Mike Ault's Blog

Book Review – Oracle Information Integration Migration And Consolidation

2011-11-17T07:37:00.001-08:00

I recently had the chance to look over the book “Oracle Information Integration Migration and Consolidation” by Jason Williamson, published by PackT Publishing.

The book deals with all aspects of migration to Oracle from various Oracle and non-Oracle sources. In a soup-to-nuts manner, the book covers the major tools to move data into and out of Oracle including OWB, SQLPLUS, EXPDP, IMPDP, RMAN, SQL*DEVELOPER, GoldenGate, and various ETL type tools including some form 3rd party companies.

The book includes many examples and use cases and numerous charts showing what tools should be used for which tasks. The book is written in a down-to-earth style and was easy to read.

I would recommend this book for anyone facing a data migration, platform change or complete system re-write into Oracle from another source.

The book is available here:

http://www.packtpub.com/oracle-information-integration-migration-and-consolidation/book
http://www.amazon.com/Oracle-Information-Integration-Migration-Consolidation/dp/1849682208/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321543957&sr=8-1-fkmr0

Minimizing Re-Rebuild Time with Benchmark Factory from Quest

2011-10-11T12:35:00.001-07:00

In my job as Oracle Guru for Teas memory Systems I perform a multitude of bechmarks to showcase the performance of our SSD products. One tool I have found invaluable while doing these benchmark tests is the Benchmark Factory from Quest Software, Inc. as it allows TPC-C, TPC-E and TPC-H as well as custom and other recognized benchmarks to be easily performed and provides decent reporting of the results. However, there is one fly in the ointment.

Benchmark factory does great when the benchmark size is small, however, its time to reload the database grows exponentially as the size of the database increases, for example, the creation of a 3000 warehouse TPC-C takes over 4 hours using a 16-CPU server with plenty of memory and SSD for storage, I can only imagine how long it would take with smaller servers using normal hard drive based SAN or JBOD storage. So, how can this obstacle be overcome?

First, I had Quest provide some parallel load scripts which allow me to load all 9 tables independently. Using the standard load utility it loaded them serially and any errors resulted in having to restart the load process from the beginning. With the independent load scripts you can load any combination of the tables, restarting any that may fail due to space or undo problems as needed. These are the load scripts that reduced the time to 4 hours mentioned above. They are available on the Quest website. However, spending 4 hours to refresh a database to perform a 45 minute test seems rather much, is there anything else that can be done to reduce this time further?

The http://www.tpc.org website has the dbgen utility that can be used to create load tables, then you create a set of SQL Loader files to map them into the database and you can load in parallel, this reduces the load time to about an hour, you can also map the external files as external tables. Of course, rather than deal with learning a second utility (which you have to download and link as a C routine) I just loaded the tables using BMF then before messing with them, created a set of external table using simple CTAS and the external table clauses as required. Now my load time is down to about an hour. I could further reduce the load time by parallelizing specific table loads. Note that to use the ORACLE_DATAPUMP as a source to insert from you must set the FILESYSTEMIO_OPTIONS parameter to NONE. Of course what about statistics? Statistics on multi-million row tables can take a couple of hours to generate as well.

Command to create a set of external table build scripts:
(you must use the “create directory” command to create the ext_tab directory entry first)

select 'create table ext_'||table_name||'
organization external (
type oracle_datapump
default directory ext_tab
location ('||chr(39)||'ext_'||table_name||'.ext'||chr(39)||')) AS
select * from '||table_name||';' from user_tables
/

Example result script:

create table ext_C_HISTORY
organization external (
type oracle_datapump
default directory ext_tab
location ('ext_C_HISTORY.ext')) AS
select * from C_HISTORY;

Following the data load and index build I did a statistics collection using DBMS_STATS.GATHER_SCHEMA_STATS then I stored the statistics into a statistics export table. Since I have the statistics stored it is simply a matter of importing the statistics at the conclusion of the reload.

Commands to export statistics:

EXEC DBMS_STATS.CREATE_STAT_TABLE('TPCC', 'STATS_TABLE');
EXEC DBMS_STATS.export_schema_stats('TPCC','STATS_TABLE',NULL,'TPCC');

Command to import statistics:

EXEC DBMS_STATS.import_schema_stats('TPCC','STATS_TABLE',NULL,'TPCC');

So now my data reload simply becomes a set of truncate table commands followed by an insert with the APPEND hint using a SELECT * from the external tables followed by a statistics import. This cuts the turn around time from around 6-8 hours to less than 2 for a 3000 warehouse TPC-C benchmark.

Example INSERT command:

insert /*+append*/ into c_customer select * from ext_c_customer;

Fun with External Tables

2011-09-15T14:39:00.000-07:00

During recent testing, I came upon an interesting error. This is on Oracle Linux in an 11.2.0.2 enterprise database. I am doing TPCC testing and wanted a faster way to reload the tables between the tests rather than using the Benchmark Factory loader, which takes forever! I decided to use a datapump format external table using a CTAS to create it for each table after reloading the data then simply do an insert using an APPEND hint to reload the tables following a test and subsequent table recreation (since some are single table clusters and hash clusters truncate doesn’t work so they must be dropped and rebuilt.)

I used the following to create an external table:

create table ext_C_STOCK
organization external (
type oracle_datapump
default directory ext_tab
location ('ext_C_STOCK.ext')) AS
select * from C_STOCK;

The C_STOCK table is part of a single table cluster.

After a test run I dropped and recreated the C_STOCK cluster and table as an empty table then I tried to reload it from the external table:

insert /*+append*/ into C_STOCK select * from ext_C_STOCK;

To which I received:

insert /*+append*/ into C_STOCK select * from ext_C_STOCK
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-29913: error in executing ODCIEXTTABLEOPEN callout
ORA-31619: invalid dump file "/mnt/exttables/ext_C_STOCK.ext"
ORA-27072: File I/O error
Linux-x86_64 Error: 22: Invalid argument
Additional information: 4
Additional information: 1
Additional information: -1

The problem turned out to be that the initialization parameter filesystemio_options was set to setall, changing it’s value to NONE fixed the issue.

What Are We Waiting For?

2011-07-29T06:02:00.000-07:00

It seems everything but the temperatures are in a slump. The economy, hiring, employment, purchasing, proper government action, all seem to be missing. My question is what are we waiting for? We aren’t the ineffective government, we aren’t the ones making poor decisions, at least for the most part.

Perhaps we need to step forward and start movement. We need to do something positive, each of us. Perhaps it would just be cleaning up our yard, giving a bit more at church or working just a bit harder at our jobs. If everyone ignored Washington and just did a little more for each other I think we could positively effect not only our lives, but everyone else’s as well. If all of us treat each other honestly and fairly maybe it will trickle up.

Maybe instead of charging as much as we can, we just need to charge as much as we need to for goods and services. I am tired of seeing ten cents worth of plastic being sold for several dollars. How many employers could let their employees work from home? Do you really need to watch your employees like hawks to make sure they work? Can’t you tell by results if they are working? I submit that if you can’t trust your employees to do their work if you let them work form home, you can’t trust them to do their work at work either and perhaps you should find new employees!

I guess we need to lead from the bottom, if the entire base of the pyramid moves in the correct direction, the rest has to follow.

The Times, they are a Changing

2011-07-14T15:00:00.000-07:00

For my presentations at VirtaThon least! Here is the latest schedule of my presentations:

Best of Both Worlds: Using SSd and Disks via ASM
Presenter(s):
Michael Ault
Time slot: 17 July 10:00 - 10:55

Room:
Virtual Room # 100
Infrastructure Technologies - Oracle
Target Audience:
All

VirtaThon GoldStar Session!!! 4-Hour Deep-Dive: Got Performance? Statspack and AWR Analysis
Presenter(s):
Michael Ault
Time slot: 18 July 11:00 - 15:25

Room:
Virtual Room # 100
Database - Oracle
Target Audience:
All

The Need for Speed: Using SSDs with Oracle
Presenter(s):
Michael Ault
Time slot: 19 July 13:30 - 14:25

Room:
Virtual Room # 200
Infrastructure Technologies - Oracle
Target Audience:
All

VirtaThon Keynote: Tuning on the Cheap: Oracle tuning Utilities Everyone Has
Presenter(s):
Michael Ault
Time slot: 20 July 12:30 - 13:25

Room:
Virtual Room # 100
Database - Oracle
Target Audience:
All

Looking Forward

2011-07-14T07:56:00.000-07:00

Well, looks like I am booked out for the month of July! Starting Saturday (16 July, 2011) I am doing a 4 hour presentation on AWR analysis for VirtaThon http://www.brainsurface.com/virtathon here is the rest of my VirtaThon schedule (all times EDT):

Sunday 17 July, 2011 10:00-11:00 am "Best of Both Worlds: Using SSd and Disks With ASM"
Tuesday 19 July, 2011 4:30-5:30 pm "The Future is Now: A Fully SSD Database System"
Wednesday 20 July, 2011 12:30-1:30 pm " Tuning on the Cheap: Oracle Tuning Utilities Everyone Has"

On Thursday I present at the Twin Cities Oracle User Group in Minnesota: "Data Warehouse Development Techniques and New PL/SQL Features"

On Tuesday July 26 ,2011 12:00-01:00pm "Oracle Exadata X2-8: A Critical Review" (webcast)Check out http://www.ramsan.com/company/events for more information and a link.

On Wednesday, July 27, 2011 I will be doing a joint presentation with Tariq Farooq on "360 Degrees: Everything to know about Virtualization for Oracle DBAs"

Should be a quick end of the month! Hope you can all make it to at least one of the virtual or live events!

To see any of my past Webinars look at http://www.ramsan.com/company/events and http://www.ramsan.com/resources/videos

A Bitter Nostalgia

2011-07-08T10:01:00.001-07:00

I remember in grade school and middle school when I was growing up they would roll TVs into the classroom and we would all watch in wonder as the Mercury and then the Saturn V launch vehicles would, with a rumble and roar lift our astronauts into space. With this technology we put the first men on the moon, sent probes into deep space and around the planets in this solar system. They also lifted up young hearts and minds to believe that maybe they could someday walk on the surface of a different world and stare back at the star that gave them birth with wonder.

Today, the last space shuttle mission launched. After the shuttle returns it will be mothballed and with that action, the USA will no longer has the capability to put people into space. Now, with the demise of the space shuttle we will become a beggar nation when it comes to space, just like the third world countries we will have to go begging with hat (and money) in hand to the Russians and Chinese to use their rockets, vehicles and launch facilities. John F. Kennedy will be spinning in his grave.

We have record unemployment, the lowest new job creation numbers and the dollar is at one of its lowest points in relation to other currencies that it has ever been. I don’t know what the future holds but I am worried. I worry that my grandchildren will be burdened with an immense load of debt that they can’t possibly repay. I worry that they will have no jobs and become dependent on the government for their sustenance, not because of lack of desire or ability, but because of the incompetence of our leaders. For the first time the future looks worse than the past.

Perhaps my memories just aren’t correct. I recall affordable housing, cars, gas and food. I recall a time when one income would feed a family and mothers weren’t expected to work outside of the home. I recall when a majority of time children were respectful to their elders, God was allowed in courts, in schools in lives. Many intellectuals wanted change, wanted God out of society, because after all, God was an outmoded concept that modern, thinking, scientific man didn’t need. How is a Godless world working out for you folks? Personally I find it a disturbing and quite a bit a scary place and getting worse as we get further from the basic rules, handed down by God that this country was based on.

Disgusting, violent video games that desensitize our youth to violence and death are authorized by the highest court in the land. Movies you are afraid to attend because you never know what they will contain fill the movie theaters. The basic rights that the country was founded on are perverted because our highest courts are filled with people with no common sense, no moral courage and nothing but empty academic theories instead of wisdom.

I am sorry if I am a bit morose today. The 10 year old with dreams of being an astronaut just died in my soul.

JavOraThon Conference

2011-03-09T07:14:00.001-08:00

Imagine a conference with top Oracle, Java and related topic presenters that you can attend in your PJs, from home, from your office, or even on your commute! A conference where you don't need to put up with TSA touching things that even your spouse won't touch and possibly having your image as the next TSA pinup of the week. Not to mention saving all those travel expense dollars in this tight economy! Well, imagine no more! The JavOraThon conference is a virtual conference with industry recognized speakers and as long as you have internet connectivity you can attend!

Here is the information for being a presenter if you are interested, I know I will be giving several presentations (yet to be announced) and know of several other experts who will be doing the same. The Conference dates are July 16-21 2011, coming to a computer near you!

Call-for-Papers URLS:

Speaker Registration: http://www.brainsurface.com/javorathon/node.add.speakers/
Propose a Session: http://www.brainsurface.com/javorathon/node.add.session/
View your proposed Sessions: http://www.brainsurface.com/javorathon/program.mysessions.proposed/

Hope to (virtually) see all you fellow Oracle users and Gurus there!

Class Action Suite

2011-01-27T13:57:00.001-08:00

I think there needs to be a class action suite. It seems there are a bunch of folks who took money from a guaranteed fund and replaced it with completely worthless IOUs. Millions of people put money into the fund, in fact, they were forced to. The class action suite would be on behalf of these millions of folks and levied against at least 643 folks who were trusted with the fund.

In case you haven’t guessed, I am talking about the ponzi scheme known as social security. A ponzi scheme is when you take money from investors and then pay back past investors with money from future investors without investing a dime to make more money. It works as long as your new investors exceed the numbers of your old investors. Supposedly the Social Security system was supposed to be a safe investment into a safety net retirement fund it grew into the mandated ponzi scheme it is today because in the 1980’s the government was allowed to borrow from it and pay back using federal bonds supposedly earning 5%/ However, the only way to pay these bonds was through additional tax revenue. Needless to say, any additional tax revenue was just as quickly spent as the money borrowed from Social Security. Shall we stop using euphemisms? The Congress and Senate, aided by the Presidents and Vice Presidents as well as the Fed stole from Social Security with no intention of ever paying it back.

I think that any currently sitting house of senate member and any past or present Presidents or Vice Presidents, in office or not, who ever voted at anytime to approve this thievery should have their pensions stripped from them and they should be jailed just like Bernie Madoff. To deliberately steal money from your constituents knowing you can never pay it back is criminal.

Unfortunately this elected royalty will never have to be punished for what they have done and continue to do. The trillion plus dollars they have stolen will never be paid back and many of the baby boomers who paid more in Social Security than any of their predecessors will end up in soup lines and shelters sleeping on cots when they reach their 90’s. Sometime around 2037 if things stay as they are the Social Security fund will run out of money and it is the fault of the greedy politicians in Washington who couldn’t keep their hands off of the money contributed to Social Security. By then I will be 80 years old, assuming they haven’t confiscated all the guns by then I hope I can still shoot straight.

Self Sufficiency

2011-01-25T12:10:00.000-08:00

As many of you know I am a staunch supporter of the USA 2nd amendment right to bear arms. In support of the 2nd amendment I own and usually carry a firearm and have the needed permit to do so legally for the state of Georgia and the states that practice reciprocity with Georgia about concealed carry permits. Part of the responsibility of being a firearm owner and user is maintaining proficiency with your weapon. Having a weapon and not knowing how to properly use it usually results in you, or someone you love, getting hurt or killed. Part of knowing how to use your weapon is to practice with it to acquire and retain control and accuracy.

Practicing with your weapon involves going to a safe place to shoot, either a secluded, isolated place where you have permission to shoot, or, a public or private shooting range, either indoors or outdoors. Near my home I have an indoor shooting range I go to when I need to practice with my hand guns or 9mm carbine as the indoor range is limited to a 50 yard distance. I have a public, outdoor range I use when I practice with my hunting rifle that is about 40 miles or so away. Of course to practice shooting you must expend ammunition. I usually shoot about 100 rounds of 9mm and 200 or so of .22 caliber when I go to the range. Sometimes maybe a few rounds of .38 special as well. All of these rounds cost money.

For full metal jacket 9mm 115 grain Remington practice rounds the cost runs about $13.00 per 50 rounds if you buy them online and have them sent to you, of course this also involves shipping costs so let’s say the 50 rounds costs you about $24.00. If you buy the rounds in a mortar and brick store they will be over $24.00 in most places. So we are talking about 48 cents a round, minimum. So, anything I can do to bring a cost of less than 48 cents a round will be like putting money in my pocket over the long haul. Thus, I thought about reloading my spent ammo.

Back when I was a poor sailor, I had a 8mm Argentine Mauser I picked up in a pawn shop for $75.00. I gloomed onto this reloading thing with that right away and picked up a really inexpensive Lee-Loader, simply a set of sizing and bullet seating dies, a de-capper and a primer seater. You used a hammer as your press and could load anywhere you wanted to. Unfortunately it wasn’t suited to doing hundreds of rounds at a time.

Flash forward 35 years. I decided to reload my handgun ammo and try to save a little dough as well as be more self sufficient, in the coming times that could be quite useful. Thus began an epic journey to obtain a reloading setup to call my own. After checking reviews, prices and forum entries about various reloading setups I decided I wanted a simple to use press that would allow me to reload with minimal change out of dies and such. I decided on a turret style press that would allow you to put all the needed sizer, decapper, bullet seater and post sizing dies on a turret for a single caliber and all you had to do was pull the lever on the press to rotate the turret as needed. The capability to turn off the “indexing” (movement of the turret) and allow for use as a fixed position press was also a plus. I decided on the Lee Deluxe 4 Place Turret reloading kit which included the turret press, the Lee Autodisk powder measure, a beam type powder scale and various other tools such as a primer pocket cleaner, a casing trimmer and a casing chamfer cutting tool. I added to that dies for 9mm, .38 special and 8mm Mauser, a digital caliper, and the Lee autoprimer. Of course since my loading knowledge was 30+ years out of date, I also picked up a couple of loading manuals like “Modern Reloading – 2nd Edition” by Richard Lee. Of course you also need a bench to hold all this stuff so I picked up a do-it-yourself reloading bench kit where all you add is a 4X8X3/4 sheet of plywood, 7-2X4s and some elbow grease to build a nice bench.

