Pro or Con Opensource

I have had a look on my company's web pages http://www.alcatel-lucent.com and I found out that the page is made using the opensource engine Wordpress. It is somehow strange because nut long time ago they were quite scared by Open source. I really do not believe that they changed their minds. An it will be somehow nasty for the guys in Bell Labs that have produced many OS jewels to work for an employer that does not value enough their creativity.

...

This is one of those angry postings I used to have on my previous blogs.
This one is about friendsship and how others see it.
To make one long story short.
One of the my oldest friends came to me in Timisoara.
He is a true rocker. Also he is a PhD in Chemical Engineering.
In the same time I was invited to a wedding.
I decided to go there with him - as I believed that among friends there will be no problems.
I went there and I felt rejected. Everybody looked at him as he had been a villain. His rock clothes made all the snobbish cocktails drinkers there to look to him disgusted. Including some of so called "friends" of mine. I would quote for one of them "Important e nu cat de lung ai parul/Important e ce si cum gandesti!".
So we have left after less than olne hour. not embarrassed but contrairly empowered. I have leearnt again one of the life lessons I keep forgetting: "The most important quality in a MAN is honesty".

PS: Thanks M. and V. for telling and showing me about what does friendship means.

In memoriam Razvan Jigorea

http://www.jigorea.com/

One of the most complex man I have had ever met has gone. Gifted photographer, talented musician and an extraordinary developer... Rest in peace

Alcatel + Lucent merger

+

=

Weekeend works

http://esper.codehaus.org/ - a try to make some statistics from ISUP events

http://www.opensymphony.com/quartz/ - for some job scheduling needs

http://www.hsqldb.org/ - a database to store data from the two above

Googling....

I have googled for my name.
The results shown:

1. Daniel VOINA - Myself.
2. Daniel VOINA - art critic.
3. Daniel VOINA (aka Dady) - hooligan beatten by the police during a footbal match.

...

My phones

Among the gadgets I have had the mobbile phones were among the most worthy of attention. I have been fascinated by them since they appeared in Romania as I couldn't realize how they are really working.

So cronologically here is the list of the phones I had:

1. 1998 - 1999: Motorola D460
This one was a brickphone. It was big, hard, with a few functions but it worked well.
Its main use was that I was reachable by my folks in Timisoara. My mom abbused it by calling me very early in the morning. I bought a quite expensive prepaid (for my student budget in those days) in order to operate it.

2. 1999 - 2001: Philips Savvy
The second one. Nothing very special on it. Blye, small, with some nice ringtones and biorithm. I made my Vodafone(Connex) subscription for this.

3. 2001 - 2003: Ericsson R320
"The Rolls-Royce": I still cannot believe that I have had one of those. It was an exxtraordinary piece of work and engineering. Slim, with long battery life, with many features that even today are missing in the phones.

3. 2003 - 2003: Sony-Erricson T300
Impressed by R320 I went again on SE's hand. This one was from the first colour+polyphonic phones. Nice retro design. Somebody has stolen it from me.

4. 2003 - 2005: Siemens ME45
I bought this very well built phone. It had all the business functions possible inside a roughed case. A true supporting gadget.

5. 2005 - 2006: Siemens S65
Extremely nice ddesign. Stylish case and lots of functions. Unfortunately lots of bugs, bad camera...

6. 2006 - ... : Nokia 6233
I am not a Nokia fanatic but I have to admit that they do good phones. This one is my 3G shift.

