Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Daily routine

1. I have looked into a possible integration of curl and memcached for a distributed caching of VXML pages. The idea is that when a media server makes a HTTP request to an application server in order to fetch something (vxml page, audio, video, javascript) the retieved content is stored into memcached so that a subsequent request for the same resource would be served faster. For the media server traffic model this would be quite a good speedup as it is very likely that the SIP requests would often reach the same IVR service (the same VXML pages) and therefore all the data would be already cached. What I am thinking further would be to cache somehow the TTS prompts.

2. Problems with my satellite dish. After the weekend I cannot see any TV. The HH mount works, the alignment is correct but still no signal.

3. Ubuntu 9.04 - works and looks nice. No more wireless issues but the same omnibook modules I had to recompile for my Toshiba. Now I have windows only in a VM (VirtualBox)

4. Issues with VirtualBox - if the guest uses poll/epoll the CPU consumption is considerably higher than with VMWare.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

random()

What if Romania would make a commemoration day of all the victims of Romanian rapists and murderers throughout Europe. It would be the case... sadly. We were outraged when some Hungarian gypsies killed Marian Cozma but we are indifferent when idiots from Romania kill and rape in Italy and steal in other countries. However people died and us, the real Romanians, should pay at leas a little respect to them.

I wondered through churches and I have seen the bishop's chair always empty. It was sad. In Greece there is almost a bishop in every town. In Romania are quite a few, but their place is taken by other dignities and this leads to chaos. Moreover, I was disappointed that Iustin Sigheteanul - the bishop of Maramures - although having the name of Sigheteanul (of Sighet) did not participate to the divine service in the city of Sighet. Is he really a bishop for Sighet? If he is not among the people of Sighet why does he has this name? Are the people from Sighet 2nd hand christians that do not deserve a divine service led by a bishop?

Romania is not a rich country anymore. We are getting from poor to poorest on a daily basis. Everything seems to be decaying: people, nature, building, roads...
Hovever on thing thrives: the fees.

Forfait taxes in Romania. They somehow abolished the 16% profit tax. Many small/micro companies will be closed and the results would be against of what they hoped when they introduced this tax.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Revolts in Modova

Has the communism reached the its final end in Moldova?

I really hope so although I think that this movement will end badly because of the very fragile position Moldova has in the relations with the strong neighbours, Russian interests and impotent Romania.

May God be with you brothers!

Cheap hire year

2009 will be maybe the year with the cheapest hire price in Romania.
There are two main reasons:

1. The well-known crisis

2. This year will graduate two promotions of CS students. Those with a 5 years curricula and those with 4 year curricula in addition. Therefore this year the number of available candidates will be with about 40% higher overall.

This is good for employers because:
1. The selection base is broader and therefore better candidates would appear
2. the demand will be higher than the offer and there will be real concurrency for the declining number of positions
3. The employers would be able to negotiate the wages more tightly.

Maybe this will be the end of some odd situations in the Romanian HR. Very young and unexperienced candidates with very high demands. They were chosen just because nobody else asked for the job. Now this will end... This is good! Also for us those that are already in 'comfortable' positions because young wolves are coming and we will have to strive at our best to keep our jobs.