Of course you also need primers, powder, brass and bullets. I picked up some once fired brass for the 9mm (about 2000 casings), 500-124 grain jacketed hollow points, 1000 Winchester small pistol primers and 2 pounds of HP-38 pistol powder. All told the reloading equipment, bench and supplies cost me about $600.00. Add to that a bullet chronograph to measure the results of your reloading for consistency and safety and you get about $700.00. Now, doing the math, if all I ever did was reload the 2000 rounds I purchased the casings for, they would work out to 35 cents a round (even with buying 1500 more bullets and 1000 more primers). So, even with buying the reloading equipment all I need do is reload and shoot 5385 rounds (40 times to the range, about 12 months worth) to break even. Of course, soon my wife and daughter will also be going to the range with me, add in their rounds and I should see payback in 6 months or less.

Of course the other benefit to doing your own loading of ammo is that you can work up an exact load that gives you the best performance from your pistol or rifle. You can also figure out a minimal load to give you a cheap range ammo to practice with. Of course I am a firm believer in practicing with what you will be using, a load that barely punches a hole in paper at 50 yards won’t behave the same, have the same trajectory as or deliver the same kick as a 1200 FPS screamer. If you are going to just detune to reduce cost and recoil, .22 long rifle are cheap and guns that simulate your handgun, or kits that allow your handgun to fire .22 LR are readily available for fairly cheap prices.

After a few false starts and a few mess-ups as I got the various parts adjusted properly and I loaded my first 92 rounds last night. Only 5273 to go!

Has Aggression been bred out of Western Europe?

2010-11-22T11:43:00.000-08:00

I just spent a week in Nuremberg, Germany. While there I had some interesting discussions with a friend over why Europe seems to be less violent than the USA. Then I had an epiphany. Europe is less violent because it is normal for it to be less violent. Follow my logic here.

Between the various wars in Europe, they had been at a nearly continuous state of war for over 300 years or longer when World War II ended. Let’s start with the middle ages with the various wars, crusades and revolutions, then the Napoleonic wars, then World War I, then World War II. In each of these conflicts hundreds of thousands of the most aggressive of the men (and women) were killed off, usually before they could breed much. Add into this the constant drain of the most aggressive types out to the colonies and various explorations going on during the same period. Soon the majority of people left behind are those that are easily led and want the government, no matter how poor the government is, to take care of them, call it a serf mentality. Yes, I realize there are exceptions, but most of them are due to artificial suppression of hostilities by an outside force, otherwise the aggression would have worked its way out in many cases.

Now look at places like USA, South America and Australia. Most of these countries are areas that were settled by aggressive types or outcasts, people looking for a new life and willing to do anything to get it, folks who wanted to govern themselves and say stuff-it to their current governments. Now while we have participated in some of the wars, we haven’t had nearly the body counts that the European countries racked up, so many of our aggressive types returned to breed and reinforce the bloodlines. In addition, those that tired of the yoke of the government big enough to give them everything and big enough to take everything away fled to…yep…places like USA, South America and Australia re-introducing the aggressive genes and behaviors at every step of the way.

So is it some magic thing the governments have done in places like The UK, Netherlands, Germany, France, Sweden, Norway, etc? No! Will the way they govern work without a high ratio of people who want to be taken care of? No! They have less aggressive, independent people naturally, due to years of selective breeding and killing off or eliminating the aggressive types through war and encouraging them to go elsewhere. I hate to say it but the ratios of the people type known as Sheep to the type known as Sheepdogs and Sheep to the type known as Wolves are much higher in Europe than in the USA or other ex-colonies.

Of course what happens when the predators are eliminated in any ecology? The grazers over populate and soon you have a reduced quality of life. In human society when all that is left is the “sheep” social programs are soon overburdened and collapse just like ecologies where there are no predators to balance the grazer populations. Without the “gadflies” to constantly poke and prod and invent and create, society soon stagnates.

No Clue

2010-11-10T14:01:00.001-08:00

I read with great interest the latest "Plan" to cut federal spending. You can look at it here The biggest suggestions are to cut programs that do the most good, Social Security and Medicare and about the only real tax break most of us have going for us, the interest on our home loans.

Let's see, cut COL increases for retirees, cause further cutbacks in a medical system that will see significant decrease in services already due to Obamacare (or is that Obamanation?), kill the housing market completely. Sounds like a plan to me! What planet are these idiots from?

I have paid into social security since 1973. I have paid the maximum into it each year since around 1990 and now they say they may cut what I get back out of it if I am considered "well off" whatever that means. Also they are talking of raising the retirement age to those born after 1960 to 69 or 70. This coming from folks who get full retirement after 4-6 years of "public service".

Remember all this in 2012.

Mike

Sheep, Sheepdog or Wolf?

2010-10-23T20:36:00.000-07:00

I read an interesting blog identifying three types of people, sheep, wolves and sheep dogs; with the sheep being the rank and file who basically keep their heads down and expect others to care for them, the wolves those that prey on the sheep and of course the sheepdogs being those who choose to defend the sheep.
Interesting as this analogy is I don’t believe it goes far enough. In the ranks of the sheep are actually wolves that act like sheep and in the wolves are many sheep. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on circumstance) the true natures of these changelings often come to the surface in time of stress. What do I mean? Let me explain.

First let us take the case of the wolves who act like sheep. How many times have we heard “He/she was such a nice person, I can’t believe they did this!” these are examples of wolves who did their best to be sheep but one day it all came crashing down and they revert to wolf ways, eating their young and generally attacking anything within striking distance.

On the other side are the sheep who act like wolves, but usually only in a pack setting. Many gang and sect members fall into this category. As long as they are safely surrounded by the rest of their pack they act like wolves, isolate them and they quickly turn tail (metaphorically speaking) and bleat out the rest of the pack to save their own sheep hide. The real wolves get great pleasure and many laughs over leading sheep astray, of course they usually fall on these sheep and eat them (literally or figuratively) by getting them to do such things as the ultimate passive aggressive act such as wearing a vest packed with explosives and setting it off in a flock of sheep.

Of course we also have sheep with rabies and wolves with rabies that attack everyone around them whether they are sheep, wolves or some other unknown subspecies…
Of course we also have sheep who try to be sheepdogs and wolves who think they are sheepdogs. Generally the sheep who try to be sheepdogs are weeded out and placed in desk jobs, or the cemetery. The ones who get desk jobs take it out on the rest of the sheep for their own lack of sheepdogedness. The wolves who try to be sheepdogs usually do very well for a while, but eventually, unless they go out in a blaze of glory or reveal their wolfness in some manner, they end up preying on the sheep in a more virtual manner than the wolves who act like wolves, in the form of graft, corruption, police brutality and other behaviors unbecoming to sheepdogs.

Sometimes a sheepdog falls into wolflike behvior and both the wolves and the sheepdogs tear them to peices.

Finally we have the stealth sheepdogs, they submerge into the flock and act sheeplike until they are needed, unfortunately unless they are prepared like the full sheepdogs, they usually get the sheep dip kicked out of them once they do act. However, many times they do actually help and prevent sheep from falling prey to the weaker wolves.

So where do you fall? Sheep, sheepdog or wolf? Or are you a pretender?

Great Opening Day

2010-10-17T08:03:00.000-07:00

My Son-In-Law and I used to hunt a friends farm, but do to family issues, we lost that area for at least the time being. Then my Son-In-Law had a previous commitment to go to the Apple Festival with his brother so it was looking like I was going to get stuck hunting alone on public WMA land with 10,000 other folks.

Then, out of the blue I get an email from Noel Lucas showing me his finished custom rifle (and a very nice one it is too!) We exchanged a few emails (in which he included some game camera shots of the deer on his families property) and to make a long story short, he invited me down to Talbot County near Baughville, GA to hunt with him on opening day.

Of course Baughville, GA is about 127 miles from where I live near Atlanta so I had to be up by 3:30 am to meet Noel at 6 am. After only a few bad turns I made it by 6:15 and met Noel at the BP in Ellerslie, Ga and from there we drove to his families land to begin the hunt. Noel took me to a nice two-man stand and he went to try a new spot with his climber. The two-man stand was overlooking the exact spot from where the game camera shots had been taken. I attached the safety line to my rifle and wearing my backpack climbed up the stand's ladder. Once safely in the stand I pulled the rifle up, loaded it, and was ready for a days hunt.

It was a little crisp at 44 degrees but with my 200 gram long john bottoms I used for diving with drysuits, heavy jeans, a long sleeved tee-shirt, regular shirt, coat and camo-overalls I was actually getting toasty by the time the sun came up. I ended up eventually removing the coat and shirt and just hunting in the long-sleeve tee-shirt on top.

Unfortunately, other than a great many birds and squirrels the morning hunt was fruitless without even a sighting of a flashing white tail through the trees. However, it was peaceful, no phones, no TV and no Oracle and even a poor day hunting is better than one at the office! We came down out of the stands about 10:30am and met up with Noels dad Doug and his Aunt to go into Waverly for lunch at the Cathead Restaurant (Its a southern thing). It looked like a camo-clothing convention in the restaurant with all the hunters in there, in fact the waitress commented when we left that she was already sick of seeing camo.

After lunch we reviewed the game camera footage and determined that the best time was between 5-7pm to be on the stands, so of course we got back on them at about 2pm. We figured that with all the hunters in the woods the deer might be a bit restive and off schedule a bit. We were wrong.

So I spent another 4 and half hours watching the birds and squirrels and listening to the distant, and not-so-distant sounds of gunfire indicating other hunters were having a lucky day (or just shooting their guns so they could tell their friends they missed a really big one...) Finally, at about 6:30 pm I heard the sounds of something pushing through the bush that was obviously not a bird or squirrel. I scanned the game trails I could see from my perch and soon was rewarded with the sight of two deer, a medium size and small size doe. I waited a bit to see if there was a buck following them but since the rut is still a few weeks off it was not to be. In Georgia you are allowed ten"antlerless" deer and 2 bucks a season. In the northern counties there are special either-sex days and hunts, but in the southern counties like Talbot, the entire season is either-sex due to the large proliferation of deer in recent years. I put my eye to the scope and centered on the largest doe's chest, just behind the front shoulder. This would tell if all the weeks of work on the rifle and several trips to the shooting range to zero in the scope would pay off.

I squeezed the 3 pound trigger, and was surprised when the gun went off (not surprised that it went off, just when, which is the sign of a proper trigger pull) and the doe leaped up like a stallion. When the deer does a leap up on the hind legs like a stallion does, it is a sign of a fatal (usually heart, lung or both) hit. She stumbled off with the smaller doe following.

I had just lowered my rifle and was glassing the area where the deer had exited when my cell phone buzzed, it was Noel. "Did you get one?"

"Yep, they came in just like on the camera"

"I'll be there shortly so we can track it down!"

I cycled the bolt on the 8 mm rifle and left it with an empty chamber, recorded the deer on my tag, then packed my hunting backpack and using the line provided, lowered them both to the ground. I then climbed down the ladder and went over to check the kill zone. Just as I located the blood spore I heard Noel drive up in his red Chevy pickup. Together we followed the heavy bright red blood spoor about 50 yards to where the doe lay dead. Grabbing the hind legs I pulled her out to the truck and we put her in the back. I went over and got my rifle and pack and put them into the back seat of the king cab and we headed back to the house.

It was just turning dark when we started to field dress, skin and quarter the doe. We hoisted her up on a sturdy branch of a huge old Oak. With Noel providing light I finished up at about 8 pm and packed the quarters into the cooler. At the same BP we had met at that morning I filled up on gas and got some ice to pack the cooler with, a diet Mountain Dew and some snacks and headed for home. A great end to a great day! I can't wait to go back down and hunt with Noel during November and the rut season. Hopefully I can bag a nice 10 point buck or better!

Final Sight-In

2010-10-10T14:16:00.001-07:00

Well I got the final sight-in done for the rifle finished with only a week to go until deer season. Afraid the Leapers scope just didn’t work out. But I am getting ahead of myself! I found a great free rifle range with both pistol and rifle (out to 85 yards) at Wilson Shoals WMA near Alto, Georgia. It is about an hour’s journey but it is free and has great hours. When I was up in Helen, Georgia about 2 weeks ago I actually began the sght-in process.

I took both of my 8 mm rifles, the original one that I had converted 29 years ago from a model 98 Mauser and my most recent Yugoslavian Mauser conversion, to the range in Alto, Georgia to check the sight-in on my original rifle and do the initial sigth-in on the new one. The original rifle has a Nikon Prostaff 3-9X40mm scope with bullet drop compensation (BDC). On the new rifle I decided to try a brand of scope I hadn’t used before, a Leapers 5th Generation 3-9X40 Full Size A.O. Range Estimating Mil-Dot Side Wheel Red/Green Illuminated Zero Locking/Resetting Scope SCP-394AOMDLTS. The first rifle only needed minor adjustments to throw 1 inch groups at 100 yards. The new rifle I could only get adjusted to paper at 4 inches to the right, but at that point it was giving a 1.5 inch group. I decided I would need to get a windage adjustable set of scope rings to get a full zero.

I ordered a set of windage adjustable scope rings and then had to leave for a business trip. When I got home a couple of days later, the new rings were waiting so I switched out the rings and after some tweaking was able to get a laser bore sight zero on the scope. I thought I was home free, little did I know the horror that awaited me!

This weekend Susan and I were helping watch Doc so Mary could get some time off (Doc is my Father-in-law and has Alzheimer’s) and that shortened the drive to the rifle range to only about 45 minutes. I decided to finish up the sight-in on Saturday. I got up nice and early and showed up at the range and was assigned a bench. I waited for the range master to give the all clear and set up a target at about 40 yards to do the initial shooting. After a few shots I tweaked in the laser bore sight to dead on, and during the next clear time, I ran a set of targets out to 85 yards, I couldn’t wait to try out the scope at full range.

I fired one shot and it was a bit high and to the right, so I tweaked the scope and fired a second round. When I checked my placement I wasn’t even on the paper! I looked again through the scope and noticed things looked a little blurry, rather like some of the times way back in the Navy when I had lifted a few too many at the Back Aft tavern… I tried one more shot and something really horrible happened.

As you can see, the main lens group came completely un-mounted and was now free floating in the barrel of the scope. Needless to say that ended my shooting with the new 8mm! I submerged my disappointment by shooting 100 rounds through my .40 SW pistol. On the way home I stopped by the Bass Proshop Warehouse store and picked up a second Nikon Prostaff 3-9 40mm BDC scope (they were on sale for $169.99 and had a $30 rebate! I guess it was meant to be!) When I got back to doc’s I removed the dead Leapers and installed the new Nikon. Needless to say on Monday the Leaper’s goes back for a full refund of its $69.99 price!

I used a rear fence to laser bore sight the rifle on Saturday night. On Sunday the range is open from 12-5pm so I headed over after lunch the next day. It was like night and day! At 50 yards I was off about 4 inches to the left and about 2 inches high, I did the needed adjustment and then moved the target out to 85 yards.

I use a bipod and rest my right elbow on a folded gun case which gives a very stable platform. At 85 yards what my first group looked like is shown below.

I tweaked the windage 4 clicks to the left and then shot the group shown below.

Since I am not trying to save hostages from kidnappers or shoot antelope at 300 yards and this was well within 1 degree of deer, I figured it was good enough. Yes, the top hole is from 2 shots. You can see some of my known outliers, there was a fellow next to me shooting off a .30-06 who had the habit of shooting just as I started to pull off a round.

So now I have two deer rifles that shoot consistent 1 inch groups at near 100 yards. What are the take-aways?

1. Don’t buy Leaper’s scopes for anything other than air or paintball rifles. The shock from high caliber rounds such as an 8mm completely debonded the main lens group in spite of its claim to be for high powered rifles. Stick to known performers such as Nikon, Leopold, Burris, BSA and of course the higher cost scopes.
2. Do a good laser sight-in first, then one at 50 yards and then at 100.

Finished the Rifle

2010-09-21T20:53:00.000-07:00

Well, after several weeks of effort I have finished the custom rifle project, at least until I feel confident with my checkering skills enough to do the checkering! I had to replace the original scope rings I purchased with ones that where windage adjustable after attempting to laser-bore sight in the rifle and finding I ran out of windage adjustment on the scope it self before I got zeroed in. Flipping the rings around and trading their places didn't help.

I took the rifle out and did some test shooting with the original rings dialed in as good as I could get and found that at 100 yards I had to hold about 4 inches to the right to get a bullseye, this is what prompted me to get the new scope rings. With the new rings I was able to adjust enough to get about 16 clicks (4 inches) of additional adjustment room with the scope zeroed, and, they aren't as high as the sight-through rings I was originally using so the rifle fits better in its case.

At the range I got several nice comments on the rifle and after posting the before and after shots on POTN (a Canon photography site) one fellow lamented that I wasn't closer to him so I could do one for him. Of course once he could see the price tag he might sing a different tune!

Anyway, here is a before and after shot with the original rings. I will post some target shooting results once I can get back out to the range now that I can pull a proper zero using the laser-bore sight.

For a complete description of everything I did, look here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/37078095/Creating-a-Custom-Rifle

Building a Custom RIfle

2010-08-21T10:25:00.000-07:00

In my spare time as you all know I like to dabble in various crafts. Since hunting season is coming up and I am still using a borrowed rifle (I originally sporterized a K98 mauser, then gave it to my brother, then borrowed it back)so I decided before the season opened I would customize me a new rifle and return my brothers to him.