Finally Ubuntu + Beryl + Xgl on i915

What I did for this:

1. Added this repositories to /etc/gdm/sources.list

deb http://yakablog.info/share/ubuntu dapper main
deb http://www.beerorkid.com/compiz/ dapper main
deb http://xgl.compiz.info/ dapper main
deb http://ubuntu.compiz.net/ dapper main
deb http://www.beerorkid.com/compiz dapper main aiglx
deb http://media.blutkind.org/xgl/ dapper main aiglx

2. Imported those GPG keys

#wget http://www.beerorkid.com/compiz/quinn.key.asc -O - | sudo apt-key add -
#wget http://www.beerorkid.com/compiz/quinn.key.asc -O - | sudo apt-key add -
#wget http://media.blutkind.org/xgl/quinn.key.asc -O - | sudo apt-key add -

3. Upgrade my distributio to latest release

#apt-get upgrade
#apt-get dist-upgrade

4. Install the following packages:

# apt-get install xserver-xgl libgl1-mesa xserver-xorg libglitz-glx1 beryl emerald-themes emerald

4. Edit the file /etc/gdm/gdm.conf
4.1 in section [server] change the line:

 
0=Standard

into

0=Xgl

4.2 add trhe section [server-Xgl] with the following content:

[server-Xgl]
name=Xgl server
command=/usr/bin/Xgl :0 -fullscreen -ac -accel glx:pbuffer -accel xv:pbuffer
flexible=true

5. In the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf
5.1 edit the section "Module" to have the following content

Section "Module"
        Load    "i2c"
        Load    "bitmap"
        Load    "ddc"
        Load    "dri"
        Load    "extmod"
        Load    "freetype"
        Load    "glx"
        Load    "int10"
        Load    "type1"
        Load    "vbe"
EndSection

5.2 edit the section "Device" to have the following content

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Intel Corporation 82915G/GV/910GL Express Chipset Family Graphics Controller"
        Driver          "i810"
        BusID           "PCI:0:2:0"
        Option          "DRI" "true"
EndSection

5.3 Check for the sections "DRI" and "Extensions" - if you do not have them add them to this file with this content

Section "DRI"
        Mode    0666
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
        Option  "Composite" "true"
EndSection

6. In the menu System->Preferences->Sessions go to "Startup programs" tab and add the applications:

beryl-xgl
and 
emerald

7. Restart your X server.

In the System->Preferences you should have now two more entries "Beryl settings" and "Emerald"



Enjoy!!!

Eye Candy on Ubuntu

I have installed on my cusin's computer (another Ubuntu fanatic) Compiz/Beryl with Xgl on a nVidia card.
It is incredioble how nice it works. Th gui is quite fast and responsive the graphical efects are awsome (wobbling, zooming).
The instalation was a little odd but afterwards everything went smooth (only a few crashes - but that's normal for such tools that are very new).

British Film Festival in Timisoara

The poster - as usual funny

British Animation Awards

My first OS-X experience

I have just installed OS-X 10.4.4 on my laptop. I succeded only after some trial and error cycles. I guess that I will finally end up in buying a real Mac as the software is just to nice to work with on my PC

Now the list of operating systems I worked with has a new member:

OS-X, Solaris(8,9,10), FreeBSD(5.4,6), IRIX(5.3) HP-UX, AIX, OS/400, DOS, Linux(2.0.30 - 2.6.18), BeOs 5, Windows(3.0 - XP)

Snow in Timisoara

My Heloween Pumpkin

Management promises - again

Act 1, Scene 1:
The Manager asks for commitment and reliability. He asks people to estimate well and keep the deadline.

Act 1, Scene 2:
People are trying their best and do the job in time.

Act 1, Scene 3:
The Manager promises rises without being asked for.

Act 1, Scene 4:
The manager cancels the rises and moreover it diminishes the netto income.

Act 2, Scene 1:
Everybody starts to leave.

Act 2, Scene 2:
Somebody writes this on the net.

Not the scenario of a play - it is what happened today in my company...
The manager was not reliable at all in front of his peoople.

New toy :)

I have recently bought a new Nokia 6233 phone. My good old Siemens S65 just died.
The toy is nice - I have chosen this model instead of N series because of the better performance/price ratio. I am now able to test my mpeg4ip streams and to remotely control some home appliances via sms' and web.

