I thought, again.

Lucky enough, with the help of HP Support and Operations, we managed to resolved the problem, Cheers!!! This is what I call TEAM WORK!

Hey, if anybody out there has a copy of DataProtector Windows Clients GUI or knows where to download the software, let me know, ok?

1 Terabyte Hard Disk Drive!

Cool, the 1 Terabyte hard disk drive is out!

The hard disk drive industry is really advancing fast, 10 years back when I was still working for a hard disk drive manufacturer, the highest capacity was around 50GB, and the hard disk drive looked like a piece of brick, and as heavy as 5 (to 10 kg). A 1/2" height drive could only have about 9.1GB, as compared to now, same size, 1 Terabyte! Where most SAN and NAS implementations are still using 140GB hard disks, this monster could create a revolution to this storage industry.

I guess the demand for disk space drives the growth in this storage (i.e. SAN and NAS) sector, if you are intending to change jobs, seek one in the storage field, I heard they (storage companies) pay employees well.

Check this out....

http://www.hitachigst.com/portal/site/en/menuitem.b5bc67ba7b48099056fb11f0aac4f0a0

Massive Human Jam! @@

I mentioned that during the National Day Parade processing, there were massive human jam, people, people, everywhere. Here is a picture to show you how massive it is.

The bridge in the background was where my friend and me stood, facing towards the Parade ground.

Lucky thing, it was breezy on that day, and no rain, else, everyone, not just us, would have been drenched, wet, for sure.

National Celebration

Last Thursday was the country National Day (or Independence Day). I went there with a friend, primarily aim was to watch the fireworks during the parade processing, but, we had to be there early in the evening, because we knew may people will be there also.

It was a massive human traffic jam, there were police barricades everywhere! An estimate of 50 to 100k people were there, maybe? All roads, open areas and bridges were filled with people. We also couldn't get a good view, but had to settle with standing on one side of the bridge. We waited for about 2 hours plus, finally got to see the fireworks! It's worth it.

Japanese Anime

Recently, I have watched alot of K-movies, e.g. Windstruck, Blood Rain, Trace of Love, and J-Movies, e.g. Ghost train.

In the movie making, I can see that the Koreans and Japanese make a big effort in creating each scene setup, no matter whether it's a house, hut or the location. I think their production costs should be pretty high. Their artists are also very professional, especially the Koreans, heard mostly gratuates of Arts academies (Universities).

I have also watched a Japanese Anime named 'Beyond the Clouds, The Promised Place'. Check the website, http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=2324.

What's Anime?

It's a work of self-expressive art, where it transcends the realism of the world that we see it with our eyes, hear with our ears, feel by our touches, and transform it into an imaginary and dream-like sub-conscious appearance of true human behaviour moments, which are visible to the conscious ones. To me, that's Anime.

Detox

Is Detox good? I have seen such Detox products in almost all pharmacies in this city.

The common believe is that it is a method of cleansing your body, remove 'toxic' waste within, improve your skin tone and best of all, slim you down. Some claimed that it rejuvenates and makes you feeling good and less stress.

Gee, wondering whether this is true, or just some kind of advertising gimmick. But, I do know, heathcare products are selling like hot cakes these days, and mechants selling them are simply laughing all the way to the bank.

Hello again!

It has been more than a month since I last wrote. Been busy and lazy, as usual. I had worked for the passed 2 Sundays, one, helping another team solving a backup system issue, the other, doing system testing after an upgrade.

An ex-colleague of mine invited me to her new born child's 'first month' reception this coming Saturday, thinking of going, but can't, got to meet up someone around the same time.

Hey, take a look at the picture above, see the mountain in the background? Yes, that is a magnificent mountain which can only be seen during clear weather, no haze, no rain and no mist.