I chose a Yugo M27/47 Mauser, 8mm, from Samco Global Arms it is a short action Mauser and relatively cheap to get in good quality. Seems there was this Yugoslavian Mauser factory that turned out thousands of them before WWII and put them in storage, before they could be used, the Germans overran the factory and since they had plenty of Mausers already, just left the guns in storage. Then of course the war ended and possession returned to the Yugoslavians who have been dutifully cleaning, relubricating and putting these guns back into storage every 5-10 years since then! At least that is the story. Now they have been released for sale and I got me one.

Now military Mausers aren't ready for mounting hunting scopes and with their nearly full length stocks and hand guards over the top of the barrel tend to be a bit weighty for using for hunting. Also, they aren't as collectible as the true Germain Mausers so folks don't much care what you do to them. The first thing you do is replace the stock with one more suited for carrying about the woods. IN this case I choose a nice walnut stock from Boydes. I wanted my stock a bit more custom than just a simple walnut stock so I added an Ebony forearm tip, a buffalo horn pistol rig cap and a recoil pad. Here is a before and after shot.

Next I will checker the forearm and pistol grip area, here is a shot of a forearm of a practice stock I did the other night. I thought it best to do a practice stock first since I have never done checkering before. I used the old military stock that came with the Mauser.

Today I am glass bedding the action. Glass bedding is where you remove some of the wood that supports key parts of the action and receiver and replace the wood with epoxy resin. The resin gives a more uniform "fit" and makes sure the action and barrel don't move between shots. It always makes me nervous when I do glass bedding (this is the 4th rifle I have done) because if you don't get enough release compound on the action you end up epoxying your rifle together!

After the glass bedding, I will turn the action and barrel over to a gunsmith who will remove the old front and rear sights and re-crown the barrel. The crown is the area of the barrel at the tip of the muzzle where the bullet comes out. Along with the bullet comes an explosion of hot gas that propels the bullet. If the crown isn't near perfect it can shift the bullets trajectory or cause it to tumble in the worst case which can play Hobbs with your accuracy!

While the action and barrel are off getting trimmed, I will put the finish on the stock. First a final sanding then a good rub down with steel wool and an application of stain to darken the wood a little. Then a rub down with fine sandpaper and steel wool, then stock sealer. At this point I will apply the checkering to the forearm and pistol grip areas. After the checkering is done, a little of the finish (a Tung oil derivative) to the checkered areas. Then another sanding (not on the checkered areas) and an application of the finish. I am using an oil based finish similar to Tung oil. After that dries, repeat the steel wool rubdown, then another coat, repeat until satisfied with finish.

Hopefully by the time I finish the stock, the gunsmith will be done with the action. I will then re-blue any areas where the bluing has been damaged or is missing, like under the rear sight. After the action is re-blued, a final cleaning and lubrication and I mount the drill-less scope mount (it wraps around the action and uses a barrel clamp, which may require a bit of inletting to fit) then the rifle is reassembled.

After reassembly I need to check that the barrel, from the 2 inch area after the receiver where it is glass bedded out to the end of the stock is free floating. Then after mounting the scope, it is off to the rifle range to zero it in!

So it appears I will be a bit busy in the evenings right up to mid-September when I leave for OOW and vacation.

I will be publishing a full description of everything done with pictures on www.scribd.com when I finish, kind a poor man's guide to customizing a Mauser.

Mike

Miscellaneous

2010-07-19T15:24:00.000-07:00

I am getting ready for several upcoming events and just working. Time sure seems to fly though, it has been several weeks since my last post! Along with TMS partner DSI, I will be presenting at an Atlanta Road Show event about solid state devices and their use in databases on Wednesday. In August Susan and I and our kids and grandkids will be going on vacation for a week, then in September it seems everything is going on. I will be taking a working vacation where the wife gets to relax but I still work every day, but hey, we will be in Helen, Ga. so at least in the evenings we can both have fun, then it is a week in San Francisco for the Open World conference (I have two presentations, I will blog about that as it gets closer), and after that a week in St. Thomas relaxing and scuba diving for my full blown vacation and somewhere in there is my High School reunion (37 years, they combined several classes in one big reunion).

In October not much other than my grandson Mikie's birthday. Then in November comes the German Oracle users group, DOAG, in Nuremberg, Germany, which looks like I will be attending. I haven't heard about my presentations there yet, but will let you all know as soon as I do!

I haven't heard about my nominations for Oracle Ace yet, I know I got several recommendations from other Oracle Aces on it but sometimes things take a while.

Other than that we just spent a weekend diving at Loch Low-Minn Quarry, a PADI dive resort just outside Athens, Tennessee, I blogged about it here.

AS plans tighten up (Oracle Ace status, DOAG) I will blog more about it! Oh, did I mention I am going to be a grandfather for the third time? I should know more about that (like the sex of the baby) later this month as well.

Enough rambling I guess! Talk to you all later!

ODTUG 2010

2010-07-01T09:59:00.000-07:00

I am waiting in the National Airport in DC for my flight back to Atlanta after being just a vendor at ODTUG. Neither of the papers I submitted made the cut this year, so I was relegated to booth duty alone. There were around 1000 attendees from what I could garner from various folks, so it was an average year. We had good traffic to the booth, not great mind you, but several folks who seemed interested a day.

On Wednesday night they had a stand-up comic. I felt kind of sorry for him as his jokes were more miss than hit. I am afraid that getting comics for tech conferences tends to be a risky venture. Let me tell you why I think that is the case.

Most comics are aiming their humor at the average person. Unfortunately the average person has an IQ around 100 or less and is generally pretty near the stereotype for their gender. From what I have observed most techies (at least in the Oracle field) tend to be well above average intelligence (110-120 IQ) and are not stereotypical. Most women I have met in the Oracle field are driven, goal oriented and usually not vain, object driven clothes horses. Most men in the Oracle world seem to be more “metrosexual” in their way of life, cooking, cleaning and generally not being slobs with little focus outside of jobs, sports and other male dominated pursuits. Given this misqueue between what most comics are setting their humor for and what the average Oracle nerd really is like you can see why much of the stereotype driven humor falls on deaf ears.

Anyway, overall the conference seemed successful with most people I asked saying they enjoyed the talks and got value from the presentations, even if the show on Wednesday left many of us not laughing.

54 and Counting

2010-06-09T16:52:00.001-07:00

It started warm and partly cloudy in New York today. After learning that it would probably be at least $50 to simply cross the river in a taxi cab, I decided to use the path train to get from Jersey City to the NYOUG meeting in New York. The hotel shuttle dropped me off at the Path depot at the Exchange Center and after paying my $4 I got a round trip ticket to the WTC depot across the river. The trip was only about 4 minutes and I was soon pushing my pay into the St. Johns University building.

After the typical continental breakfast the rest of the attendees and I settled down into the auditorium for the keynote which was given by my friend Steven Feuerstein on the golden rules for PL/SQL developers. As usual Steven gave an excellent presentation. After Steven finished I gave my presentation on “Holistic Oracle Tuning” with many good questions and only over the time by 15 minutes or so. Then he, Peter Koletzke and I gave a panel presentation in which I got the most questions, probably because DBAs outnumbered developers.

I met an old friend of Susan and I and she made me promise to give Susan a hug and kiss for her and to be sure to tell her next time we were in town so we could come to dinner for some good (I am sure great) Russian cooking. I look forward to it.

After the conference I decided to hang around the city and have a birthday dinner at The Grill Room in the World Financial Center. I sat in one of the rear rooms with a view over the river. I watched the clouds roll in and the rain began as the ferries brought people to and from the various parts of New York and New Jersey into the Big Apple. The sheets of rain washed the colors form the buildings across the river, leaving them all in shades of gray. I started with a single Sapphire Gin and Tonic. Then I enjoyed my lamb chops, broccoli with hollandaise and artesian breads along with a nice glass of Pinot Grigio. To finish my solitary birthday celebration I ended with a chocolate mousse and glass of 15 year old port. Meanwhile the rain had intensified, sometimes blocking the view of the buildings across the river entirely.

Waiting for the rain to slack off, I paid and then sat in the atrium area watching the boat masts sway to and fro in the wind and rain and called Susan. We talked about the trivia of the day and important Mother-Father talk about our grown daughters and I was reminded that being alone on your birthday sucks.

When the rain finally slackened, I made my way back to the PATH depot and rode the train back to Jersey City. I waited in the wind and the rain for the hotel shuttle for 15 minutes, it was nice to be warm and dry. So now I am back in the hotel trying to decide whether to buy a movie or just work. A middle aged man alone in a hotel room.

Hindsight

2010-06-03T11:33:00.000-07:00

Hopefully the latest attempt by BP to stop the Deepwater oil-leak will be successful. Of course now all the armchair quarterbacks will jump in with what they should have done, could have done or would have done had they been in charge.

In that line of thought I have just one question, why didn't they do the simplest things first? Putting the whole profit thing aside, the best thing to do was cap the well, kill it if needs be, to stop the oil. They have shown they have the technology to snap those huge pipes like twigs if they wish using huge hydraulic shears. SO obviously they have the technology to crimp them as well. Look at the following simple diagram:

Why didn't they do a progressive large set of crimps leading to the end of the pipe where they completely close the pipe? Then they could have gone back with the top-kill process and plugged the well with concrete. Face-it, had they broken the pipe trying it, we would not have been any worse off than we are now. As far as the smaller leaks in the pipe, there has been a wonderful technology used in damage control kits on Navy ships for years called band-it clamps. Essentially it is a large steel frame, sized to fit the pipe, that uses steel backed rubber mats and toggle bolts to allow you to place the clamp around the pipe, lock the toggle bolts in place and then slide the clamp over the leak and then tighten the bolts. A simple elegant and fast way to stop pipe leaks. It seems that this type of procedure could have been done in days, not weeks.

As far as this top-hat, funnel, whatever contraption, why not add some type of rubber skirt and band-clamp at the bottom to allow making a tighter seal to the sheared off pipe when they get it in place? And why do they think a pipe that is (at least it looks to be) only a quarter of the diameter of the leaking pipe going to handle all of the flow? I guess that falls into the category of things that make you say what?

What about good old fashioned gate or ball valves to close off the pipe every couple of hundred feet? Especially one right on top of the blow-out preventor? How about some good old low-tech to back up the often-failing high-tech?

As far as the top-kill: You would think all those brilliant chemists would have come up with something better than concrete. How about a high density foam that reacts with either water or oil (or both!) to form a fast, leak-tight plug?

Anyway, I guess I have arm-chair quarterbacked enough for now.

All of those tourists covered with oil...

2010-05-30T05:40:00.001-07:00

The oil leak in the Gulf is becoming, if it is not already, the largest disaster of its type in all history. It is hoped that the oil companies will learn, as will the regulators of the industry, from this disaster. But what should they be doing right now?
I am not an expert in oil drilling, capping wells or cleanup, so to tell you the truth I have no clue what should be done, but common sense seems to dictate a few things:
1. If pumping drilling mud into the hole prevents the oil form coming out or reduces it significantly and the mud used is the least toxic, water and bentonite clay based mud, they should be required to keep pumping the mud in until the leak is stopped.
2. The relief wells should be required to be in place before the well can be brought into production.
3. The blow-out preventers and other safety gear should be required to be tested on at least a quarterly basis with a full well shutdown required as a part of the test.
4. Each platform should be required to have in place a floating dam that would contain the projected flow of the well should a blowout occur for a specified minimum amount of time both above and below the water.
5. A main and backup flow preventer (i.e. shutoff device) should be in place before the well is allowed to be in production.
6. All of these requirements should be required to be retrofitted on all existing platforms.
7. The required skimmer and vacuum ships should be on standby within hours of the platforms.
8. The oil companies should be required to provide funding for an independent group of clean-up engineers who will take over a well when an accident occurs who will give priority to stopping the well, not profit.
Will all the above be expensive? Yes! However, it will be less expensive than another disaster of the size we are currently seeing.

Selling (Or: How to Self Toot)

2010-05-25T08:09:00.000-07:00

My wife tells me I couldn't sell myself if I was an umbrella in a thunderstorm. I guess I don't like to toot my own horn much, which makes it difficult to sell things like consulting time and books. I see some of these folks out there figuratively tooting their heads off and I just do not see myself very comfortable doing that. I guess I expect too much out of my work and word of mouth.

I assume at least in the Oracle space that folks have heard my name, seen my books or heard me speak at a conference or on a webcast. Usually this is true, in the Oracle space I have a bit of a shadow, not as much as Tom Kyte or Jonathan Lewis or several others I can think of, but at least many folks in the Oracle Database realm know who I am. But what about in other areas?

I am a fiction writer (of course some would argue that they knew this from my Oracle writings, but let's not go there!) and have three books out there right now, you can see links on the link list on this blog. I also do photography, there is a link off of my website showing some of my work. And, last but not least, I have begun to dabble in handmade jewelry, I also have a link form my website as well as one over on the links list. So I am not just an Oracle person, I have other interests! Unfortunately most people don't realize my other interests exist because of my lack of ability at self tooting....

I guess I need to start tooting a bit more, so if you are reading this you have been officially tooted about my other activities (so if my wife asks please tell her!) Anyway, enjoy the numerous articles, recipes, short stories and such that I have published along with the photographs I have taken while you are gazing i rapture at the jewelry I create (was that a bit over the top?) Anyway, now you know, I am not just a one trick pony...

Leap of Faith

2010-05-14T12:22:00.000-07:00

Well this week I did something that I have always wanted to do. It is probably one of those things which require the greatest leap of faith of anything a person can do. It involves trusting, totally at least 2-3 other people who you probably have never met before. One has a very technical and arguably the most critical of the jobs, one literally has your life in their hands and the third (if needed) has both the second persons and your life in their hands.

Let me explain. The first person I am referring to above is an airplane pilot responsible for getting you and the second person off the ground and to an altitude of 14,000 feet. The second is the jump master or instructor who is responsible for making sure you have the harness on correctly and that you are properly attached to their harness. In addition they may (and usually do) pack their own chute, so they can become the third person, the person who packs the most vital part of the equipment, the parachute, so it opens properly.

Yep, I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane at 14,000 feet, then fell for 9,000 feet (over a mile and a half) and then glided down to a not so soft, but definitely safe landing, in short, I had my first tandem skydive. A tandem skydive is when you are attached to an instructor and they do the chute release and guide the chute once it is open. For more money and more training you can do a solo jump which of course means you are responsible for the opening of the chute and the guiding.

Remember that feeling you get in a dream when you fall? That is exactly the sensation you get when you jump out of the door of the plane. Only instead of lasting only a second it lasts several as you reach terminal velocity of between 120-130 MPH and fall to your release height, generally around 5,000 feet. The chute was a slow opening model so rather than jerking you harshly it was more like a quick stopping elevator as it caught the air and allowed us to fly. By the time you are done, your adrenal glands are running on empty.

We swooped and turned and pirouetted in the air as we came down to a “butt” landing. Yep, we landed sitting down with only a small bounce or two. No bruises (at least that I can see) and nothing broken. It was a great experience.

The sky had numerous small white fluffy clouds at about 8,000-9,000 feet so we literally were above the clouds at 14,000 feet when we lept from the plane and drifted down past them. Unfortunately we didn’t go through one but just realizing I was free of any constraints and above the clouds was quite a heady experience.

I don’t know if I will ever do it again, but it was definitely worth doing. Of course now my daughter is saying she would love to do it, so I may have to take her. Of course, that will have to wait a couple of months as she is about 3 months along with my third grand child.

Home Again, Home Again

2010-03-17T13:26:00.000-07:00

Well, I am back from the road trips. Chicago went well and we had another great turnout. Other than some scheduling snafus where I had to present first and stretch it a little (you all know how I hate to talk!) everything was great.

This week I am teaching 1/2 days (09:30-13:30) on Oracle11g new Features for DBAs including release 1 and release 2. It has been interesting as I try to demo live the new features to a class over Webex. So far no one has thrown any virtual tomatoes so I guess it is going great. The class is participating and asking questions. I do feel bad that because of some equipment issues they aren't able to do the labs as planned, but you take what you are given and do the best you can!

After this week I have some down time until 4/18 and Collaborate in Las Vegas. Of course that time includes jury duty and several minor meetings. I hope the weather clears up so I can do a couple of tune-up scuba dives. I am planning on going to Alabama Blue Water for DUI-DOG days again this year weekend after next, and maybe if things work out, take Susan along for her first drysuit adventure. Of course then I will probably have to get her one...

Doing some playing with dbms_resource_manager.calibrate_io if I get something interesting I'll post the results on my TMS blog.

Stay Safe!

Mike

It isn't a Job it's an Adventure

2010-03-02T17:05:00.000-08:00

I am in San Jose, California relaxing after doing the first Texas Memory System Road Show event. The event went great. However, getting there was an adventure. You would think in this modern day world travel would be rather a blase experience what with all the high-speed and efficient ways we have from getting from point A to point B. However, this isn't always the case.

I usually try to get to the airport when I travel at least 1, if not 2, hours before I actually need to worry about setting foot on the plane. This allows for problems getting to the airport, problems at the airport and if not problems occur, allows me time to get my traditional travel meal at Houlihans: Buffalo Chicken Strips and a Killian Red, while I wait. However this time this was not to be.

First, I try to travel outside of rush hour, but since this trip was set to leave out at 6:55 pm, I was stuck right in the middle of Atlanta's rush hour. Scratch the chicken and beer. I still arrived at the airport with plenty of time to make the flight, especially since I was not checking luggage. I get to the gate only to be told that the plane was going to be 20-30 minutes late. I grab a Burger King Grilled Chicken and a Sprite as a consolation prize and sit down to wait. 30 minutes comes and goes, however, the representative assures me that I will still make my connection in Denver as "There are only 40 people on the flight, we can board quickly and get there in plenty of time". Famous last words.