"Cinderella" ballet in Bucharest

I went yesterday at Bucharest in order to see a very good friend of mine.
We went to a good ballet show - "Cinderella" by Sergey Prokofiev. The music was extremely pleasant and the live performance of the orchestra was good. The dancers at their turn were okay, although not spectacular. I remarked Corina Dumitrescu in the role of Cinderella and the very nice suporting roles of Tiberiu Almosnino, Catalin Caracas, Gabriel Opincaru and Vicentiu Popescu.

Trip to France

I went to France this week for some business purposes and I must say that I had a bad week there.
Let's begin:

1. On Monday, October the 22nd, I had to go to the airport as my plane was taking off at 08:40 am.
I have made a reservation for a cab on Friday, October the 19th, to Omnitour at 07:00 in order to get to the airport. The cab never showed up and I had to call for another one in the morning so that I arrived late, only 6 minutes before the check-in.

2. After a flight with many turbulences I arrved at CDG airport in Paris. From there I have taken the RER to the Montparnasse Bienvenue station. I have put my luggage in a locker box in the station and visited Paris for six hours. I managed to reach Notre Dame, Eiffel tower, Les Jardins de Tuilleries, Le Dome des Invalides. Of course everything in a hurry. I have had also some time to go on the tower of Montparnasse.

3. I have reached Rennes at 21:48. The Hertz barnch in the train station was already closed so I had to take a cab to the hotel.

4. I have finally got my car from Hertz - a small but strudy Chevrolet Spark therefore I went to Saint Malo.

5. On Thursday, October the 26th I came back in Paris and stayed overnight at Hotel Cronstadt. I would not reccomend it to anybody...

6. On Friday, October the 27th, I came back to Timisoara. Carpatair had some problem refuelling on CDG and we took off with a delay of 2 hours.

A hedgehog in Timisoara

I have found this hedgehog in Timisoara, yesterday. It is strange that it lives in the city...

Otelul Rosu

I went yesterday to a friend's wedding in Otelul Rosu. I have to congratulate Rudy for this!

Unusually for me I have driven all the way back and forth from Timisoara to Otelu Rosu that is about 120 Kilometres away on the way from Caransebes to Hateg.

A Doctor was badly beatten inside a hospital

Called from home for an emergency a doctor was beatten badly inside the hospital.
I think that okay our medical system has lots of problems, it is infested by corruption and unprofessionalism but violence should have nothing to do with this.

Education in Romania

As I have said before in the posts on this blog the education in Romania sucks.
I know that we gare going from bad to worse because I often speak with friends that are TAs in Universities in Romania and also with some of my ex-teachers.

Yesterday I have seen a talk show on TV in that the guests (Andrei Marga, Eugen Chelemen and Alina Mungiu Pippidi) were sharing the same oppinions as I do. They also pointed out that integration of Romania in European Community will also produce a major crisis in the universitary life when the Romanian universities will get into direct competition with European counterparts.

Th education in Romania is quite expensive (somewhere around 600 EUR/year) and of very poor quality. With about the same ammount of money somebody could learn in a better University (good Italian ones are about 1000 EUR/year tuition fees). More than this everything in Romanian education seems to be crafted without any plan, without taking into account any curricula, prerequisites and consequences of the learning activity.

...

I really do hope that somet6hing will changhe also in this field.

Weekend on the Danube

Danube as it is seen from Orsova

King Decebal's Statue

Cazanele Mici

Cazanele Mari

The ruins of the Trikule fortress

(C++)++

(C++)++ == C++ + STL + Boost + Loki
(C++)++ = C+2
C+2 < Java

Hg vs. Bazaar-NG

I have tried the two SCM's and I found that HG is more advanced in development than Bazaar-NG.
Although they share a good ammount of features Hg has a richer set of usable ones.
I have missed the tags from Bazaar and this is the main reason for that I have quite disqualified it. Anyways, both are quite likeable, much more than CVS or even Subversion.

Wow! I am a nerd

Websurfing on Andy Hunt's blog I learnt about "The Nerd Test". Here are my scores:

Thanks Ubuntu!

