All of a sudden, I feel the need to have regular backups of my data (on the laptop) to a server at office and at home. I’ve never had this kind of requirement as I used to have my ad-hoc backups done manually. Now within a month I’ve so many documents/files that I need to preserve. So the thought of using ‘Oracle FileSync’ came to the mind…but hey I’ve left Oracle long time back. So the hunt for a similar FileSync program began.

From tkyte’s blog, I got reference to Unison. Since Tom has been using this tool for quite some time, I thought it would be worthwhile to evaluating from this one.

Boy ! Its not as easy as it sounds. Downloaded the utility for windows, the GTK+ one alnog with the standalone GTK+ installer. Tried a simple local dir sync and it went pretty good. I wanted to move on and sync a local folder to my remote linux server. For remote server connection, it needed a ssh client. I use PuTTY and this was no good for Unison. I could have tried the cygwin thing, but have left it for another day. Downloaded ssh-1.2.14 . Had trouble in getting this ssh work. After much digging around, it turned to be the way env variable HOME was setup. With the proper format, ssh.exe was able to connect to my linux server.

All set, I was eager to try it out now…but then…realized that you need unison even on the other side of the synchronization. Here starts the never ending story of RPMs for the perfect lib versions 🙁

Currently I need to get the ocaml installed on my RHEL3 box and then manually build the unison using it. ocaml now refuses to get installed till I get the required libtcl and libtk loaded. So testing of Unison is on hold at the moment.

Today is Aug 15 – The Indian Independence Day !!!

Lots of memories from the old times on this day. We used to celebrate a lot during my schooling days. A parade, lot of shows by students and we used to get sweets too !

The snaps are taken from a nearby school parade.

I was at a friends place and we got off to some very basics of physics like unit of measurements and stuff like that. When we were unsure of the fact, we just did a search on Google for it and always found the answer. For a moment, I imagined what would have happened if we didn’t have the net and a search engine like Google. Its so difficult to even fathom something like that, even though we have come from that situation.

I just did another search for my short name “sudhi” and I was suprised to see something related to me comeup on the results page, all be it at 4th listing. Still I was amazed that the information I had entered in the year 1999 was listed.

The site from which google listed me is www.experts-exchange.com. After joining InterConnect Network Systems, I had the oppurtunity to move to Atlanta, GA. As a trainer, I was living out of a suitcase and hotel rooms almost every week. At the end of the day, I used to just return to the hotel and got hooked onto this site. Man it was fun trying to dig answers to Oracle questions. I learnt a lot of things about Oracle in just attempting to answer them.

After joining Oracle Support, I couldn’t spend time on the site. After a very long gap, now I’ll keep a tab on the questions being asked. This time it’ll be different as I’ve been inside Oracle. Earlier I never had the oppurtunity to get docs from MetaLink. Just realied on the good old documentation. After being in Oracle, I think I’ll go back to the old style of just using the documentation and trying the stuff on the system.

Still feeling very nice about my listing in Gooogle !!!

From Oracle I’ve moved to Yahoo !. When a lot of my friends @ orcl heard that I was moving to Y!, they just said “Very nice company to work for”. I was little surprised at it. Also felt good about it as its always nice to hear good things 🙂 The surprise came from the fact that the very people who quoted that, hadn’t worked for Y!. Neither their close relatives or friends were working in Y!. So from where are these “good” things coming out. Didn’t have a clue on it.

I had a one line answer for those comments…

‘Ask me how it is in about a quarter’

After leaving Oracle, I had accepted a consulting offer for x days in Delhi. This was a very unique experience than all the consulting work done before.

The total time committed was for 16 days. I decided that I’ll do it in 2 shots. A 6 day visit and then followed by a 10 day visit. The reason for hiring me was for :
– Installation of RAC on a HACMP cluster.
– porting their cluster database from the existing cluster to the new one.
– any pointers to improve performance.

After landing there to my surprise I was invovled with the “design” meetings. This was never mentioned to me in the project scope. The funny part was all the decisions were already made. I’m not sure why I was involved in them. For example, I was asked “how would you want the RAID configuration done?”. I just said that RAID 1+0 for log files, temp, undo tablespaces go to a different configuration. But the reply was “We have identified RAID 5 and we’ll go with that for everything”. Man, if decisions are already taken, then why pay a consultant to just sit in those damm meetings…

So the first visit was just nothing in terms of work getting done…but hey they were making a lot of progress in their project planner !!

The second visit was more to do with the implimentation. Got the RAC installed and patched with the latest patchset. Over the weekend there was a test run of it too. The CTO was extremely happy with the outcome. So things went on smoothly there.

No time to write more on this. Its a wrap for now.

Its been 5 years working for a reputed product company. Till recently I was not even thinking about a change. But since my last appraisal, its been very clear that the team I’m working for doesn’t prefer to increase my pay no matter how much targets I achieve. This has made me come to the decision that there is no point in staying with this company any more. So my hunt for a new job beings…

My work week ended very soon. On wednesday night, we were off to attend Selva’s Marriage at Virudhunagar. We boarded the train at 6:00 PM. Landed at Virudhunagar Junction at 9:30 AM. Haven’t had much of experience of travelling in train. Had a lot of trouble in getting some sleep. Our coach was making funny noises. When I told that to my other friends, they said “its normal”. Also just last week I read some train accidents and was really worried. Now you can imagine the cause of my distrubed sleep.

The wedding was one of a kind. Never had I seen two marriage halls used. One by the groom’s side and the other by the bride’s side. The best part was when Selva had to sit on an Elephant’s back and ride to the bride’s hall. It was really nice to see kutti aane on a real one 🙂

The hospitality was at its best. One of the person who stands out is Mr. Chittappa ! Thanks a lot Chitappa for making it a memorable one.

Overall the trip was a good refreshing one. Also learnt a very important lesson in life. A lot of people that I’ve interacted with on a more personal level, aren’t really very straight. They say they are but really hesitate to say something. When they do open up their mouth to say something, its either too late or very bad timing. hmm…next time onwards I’ll be on guard with any outing I make.

My friends keep telling me that I’m on the verge of being a nerd. They also tell me that if not technical stuff, I really don’t know how to communicate to them. So based on those comments, I’m making an effort to learn new things and to get a change from the regular routine.

Didn’t know that anybody was even offering free blog account. But Uncle Google came to the rescue. This site looks really cool. I still don’t know how much of diskspace they are going to offer me, but I don’t know that I’ll ever have so much to write.