Live Life. Life is Short. Life is an Adventure.

Hmmm, one of those life pondering questions. Well, I’m a simple guy. Fate is:

“Going out to buy a bottle of milk, grabbing a random handful of coins. While getting the milk, you decide the temptation of those choclate mint slice biscuits is to much. At the checkout you ponder your decision, and then looking at your money realise the reason why temptation doesn’t work, because you take a few coins, and not your wallet on purpose. So the outcome is $5.70, and you have exactly $5.70 in coins.”

That is fate.

From one of the motivational books I read 10 years ago.

I came across in my papers while searching for some taxation information, a list that I made to use as an evaluation in an “ideal job”. This goes with a general comment I made only a few weeks ago to a number of colleagues.

The list I found and made in 2002 was:

1. Use of Existing Core Skills - Technologies
   • Oracle, Unix, Java, HTML/Web
   • Open Source Projects (Apache - HTTP/Java/XML, MySQL, PHP, etc)
2. Use of Existing Core Skills - Experience
   • Database Modelling
   • Large Systems Design & Development
   • Application Performance & Tuning
   • Technical Problem Solving
3. About Newer Technologies
   • Encourage/Embrace use
   • Not bleeding edge
   • Opportunity for learning new relative skills
4. Work Environment
   • Equipment
   • Location
   • Core working hours
   • Work at home options?
5. Team Environment
   • Ability to undertaking varying roles (and not others due to a team)
   • Existing working relationship with people
   • Across Development/Management/Support teams
6. Project Environment
   • Durations 1 month - 1 year
   • Challenging
   • Varying
   • Problem Solving
7. Project Methodologies
   • Emphasis on Quality Procedures
   • Emphasis on Software Testing
   • Emphasis on Customer
8. Remuneration
9. Other
   • Some fun

What’s interesting to know, is that this list includes a lot of points I’d still consider essential for my “ideal job”. I’ll need to consider more a revised list, as it took some time to make this list up. It’s interesting to know that my present contract position, as well as my last position do not meet a great deal of my “ideal job” requirements.

As see on a tee-shirt somebody was wearing.

From a tee-shirt at a Mambo store.

I came up with this quote, I hope it’s original. It was in response to some events, that resulted in the following last email response from the action of another, which I acknowledged, and which was also responsed to.

Too often in today’s society we judge/criticise/complaint of those things that aren’t right for the given circumstance. (I’m not saying that it isn’t called for in some situations.)
We lose sight to complement actions/people/situations that should be the norm in life, and what we should all strive for, far above what has become socially acceptable today.
The world would be better place if we all worked at making it a better place.

I made the comment yesterday “I’m twiddling my thumbs”. While this is slang, it also represents an action, of interlocking your fingers together and moving your thumbs around in a circle.

So what does it really mean?

Well “twiddling my thumbs” can mean a number of things, but generally, “I’m doing nothing”, “I’m waiting”, “I’m bored”. It’s one of those things that you say when you need to be doing something, but you can’t because you are dependent on somebody else, and normally it’s not something you want to achieve, but something the other party wants you to do, but they are the bottleneck.

On a side note, the thumb is also known as an “opposable digit”. See Wikipedia for some more info.

Got my new toy today, having only ordered it Thursday night, it arrived Monday. Normally Dell stuff comes from Asia, maybe they had some of these on hand locally.

A Dell 2407WFP 24″ LCD monitor with a 1920×1200 resolution.

Hmmm, not bad. I should mention $1,199 Delivered ($300 off normal price)

No, it’s not a slogan from the 1960’s and 1970’s, however if I could draw a picture in a wordpress textarea I’d draw a hand Victory signal with two fingers.

Today I started providing services as a Technical Analyst for Peace Software initially here in Brisbane. Stealing directly from the marketing blub.

So, a different pace for me, especially in terms of the “end user” customer of the software I’ll be responsible for in some small way.

Things that are the same. Java, Web Client, Oracle, Unit Tests, some exposure to Agile Methodologies

Things that are different. Large, stable and established product, long standing company, corporate customer, lack of Internet end user urgency. And Still, no job working with MySQL which is my goal.

This is not the first time I’ve worked particularly in this type of software industry. I had a reasonable stint at Brisbane City Council when they first rolled out the RIMS system to manage Council Rates and Billing ($1 billion revenue p.y.) for one of the largest councils in the world.

Following on from my earlier Eclipse CVS Tutorial 1.

Decorators

The following options define what is presented in the Navigator View at the project, directory and file levels.

• Window | Preferences
  • General | Appearance | Label Decorations
  • Team | CVS
  • Team | CVS | Label Decorations | Text Decorations

NOTE: There is a Mercurial Eclipse option under the top level menu in Window | Preferences. It should be moved to the Team submenu in line with CVS and SVN.

Menu Options

The following are the Right Click | Team menu views for both CVS and SVN.

NOTE: That depending on the Version Control, only the CVS or SVN options are shown. Presently the Mercurial options are shown for both, but should not be until the Project is shared with Right Click | Team | Share Project.

New File Management

To step through the process of adding and maintaining a new file within CVS.

• Right Click | New | File adding test.txt
• On test.txt, Right Click | Team | Commit. (Unlike the command line interface, where you must do a cvs add before a cvs commit, under eclipse the Team | Add to Version Control is optional)
• Enter comment, and click Finish
• Edit the file, and repeat a few times
• To gain a history of information you can on test.txt do Right Click | Team | Show Resource History. This gives you the CVS Resource History tab and shows details of revision, user etc