I have received from Ubuntu's Ship It service a bunch of CD's with Ubuntu and Kubuntu.
I have spreaded them among my friends, to the public library where they are willing to go on using Linux and some schools in my home city Sighetu Marmatiei.

Solaris 10

I had a nice experience working with Solaris 10.
After not so funny work with Solaris 8 and partially with Solaris 9 I got into Solaris 10 that was by far better than anything I have seen before.

Starting from the installation, that was clearer and simpler than before up to the software packages installed and the ease of use of the overall system everything was more than okay.

I have installed it on an old Netra 1125 SPARC machine and it is working surprizingly fast for a 440 MHz machine.

One more thing I want to add is that the Jumpstart installation went reasonably okay (aka I would like something similar on Linux...)

Personal DNA

Attentive Experiencer

Idea?

I have read about the chip ZL50075.
Suddenly I had a dream. A complete TDM swtch with hundreds of trunks embedded into a 4U rack enclosure using sut a dozen of those chips and a bunch of TDM trancievers, all this chips controlled by some small/low cost/low consumption processors?

Sounds feasible?

Think to add to this small SSP some value added services like IVRs, DAMs...
Feasible also with a couple of Linux/xBSD machines.

Extend this to VoIP using again simple and efficient SIP proxies as Yate, Asterisk or SER ?

Connect this to a couple of networks via gateways...

We can manage it with XMLRPC and SNMP....

I think all those could be done in a single 19"/42U rack.

Wake me up if I am dreaming too nice...

Daniel Iliescu's Wedding

I will Go today to one of my colleague's wedding. Daniel is one of my colleagues, a Java developper, and he is getting married to Mihaela.

I wish them health, happines and peace!

Managers

Imagine that you have a product.
It is a cluster with several servers.
On each you have to install a set of packages depending on some needs.
Then test the configuration in order to certify that it works, works well, works fast enough.

How long do you think it will take you?
Several weeks? A couple of months?

Naaaah... Yo must be lazy!!!!

A manager affirmed that should take about five minutes. In a meeting. With other higher ranking alikes...

I really tend to believe that The Pointy Haired Boss is a true character.

RCA==Root Cause Analisys

I was asked by my direct manager to do a RCA for a couple of projects that me and my team have delivered in the past.
Everything that I have been telling him suring the last year was again in the RCAs:
1. Bad communication with the client
2. Bad specification
3. Incomplete/Superficial trainings
4. No quality tools to use and very little resources
5. No code reviews
6. No coherent testig policy
7. To regular builds
...
I guess we could easily fail 'The Joel Test'

Books

I have recently read some books on project management

The first one was 'The Death March' by Ed. Yourdon that seemed quite interesting as the perspective of the narrator was wellpositioned.

The second one was 'Agile Software Development' by Allan Koch that was for me just a compilation of other authors.

Lynksys WRT54GL

I have finally found a reseller for this nice device in Timisoara.
I have bought it and I am very proud of it

Nice factory method implementation

I have been working with a colleague of mine Nelutzu to refactor some code in a project. We have installed some metrics plugin in Eclipse and we started to purify he code (as we had some problems that the metrics spotted out)

One of the problems was the large number of branches in a factory method so Nelutzu has refactored it in a very nice way:

class FooFactory {
    private static HashMap items = new HashMap();
    static {
        items.put("foo1", new Foo1());
        items.put("foo2", new Foo2());
        items.put("foo3", new Foo3());
    }
    public static Foo getFooProduct(String fooName) {
        return items.get(fooName).getClass().newInstance();  
    }
}

Voila, no if or switch while creating the objects. Nice work, Nelutzu!

C oddity....

Found something similar while debugging a memory leak:

int main() {
    int x, y;
    switch(x) {
        case 0:
            break;
        case 1:
            if(y==5) {
        default:          // wtf. default inside if? 
            break;        // it seems to work for every
                          // compiler I used
        }
        case 2:
            break;
    }
    return 0;
}

Happy Birthday to my Sister!

