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| Thursday, March 23rd, 2006 | | 11:51 am |
April event thoughts
I'm on a roll this morning for some reason. Perhaps I just don't want to be here today. :) Anyone interested in invading Atlantia April 15th? Night on the Town VIII, Crownsville, MD. Pascual went last year and had a blast. If you aren't familiar with Crownsville, it's the town that the MD Renfair is located in. I'm also thinking about day tripping Balfar's Challenge April 29th. Current Mood:  restless | | 10:24 am |
Fencing thoughts
I went to Iron Bog last week and enjoyed having a change in scenery for practice. As long as they still have the practice I want to try to may hit that practice a little more often. I also haven't been able to give Rowan the same detailed training at Piscataway for some reason. It seems to be a challenge to get footwork and drills done in Piscataway for some reason. The practice lends itself to just playing for some reason. Blood Guard still has the school in Toms River, and Rowan has asked if I would consider coming back down on Wednesdays to work specifically on teaching her without the distractions. At the same time I really want to try to hit the Bhakail practice a little more. There are a number of the tadcasters who I want to fence a little more regularly at the moment. I'm just not sure how to balance all of this in my schedule. Thoughts? Current Mood:  energetic | | 9:41 am |
Got this from one of the guys in Creative Services this morning. It is what the Ipod packaging would look like if it were redesigned by Microsoft. Pretty amusing, and at the same time earily accurate I think. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4313772690011721857&q=iPodI also came across the following on /. from yesterday, but thought it was just to cool. Since I've already created two other journal entries for today, I'm just going to add it to this one. It is a comparison via screenshots of games from 20 years ago to their counterparts today. WOW! http://gadgets.fosfor.se/gaming-now-and-then/ Current Mood:  good | | Wednesday, March 15th, 2006 | | 4:14 pm |
Oracle Sucks
I normally would hide the following behind a cut, but I am just so angry at Oracle at the moment that I need to make it as public as possible. Sorry for those of you who aren't interested in it. Had my phone interview with Oracle yesterday. At the end of the interview the license consultant informed me of how helpful I was and how detailed my server worksheet was, and that now he needed to schedule a date to conduct an on site review to confirm that my numbers were accurate. I told him my staff and I are busy, swamped even for the next month or two because of Sarbanes auditing, scheduled projects and preparing to move everyone from Lawrenceville and Langhorne to Bristol, but the sooner the better as I really wanted to get this over with. Well I'm off the phone, after being polite to him and I am livid. I informed my Director and VP of what happened, and decided I should move a couple of tables I have sitting on one database to express edition since they are small and I'm not sure if the users hitting them would exceed my license, so better safe then sorry. Express edition is free with unlimited use, limited to only use one cpu, one gig of memory and 4 gig of tablespace. All perfectly fine for the data I'm moving. I reviewed our licensing, and we are definitely in compliance. I even hired an outside Oracle consultant/reseller to come in and review everything. It was questionable last year this time, but since the purchase of the company people have quit, others were fired, few if any have been hired, and I've consolidated a couple of servers. So I know we are in compliance. So whats the big deal? Oracle and my employer have LONG have had a bad relationship. They more or less bullied us last year because we were out of compliance by 1 cpu, that if we didn't purchase it by a given time frame we would be handed over for full audit. When we realized we were out of compliance we agreed to pay to fix the problem, it took a while to get the money approved because we were being sold. That is just one of the more recent issues. So the fact that they were now auditing us now was injury on a still fresh wound. The insult came when after preparing all the documentation, having an external consultant verify we were in compliance no only by the standards we bought the licenses, but by today's even stricter standards. That we got a letter saying we had to provide them with server and database documentation in 10 days, and upon completing such on time they waited a month to conduct the phone interview to without hesitation at the end of the interview inform me they wanted to come on site. Why bother putting me thru the work, effort and stress of the documentation and phone interview if you were going to come out anyway. I spent nearly an hour this afternoon screaming at my Account Manager about Oracle's conduct as a company. I couldn't argue a single of my issues, but said his hands were tied and asked me what I wanted him to do. I told him I want him on the phone with his boss, a regional VP for Oracle and someone in charge of the license management. One of the letters that went out to Oracle this morning wrote "We have been Oracle customers for nearly 10 years. [We] pay over $120,000 a year in maintenance...which is basically nothing but an annuity for Oracle since you provide us basically zero support and new business solutions. We are in the process of making strategic ERP decisions. AND NOW YOU WANT TO WASTE MORE OF OUR TIME AUDITING US? Like I said...incredulous, a waste of time, AND BAD BUSINESS! Needless to say, this "annuity" and our use of Oracle products is now under review. We're looking at alternatives for your products." I wrote the following to the account