Flight time comes and goes and finally the plane arrives. The representative has a sheen of sweat on her forehead but still assures me I can make my connection, then the kicker, mechanical problems. Seems there is an issue with the radio and they need to get a mechanic over to take a look before they can board. Now it is 40+ minutes past the time for boarding and they are already telling many folks that they aren't going to make their connections and offering hotels either in Atlanta or for brave souls, Denver. Seems they still think I may be able to make my connection, but I get in line anyway. A second rep says the flight out of Denver to San Jose has been delayed 20 minutes, I might just make it. Of course then I think about what happens if I get to Denver, rush to the plane only to wave to it as it takes off and I am stuck in Denver overnight. The earliest flight puts me into San Jose at 10:30 the next morning...30 minutes into my presentation time.

I finally make it to the desk. They say maybe I could make it...just as they announce they are ready to board. I am afraid maybe isn't good enough. I ask if they can book me on their partner who has a flight direct to San Francisco Airport with no stops. After a thoughtful glance the representative says "Sure". End of adventure? Not quite!

It seems to do this for some reason she has to print out a copy of my old ticket before the system will allow her to print me a boarding pass for the new flight. She spends 10 minutes looking for ticket stock, then another 30 minutes trying to get the printer to print. Finally I say "Have you tried cycling the printer on and off?" (sometimes you need to rest them on the network if they haven't been used in a while.) She gives me a dubious look like that is just to simple, after all, she has been banging on it, reloading it, and I am sure saying a few sub-vocal swear words that would have curled my hair, and I am an ex-sailor. Anyway, it worked, she prints the old pass and then finally the ticket for the other flight. Now the kicker...she can't find the gate.

Down the way is a representative from the partner airline, I trot on down and she gives the bad news...it is on another concourse, so it is the seemingly mile sprint up the concourse, take the escalator into the bowels of the Earth, get on the train and then reverse the process in the new concourse.

Anyway, they have just started boarding the new flight when I get there. I go up and check in and a miracle, I can upgrade to business class for free! Excellent. I board the flight and relax. A couple of drinks and a relaxing flight later I am in San Francisco. As we taxi in I try to get a hold of the rental car agency to switch my San Jose reservation to a one-way from San Francisco to San Jose. After traversing several menus, it disconnects without me talking to anyone. Fine, I'll just go to the counter. Believe it or not, at the counter everything went fine and I was soon hurtling down 101 towards San Jose. I finally got into my room at 0030 am local time (3:30 my time). After a quick review of the next days presentation I finally fell into bed at about 1 am pacific time.

Who says there isn't anymore adventure?

Mike

Do You Know the Way to San Jose?

2010-03-01T09:05:00.000-08:00

I do...you get on a Frontier Airlines plane and fly there! I am getting ready to head to the airport for a 1 day trip to San Jose, California for the TMS Road Show. This will be the first Road Show for TMS and we are really expecting it to be a great event.

I will be presenting on Oracle IO, RamSans and everything in between and will be available for questions, other folks form TMS will be there and present as well so it will be a one-stop place to be for everything you ever wanted to know about RamSan technology!

Well, I have a presentation to complete so I have to go for now. I will post about the Road Show in the TMS event blog tomorrow.

Mike

Heading Home

2010-02-25T03:32:00.000-08:00

Here it is day two of SEOUC. It is going to be a booth day since my second presentation was moved from day 2 to day 1 so I was able to do both presentations yesterday. I had good attendance for both talks and folks seemed real interested in the new technologies and test results I presented. My first presentation dealt with testing disks verses SSD for identical databases, of course the SSDs won hands down. The second dealt with using Oracle Automatic Storage Manager's preferred read group to maximize performance in Oracle by mirroring SSD to disk and setting the PRG to the SSD.

So, after 1:45 Susan and I jump back in the car for the 4 hour drive back to Alpharetta. We'll be swinging by Susan's folks and picking up the signed books for Dr. Kuntz (he purchased 10 of my father-in-law's books) and dropping them off on the way home. If anyone is interested in the book, it is called a"A Kick in Your Caduceus" and can be found here. 50% of all proceeds for the book go to Alzheimer's research.

The next stop for conferences and shows is the TMS Roadshow in San Jose. Hope to see you there!

Mike

Making the Best of Both Worlds

2010-02-19T08:08:00.000-08:00

Well I just got back from RMOUG and week-after-next am off to SEOUC in Charlotte. While I was at RMOUG I spoke about Tier zero usage and our new proposed architecture known as OPERA. Now OPERA stands for Oracle Performance Enhancing RamSan Architecture but it might as well be OpenSource database Performance Enhancing Architecture or Omni-Performance Enhancing Architecture (sorry, I can't find a way to tie in SQL Server to this but, it would also benefit from the architecture!).

Why am I so enthusiastic about this new architecture? In tests, by only switching on this architecture in an existing structure we were able to achieve a 9-10 times performance improvement. Time to execute a test run of 2,000,000 SQL statements dropped from 12 minutes to 1.3 minutes. Latency dropped from 13 ms to less than 1 ms. Here is a link to the entire paper describing this architecture:

http://www.texmemsys.com/files/whitepaper_opera.pdf

While the paper describes an Oracle based architecture, the concepts it describes could be used for any read-intensive application with the use of a disk management system that allows preferred-read mirrors to be utilized.

of course the beauty of this architecture is that it makes use of and accelerates your existing IO subsystem without any changes to the tables and indexes or your application.

Mike

Ready for Day 2 of RMOUG

2010-02-18T04:43:00.000-08:00

Well, here it is 5:30 AM local time and I am wide awake. Of course it is 7:30 am back in Atlanta and my body insists I be up. Today I present: "The Ultimate Oracle Architecture: OPERA", a pape about "Oracle Performance Enhancing RamSan Architecture" OPERA for short. I thought I should make that clear since someone asked if Opera the web browser was really the best architecture for Oracle...

Of course in this more generic version of the paper I have reworked the OPERA acronym into "Oracle Performance Enhancing Reliable Architecture" an removed specific references to the RamSan-620 (other than in the pictures) to be able to give this great presentation and not come across as an advertisement which of course is a no-no at almost all Oracle conferences unless you are doing an allowed and sanctioned product presentation. Fear not, whether the paper uses RamSan or SSD the architecture it espouses is just as valid and performance enhancing!

In speaking with some of my contacts here I found out something interesting for you MySQL folks out there. MySQL as it sits right now can only properly utilize about 4 CPUs before not so good things start happening. Well, there should be a new release soon that will properly handle up to 32 CPUs. Looks like Oracle is keeping their word not to interfer with the further advancement of MySQL in the OpenSource environemnt.

Well, I have to pack and then do the normal morning duties so I can meet Lee Miles for breakfast at 6:50 (the showroom floor opens at 07:30) so that is all for now.

Day 1 of RMOUG

2010-02-17T10:12:00.000-08:00

The convention opened with breakfast with the ACE Directors. For thoes not familiar, the ACE program is a group of Oracle experts from the industry that help on the Oracle Technical Network by answering questions and generally being good people to know and ask questions to. Most of the questions revolved around the SUN-Oracle relationship, APEX and other new release items generating interest as well.

My first presentation "Going Solid: Determining What in Oracle to Put on Tier Zero" came off without a hitch with lots of interest and great questions. We've seen lots of activity at the booth with many people very curious about the benefits of SSD technology in their environment.

Well, it is off to lunch, I will try to post more later in the day after I see a few presentations.

Mike

A Valentines Day Surprise

2010-02-15T08:13:00.000-08:00

As you all may know I have been happily married to my wife Susan for 36 years. Due in no small part to the love and support from her mother and father. Her father was actually my Doctor before I knew her...buts that is another story! Anyway, Doctor Hamilton, Susan's father spent 47 years as a country doctor in Georgia and the surrounding area. Doc wrote a book about his experiences about 10 years ago. After a few attempts to get it published it languished in a cardboard box for the last 10 years.

So...I published Doc's book, a collection or anecdotes from his 47 years as a country doctor. It started as a roughly printed manuscript that lingered for 10 years in the back of a closet. I scanned it in to my computer and used OCR (optical character recognition) software to recover as much of the text as I could then spent several nights correcting, editing and typing in hand written changes and additions that didn't make it in to a final printing the first time. Doc also painted, scenes for his life, scenes for day to day living. I then added pictures of Doc's paintings where I could find some that were at least tangential to the story being told.

2 years ago Doc was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Luckily it isn't a severe form...yet. He still recognizes us but his memory stops short of his second great-grandchild, Hannah Marie, my grand daughter. Anyway, to try and do my bit for helping to eliminate this brain stealing disease, half the royalties will be donated to Alzheimer's research and the other half to help cover Doc's future medical and care costs in the future.

Doc wasn't aware (neither was Mary) that I was doing this, Susan, Marie (my oldest daughter) and I did a real good job of keeping it secret. We gave a proof copy to Doc on Valentines day. At first he didn't know what it was, until he recognized his drawing on the cover and saw his name as author! His eyes lit up and he spent then next several minutes paging through, reading here and there and remembering. Mary (his wife of over 50 years) got wide eyed and I think she was about to cry, if you could know Mary you know how much that is saying. Anyway, they both gave their support to making it publicly available.

Here is the books website, have a look!

http://caduceus.scubamage.com

Mike

Loading in Oracle

2010-02-05T09:52:00.000-08:00

Well, in the past several weeks I have done some interesting tests in loading in Oracle. It seems there is something inside Oracle itself that is limiting the amount of data that an be loaded through a single instance in a given time frame. About the best numbers for a single instance, parallel DML or not, was between 70-100 megabytes per second.

Now using RAC and going with multiple instances I was able to increase that number as a factor of the number of nodes. However that seems to be a very complex method.

So, anyone out there have some good tips for loading data quickly into Oracle? Currently I am going from a memory cache (filesystem) using external tables directly into an internal table, use of APPEND made no difference since the table is new.

Eventually I would use the table to do a partition swap as soon as the table reaches a specific size and start a new table loading. For right now I just have to maximize the load speed going from an external table to an internal one.

Anyway, I will post more information as I find more.

Mike

Going Critical

2010-01-26T09:07:00.000-08:00

Back in my days as a nuclear chemist/technologist we used a term, I am sure everyone has heard it, even if they don't understand it, for when the reactor was capable of generating a self-sustaining reaction. This term was called the state of criticality, or the action of taking the reactor critical. In most popular fiction, this is seen as a bad thing, with someone shouting "Oh no the reactor is going critical!!!"

Of course , real life is seldom if ever reflected in movies or fiction, otherwise these things would be called reality. Criticality is a required state for the nuclear reactor to reach a state of self-sustaining reaction. Essentially it means that the reactor core on average is producing more nuetrons, a little bit over 2 generally, per fission which allows for losses during the fission process (absorption of the nuetrons that doesn't produce fission, or leakage of the neutrons from the core.) A reactor can be sub-critical, where there simply aren't enough nuetrons to sustain a self-perpetuating reaction, critical, where the neutrons produced are just enough to make up for losses, and super critical where the reactor is producing more neutrons than needed to sustain a reaction. The term most of the writers are looking for when they want to portray a problem with a nuclear reaction should be "Oh no! The reator is super-critical!".

So what, you are probably saying, what does this bit of nuclear trivia have to do with regular life? Well, each reaction, if it is to be self sustaining, must reach a critical state. What this critical state for reactions of course varies for the type of reaction. For example, let's say someone sends out a spam email about rutabagas. Rutabagas are not very interesting vegatables, but, if you can get off enough emails to enough people who are interested in rutabagas the email will continue to circulate and take on a life of its own, essentially going critical in the espace.

This notion of critical mass for a successful email campaign of course also carries over to other forms of publicity and all PR shops hope for their campaigns to reach a critical mass of interest where they takes off on their own. Usually once a successful formula for reaching a critical mass in an ad campaign is found, with minor tweaks it can be applied to others. This also known as "going viral".

So, why have I been thinking about this? Well, of course there is my professional life where we hope each new RamSan SSD we launch will reach a critical mass in the storage world, where essentailly word of mouth does our work in selling it for us. Then there is my personal life.

If you have been following my recent posts you know I have been dabbling in self-publishing. Of course anyone who publishes anything wants it to reach a critical mass in its publishing domain, whether it is my technical, Oracle books, or my self-published fiction books, I want them to reach a level of popularity that generates its own publicity and of course, sales!

Well, enough lunch time musings. Be safe and enjoy life!

Mike

The Puddings in the Proof

2010-01-24T08:17:00.000-08:00

The final proofs for the three books came last week and after one false start (had to change fonts and tweak the format) I was able to approve the final versions. So now the books are available in paperback.

Just so everything is in one place here are the links for the various Kindle and Paperback versions:

Quest of the Rune Sword:
Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0033WSZH2
Book: https://www.createspace.com/3424929

Ransom of the Phoenix:
Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00347AIE4
Book: https://www.createspace.com/3425526

Seeds of Wonder:
Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0033WSW7U
Book: https://www.createspace.com/3424266

This journey into self publishing has been enlightening. Some things you need to watch for:

1. Avoid self publishing offerings (SPO) (for the most part) that only have one or two expensive options where they want a load of money up front for formatting, editing and such.
2. Avoid SPO where they want some long period (for example, 7 years) where they own your content. It usually seems these correspond to ones that fall into item 1.
3. Do make sure your content is fully editted, proper spelling, grammer and usage. The first step is no red or green underlinings in WORD then read for word usage.
4. Watch were and where, lose and loose, threw and through, etc.
5. Quote properly
6. Don't publish anything you don't own or have permission on unless you know the fair usage laws and fall well within them.

I could go on, but I believe you get the gist of it.

The ones I have heard good things about are: Createspace, dtp.amazon.com, xlibris, iUniverse and LuLu. I am sure there are more quality ones but this will get you started!

Anyway, take a look at my offerings and enjoy!

Mike

More on Writing

2010-01-15T09:41:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not after 20+ Oracle titles as author or co-author I was getting a little burned out as a technical writer. Of course that isn't counting the dozens of presentations, white papers and articles in addition to the books.

However, since I have been cutting back (yes I know, many have asked when the next Oracle book will be out) I am beginning to get the writing bug again. In addition, I have recently published another book with Texas Memory Systems about the use of SSD technology with Oracle, check it out on the TMS website: RamSan book.

Of course I also used to write fiction as well as technical and I have ground out a couple of short stories and polished off a couple of novels I had sitting around. While I was doing this I found my pile of rejection slips. When someone asks me how to be successful as a writer I tell them to collect enough rejection slips to use as wall paper for a regular size bathroom. Of course some would use them for a different type of bathroom paper.

As you can tell from my previous blog on the 13th, I have gotten tired of rejection and the add of insult to injury of having to wait (sometimes months) for the privilege of being rejected without the benefit of even having been read at times. I have had several times been rejected with letters that used the wrong title for the book, wrong author name and with the manuscript returned in the same box, same rubber band around it and in absolutely pristine condition. Now I didn't check for fingerprints but my guess was it sat in someones read pile for X days and they simply sent it back without a read. Until the invent of print on demand (POD) and ebooks this was the fate of most submissions to mortar and brick publishers.

So I decided to give self publishing a whorl. Looking over many POD publishers most seemed more designed for vanity (oh let me buy 10 copies for friends and relatives and I don't care if it is never marketed) than for actual get it out there publishing. Then I stumbled on CreateSpace and DTP from Amazon. I know you all know what Amazon is, well, they partnered with CreateSpace to provide POD publishing that is actually a real attempt at true publishing. Hence I decided to use both the POD and digital publishing services from Amazon.

Justr as with my foray into jewelry making where I had a bowl of sharks teeth on my desk so I decided to do something with them, I had a collection of short stories (several published in magazines and in two anthologies) and two novel length books just sitting on my hard drive so these have been sacrificed to the POD and ebook effort.

To date the three have made it online to Amazons Kindle store:

Ransom of the Phoenix an action adventure about theft of Nuclear fuel.

Seeds of Wonder a collection of short stories

Quest of the Rune Sword an epic fantasy

Anyway, I'll see how they do. The actual softcover books will be available (with any luck!) sometime next week.

Enjoy!

Mike

Don't Pay the Ransom!

2010-01-13T06:44:00.000-08:00

I looked at my blog and realized that I hadn't posted in quite a while. No, I haven't been kidnapped, so don't pay those ransom demands! I have been quite busy with work (and play) related travel and with doing load testing using the RamSan440 and Oracle (spoiler:the log jam is Oracle...).

Anyway, thought I had better post something! (Thanks for the nudge Nigel)

Believe it or not I do have time for other things (other than Oracle and scuba diving) I also do wire wrapped jewelry (radidjewelry.etsy.com), write fiction (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0033WSZH2,http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0033WSW7U) and do photography (http://s159.photobucket.com/home/mikerault) as well as play with my grandchildren (2 and counting).

However, I shall endeavor to do a better job keeping up this blog. Once I wrap up my load testing with Oracle I will see what tidbits I can write about.

So thanks loyal readers and whatever you do, don't pay the ransom...I escaped.

Mike

Exadata Part Deux

2009-09-15T14:35:00.000-07:00

I just watched Larry Ellison’s webcast announcing the new Exadata-2, the Database Machine made for both data warehouse and OLTP systems. The new Exadata contains both DDR3 (about 450 GB) and Flash (around 5.6 TB) cache areas (not SSD) and up to 100 TB of SAS or 336 TB of SATA raw disk capacity in a full rack of 8 DB servers and 14 Exadata-2 cells. Of course formatted and ASM redundancy will eat at least half of that disk capacity or more.