La multi ani, Tina!

Hourray!!!

Hourray!!!

I have made a small VXML interpreter in Python.
I have used the PyTTS (a python wrapper over MS SAPI) and xml.dom.minidom for handling the tags.
It works quite well... I just have to add some DTMF processing and I think it will be quite okay.

Following the last post

More than I have said before....

I discovered that a person that works for over 7 years in an IT company doesn't know:
1. To use Microsoft Word (Spellchecker is a big problem)
2. English or any foreign language (Mother tongue rules)
3. How to program (Although is a SW engineer...)

Yeah, a little bit contradictory with what I said in the last post, but I think that now everything is possible.

But in 7 years not to be able to speak a basic English or use Word...

Simple computations

1. Software engineer
Responsibilities: design, develop, test, write documentation, be ready in time...
Skills needed: Programming languages(Advanced), OOAD, Databases, Various technologies, Foreign languages
Studies: BSc or MSc. Preferably in CS, EE, Telecommunications, Math...
Risks assumed: High - projects depend un the quality and speed of their work
Satisfaction: Low to medium

Monthly salary ~= 500 EUR
Bonuses ~= 0 EUR
Daily allowance = 0 EUR

2. Operation guy
Responsibilities: go onsite, install or update systems
Skills needed: Reading - to be able to read procedures, Computer skills (Medium) - Installation + Office...,
Studies: BSc on whatever
Risks assumed: Low. High only in underdeveloped belligerent countries...
satisfaction: High. Can see foreign countries for free

Monthly salary ~= 450EUR
Bonuses ~= depending on project
Daily allowance = 120 EUR when on mission


All the data is for two years experienced guys.
A simple math will say that:

In an year a SW Engineer will earn about 6000 EUR
In an year an Operation guy will earn 5400 EUR + 12000 EUR = 16400 EUR
30 Days - mean month value * 200 EUR/day * 6 Months average mission time = 21600 EUR
Costs in mission for food and lodging ~= 10000 EUR

What do you think?

I was puzzled myself when someone has shown me the figures. I understood why some of the good developers I have in my team want to leave for operations. They are ready to do a work that does not involve much risks and offers them some possibilities to visit the world while earning more money than the hardworking guys that remained home. Moreover they have the opportunity to meet the client face to face and learn more about some opportunities.

I will certainly not encourage anyone to become a SW Engineer from now on. They should be fools to do it...

Groupware!

In each corporation groupware is needed. But nobody really seems to understand it and use it correctly. No integration between tools, no standards... A totally mess.
There should be some public protocol that could be used to share information between all clients.

In my opinion GW should integrate:

1. PIM
Zimbra
Chandler
HulaEGroupware

2. Project planning
PhpCollab
Netoffice
Microsoft Project
Gantt Project
http://www.openworkbench.org/

Links for these tools

3. Presence & Messaging
http://www.jabber.org

4. Data Sharing
FTP, HTTP, RSYNC, WebDAV

All above should be under the same interface or with different interface but using the same background engine.
There are some web projects and some applications that are trying to accomplish this task but they are really not understanding each other well enough.

Zimbra
Chandler
Hula

Buena Vista back in Romania

I have learnt from a FRIEND of mine - his name is Razvan Pocaznoi - about "Buena Vista Social Club". I was not a fan of latino music before and I cannot say that I am one now , but was fascinated by the original music those guys were producing.
The music created by Ibrahim Ferrer, Compay Segundo, Ruben Gonzales and Omara Portundo has extraordynary scents of exotic fruits and quality tobacco and the rythm graciously hidden inside the tune makes you dance either inside but generally it shuffles somebody's feet in a extraordinary dance.

I went to one of the last concerts of Ibrahim Ferrer held in Bucharest in April 2003 and I can say that the atmosphere was vibrating and the show was terrific.

I hope for the best of today's concert in Timisoara.

Thank you for the music, Buena Vista!

