Bay Area SIG - 29-Apr-2010

So this was my second Coherence SIG (the first was in New York almost three years ago). This time it was all about monitoring monitoring monitoring. It was nice to meet familiar faces. Few who recognized me right away, including Jon, Peter, and with a slight hick up Desmond and Raanan. Rao from Oracle EM remembered me from my blog photo (I think I still look the same). Ones who did not, included Craig. A few I knew I have met before or worked with was good to see in the Coherence crowd. It was a good presentation from Randy Stafford and his tips were:

• Monitor everything - CPU, Network, Heap and Application.
  
• Different tools for different things - Jamon, sar/ksar, JMX
• Re-architect if you have to.
• No comprehensive patterns available for Grid Computing so keep yourself up-to-date
• Mission Control rocks - May be single biggest reason to use JRockit

Tom from SL.com's presentation was informative and stressed the importance of Monitoring and why it is not an optional piece of the solution. I had introduced them to one of the clients I worked with and was to good to see that they were in their customers list as shown in his slide. It was good to see Tom recognizing features of Oracle EM not offered by RTView. Rao must feel happy. At the end Taylor from Grid Dynamics talked about the proven design patterns also implemented by Oracle Consulting at numerous engagements and was good to see common solutions to common problems by two professional services. Overall was a good night out.

Chinese gymnast stripped of Olympics Medal

Now Chinese Government is launching its own investigation - How did she escape the Nike sweat shop?

What is BJP doing wrong?

Its heart breaking to see as a keen self proclaimed political analyst how day by day a national party is dying under its own weight. The recent slap being from Shibu Soren's JMM. So what is this once beloved political front doing wrong?

• Lack of leadership
• Coalition of opportunists
• Inability to prove why Congress is bad for the nation
• Losing its key constituents to regional parties
• Becoming agenda-less secular front

So how could they ever come back?

• Find leaders with mass appeal - The ones who represent not necessarily smart
  
• Delhi - You win Delhi, you win India
• We all know corruption exists. Prove why it hurts?
• Become secular when you are in power, not when you are out.
  
• Grass root Grass root Grass root
  

A song by Gumbu and Shumbu

*Animation not self created - downloaded from google

A Song by Aliens

* Animations not self created - downloaded from google

Five Pakistanis I wish were Indians

These are Five Pakistani celebrities who I respect a lot and would have love to have as Indians:

• Wasim Bhai Akram- He has been more pain in the neck for India than even a well trained Pak SoG soldier. A guy to salute, what an awesome bowler he has been.
• Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - A real maestro. His songs has united more Indians and Pakistanis than a series of CBM meets.
• Shoaib Akhtar - For some reason Bollywood and hence the rest of India loves to see a flamboyant and a little arrogant talent. What if his name sounds "show aib", so be it.
• Shoaib Malik - A guy who took away the heart of someone who the entire India loves. He must be someone.
• Ghulam Ali - He had put Ghazals back on the table in Hindi Cinema. We had more of his cassettes than any Hindi movie's. Don't hear him much these days though.
  

iPhone again - This time it removed an important email

For some reasons Apple iPhone keeps doing something or the other that does not let me settle down and love it. This time it deleted an important email - Just out of the blue. I was reading a yahoo email and accidentally it moved it to one of the other folders from Inbox. After searching a bit I found the email. I opened it and clicked the move icon and moved the email back to Inbox. Nope. Instead of moving back to Inbox it removed it. I spent hours to search on iPhone and email's web interface to find where that email was but could not trace it. No where to find. Thanks iPhone! With all your fancy bells and whistles you are proving to be a junk phone that I have ever bought - at least for me.