Larry promises 10X at a minimum improvement in speed and response with 1,000,000 IOPS per full rack.

All of this is wonderful news except for one thing, it locks you completely into Oracle technology. The Oracle database, Oracle Linux OS and Oracle SUN hardware. None of this new toy works without special Oracle software and licensing. You can’t run anything else on it but Oracle. It comes preconfigured with Oracle and OS. The cost for a full rack is 1.15 million plus around another million in license fees.

Interesting thing that you could take the 8 DB servers with a normal amount of memory, not the massive 72 GB per server in the Database Machine, 4 RamSan-620’s and 2 RamSan-420’s, a couple of FC switches and some HBAs and get that 1,000,000 random IOPS Flash plus an additional 1,200,000 random IOPS DDR and have 5 TB of Flash, fully redundant, and 512 GB of DDR2 fully redundant and still come in at less than 1.15 million and a lot less on license fees. Shoot, even add in some SATA or SAS drives and use the preferred read technology in 11g ASM or other global filesystems and viola! The same configuration. Nice thing, you can run anything on it. Of course Oracle runs really sweet on this configuration but so will SQLServer, MySQL, BSD, or anything else. It can also run Windows, Linux, or with IBM servers, AIX as well as Solaris’ various flavors.

So you get the same bang, since Oracle11g software will run (with its compression technology, query optimization and partitioning) the only thing you don’t get is the added power requirements of the SAS or SATA drives in the 10 extra Cells needed to get what we get out of 12-U of space.

One other point Larry made was that to expand you just add more servers of more cells. Supposedly in Oracle11gR2 RAC allows this anyway. Now we don’t have fancy software that automatically rebalances the whole storage array, but guess what, Oracle provides ASM for free and it does.

Ok, I will concede one point, the parallel query software at the cell level (10K USD per disk license fee in Exadata-1) will probably result in some queries (who knows, maybe all) running a wee bit faster than without it, but I would love to see a comparison between equal configurations just to see!

On Gun Control in the USA

2009-06-03T11:08:00.000-07:00

Gun control is a hot button item with liberal democrats and conservative republicans. The desire of the most rabid of the gun control crowd is to remove all guns from everyone except the police and military (and some would take the guns from the police as well!) The conservatives want almost no limits on gun ownership. I believe the reality of the matter should be somewhere in between.

Coming from a long line of hunters (going back to the first Alt’s in America in 1738 or so) I own a rifle and a shotgun. The rifle is an old converted Mauser and the shotgun is a semi-automatic plugged to only allow 5 shells to be loaded at any one time. At this time I don’t own any handguns but have no negative feelings towards them. In fact, when finances allow I plan on purchasing a hand gun for home defense. Of course I will be sure both my wife and I take a class on its safe use from a local gun range or police station.

Now, to the meat of the matter, I am a card carrying member of the NRA, does that mean I stand for everything they do? No, of course not. I believe that Americans have the right to keep and bear arms, both for home defense and just in case politicians get too uppity and decide to try to take more power than they need to govern. And I believe that is the reason that the framers of the constitution put the right to arms clause in there, to remind politicians that they aren’t all powerful. Do I think the average citizen should own fully automatic weapons, flame throwers, grenade launchers or Abrams tanks? No, definitely not.

Currently there are some half baked proposals before the Congress and Senate proposing bans on semiautomatic weapons with some fairly liberal definitions of exactly what is a semiautomatic weapon, unfortunately, that definition would not only ban a semi-automatic AK47 with an extended banana clip holding hundreds of rounds, but my son-in-laws 30-06 semiautomatic hunting rifle. Thus, it is a bad bill and should not be passed.

I am all for limits based on cyclic rate of fire and clip size, but not so loosely specified that it can produce a cascade effect onto sporting rifles. In fact, the very weapons that the bill is designed to restrict are already restricted by existing laws. Most of the crimes that the liberals are saying would be curtailed by this new ban were not committed with the semi-automatic rifles they are trying to ban! The one thing that the liberals who propose these bans forget is that criminals don’t follow the law, that is implicit in their being criminals. As countries such as England and Australia have found, once you make it impossible for a law abiding citizen to own guns, crime rates increase.

Why is it that liberals can’t read statistics? The states and cities with the most restrictive bans on guns have the highest crime rates, the ones with the least restrictive tend to have the lowest. When a criminal (who could care less that he is using an illegal hand gun) knows that a home owner or car driver probably won’t be armed because the law forbids it, it makes them an easy target for that criminal. Some states have already made it illegal to defend yourself, allowing criminals injured by homeowners to sue the homeowner for damages! Talk about legal insanity! More people where killed by bad Doctors last year than by guns in the USA, should we ban all Doctors? More children were killed by bicycles than by guns, should we ban bicycles?

Remember, it is already illegal to own or sell fully automatic weapons, grenades, rocket launchers and generally illegal for anyone to own anything other than a rifle or handgun that can be used for hunting or sport shooting. By law the guns must be registered. Most states require a permit and a safety course.

I agree that before a person can own a gun they should have to take a gun safety course, not be a felon and be at a responsible age. However, beyond restrictions on fully automatic weapons, ridiculous calibers (bullet sizes) and rocket launchers, if Granny wants a semiautomatic AK47 with a case of ammo, the more power to her!

If gun laws will make us safe then why are the states and cities with the most restrictive gun laws the most unsafe? If laws make us safe then we should have nothing to fear since it is illegal to commit a crime with a gun, it is illegal for felons to own guns and the most dangerous fully-automatic guns are already illegal. Face it, the reason most politicians want guns banned is they are afraid that if they really screw up we will hold them accountable for it, an unarmed population is much easier to control than an armed one.

Preliminary TPC-C Results

2009-05-28T08:25:00.000-07:00

(Note: These are preliminary, non-reviewed results)

I just wrapped up my series of TPC-C based tests involving the TMS RamSan SSDs and HDD technologies (SSD-Solid State Disk, HDD-Hard Disk Drive.) For those not familiar a TPC-C has 9 tables with related indices and uses 5 basic transactions to compute a number called a tpm-C, essentially a transactions per minute completed for a given size of database and user load. I used a scale factor of 1000, which means that in the WAREHOUSE table of the TPC-C schema I had 1000 entries, the rest of the database is based on multiples of this value. The TPC-C is a benchmark used for OLTP type systems.

There are two basic methods to do a TPC-C test, one with many clients (read thousands) and built in latencies (usually on the order of up to a second per transaction) and the other with few clients and no latencies. In the first methodology in order to achieve tpm-C approaching 100,000 you would need close to 10,000 clients, roughly a 1 client per 10 tpm-C ratio. In the second method you can get to a tpm-C of over 100,000 with as few as 250 clients. Since I was limited as to the number of client boxes I had access to I decided to use the second method and utilized a ramp-up from 5 to 500 clients in increments of 5 using the Benchmark Factory (BMF) tool from Quest to both build, and, repopulate the TPC-C database before each run. Kevin Dalton at Quest supplied me with some custom build scripts for BMF that allowed me to build any or all of the tables simultaneously, this helped immensely with the build and needed rebuilds. The scripts he provided should be available on Toadworld.

The test system consisted of a 4-node RAC cluster with each node having 8-2 GHz CPUs and 16 GB of memory using an Infiniband cross connect running Oracle11g, 11.1.0.7. The storage subsystems consisted of 2-RamSan400’s, a RamSan500 and 6-15 disk racks of 114GB 15K RPM disks. The RamSan400’s were used for Redo logs and Undo and Temporary tablespaces. ATPC-C schema was built on the RamSan500 (which also held the SYSTEM, USERS and SYSAUX tablesapces for both tests) the RamSans where configured with multiple 4Gbps fibre channel lines each in a multipathed configuration. A duplicate TPC-C schema was built on the HDD array which was configured as two groups of 45 disk drives on different 2Gbps fibre channel links and then used as a single diskgroup in ASM with a failure group (essentially RAID10.)

The RamSan based subsystem utilized 20-4Gbps fibre channel links to access the 500,000+ IOPS that the system was capable of delivering. The HDD subsystem utilized the 2-2Gbps links to utilize the 27,000 IOPS the system was capable of delivering. The database was configured using 8K blocks, in a TPC-C the major IO path is single block reads. Using 8K read/write sizes the interfaces for the RamSan subsystem can handle 1,310,720 IOPS, the subsystem for the HDD can handle 64,000. Now before you scream foul, remember that each disk drive can only handle a maximum (and this is being generous) of 300 IOPS each, 90*300=27,000, so the HDD interface is more than enough for the available IOPS.

In the above configuration the impact of Redo logs, Undo segments and temporary tablespace access are essentially eliminated and access times to the SYSTEM, SYSAUX and USER tablespaces minimized, thus we are only looking at the access times for the TPC_C data and indices as the possible variables in the tests.

In the first set of tests the database was run with 1 to 4 servers with 9 GB of DB cache size. The HDD results peaked at 1051 TPS and 55 users. The RamSan results peaked at 3775 TPS and 245 users. The HDD results fell off from 1051 TPS with 55 users to 549 TPS and 15 users going from 4 down to 1 server. The SSD results fell from 3775 TPS and 245 users down to 1778 TPS and 15 users. However, the 1778 TPS seems to be a transitory spike in the SSD data with an actual peak occurring at 1718 TPS and 40 users. From this data, given the choice, you would get better performance from a single, 8-CPU, 16 GB memory server running against a RamSan configuration than you would with a 4-node RAC configuration running against a HDD system by a factor of 1.63.

In the second test the affects of memory starvation on the RAC environment was tested. The DB cache size was ramped down from 9 GB to around 1 GB. The tests showed that the RamSan configuration handles the memory stress better by a performance factor ranging from 3 at the top end at 9 GB total cache size to a huge 7.5 at the low end comparing a 1.05 GB cache on the SSD to a 4.5 GB cache on the HDD run. The HDD run was limited to 4.5 GB at the lower end by time constraints however, as performance would only get worse as the cache was reduced more, further testing was felt to be redundant.

Of course the reason for the wide range between the upper and lower memory results, from a factor of 3 to 7.5 times better performance by the SSD, can be traced to the increase in physical IO that resulted from not being able to cache results and the subsequent increase in db file sequential reads.

The tests show that the SSD array handles reduction in available memory much better than the HD array. Even at a little over 1 GB of total cache area per node for a 4-node RAC environment, the SSD outperformed the HD array at a 9 GB total cache size per node for a 4-node RAC using identical servers and database parameters. Unfortunately due to bugs in the production release of Oracle11g, release 11.1.0.7, we were unable to test the automatic memory management feature of Oracle, the bug limits total SGA size to less than 3-4 gigabytes per server.

A third test involved attempting to defeat the cache fusion logic that assumes that getting data over the interconnect is faster than from the storage subsystem. In our test system the transfer of blocks was taking 3 milliseconds while reading and writing was taking less than 1 millisecond so using a ping (write to disk, read from disk) would theoretically be better performance than using the interconnect to transfer the block. A look at documentation seems to indicate that if you set the gc_files_to_locks parameter then cache fusion is defeated.

In the first run we set the GC_FILE_TO_LOCKS parameter to “1-13:0” which was supposed to turn on fine grain locking (the “0” setting) for files 1 to 13 (all of our datafiles.) Unfortunately this increased the number of cache transfers and caused a decrease in performance.

In the second test we researched the GC_FILES_TO_LOCKS parameter a bit more and found that we shouldn’t have set the parameter for the UNDO tablespaces and, even though the examples showed the “0” setting for setting fine grain locks, we decided to set it to a hard number of locks equal to or greater than the number of blocks in each datafile. The documentation also showed that generally speaking the SYSTEM and SYSAUX tablespaces don’t need as many locks so we decided to set the value to 1000 for those tablespaces. You don’t set the parameter for temporary tablespaces. This led to a new setting of “1-2:1000EACH:7-13:4128768EACH”. Tests with this new setting showed an increase in GC related waits.

The attempts to limit or eliminate cache fusion failed and resulted in poorer performance overall. While we reduced the gc buffer busy acquire waits and in some cases increased the db file sequential reads, the increase in the wait times for the GC related waits offset any gains that were made. All attempts to defeat cache fusion with the use of the gc_files_to_locks parameter were unsuccessful and resulted in poorer performance.

Once the full paper is available I will post a link to the TMS website.

More fun with Oracle11g 11.1.0.7

2009-03-18T12:51:00.001-07:00

I have been working with the 11.1.0.7 release of Oracle11g for a couple of months now. I have to say I have not been impressed with it. As released there are several major bugs that really limit 11.1.0.7 usability and stability.

Right out of the gate when I upgraded my 11.1.0.2 environment to 11.1.0.7 I had problems. If you utilize the automated memory management features using MEMORY_MAX_SIZE and MEMORY_TARGET, on 64 bit RedHat Linux you are limited to 3 gigabytes of total SGA, that’s right folks, less than you can get on 32 bit! This was easily mitigated by going back to full manual memory management. So much for the much touted AMM improvements in 11g.

My setup for testing is a 4 node luster using Dell servers with 8 CPUs each and 16 gigabytes of memory per server. I am using Infiniband interconnects on the 4 server cluster. Initially I would get ORA-00600 errors and server reboots if we loaded down the system doing a single user 300 GB TPC-H. For the most part I was able to fix that by relinking the Oracle kernel to use the RDS protocol with Infiniband, however, on some large queries using cross instance parallel query and large amounts of partitioning I still cannot complete a full 22 query TPC-H without at least one of the queries throwing an ORA-00600.

The next test was TPC-C using large numbers of users and cross instance parallel query. Following the example of some recent HP TPC-H runs I attempted to use clustered tables. As long as I used single table clusters, everything seemed to go alright, but as soon as I attempted a dual table hash cluster things went pear-shaped and I had to revert to normal tables. This was a known Oracle bug it seems but hasn’t been made publically available in Metalink. It seems I could load one of the tables in the cluster but then when attempting to load the second table in the 11g cluster it would error.

The next bit of testing involved creating a large table (60,000,000 2K rows) then duplicating the table, doing a select that forced temp usage, doing a self-join with large temp usage and creating a large index. Since I had 8 CPUs I initially started with a DOP of 8 increasing it by 8 as I added in each node up to a maximum of 32. Sometimes this would work, other times parallel query servers would die horrible deaths causing the transaction to fail. Now, for a 16 gig server with 8 CPUs I would expect to be able to get well above a DOP of 8 on a single table. In fact, during the load process the last several iterations use a single instance DOP of 64 with no issues. It seems as soon as I add more than 1 or 2 additional nodes, things start to get wonky (a scientific term meaning “wonky”), parallel query slaves commit suicide at an alarming rate and sometimes entire servers reboot. I reduced to 6 DOP and still see the failures on most runs above a server count of 2.

Of course you must realize from talking with support most of the internal testing and support is done on 32 bit machines. Many times support told me that they can’t test large memories or large databases because of this. Come on Oracle, take some of the interest on your billions in profits and upgrade your support servers! Buy some disk drives! Geesh!

Of course most of my work is done on gear that supports over 100,000 IOPS (actually more than this by several factors) and many beta testers may not have the 500 disk drives to allow for 100,000 IOPS or access to SSD technology to get this type of IO load. Maybe these Oracle11g stability issues only show up at high IO rates. However, with many manufacturers now offering SSD technology (SUN, HP, EMC) to go with their standard disk systems and of course, TMS, Violin, FusionIO and several other SSD vendors offering SSD systems that easily top 100,000 IOPS or more, Oracle better get with it and start doing significant testing in high IOPS situations, or at least, make sure and include the partners who have access to this technology in their betas.

I am not sure what happened with the beta testing of this (11.1.0.7) release, had I been included I would have quickly showed them these bugs as I believe in testing real world database situations. I don’t know whether to look forward to 11gR2 with anticipation or dread (I was not invited into that beta either), if the beta programs are as detailed as they were for 11gR1 we might be in for a rough ride.

Outsource This!

2009-03-10T08:19:00.000-07:00

I just watched President Obama’s speech on the educational reforms that he proposes. As laudable as his proposed fixes are, I mean after all, who isn’t for tougher standards for graduates, more pay for good teachers and accountability at all levels, I feel perhaps he has missed the boat in a key area.

The New York Times recently published an article stating that the college graduate has seen a bigger decline in employment than just about any other sector. Don’t get me wrong, a college graduate still gets better pay and benefits than a non-college graduate, but just getting a degree will not guarantee you the American dream any longer.

The key area that President Obama has neglected is that American college graduates expect to receive wages in excess of $60K per year. Unfortunately foreign graduates who still reside overseas are usually pleased to receive the equivalent of a third of this amount or less, especially in the Asian countries and in Latin America. This means that by outsourcing a company can get 3 times the number of employees and hopefully three times the productivity. This isn’t always the case but that is the logic used to justify sending jobs overseas.

What many companies are finding however is that those budget employees come with their own issues. For example, a programmer who has never experienced a free market economy may not understand all the intricacies of accounting in such a system. Of course I probably needn’t mention the various cultural and language difficulties that are also experienced with outsourcing.

I am afraid that many of the stimulus jobs that seem to be offered from the President’s plans seem to be short term blue collar type jobs that won’t do much to help the college graduate with advanced degrees. If you work outside of the computer industry, for example, for two years as a heavy machinery operator on a construction job, you will find your computer science degree probably isn’t worth much anymore.

Soon the only way to get a job will be to move out of the USA and go to a country where the cost of living is in line with what the companies who outsource are willing to pay employees, but don’t look for benefits!