The Deadline

I have recently read a quite interesting book - "The Deadline" by Tom De Marco.
The book is a a fantasy placed in a hypotetical country called Morovia where a software project manager is taught the hard lessons of large scale project management by the other characters all of them having to face the sucessful completion of some almost impossible projects.
The book is kind a "Teach Yourself Project Management in 21 Days" but it differs from that kind of books by the quite appealing story and the well characters. De Marco has good writing style, the characters and the situations he describes in his books can be seen as behavioral patterns inside large enterprises.
As well as some other books De Marco wrote this one can serve as a hands on training on project managemant, people management and risk assesment for the young and unexperienced managers (like myself :) )


The Deadline @ Amazon.com


Peopleware @ Amazon.com


Slack @ Amazon.com


Waltzing With Bears @ Amazon.com

'Niciun' && 'Nicio'

Recently the Romanian Academy made some 'subtle' changes to the way the words are written.
The word 'none' in English has two forms in Romanian 'nici un' for the masculine gender and 'nici o' for feminine.
The forms 'nici un' and 'nici o' are quite natural because thet are additively constructed from a preposition ('nici') and an article('un/o'). The new forms 'niciun/nicio' are looking somehow odd to me as I tend to like the old form.

Orthodox Icons Exhibition

Today I was to a vernisage of an exibition of hand painted orthodox icons in Sighet.
The nuns of the Holy Monastery of Miclauseni came in Sighet with extraordinary beautiful painted icons both on wood or on glass. All o these icons are closely respecting the ancient orthodox painting tradition callerd Erminia and are covered in a thin golden foil. There were paintings representing Jesus, The Holy Virgin, Saint George, Saint Lukas and Saint Matthew, Archangels Gabriel and Michael etc.
Spokemen for the opening of the exibition were Nicolae Iuga PhD, Nutu Rosca PhD and Mother Gabriela one of the painters of those extraordinary icons.

I am sorry that I haven'y made any pictures there but in order to get a glimpse of them I will post a link to some other orthodox icons - held in The Holy Mountain.

Theater in Sighet

UPS/Astral Telecom - the local cable and telephony company have made the effort to bring the Notarra theatre from Bucharest in Sighetu Marmatiei.
They played Valentin Nocolau's "Uzina de placeri SA" and the actors were Virgil Ogasanu, Crenguta Hariton, Dan Bordeianu and Ilie Anda. The director is Alexandru Berceanu and the scenograph Ina Isbasescu.
Although I consider the play not very original (clicheistic I would say) it is really a very good thing that finally a breeze of culture came to Sighet after so many years.
for some more information on the play you van check this link

Hristos a inviat!

Hristos a inviat!

Joel's DAL

I have recently read Joel Spolsky's 'Development Abstraction Layer' collumn on his website http://www.joelonsoftware.com. It felt to me like a dejavu. All the things he has written there are both true and of a great and immediate importance for me in my current position of teamleader.

I feel that generally I have to do more for my people because I am facing with the following problems:

1. Lack of resources - almost everyday I loose time and energy to argue for servers/boards/simulators

2. Acces to documentation - documentation is like an old and very precious spellbook and our distant peers are not eager at allto share their vault with us

3. Versioning system - "I hate Clearcase..."

4. Negotiation of deadlines - no negotiation.

Soreen's blog

I was very pleased to discover that Soreen has finally published his blog.
http://skrammer.blogspot.com/

I am quite sorry that I haven't talked to him for a while as we seldom see each other online.

Nice work, man! I am glad to hear news from you!

Weekend Home

I will go home this weekend. It will be quite hard for me as I will travel by train.
Despite that I have a car (I am a lousy driver) I will go by train because in this way I am saving a about two days as the train goes by night.

Interview @ Microsoft

I was interviewed by Microsoft today. It was a quite interesting experience.

Proof Carying Code (for the Brad fellow that interviewed me)is much more than the signing of the packages...

After the interview I went to "Shonyi" - a small restaurant in Bucharest together with Valentin and Florian.