manager a little later this afternoon after talking to him "Did I mention how irate I am with Oracle's behavior as a company and how I am personally insulted and offended that after making me go thru the paperwork and phone interview, that oracle feels it necessary to now come on site to 'verify my numbers.' This implies they feel I am either dishonest, or not capable of doing my job. The former highly offends me personally, the latter, well why don't you pull the records from Oracle Education on the thousands of dollars spent the last couple of years to train myself, and my department at Oracle's own training facilities. One is due to be in Berwyn for training not even two weeks from now." I am just so ANGRY! I like the product, but I am just not willing to deal with them as a company any longer. My account manager should have been the first to get people on the phone with me, not me telling him I wanted it. He has physically been to our facilities and seen the documentation of hardware and databases as we tried to consolidate a year ago. So I will get to hopefully vent to a couple of VP's. I doubt it will stop them from showing up on site, and at this point I invite it, they are going down in flames and if they insist on it, I am all the more willing to help them trully go down in flames. The servers are in compliance, and once they have certified it, the license consultant will be given a letter on the way out the door informing Oracle we will no longer do business with them and notifying them of the cancellation of the first of many support contracts as we migrate to other platforms. Current Mood:  infuriated | | Tuesday, March 7th, 2006 | | 11:22 am |
Destreza
So I've been exploring Spanish Circle with Pascual for the past year. He and I had talked about choreographing a demonstration for 12th night that we just never had the time to prepare. With the whole Marshalled A&S category now, I think it would be great to demonstrate more historical combat both to the populace but also to the general public. I've always found that the demo's we do at West Windsor and Lakewood, especially on the marshal side were more of our playtime with little to show them that we really are a historical re-enactment group. I'm hoping that by documenting some of the research on Destreza perhaps I can come up with a hand out about spanish rapier, and put on a choreographed demonstration, perhaps followed by some free bouting. Knowing the audience, and knowing they want to be entertained I want to entertain and yet also educate them, that this really is how things happened. Anyway, I've started looking for translations of Carranza and Narvaez. I've already found some material on William Wilson's site. I am wondering though if I should just relearn spanish and try translating the original treatise. Master Keyard and Master Albert have both given me some great advice so far, I still have a couple more people to talk to. I also think once I finish working on Rowan's dagger qual, I'm going to start teaching her spanish circle. She is a little more available at practice for me to work with then Pascual lately, and once I have taught her some of the basics I can start looking at choreographing with her, and practicing the choreographed fight. Current Mood:  productive | | Wednesday, March 1st, 2006 | | 10:18 am |
D&D character quiz
So I never really thought about what D&D character I am, and I always tend to play a certain character, but decided to take the What D&D character are you quiz that was filtering it's way thru the Sharc list. Surprise! I'm a : Chaotic Evil Human Barbarian ( D&D Character details )"I'm really not that evil, I just neeeeded to kill them." ( Battle for Midde Earth 2 Review ) Current Mood:  amused | | Monday, January 9th, 2006 | | 11:04 am |
conterfeits
Found the following article on /. this morning and thought I would share with people. "According to PC World, more and more counterfeit hardware is coming to market each year. From the article: '...batteries aren't the only tech item that counterfeiters love. In October 2004, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials in Anchorage, Alaska, seized 20,000 suspected fake Memorex USB memory key thumb drives from Asia. And last year, Miami officials seized 900 allegedly phony laptops valued at $700,000. "Maybe it's a laptop, an MP3 player, or a component like a DVD drive--anything in the digital world can be counterfeited," says Therese Randazzo, a U.S. Customs Service counterfeiting expert." Ever wonder how some of those stores were able to give such great prices on name brand items? Current Mood:  tired | | Monday, November 7th, 2005 | | 12:17 pm |
techno/dance tchaikovsky/classical
Okay, so I was in Hoagie Haven a week or two ago and they had some kind of techno/dance music on that was Tchaikovsky with a dance mix beat to it. It might have even been the 1812 overture. I really am dying to listen to it now, and have no idea where to look. Does anyone have any information on classical music that has been remixed to be techno/dance? Current Mood:  bored | | Thursday, September 29th, 2005 | | 10:14 am |
Deleted Revenge scenes
Found mention of the deleted scenes on the upcoming release of Revenge of the Sith on DVD. "several deleted scenes finished with complete visual effects and audio mixing (including Anakin and Obi-Wan infiltrating Grievous's battle cruiser, multiple scenes of the formation of the Rebel Alliance with Padme, Bail Organa and Mon Mothma, Grievous killing Shaak Ti and Yoda's arrival on Dagobah)," | | Thursday, September 22nd, 2005 | | 12:06 am |
color
you are darkturquoise
#00CED1 |
Your dominant hues are green and blue. You're smart and you know it, and want to use your power to help people and relate to others. Even though you tend to battle with yourself, you solve other people's conflicts well.