God and Technology

2009-03-02T16:37:00.000-08:00

Many times I have been asked how as a technologist/scientist I can believe in God. It is as if these people believe you cannot be a thinking person and also believe in a higher power. Now, this is not to say I am one of the folks who think every word in the Bible (Old and New Testament) is the gospel truth (no pun intended.) Like I said, I am a thinking Christian, as such I question everything and look for confirmation of those things that can be confirmed. Of course with religion, as in all things in science and lay areas, eventually you reach a point where it is either believe or not believe and I chose to believe.

I prefer to think of myself as more a Jeffersonian Christian rather than a Paulian Christian. It amazes me that many Christians swallow hook-line-and-sinker every word penned by the one Apostle that never actually met Jesus face-to-face. Many scholars feel that Paul was sent on so many missions not because he was good at them but because the other Apostles really couldn’t stand him and hoped that he wouldn’t return. Many believers take Paul’s letters out of context and usually completely incorrectly as their meaning is understood by true bible scholars. In fact many articles of faith were added in after the fact to the regular gospels as can be proved by stylistic differences and from going back to the earliest known translations. The fact is that no matter how current your translation you are still starting from flawed beginnings. Many of the books that “didn’t make the cut” when the first bibles were compiled were destroyed as heresy thus removing them from possible future examination.

With any scientific field of study you reach a certain point and you can go no further, from that point on you have to accept things on theories and faith. Even with the less than whole cloth parts of the Bible’s New Testament removed, what is left is still an amazing history of a real man who lived, and died for his faith and his friends. Is Jesus the Son of God? Yes, but then we all are the sons and daughters of God. Did Jesus die for our sins? Yes. Was he raised from the dead? This is where there is some contention over what was added after the fact and what is whole cloth. But let’s examine this.

Two men: One knows he is the physical Son of God, he knows that no matter what evil painful things happen on Earth he has a place at the right hand of God. Second man, a man, with man’s frailties, and doubts. Now, both give up their Earthly lives for what they believe in, which one required greater faith? Would Jesus be less or more of an inspiration if he was a frail human or the anointed Son of God? Would you believe it was a vote by a group of flawed humans (the Nicene Council) that decided Jesus was a deity and it was actually a very close vote.

Unfortunately the only documents that provide “proof” of Jesus’ deity are in the Bible and using the Bible to prove the Bible is circular logic and therefore flawed. It is like using the Dianetics text to prove L. Ron Hubbard’s qualifications as a deity. Since most Islamic accounts of Jesus are actually taken from the Bible then related texts quoting them are not relevant. While Jesus is mentioned in some historical texts none go into great detail as to his birth, (a virgin was a young maiden, not someone who had never had sex) life (he existed and taught and was hated by Rome), death (he was probably crucified) or resurrection. These accounts of the resurrection were actually added after the original text in the gospels, it was felt that the Mithran belief, having a virgin birth, life and resurrection was a big spur to add these passages. (see: http://www.near-death.com/experiences/origen048.html) Among non-Christian historians, Pliny the Younger, Suetonius and Tacitus refer to Jesus, as does Josephus (Joseph ben Matthias).

So, do I believe Jesus is my savior? Yes, his teachings show the way to the father as he himself said “There is no way to the father but through me” meaning through his teachings we find the way. Do I believe in the resurrection? That is more complex to answer. Unfortunately the resurrection is one of the parts added after the original text, that makes it suspect in my eyes. The key question is “Would I believe without the resurrection?” The answer is yes, I would, so whether I believe in the resurrection or not is moot. You are free to believe as you wish and I would never dream of pushing my beliefs onto you, after all, we have free will.

Do I believe in the life everlasting? Yes. There is enough anecdotal evidence to show that something of us exists after death, that the spirit left gets rewarded or punished based on a set of criteria created within its own belief structure is not that far of a reach. After all Jesus also said “In my Father’s house are many mansions, I go there now to prepare a place for you.”
So what have I attested to? I believe in God and I believe in Jesus. I believe Jesus died for my sins. I believe Jesus’ teachings show the way to true belief in God. If this diminishes me in some folk’s eyes, so be it. However, it is not for people that I live, I live for God, my family and myself.

Does God reject technology? No, he gave us technology to better ourselves. As with any tool, how we use it determines whether the tool is good or bad. Do modern teachings contradict the Bible? No. If you realize that most of the creation story is metaphor, used to explain something we don’t have full understanding of even today, to ignorant herders. When looked at as metaphor it actually parallels what we know. Look at the theory of vacuum fluctuations and compare it to the story of genesis. As to what timelines are used in the Bible, again, try to explain millions of years to someone who barely understands how to count his herd of sheep.

It is odd that those that insist on a literal interpretation of their favorite passages that damn certain behaviors or exalt other behaviors they profess to believe in themselves but then they tell us other parts are metaphor. Remember that the true test of a prophet is that what he prophesizes comes true. I am afraid many of the added texts in the Bible fail this test as do many of the founders of many splinter religions who used imperfect understanding to make prophesies of specific dates for events such as the “rapture” and the second coming. Of course instead of applying the test to these false prophets and rejecting them, they merely allowed that they were mistaken but that their prophesies would come true eventually.

Limiting God to a simplistic creation story is demeaning to God. That God could put into motion such marvelous mechanisms as those behind vacuum fluctuations and evolution is a testament to his greatness, not a detractor from it. That we cannot understand everything is a testament to God’s greatness . God guides technology, giving us tools to better understand his universe.

Burying our heads in simplistic beliefs because we cannot understand God’s plan as implemented in his universe is an affront to God.

RMOUG Notes

2009-02-17T09:25:00.001-08:00

Well, I am on my way home from the Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group Trainings Days event. I presented a paper titled “Is Oracle Tuning Obsolete,” a copy of which can be found on the http://www.rmoug.org/ site or at http://www.superssd.com/. While I was there I attended two presentations on the Oracle/HP Exadata Database Machine, one by Kevin Closson and another by Tom Kyte, both of Oracle.

My only complaint about both presentations was that when they presented the user test results they neglected to show the full (or even partial) configurations of the servers and disk systems they had tested against. Rather like saying my car is 10 times faster than Joe’s and telling you mine is a 1995 Dodge Avenger and failing to mention Joe’s is a Stanley Steamer. Be that as it may, I still enjoyed the presentations and the best take away was from Kevin’s presentation when he said that “If your current system is fully tuned, has adequate disk resources, and is performing well, the Exadata has nothing to offer you.” An example from kevin would be a 128 CPU Superdome with 128 4GFC HBAs that were being fed by ample XP storage as that would be 51GB/s ingest-capable. Also during Tom’s presentation he admitted the primary target of the Exadata was those shops with row-after-row of Oracle servers followed by a single Netezza or Teradata server or servers.

Essentially the Exadata Database Machine is targeted at the larger (several terabytes) data warehouse that would otherwise be placed on a Netezza or Teradata machine and I couldn’t agree more. However, it would be a fun test to replace the disks in an Exadata cell with a RamSan-500 and see what (if any) additional performance could be gained. After all, the disks are still the limiting factor in the performance of the system. For example, a single Exadata cell tops out at around 2,700 IOPS, according to white papers on the Oracle site; a single RamSan-500 can sustain 100,000 mixed read/write IOPS and 25,000 pure write IOPS with minimal response times. As far as I can tell, no additional smarts are built into the Exadata disk drives in the place of special firmware, such as is supposedly done with EMC systems, so replacing the drives with a single RamSan-500, either set up as 12 LUNs, or as a single large LUN, should be easy.

Another interesting discussion I had during this time frame was with our (Texas Memory Systems) own Matt Key, one of our Storage Applications Engineers, about why adding the Enterprise Flash Drives (EFDs) to arrays produces little if any benefit for large levels of writes. Turns out there is an upward limit on the bandwidth a single disk tray can handle and with the EFDs instead of disk drives the disk tray tops out at around 3000 (between 1600 and 3200) or so IOPS (based on a 64K stripe) so you actually need several trays (with a max of only 4 drives to a tray because of other limits) to get significant write IOPS. For comparison, the RamSan-500 can handle 25,000 sustained write IOPS. Now don’t get me wrong, the EFDs can improve the performance of certain types of loads when compared to a standard array with no EFDs, but if you are write-heavy you may wish to consider other technologies. Note: The calculations are based on a 200 megabyte/second FC-AL bandwidth with 64K writes, since RAID6 is used there are 2-64K writes for each write, 200MBS/64K=3200 IOPS, 200MBS/128K=1600 IOPS. These limitations apply to all array-based EFDs.

The RamSan-500 makes an excellent complement to any enterprise array, especially if you use the preferred read technology to read from the RamSan-500 while writing to both, for example, when you are using array-based replication, such as SRDF, to provide geo-mirroring of the frame to a remote site. By offloading the reads, the number of writes that can be supported by the array can be increased as a factor of the percent of reads in the work load, thus increasing the performance of the entire system. As an example, if you have an 80/20 read/write workload and you offload the 80 percent of reads to the RamSan, this frees up the array to handle a factor of 4 more writes, up to the actual maximum IOPS of the array. This is a 4X increase in I/O with 0-impact to infrastructure or BCVs.

Oh, on February 24-25 I’ll be in Charlotte, NC presenting at the Southeast Oracle Users Convention (SEOUC). My two presentations are: “My Ideal Data Warehouse System” and “Going Solid: Use of Tier Zero Storage in Oracle Databases.” I hope I see you there!

As I digest more of the information I obtained this week, I will try to write more blog entries. So for now I will sign off. Good bye from 37,000 feet over Colorado!

Mike

Do You Need Solid State Technology?

2009-02-04T06:51:00.000-08:00

Many times I am asked the question “Should I buy solid state devices for my system?” and each time I have to answer “It depends.” Of course the conversation evolves beyond that point into the particulars of their system and how they are currently using their existing IO storage subsystem. However, the question raised is still valid; do you need SSD technology in your IO subsystem? Let’s look at this question.

SSD Advantages

SSD technology has one big advantage over your typical hard disk based storage array: SSD does not depend on physical movement for retrieval of data. Being non-dependent on physical movement for data retrieval means that you can significantly reduce the latency involved with each data retrieval operation, usually on the order of a factor of 10 (for Flash-based technology) to over 100 (for RAM-DDR -based technology.) Of course cost increases as latency decreases with SSD technology, with Flash running about a quarter of the cost of RAM-DDR technology.

SSD Costs

Flash and DDR-based SSD technology are usually on a par with, or can be cheaper than, IO equivalent SAN based technology. Due to the much lower latency of SSD technology you can get many more input-output operations per second (IOPS) from them than you can from a hard disk drive system. For example, from the “slow” Flash-based technology you can get 100,000 IOPS with an average latency of 0.20 milliseconds worse case. From the fastest DDR based technology you can achieve 600,000 IOPS with a latency of .015 milliseconds.

To achieve 100,000 IOPS from hard drive technology you would need around 500 or more 15K rpm disks at between 2 and 5 milliseconds latency, giving a peak IOPS of around 200 per disk drive for random IO, regardless of their storage capacity. A 450 gigabyte 15K rpm disk drive may have up to 4 or more individual disk platters with 12 read-write heads (one for each side of the disks); however, these read-write heads are mounted on a single armature and are not capable of independent positioning. This limits the latency and IOPS to that of a single disk platter with two heads, so an 146 gigabyte 15K rpm drive will have the same IOPS and latency as a 450 gigabyte 15K rpm drive from the same manufacturer (http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/ds_cheetah_15k_6.pdf.)

Given that the IOPS and latency are the same regardless of storage capacity for a 146 to 450 gigabytes array of disk drive sizes why not pick the smallest drive and save money? The reason is that to get the best latency you need to be sure not to fill the various disks in the disk drive (from 2 to 4) more than 30% hence the need for so many drives. So to get high performance from your disk based IO subsystem you need to throw away 60-70% of your storage capacity!

Do I Need That Many IOPS?

Many critics of SSD technology state that most systems will never need 100,000 IOPS, and in many cases they are correct. However, in testing using a 300 gigabyte TPC-H (data warehouse) type test load using SSD I was able to get peak loads of over 100,000 IOPS using a simple 4 node Oracle11g Real Application Clusters-based setup. Since many systems are considerably larger than 300 gigabytes and have more users than the 8 users with which I reached 100,000 IOPS, it is not inconceivable that given the capability to achieve 100,000 IOPS of throughput many current databases would easily exceed that value. It must also be realized that the TPC-H system I was testing utilized highly optimized indexing, partitioning, and parallel query technology; eliminate any of these capabilities and the IOPS required increases, sometimes dramatically.

Questions to Ask

So now we reach the heart of the question, do you need SSD for your system? The answer depends on several questions which only you can answer:

1. Is my performance satisfactory? If yes then why are you asking about SSD?
2. Have you maximized use of memory and optimization technologies built into your database system? If no, then do this first.
3. Has my disk IO subsystem been optimized? (Enough disks and HBAs?)
4. Is my system spending an inordinate amount of time waiting on the IO subsystem?

If the answer to question 1 is no, and questions 2, 3 and 4 are yes then you are probably a candidate for SSD technology. Don’t get me wrong, if I had my choice I would skip disk based systems altogether and use 100% SSD in any system I bought, given the choice. However, you are probably locked into a disk-based setup with your existing system until you can prove it doesn’t deliver the needed performance. Let’s look closer at the 4 questions.

Question 1 is sometimes hard to answer quantitatively. Usually the answer to 1 is more of a gut reaction than anything that can be put on paper. The users of the system can usually tell you if the system is as fast as they need it to be. Another consideration in question 1 is: performance is fine now, but what if you grow by 25-50%? If your latency is at 3-5 milliseconds on the average now, adding more load may drive it much higher.

Question 2 will require analysis of how you are currently configured. An example from Oracle is that a wait on db file sequential reads can indicate that not enough memory has been allocated to cache data blocks read based on index reads. So, even if the indexes are cached, the data blocks are not and must be read into the cache on each operation. A sequential read is an index-based read followed by a data table read and usually should be cached if there is sufficient memory. Another Oracle wait, db file scattered reads indicates full table scans are occurring. Usually full table scans can be mitigated by use of indexes or partitioning. If you have verified your memory is being used properly (perhaps everything that can be allocated has been) and you have utilized the proper database technologies and performance is still bad, then it is time to consider SSD.

A key source of wait information is of course the Statspack or AWR report for Oracle based systems. One additional benefit to the Statspack or AWR reports is that they both can contain a Cache Advisory sub-section that is used to actually determine if adding memory will help your system. By examining waits and looking at the cache advisory section of the report you can quickly determine if adding memory will help your performance. Another source of information about the database cache is the V$BH dynamic performance view. The V$BH view contains an entry for every block in the cache and with a little SQL against the view you can easily determine if there are any free blocks or if you have used all available and are in need of more. Of course use of the automated memory management features in 10g and 11g limit the usefulness of the V$BH view. In Oracle Grid and Database control interfaces (providing you have the proper licenses) you also get performance advisories which will tell you when you need more memory. Of course if you have already maximized the size of your physical memory, most of this is moot.

Question 3 may have you scratching your head. Essentially if your disk IO subsystem has reached its lowest latency and the number of IO channels (as determined by the number and type of host bus adapters) is such that no channel is saturated, then your disk-based system is optimized. Usually this is shown by latency being in the 3-5 millisecond range and still having high IO waits with low CPU usage.

Question 4 means you look at you system CPU statistics and you see that your CPUs are being under utilized and the IO waits are high, indicating the system is waiting on IO to complete before it can continue processing. A Unix or Linux based system in this condition may show high values for runqueue even when the CPU is idle.

SSD Criticisms

Other critics of SSD technology cite problems with reliability and possible loss of data with Flash and DDR technologies. In some forms of Flash and DDR they are correct; if the Flash isn’t wear leveled properly or the DDR is not properly backed-up. However, as long as the Flash technology utilizes proper wear leveling and the RAM-DDR system uses proper battery backup with permanent storage on either a Flash or hard disk based subsystem, then those complaints are groundless.

The final criticism of SSD technology is usually that the price is still too high compared to disks. I look at an advertisement from a local computer store and I see a terabyte disk drive for $99.00; it is hard for SSD to compete with that low base cost. Of course, I can’t run a database on a single disk drive. Given our 300 gigabyte system, I was hard-pressed to get reasonable performance placing it on 28 – 15K high performance disk drives; most shops would use over 100 drives to get performance. So on a single disk to SSD comparison yes, this cost would appear to be an issue; however, you must look at other aspects of the technology. To achieve high performance most disk-based systems utilize specialized controllers and caching technology and spread IO across as many disk drives as possible. This is known as short-stroking the drive so that only 20-30% of each disk drive is ever actually used. The disks are rarely used individually, instead they are placed in a RAID array (usually RAID 5, RAID 10, or some exotic RAID technology). Once the cost of additional cabinets, controllers, and other support technology is added to the base cost of the disks, not to mention any additional firmware costs added by an OEM, the costs soon level between SSD and standard hard drive SAN systems.

In a review of benchmark results the usual ratio between needed capacity and capacity utilized to achieve performance is 40-50 to 1, meaning our 300 gigabyte TPC-H system would require at least 12 terabytes of storage to provide adequate performance spread over at least 200 or more disk drives. To contrast that, an SSD based system would only need a factor of 2 to 1 (to allow for the indexes and support files).

In addition to the base equipment costs, most disk arrays consume a large amount of electricity which then results in larger heat loads for your computer center. In many cases the SSD technology only consumes a fraction of the energy and cooling costs of regular disk based systems, providing substantial electrical and cooling cost savings over their lifetimes. SSD by its very nature is green technology.

When Doesn’t SSD help?

SSD technology will not help CPU bound systems. In fact, SSD may increase the load on overworked CPUs by reducing IO based waits. Therefore it is better to resolve any CPU loading issues before considering a move to SSD technology.