Weekend @ Stana de Vale

I had a wonderfull weekend @ Stana de Vale. I went there with my colleagues in a Team Building session. I will leave some images to speak for it.

Java again...

I had to code some applets those days. Applets as little apps... not web applets. Really small fat clients. So I had to make them look pretty. This was the hard part. I am not a very talented graphics designer so I had to figure out how to deal with:

1. Ergonomy: I suck. I tried to copy some Mac applications... But yes, I really suck

2. Icons and graphics: I was never able to use Gimp/Photoshop/Corel/Illustrator... I have stolen some graphics from:
http://www.javootoo.com/

http://art.gnome.org/

http://www.gnome-look.org/

http://www.kde-look.org/

I have also used some componets from https://swingx.dev.java.net/

3. Code && Build: Eclipse with VE rules...

Nice links I have wandered on:
1. http://baghira.sourceforge.net/OS_Clone-en.php#step8
2. http://home.cogeco.ca/~raduking/ - I believe that this is made by a guy from my hometown! Excellent work RaduKing!
3. http://retroweaver.sourceforge.net/ - I used this for swingx...

Karaoke again...

Check this out...
http://www.behringer.com/UB502/index.cfm?lang=ENG

New building - New offices - New problems

We have moved into a new building. New offices. Quite nice ones...
New problems:

1. The windows in the new offices cannot be opened... No fresh air...
2. The clima in the new building is working. It's heating all the time. If you add this to problem 1 -> Hot and filthy air.
3. The network works intermitently...

More to come.

XMLRPC for system management

Those days I had tremendous headaches with some system management applications that have to supervise some systems and continously report to a serve.
It is something alike:

                   +-----------------+
                 /-|Management daemon|
                 | +-----------------+                 
                 |    ...
+---+    +-----+ | +-----------------+
|GUI|----|Proxy|---|Management daemon|
+---+    +-----+   +-----------------+

Instead of having the modules communicating one with the other via sockets, as the application used to run, I thought of how I could improve the communication.

The ideas were:
1. SNMP
Very elegant solution indeed. But my knowledge of SNMP are quite limited and I hadn't had the time to study it more indeep.

2. XML-RPC
Clean and lightweight solution. In less than 3 hours I coud write in Python a proxy and a simple management daemon that were comunicating together via XML-RPC. Now the last step is to integrate the Java GUI I have via XML-RPC and I will feel much safer.

Feteasca Regala - Murfatlar 3 Hectare

Good wine! Check Murfatlar's page on it.

I went today with MOD, SRD, DIU, PRS, CTU, CNA, SCA, TPA, ABA, IGN to have dinner at the Rustica Pizza in Timisoara.

Karaoke

Today there was a party for our department held in a trendy club in Timisoara. the club name is CCCP.

It was a lot of fun & beer.
I participated in the karaoke contest and won the 1st prize. I am good... although aphone.



Here I am with PRS and LBA after lots of beers.

Creating a good IT infrastructure

1. You have to know what do you want to do!
2. Look on the internet for alternatives. AD can be as well implemented by MS Windows and Linux/Samba or OSX... And OSX is pretty.
3. Get a good supplier for equipment. It is mandatory to have a serious supplier that offers enough guaranties and makes the deliveries in time. Use the best possible equipment
4. Make a list with all the activities you want in the network and plan the network accordingly. Create separate and autonomuos subnets for each activity. Use VLANS. Keep in mind that more services as VoIP or IM will be added. Use FAST backbones.
5. Standardize the solutions together with the end users and do it in the begenning. For example choose the mailer, webserver, bugtracker, groupware as soon as you can do it. Argument your case well if you have some ideeas in mind.
6. Document the net. Use a wiki.
7. Delegate some tasks to trustable people. It is priceless when you have a large campus... Or you can buy a bike :)
8. Use caching proxies!
9. Use good backup tools.
10. Keep users isolated. Especially foreiners and visitors. Use DHCP.