chillin' at the airport...

We just had a bite to eat and walked around for a bit. We had 3 hours to kill before our plane takes off.

T-minus 1 hour until takeoff.

Au revoir canada...

Europe bound

En route to europe!

Woo hoo. Next stop Amsterdam.

Europe bound

En route to europe!

Woo hoo. Next stop Amsterdam.

Why I love Open Source:

At work, there is a layer of burocracy when it comes to forced software to use to do your job. At my previous job, I was extremely limited to what I could to and more often then not, was forced to come up with my own solutions to problems – and this is where open source came in. I was able to design / execute and implement a true 1 to 1 marketing vehicle based solely in open source applications (php, apache and mysql) and I’m not talking about a small task – the datasets I was working with where reaching hundreds of millions of records and worked out to be over 100 gigs in size. I was also able to analyze the results in a fraction of time. The whole solution took me a month to develop, a month to tweak, a month of tuning my queries and it never crashed. My only problem was running the model off a truly underpowered machine so runtime was severely impacted – but at the end of the day it didn’t cost the company any money (except my professional time). Right before I left they were in the process of building me a server with SAMP (solaris / apache /mysql / php) to help me crunch the data.

I think the main reason why projects fail is there is constant back and forth with the business and IT. This game turns into a “you didn’t write this in the spec” aspect and the business always comes back with “well we didn’t think of that when we had to write the spec a year earlier” which leads to failure.

The best part of this whole experience was I being able to implement a system / manage a catalogue of inventory / increase response rate without harassing our customers with no complaints from our customers. I never had one complaint from anyone (internal or external) throughout the whole process except for some collegues not understanding how the process worked and were confused (which was a good learning in itself).

Currently, my situation is even worse. There are people who don’t question the data (so they assume it’s correct) and we are extremely hampered in terms of the tools / resources we need to do our job efficiently. For example the business definition is different than what is in the data warehouse (Teradata) so you can imagine writing multiple syntax in a slow system to begin with to just pull out the right information. So I’ve decided to pull the data I need from the warehouse (at the lowest level), and store this in my own warehouse (guess what Mysql) using open source tools. I’m using Kettle (again open source) to move data / roll data from the warehouse into my own warehouse. Then managing my own tables of business logic to automate the process. The worst part of this whole process is it works.

The other people around here never think to look outside of their universe to come up with solutions to problems.

A Birthday Quest.....

For Susie's birthday this year I thought it would be fun to make her "Guess" her present by sending her email hints throughout the day.

Hint #1: I could be shiny or dull
Hint #2: I come in various shapes, sizes and colours
Hint #3: I could be big or small
Hint #4: People like to look at me
Hint #5: I come in 4, 2 or 1
Hint #6: I’m associated with a chain…
Hint #7: I’m mostly made of metal…
Hint #8: I come with a ring….
Hint #9: It is not symmetrical, but it does have fine lines….

Take a guess!

Busy busy busy

Wow time flies! Sus and I are counting down the days (hours, minutes, seconds....) 'till we board the plane on route to Europe.

Quick Itinerary:
Fly into Holland. Spend the first week with Val and Camilo - head to Belgium for 3 days (Bruges, Antwerp and Gent) then finish off our trip with the Red Light District....

Tomorrow I'll be participating in the Marathon of Sport - it's a fundraiser for the special olympics. My work put together a few teams (you get teamed up with a special olympic athlete), and you compete against other companies in the quest for the cup. We are defending champions - last year I don't think we expected to do as well as we did..... this year, the pressure is on. It's really a great day and I'm glad I can help raise money to support the special olympics.

I'm not sure if you know or not, but I'm seriously addicted to music - lately I can't stop listening to Elliott Smith's album: New Moon, quick recap - Elliott Smith "committed suicide" back in 2003. He was, imo, one of the most talented singer songwriters of our time. He never received the attention he deserved (which is good and bad), but his songs are simple, yet complex, with lyrics so intricate, that anyone who listens can find a moment in life to relate to what he's saying.

New Moon is a compilation of new tracks produced between 92 and 97 found in his tape archive (released May '07), definitely give this one a listen - you won't be disappointed.

Lucky me...

The company I work for just passed their 15th year anniversary. As a special thank you to employees they decided to give every employee a brand new Canon Digital Camera.

Talk about lucky, it was unexpected - and greatly appreciated!

New Toy

Well I decided to purchase a new toy - Creative Zen Vision M. I was thinking of buying a new mp3 player (as my old thumb stick Rio Flash player has a cracked screen - from one too many drops). Well, to my surprise, the new toy has been much more beneficial than I could have imagined. I've been listening to it every day at work, helps me stay focused and to eliminate the cubicle white noise (constant phones, people bitchin', printer noise, computer hum, etc).


I purchased the Creative Zen Vision M 30gb mp3 player. This thing is amazing. I'm able to copy over movies (XviD, DIVX, etc), I've even setup a script to convert my PVR'd shows (from MythTV) into a format the Zen will play - stocking up for the day I will be taking the subway again.

Susie has a video ipod. She loves her ipod - for me my decision not to buy the ipod was the screen - the Creative Zen has a better display. With the Ipod, I've watched a few movies and it gave me a headache. With the Zen, I'm able to watch movies (even though its a tiny screen) and the picture is much better and no headaches.

The other thing I've been happy with was the pretty painless integration with ubuntu. Thanks to ubuntuforums.org I was up and running in less than 15 minutes. Whereas, with the Ipod it took me a little bit longer to get Susie's ipod hooked up and working.

My one complaint is the cheap headphones included with the Zen. I've been listening to it at work all week and my ears have been starting to hurt. I have an older pair of Sony DJ 500's. Plugging the Sony's into the Zen was like moving from Tapes to CD. The Sony's are a little bulky, but I forgot how good they sound.


No more toys for me for a while, time to finish paying off my debt and save for our Holland trip coming up.....

The noise below

Over the past few weeks both Sus and I have heard "noise" from the apartment below. Sometimes the noise is slamming doors to bouts of yelling and screaming. Right now there is an escapade - I guess it makes you appreciate how lucky you are to come home to a nice quiet home.