In Summary

The basic rule for determining if your system would benefit from SSD technology is that if your system is primarily waiting on IO then SSD technology will help mitigate the IO wait issue.

Scuba Diving New York City

2009-01-31T23:44:00.000-08:00

A few months ago I wrote a blog about global warming and some possible mitigating actions we could all take (here: http://mikerault.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html) some might have been a bit off the wall, but were meant to make people think. Of course now many leading scientists are saying there is nothing we can do to radically affect global warming trends for the next 1000 years (http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/01/27/2475687.htm). The article pretty much echoed the sentiments I expressed in an earlier blog of mine in which I stated that while we as a species may have added 1 or 2 percent to the overall picture we are on a warming and CO2 curve that is following a natural cycle that seems to occur about every 100,000 years or so according to studies of ice cores from the Vostok site in Antarctica (http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/). If there was a direct correlation between temperature and CO2 concentration then we would all be par boiled since we are at a level almost 100 PPM above highest historical levels and so the temperature should be 5-10 degrees above what it currently is, when in fact, we are actually cooler by up to 2 degrees than we should be according to the historical data.

Perhaps my most wild eyed suggestion was to place a solar shield between the Earth and the sun to reduce the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth. Oddly the most wild eyed suggestion seems to be the only one that would make a difference at all. Unless we find a way to reduce the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth’s surface we can expect global temperatures to increase steadily until there are no ice caps, Arctic or Antarctica.

The net effect of the melting of the melting of the Arctic ice cap would be negligible since it is in effect floating so the change in sea levels would be near zero, however, the polar bears would have a few issues. The biggest problem would be the Antarctic ice sheet which is resting on the continent of Antarctica. As it melts and adds to the water levels the weight compressing the Antarctic land mass decreases causing rebound. Between the added water level and the displacement from rebound we are talking over 100 feet of additional water levels around the world. Say good bye to New York, London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, almost all of Florida, heck, most of our seaports. You think Bangladesh has problems with flooding now, just wait.

We need to start planning and doing something now. By reducing the amount of sunlight we receive by 10% we could nip this issue in the bud before 42nd street is considered an advanced level scuba dive. This would be done by orbiting a single large sunscreen or multiple smaller sunscreens in the L1 Lagrange point. Maybe by making these sunscreens actually into thermionic generators or simple solar cell arrays we could also provide large amounts of energy which could be sent back to Earth via microwave beams for use as a green energy source(http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/reports/2004/TM-2004-212743.pdf). To block 10 percent of the energy of the sun that reaches the Earth sounds a bit crazy but it could be done.

Even by spreading large clouds of metallic debris (how about all those aluminum cans we see lining the roadways?) or using a few large asteroids pushed into place using low thrust ion drives (http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/ion/) .

It is time to look out for all of us and put aside petty (in the scheme of global warming scale disaster) differences and pull together to really do something to fix this problem. Driving a fuel efficient car and turning your thermostat down in the winter and up in the summer may give you warm and fuzzy (or cold and fuzzy depending on the season) feeling but it won’t amount to a hill of beans when it comes to helping fix global warming.

Database Entomology in Oracle11g Land

2009-01-07T13:18:00.001-08:00

For the past several months I have been working with Oracle11g, 11.1.0.6 to be exact, doing TPC-H runs, tuning exercises and putting it through its paces. My platform is a 4-node, 32 CPU 64 bit Dell cluster connected to both a solid state disk (SSD) storage array set and standard 15K hard drive (HD) JBOD arrays. On this test rack I created a 300 gigabyte TPC-H test database, well, actually 600 gigabytes with dual identical TPC-H setups in the same database one on SSD and the other on HD.

As a pre-test I had created a small TPC-H (not more than 30 gigabytes) and on a single-server rig I could run the complete 22 query TPC-H set of queries in parallel query. Of course I wasn’t using high levels of partitioning and parallel query simultaneously with the small data set.
I knew it would be interesting when I got to query 9 on the 300 gigabyte dataset and on query 9 I got an ORA-00600:

ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments [kxfrGraDistNum3],[65535],[4]

When I ran an 8 stream randomized order query run I also periodically received:

ORA-12801: error signaled in parallel query server P009, instance dpe-d70:TMSTPCH3 (3)
ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments: [qks3tStrStats4], [], [], [], [], [], [], []

On query 18 once in a while but not every run. Due to not being a full customer (only having a partner CSI number) I was unable to report these as possible bugs. I did completely check out OTN and Metalink as well as Google and no one else seems to be having these issues, of course how many folk are running Oracle11g 11.1.0.6 or 11.1.0.7 with RAC, cross instance parallel query and heavy partitioning and sub-partitioning?

I had a quick look at the Oracle11g 11.1.0.7 release notes and saw a load of bug fixes and hoped mine were covered, even though a text search didn’t show up the ORA-00600 arguments I received. So I bit the Oracle bullet and performed an upgrade.

Well, actually 2 sets of upgrades. First I upgraded my home, 32-bit (this is important later) servers and other than the usual documentation gotchas and needing to set the database as exclusive, start it, stop it and then reset it as a cluster before the dbua program would run properly, I was successful and now have an Oracle11g 11.1.0.7 instance running on my home RAC setup. A quick run against the 30 GB database showing no really stellar improvements against my test setup using JBOD arrays for TPC-H and it successfully ran Query 9 against the non-partitioned, smaller 30 gigabyte data set.

Feeling pleased with the success I immediately set out the next morning to update my large test environment, my 64 bit cluster. The CRS update went smoothly, and other than some space issues (you may want to add a datafile to your SYSTEM tablespace) and some package problems (for some reason DBMS_SQLTUNE and DBMS_ADVISOR where missing) the database upgrade went fine, right up to the point of starting the instances under 11.1.0.7. It seems there is just a small bug with the use of the new MEMORY_TARGET parameter and release 11.1.0.7…you can’t go above 3 gigabytes! This is why I said that the upgrade on 32 bits was important to remember, in 32 bit systems you will rarely get above a 3 gigabyte SGA size once you allow for user logins, process space and operating system memory needs. However, one of the major reasons for going to 64 bit is to have SGA sizes in Oracle greater than 4 gigabytes. Now, if you go back to using the SGA_MAX_SIZE and SGA_TARGET or the full manual specifications such as SHARED_POOL_SIZE and DB_CACHE_SIZE you can get above the 3 gigabyte setting.

Another annoying thing with 11g and the MEMORY_MAX_SIZE setting is that you cannot exceed MEMORY_MAX_SIZE with the sum of your SGA settings plus PGA_AGGREGATE_TARGET. Now for those of you with small sort sizes this isn’t really a problem and you probably won’t have any issues. However, with a TPC-H you need a large sort size so you need a large PGA_AGGREGATE_TARGET but, you quickly get into trouble with the limits on MEMORY_MAX_SIZE and large PGA_AGGREGATE_TARGETS. With my 16 gigabytes of memory per server I was only able to allocate about 8 gigabytes to Oracle (actually about 7.5 in 11.1.0.6 and 3 in 11.1.0.7) anything larger and I would get errors. So needless to say, I turned off the total memory management and did it the old fashioned way.

Finally, I had my instances up, about a 7 gigabyte SGA with 5 gigabytes of DB_CACHE_SIZE and 5.5 gigabytes of PGA_AGGREGATE_TARGET. Oh, did I mention, your SHARED_POOL_SIZE must be at least 600 megabytes for Oracle11g 11.1.0.7? If it isn’t you will get 4030 errors on startup, I ended up with 750 megabytes worth.

So after 8 hours of upgrade time for my main set of instances I was finally ready to run a TPC-H. Guess what, with the upgrade in place, more cache and bigger sort areas, I seem to be getting worse performance than with the sub-optimal query resolving, bug-ridden 11.1.0.6 version. Looks like they fed the bugs instead of killed them. Oh well, back to the tuning bench.

Happy Holiday Shopping - Not!

2008-12-04T09:53:00.000-08:00

Recently, due to the dramatic increase in the number of online shoppers and unplanned for peaks in attempted access/logins, several major retail websites have experienced anything from dramatic slowdowns to out and out failure. Of note are the recent problems at the Sears and Dr. Pepper websites.

Sears and Others:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/28/technology/bc.apfn.tec.holidayshop.ap/index.htm
http://tasquatch-sentinelling.blogspot.com/2008/11/blog-post_7519.html

Dr. Pepper:
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2008/12/01/daily45.html

In order to understand what is happening you must understand what occurs when a user attempts to access a website, let alone when they attempt a complex transaction. When a user logs in to a website the user identification must be validated from a database using several database queries. For example: Is the user ID valid? Is the password correct? Has the password expired? What type of user is this? etc. It is even worse if the user has to create a login and password as well as enter other data such as address or credit data. All of this transactional traffic causes a flurry of underlying IO subsystem activity and web traffic across the networks. And of course all of this is magnified when actual query and sales transactions are also being performed.

All of the traffic to the system database can overwhelm the underlying IO subsystem, especially when it is disk array based which is the case with a majority of databases. Disks generally can only respond within a 5 millisecond window. Now, with on-disk caching and large caches in the disk arrays this response time can sometimes be reduced to 1 millisecond but as the caches flood with high activity performance generally drops to 5 milliseconds per IO or more. As the time to respond increases the number of users which can be served drops in a direct example of Little’s Law.

Unfortunately, while you can increase the IOPS (input output per second) by increasing the number of disks in an array, you cannot decrease the latency beyond that of any one disk. In fact, for a large read you will suffer from convoy effect where the slowest disk in the array involved in the IO operation will drive down the performance of the IO itself.

Several websites have found that by placing the user tables and other transaction dependent tables on low latency storage such as solid state SAN replacements like the RamSan 400 or 500 series from Texas Memory Systems they can dramatically increase the capability to support many more transactions (read clients) than before. An example of the dramatic improvements that can be achieved is shown in the recent press release from The Container Store group:

http://www.superssd.com/pressrelease/2008-12-02.htm

Realizing that their underlying IO subsystem couldn’t support the expected peak load generated from a positive blurb about the company on The Oprah Winfrey Show, the folks at The Container Store turned to TMS RamSan technology.

Another area that must support high concurrent logins and maintain strict inventories is in the online gaming community. Eve Online was able to go from 15,000 online users to over 17,000 with a 40x performance improvement:

http://www.superssd.com/success/ccpgames.htm

As a final example, IC Source first tried doubling the number of disks in their infrastructure; the net result? Zero improvement only to solve the problem with SSD (RamSan) technology:

http://www.superssd.com/success/icsource.htm

What all of these examples show is that many times your problem cannot be solved by throwing more disks at it, you must get to the ultimate problem, latency, to fix the issue.

With latency numbers of 15 microseconds (.015 milliseconds) and the resulting ability to support 600,000 IOPS and 4.5 GB/sec the RamSan-440 is the heavy hitter in the TMS line as far as throughput however, it is DDR RAM based and currently limited to 0.5 terabytes of storage capacity per unit. Compared to normal disk latency of 5 milliseconds the RamSan-440 shows a factor of 333 decrease in latency, even if you get 1.0 millisecond latency due to short-stroking and aggressive caching the 440 is still a factor of 67 times faster.

http://www.superssd.com/products/RamSan-440/

The RamSan-500 series utilizing Flash memory technology tops out at 2 terabytes (with promises to go to 8 terabytes in the near future) of storage capacity per unit and 200 microsecond ( 0.2 milliseconds ) peak latency with a minimal IOPS rating of 100,000 IOPS. Just to put this in perspective, EMC recently achieved 100,000 IOPS using 2-CX30 racks and 391 disk drives in a RAID0 configuration, the RamSan-500 does it with a single 4-U unit, and the RamSan-440 beats it by a factor of 6 in a similar footprint as the RamSan-500.

http://www.superssd.com/products/RamSan-500/

Being solid state (except for the cooling fans) means the RamSan technology is inherently more reliable and less prone to crashes. Current estimates of MTBF show a value of at least 500,000 hours per RamSan before a critical failure. With built in RAID, write leveling for Flash and the use of ECC memory as well as ChipKill the RamSans have built in redundancy. Utilizing Flash drives for backup, the 440 also provides unparalleled data persistence with triple battery backup ensuring that all data is written to Flash before shutdown. The RamSan-500 also uses battery backup to ensure that the 64 gigabytes of DDR cache is written to Flash on shutdown.

Another big movement is the green technology push we see today. I’ll leave the math on figuring the amount of electrical and cooling costs disk arrays to you, but at under 300 watts for the RamSan-500 and 600 watts for the RamSan-440 it is easy to see the cost savings from the energy footprint reduction.

So what should you take away from all of this? Essentially, if you have reached the latency limit of your IO subsystem, increasing the number of disks will not help. The only way to improve the performance of the system is to reduce overall latency. If you are an online retailer looking at the coming holiday season with dread because of performance issues, look at using SSD technology such as the TMS RamSan 400/500 series to slay the latency monster and achieve stellar website performance.

From Mike at 30,000 feet

2008-11-08T06:42:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven’t been blogging much the last few weeks. Between various conferences and presentations I have been on the road and when not playing road warrior I have been configuring the lab to run a 300 gigabyte TPCH. Unfortunately during my first tries of the TPCH protocols I tripped over a bug in Oracle11g dealing with parallel query and partitioning, both of which are a requirement if you are to complete a 300 gigabyte TPCH. Hopefully I will find a patch waiting once I get back to the office so I can really dig in and see what I can wrest from the RamSan 500, 400 and my 4 node configuration.

I have also been busy creating a demonstration database to show a side-by-side comparison of the differences in performance between disk and RamSan, after all seeing is believing as the old saw goes. I am writing this entry while flying over the mountains of Virginia and North Carolina on my way home from giving a one day tuning seminar in Stirling, Virginia at Oracles offices there under the auspices of the NatCap Oracle group. I leave again next week to give the same seminar to the Dallas Oracle User Group at the Oracle office in Plano Texas and from there go on to the Super Computing conference in Austin and then finally home again to Alpharetta for the Thanksgiving holiday.

I am also compiling a set of statistics to show the IOPS/gigabyte needed by Oracle databases of various sizes, in this task I will be gathering what historical data I have from past clients and if any of you have that type of data for your systems I would love to have it to add to the mix. If I have time I will try to come up with a query that shows this for a system and will post it. I imagine it will involve a rather simple sum of gigabytes (maybe just the active ones from dba_segments) and a v$sysstat capture of read and write IOPS. Here is a simple first cut, no doubt someone can make it simpler:

set serveroutput on
SET FEEDBACK OFF
col tod new_value now noprint
select to_char(sysdate, 'ddmonyyyyhh24mi') tod from dual;
TTITLE 'IOs Per Second'
col null noprint
select null from dual;
spool io_sec&&now
declare
cursor get_io is select
nvl(sum(a.phyrds+a.phywrts),0) sum_io1,nvl(sum(b.phyrds+b.phywrts),0) sum_io2
from sys.gv_$filestat a,sys.gv_$tempstat b;
cursor get_gig is select
sum(bytes)/(1024*1024*1024) from dba_segments;
gig number;
now date;
elapsed_seconds number;
sum_io1 number;
sum_io2 number;
sum_io12 number;
sum_io22 number;
tot_io number;
tot_io_per_sec number;
fixed_io_per_sec number;
temp_io_per_sec number;
iopsgig number;
begin
open get_io;
fetch get_io into sum_io1, sum_io2;
open get_gig;
fetch get_gig into gig;
close get_io;
close get_gig;
select sum_io1+sum_io2 into tot_io from dual;
select sysdate into now from dual;
select ceil((now-max(startup_time))*(60*60*24)) into elapsed_seconds from gv$instance;
fixed_io_per_sec:=sum_io1/elapsed_seconds;
temp_io_per_sec:=sum_io2/elapsed_seconds;
tot_io_per_sec:=tot_io/elapsed_seconds;
iopsgig:=tot_io_per_sec/gig;
dbms_output.put_line('Elapsed Sec :'to_char(elapsed_seconds, '9,999,999.99'));
dbms_output.put_line('Fixed IO/SEC :'to_char(fixed_io_per_sec,'9,999,999.99'));
dbms_output.put_line('Temp IO/SEC :'to_char(temp_io_per_sec, '9,999,999.99'));
dbms_output.put_line('Total IO/SEC :'to_char(tot_io_Per_Sec, '9,999,999.99'));
dbms_output.put_line('Total Used Gig:'to_char(gig, '9,999,999.99'));
dbms_output.put_line('Total IOPS/Gig:'to_char(iopsgig, '9,999,999.99'));
end;
/
spool off
ttitle off
set feedback on

Here is what the output show look like and as you can see it will generate a report as well:

Fri Nov 07 page 1
IOs Per Second

Elapsed Sec : 132,900.00
Fixed IO/SEC : 3.93
Temp IO/SEC : .01
Total IO/SEC : 3.94
Total Used Gig: 1.34
Total IOPS/Gig: 2.94

Well, I will sign off for now, hope to see some of you at the Dallas Bootcamp seminar and more at the Supercomputing conference.

Two Tales

2008-10-06T10:14:00.000-07:00

I’ve been on serious Oracle and SSD related topics for a few months now so I thought I would relax for one entry and tell you a tale, well, actually two of them, and allow you to judge which is probably the truth.

Tale 1:

In 1979 or so a man who called himself R.C Christian (not his real name) came to the office of the Pyramid Quarry in Elberton, Georgia and contracted them, as the representative to several private individuals, create a large granite monument (the town of Elberton is the self proclaimed Granite capital of the world.) The design and location of the monument was provides and in March of 1980 it was erected by the Elberton Granite Finishing Company at a cost of approximately $41 million. Known as The Georgia Guidestones it sits outside of Elberton, Georgia on one of the tallest hills in Elbert county Georgia.