Your saturation level is very high - you are all about getting things done. The world may think you work too hard but you have a lot to show for it, and it keeps you going. You shouldn't be afraid to lead people, because if you're doing it, it'll be done right.
Your outlook on life is brighter than most people's. You like the idea of influencing things for the better and find hope in situations where others might give up. You're not exactly a bouncy sunshine but things in your world generally look up.
| | the spacefem.com html color quiz |
Current Mood: tired | | Wednesday, September 21st, 2005 | | 12:11 pm |
Coronets
WHEE! I got to help make two baronial coronets last night. It was so cool! I got to cut them out of stainless and then sand them to clean the edges. Kelson then did the fluting and put the brass rivets in. But it's a start and I had a LOT of fun doing it. I got to see him working on his Ducal coronet. So I've decided after waiting over a year now for my coronet from Drachenstein, I think I'm going to cancel my order and make my metal coronet myself with some help from Kelson. I'm thinking of mocking it up in stainless, which will give me a travel coronet that is relatively durable and inexpensive that I can wear regardless of rain, and take with me to places like Estrella without as much worry to it being damaged or lost. Then I will make one out of silver for the experience, that I can use as my court piece. YAY! Maybe I can then make metal coronets for friends in the future. Current Mood: excited | | Wednesday, September 14th, 2005 | | 9:29 am |
| | Thursday, September 8th, 2005 | | 9:59 am |
Fencing
Okay, so I likely deserve to be beaten for this, but I was planning on going to Bhakail tonight, and it is looking less and less likely that I can make it tonight. My fencing gear is up with Edmund, so for me to make Bhakail I would have to drive up to Piscataway and then all the way back down to Bhakail. The way my week has been, that likely isn't happening tonight. I meant to pick up my gear earlier this week but work has pretty much made that almost impossible. So I will plan instead to hit Bhakail next week. Sorry to everyone I meant to fence tonight that I won't get a chance too. | | Wednesday, September 7th, 2005 | | 8:21 pm |
| | Thursday, September 1st, 2005 | | 12:23 pm |
| | 10:51 am |
| | Wednesday, August 31st, 2005 | | 5:52 pm |
Animality
Stolen from so many it seems, it's the muppet meme. I really should just go home and bang on da drum, err doumbek. ( Muppet Meme ) Current Mood: bored | | Monday, August 8th, 2005 | | 10:14 am |
stolen from several people.....  | You scored as Aquarius. You seem to have many of the qualities of an aquarian, even though you probably are not one.
Aquarians are known to like: Dreaming, Fun and Good Companions
Aquarians are known to dislike: Imitations, The Ordinary and Loneliness
See All Results/Comment
Pisces | | 79% | Aquarius | | 79% | Cancer | | 79% | Taurus | | 71% | Scorpio | | 63% | Libra | | 54% | Virgo | | 50% | Gemini | | 46% | Capricorn | | 46% | Aries | | 46% | Leo | | 34% | Sagittarius | | 33% | </td>
Which Sign of the Zodiac Would've Suited You Most
created with QuizFarm.com |
| | Thursday, August 4th, 2005 | | 6:29 pm |
:)
stolen from Pascual. | Your Mood Ring is Orange | 
Stimulating ideas
Daring
Full of desires |
| | Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005 | | 10:32 am |
the sky is falling
So I've been having a series of things break lately. :( Last weekend it was the railing down the stairs to my den. It was damaged last year when the previous owners were moving out, the metal was bent and it had ripped a small part of the wall away at the top of the railing. I didn't stop to think that it was still under tension, until Sunday morning I woke up to find it had pulled even further, completely off the wall at the top of the stairs, and left a nice size hole in the wall. Okay something I really need to fix now. Then last night I had an electronics failure. I went down stairs after a long day at work to sit and watch tv, and I turned on my replay, and just got a series of green vertical bars. Fortunately it isn't the tv, because I was able to tune the cable box and the dvd player fine, but it looks like either the component video in my replay, or the entire replay is shot. :( Glad I have seen all the new scifi friday season so far. Hmm, I get my annual review this afternoon, maybe the raise will help pay for a new replay/tivo if in fact my unit is dead. Really all of these things are just trivial, everything ultimately is still good in the grand scheme of things. Current Mood: blah |
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