The Georgia Guidestones

The monument consists of 4-standing stones with a central Gnome stone and capstone. The faces of the standing stones are all inscribed with the same set of guidelines, each in a different “modern” language:

Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature

Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity

Unite humanity with a living new language

Rule passion — faith — tradition and all things with tempered reason

Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts

Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court

Avoid petty laws and useless officials Balance personal rights with social duties.

Prize truth — beauty — love —seeking harmony with the infinite

Be not a cancer on the earth — leave room for nature — leave room for nature

Note that the last guideline has “leave room for nature” repeated twice on each of the 4 monoliths eight total sides with the exception of the one in Russian, where it looks like they ran out of space. The monoliths have the message in the following languages, moving clockwise around the structure from the north: English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, ancient Chinese, and Russian.

On the capstone is the message, in Babylonian Cuneiform (north), Classical Greek (east), Sanskrit (south), and Egyptian Hieroglyphs (west), and the stone embedded in the Earth on the wesern exposure provides what is supposed to be an English translation: "Let these be guidestones to an age of reason." It is rumored to be engraved on the top of the capstone but as I am not 20 years old anymore I didn't try to get up there and see!

The guidestones messages and capstone message give a tip of the hat to Thomas Paine and other “radical” authors who espoused these types of rules for life in ages past.

The monument itself is aligned on several astronomical axis, it has a slit for viewing the sunset, a hole to look at the North Star (if you move to the left and squint as the monument is supposedly two degrees off proper placement) and a hole in the capstone that marks noon throughout the year. The width of the monument supposedly aligns with the migration of the moon throughout the year.

The setting sun through the slit

The sight of the setting sun through the aperture provided is quite fetching. Like I said, the North Star (“Celestial North”) is also visible through a hole in the center slab, if you move the left and look carefully through the hole due to a misalignment of the monument. I wasn’t there for noon so I couldn’t verify the noon time affect but I am assured it works well.

Now, tale 2.

As I was wandering around the site video taping and taking pictures an older gentleman and his wife drove up, he got out and his wife waited in the truck. Tall (about 6 foot) and a little heavy although not overly so, he reminded me of several rural Georgia farmers I have met in my wanderings. He told me that he had heard someone had vandalized the stones and wanted to see how badly (you can see what appears, upon close inspection, to be some type of clear polymer resin splashed on two of the stones.) We struck up a conversation and I asked him about the mystery surrounding who had them erected. He asked if I had heard the story and I said I read it on the web. He then stated:

“All of that is bullshit.” And smiled at me. “I worked at the quarry when this was built, Mr. Fendley himself had it built and made up that story” Mr. Fendley is/was the owner of the Pyramid Quarry. “He liked publicity and Lord knows this gave it to him.”

He also said he confronted Mr. Fendley about the monument and “He didn’t deny it, he looked mad, but kind of half smiled at me.”

Seems Joe F. Fenley Sr., Wayne Mullinex (the man who donated the land) and Wyatt C. Martin, President of the Granite City Bank involved with the financing were all Shriners (and therefore Masons) and agreed to do this together.

Now even if you take out having to pay for the granite itself (119 tones give or take) and the cost of the land, the cost of paying the workers to extract, cut, shape and carve the custom sized stones as well as place them is still rather high just for a publicity stunt, however, I wouldn’t put it past some folks. Also, the alignments and other parts of the monument are intriguing, why go to such effort when just the slabs themselves and their message would have been enough?

To add to the message there is supposedly a time capsule buried (or will be buried) under the slab that is on the west side of the monument. The slab explains the monuments message, who supposedly built it and details of the stones themselves. The “six feet under” makes me wonder if it isn’t someone who will be buried, hence the missing dates.

Inscription about the time capsule, notice missing dates.

All in all the stones looked like they were rather hurriedly inscribed because some of the inscriptions overrun the finished part of the slabs, there are translation errors and character errors on some messages and the lack of the repeat on the Russian stone due to running out of space. On the stone showing noon for several different parts of the year, the final marker overruns the finished part of the stone, was this a mistake, or is that marker more (or less) significant than the others?. Also, the North Star viewing hole appears to have been done as two holes drilled to run into each other, unfortunately they are off access to each other giving the hole a curved appearance and the noon hole looks like it was added as an afterthought.

Some have commented that if you wanted people to see the stones why not place them in a more significant location than a rural Georgia county? Well, for one thing, the sunset view and the North Star views probably would be difficult to guarantee in the heart of Atlanta or in areas where development might throw a skyscraper in the way. Besides if this really is a message for post-Armageddon survivors you don’t want it near any ground –zero targets.

Final “noon” marker overruns finished stone (circled in red)

Now, do the “mistakes” add up to rushed workers or are they deliberate? Are they sending us a message? I’ll leave that to the “DiVinci Code” fans to determine.

So, which tale is the true one? I know I have my opinion although the romantic side of me leans towards the mysterious group of strangers. For those close enough, go see this “America’s Stonehenge” yourself, for those who can’t, look them up on the net. I’ll be posting a bunch of other photos from my visit at my http://www.scubamage.com/ site as soon as I finish processing them, I’ll provide a more substantial link at that time.

Oracle's Data(Warehouse)base Machine

2008-09-29T15:06:00.000-07:00

I just got back from OOW08, my wife and I tagged a couple of days in Napa, California onto the conference for our 35st anniversary so I am still getting back into the swing of things.

The biggest news at the conference was Larry Ellison’s announcement of the Exadata storage concept and the Oracle Database Machine both developed jointly with HP. These new storage and database devices offer up to 168 terabytes of raw storage with 368 gigabytes of caching and 64 main CPUs in 8 stacked DL 360 G5 servers and each Exadata unit has a HP Proliant DL 180 G5 with dual quadcore CPUs, 8 gigabytes of memory and 12 SAS 300 GB or SATA 1 terabyte drives. The entire HP Oracle Database Machine contains 14 Exadata blocks and 8 – dual quadcore servers in a full configuration. The Exadata blocks can be purchased separately. There are 4-24 port Infiniband switches provided in the Database Machine. The entire device provides a throughput of 10.5 (SATA) to 14 (SAS) GB/second.

Now, each Exadata block can only provide 1 terabyte if the 300 GB drives are utilized and 3.3 terabytes if the 1 terabyte drives are used unless Oracle compression is also used. This space calculation (from Oracle documentation) is based on mirroring of all the drives and subtracting space for logs, undo and temp space. The usual “your mileage may vary” warning applies to this available space. ASM with what appears to be high redundancy storage is being used to manage the drives. So while raw storage appears to be 3.3 TB to 12 TB the actual space that ends up being usable is only 1/3 of those amounts. Each Exadata has 2 – 20 Gigabit Infiniband interfaces. However, the blocks can only support 1 GB per second of output with the SAS configuration and 750 MB per second in the SATA configuration.

The Oracle Database Machine was actually designed for large data warehouses but Larry assured us we could use it for OLTP applications as well. Performance improvements of 10X to 50X if you move your application to the Database Machine are promised. This dramatic improvement over existing data warehouse systems is provided through placing an Oracle provided parallel processing engine on each Exadata building block so instead of passing data blocks, results are returned. How the latency of the drives is being defeated wasn’t fully explained.

The HP Oracle Database Machine must run Oracle11g, 11.1.0.7, RAC and Linux and each Exadata block must have the new Oracle 11g parallel query engine installed. So in a full configuration you are on the tab for a 64 CPU Oracle and RAC license and 112 Oracle parallel query licenses (assuming it is per CPU, if it is per Exadata block then it will be 14) as well as any Grid control licenses you may need. The base cost of the full Database Machine is around $650K which seems quite a bargain for 14-46 terabytes of usable storage and a 64 processor stack, however, you will also need over a million dollars in licenses even with aggressive reductions from your sales representative.

The HP-Oracle Database Machine only works with Oracle databases (just thought I should throw that in.)

Whew! The HP-Oracle database Machine offers quite an impressive array of facts, figures, promises and price tags. It will be interesting to see how this all sorts out over the coming months. Will there be enough profit in the HP-Oracle Database Machine to keep HP interested? Or is this another network computer? For those too young to remember Larry’s last hardware foray was the Network Computer, a device that would replace all the desktops and centralize application and data storage, it failed. [Note: don’t forget about Pillar Data another Ellision investment that would seem to be hurt by this announcement]. I believe this system is designed to help Oracle protect turf from Netezza and promote growth in the analytics market. Targeting the product to OLTP environments is just sloppy marketing as the system will not offer the latency needed in real OLTP transaction intensive shops. These applications do not need parallel queries, they need low latency database writes and reads.

So for nearly 2 million dollars (licenses plus hardware) you get a dedicated Oracle server in a rack with 64 CPUs of central processing and 46 terabytes of usable storage managed by 112 block resident CPUs and a wee bit less than 224 gigabytes of cache area (168 gigabytes of cache were promised after processing overhead was subtracted). However, you must throw away your existing infrastructure, upgrade to Oracle11g and marry your future to the HP Oracle Database Machine to do so.

What might be an alternative? Well, how about keeping your existing hardware, keep your existing licenses, and just purchase solid state disks to supplement your existing technology stack? For that same amount of money you will shortly be able to get the same usable capacity of Texas Memory Systems RamSan devices. By my estimates that will give you 600,000 IOPS, 9 GB/sec bandwidth (using fibre Fibre Channel , more withor Infiniband), 48 terabytes of non-volatile flash storage [S1] , 384 GB of DDR cache and a speed up of 10-50X depending on the query (based on tests against the TPCH data set using disks and the equivalent Ram-San SSD configuration). More importantly, this performance can be delivered with sub-millisecond response time. At Oracle World I was presenting on the importance of latency to Oracle databases. The Exadata is massive and offers great bandwidth but will have nearly awful disk access tedencies due to the massive and slow disk drives included in the system.

Of course, if you don’t need 48 terabytes you can purchase Ram-San SSD technology from 32 gigabytes up to whatever you actually need. Ram-San SSD technology works with all Oracle versions and requires no special licensing or changes to your system. Ram-San uses fibre channel or Infiniband for connection to your infrastructure and looks identical to a disk drive once configured (it takes about 10 minutes.)

Oh, and the Ram-San doesn’t care if you are on Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, or cousin Joe’s Ozark Mountain special database.

So let’s recap:

Purchase the complex, tied to Oracle with a golden chain, HP-Oracle Database Machine and end up throwing away your existing technology stack, and spend up to 2 million dollars for the privilege, for a speed up of 10x to 50x on data warehouse type queries.

Or

Purchase just as much Ram-San SSD technology as you need ($43K base price for 32 GB mirrored), keep your existing hardware and license structure (or possibly reduce it) and get a 10x to 50x speed up on data warehouse type queries, with the freedom to change databases as you need to.

Call me simple, but I think I see the proper choice.

[S1]Note that the 8TB systems are projected to have 1.5GB/second of bandwidth sustained reads or writes (to Flash). This can be accomplished with four 4Gbit FC ports or two 4x IB ports per unit.

Is there a DBA in the House?

2008-09-16T18:17:00.000-07:00

No, I wasn’t recently at a theater that needed an emergency restart of the database for the show to go on. However I do watch a TV show called House. For those who haven’t seen the program House it is about an acerbic, disabled, pain pill addicted Doctor who just happens to be a genius diagnostician. Think of an anti-Marcus Welby (for those who remember the show Marcus Welby M.D.) Anyway, in each episode Doctor House and his team solve a medical problem by looking at the facts and applying logic, common sense and luck. Doctor House also has one rule, “Everyone Lies” and of course in each episode the pivotal point occurs when they find the lie that is obscuring the true source of the problem.

All of the problem solving that occurs on House reminds me of trouble shooting in the Oracle world. In many cases there are a number of symptoms with database problems and some of them are contradictory just as with problems in the human health areas. Oh, and everybody lies. “No, there weren’t any changes”, “No, nothing is different between these two test runs”, ”Yes, we used the same data/transactions/parameters”.

In almost every episode of House they go through at least three different “cures” before they find the real problem and solution. Many times in the Oracle universe we apply a fix for a problem, only to find it wasn’t really the issue, or, in fixing it we transfer the problem to another area of the database. Another similarity is that many times House and his team will take a shotgun approach when there isn’t a clear solution, applying two or more “cures” at the same time, much like a DBA will apply multiple fixes in a single pass, thus not really knowing what was fixed but just breathing a sigh of relief when performance improves.

I think the character portrayed as Dr. House would make a great DBA, but somehow I can’t see folks glued to their TV screens hoping that next index will fix the query…

SSD is Green Technology

2008-09-04T06:34:00.000-07:00

In a recent research project I compared the energy consumption of SSD based technology to IOPS equivalent disk based fibre attached SAN systems. As you can well imagine the SSD technology was much more space efficient, required less cooling and of course less electricity while providing faster data access.

But just how much can be saved? In comparisons to state of the art disk based systems (sorry, I can’t mention the company we compared to) at 25K IOPS, 50K IOPS and 100K IOPS with redundancy, SSD based technology saved from a low of $27K per year at 6 terabytes of storage and 25K IOPS to a high of $120K per year at 100K IOPS and 2 terabytes of storage using basic electrical and cooling estimation methods. Using methods documented in an APC whitepaper the cost savings varied from $24K/yr to $72K/yr for the same range. The electrical cost utilized was 9.67 cents per kilowatt hour (average commercial rate across the USA for the last 12 months) and cooling costs were calculated at twice the electrical costs based on data from standard HVAC cost sources. It was also assumed that the disks were in their own enclosures separate from the servers while the SSD could be placed into the same racks as the servers. For rack space calculations it was assumed 34U of a 42U rack was available for the SSD and its required support equipment leaving 8U for the servers/blades.

Even figuring in the initial cost difference, the SSD technology paid for itself before the first year was over in all IOPS and terabyte ranges calculated. In fact, based on values utilized at the storage performance council website and the tpc.org website for a typically configure SAN from the manufacturer used in the study, even the cost for the SSD was less for most configurations in the 25K-100K IOPS range.

Obviously, from a green technology standpoint SSD technology (specifically the RamSan 500) provides directly measurable benefits. When the benefits from direct electrical, space and cooling cost savings are combined with the greater performance benefits the decision to purchase SSD technology should be a no brainer.

A Tale of Two Databases

2008-08-24T19:01:00.000-07:00

It was the best of times, it was the...oops, wrong story. I’ve been doing a little testing of databases lately (imagine that…) anyway, while I am waiting for my own personal RAMSAN device my employer has set me up with a remote laboratory setup with a RAMSAN 400 - 128 gigabyte SSD connected through a single fibre channel to a 4 CPU server running RedHat 4.0 Linux. The server has 8 gigabytes of memory and the CPUs run at X gigahertz, a most satisfying sandbox.

In my own laboratory (no, I don’t have an Igor, but he would come in handy to help dispose of dead computers now and then) I am running a two-node RAC cluster with each cluster node being a single 3 gigahertz 32 bit CPU with hyperthreading and 3 gigabytes of memory. The cluster interconnect is a single gigE Ethernet. As to storage, I utilize two JBOD arrays, a NexStor 18F and a NexStor 8F each fully loaded with 72 gigabyte 10K Seagate SCSI drive and connected to the servers via a Brocade 2250 with dual QLA2200 1gb HBAs on each server. The arrays themselves are connected through single 1 gb fibre channel connections. Oh, it is also running RedHat 4.0 Linux.

On the system in the remote lab, let’s call it TMSORCL for ease of identification, I have 4-3.6 Ghz CPUS, 4-2 port QLA2642 4 Gb HBAs (I used 1) and 8 gigabytes of memory. I have Oracle10g 10.1.0.2 installed, on the home lab (let’s call it AULTDB) I have Oracle11g, 11.1.0.2 installed.

AULTDB is utilizing ASM on two diskgroups. One diskgroup consists of 16 drives, 8 on the 18F and 8 on the 8F using normal redundancy and failgroups, the other diskgroup uses 8 drives on the 8f and uses external redundancy. I have placed the application data files and index files on the datagroup with the 16 drives and the rest (system, temp, user, undotbs, redo logs) on the 8 disk externally redundant datagroup. Using ORION (Oracle’s disk IO simulator) I was able to achieve nearly 6000 IOPS using 24 drives, so I hope that I can get near that using this configuration.

TMSORCL is only using the RAMSAN 400 through its 4 gb fibre channel connection for all database files. The RAMSAN should be able to produce enough IOPS to provide at least 100,000 through the single HBA (if it doesn’t saturate that is.)

Using Benchmark Factory from Quest Software I created two identical databases (you guessed it, TMSORCL and AULTDB.) These are TPCH type environments with a scale factor of 18, the largest I could support and still have enough temporary space to build indexes and run queries.

Now, some may be saying that I have set up an apples to oranges environment for comparison, and they would be correct, however, many folks will be facing just such a choice very soon, that is, to stick with an Oracle10g environment or upgrade to an 11g environment. Another question that many folks have, should I go to RAC? So this test is not as useless as you may have first thought.

I set up both TMSORCL and AULTDB to be as near in effective size (memory settings wise) allowing that AULTDB was spread across two 3 gigabyte memory areas allowing for a total memory footprint of about 3-4 GB, I set up the TMSORCL environment to have a maximum size of 4 GB with a target of 3 GB for memory.

I had some interesting problems with the number 5 query in the TPCH query set until I added a few additional indexes, it kept blowing out the temporary tablespace even though I had it as large as 50 gigabytes. If you want the script for the additional indexes, email me. I also had issues with parallel query slaves not releasing their temporary areas. Anyway, after adding the indexes and incorporating periodic database restarts into the test régime I was able to complete multiple full TPCH power runs on each machine (just the single user stream 0 power run for now).

So, before we get to the results, let’s recap:

AULTDB – 32 bit RedHat 4 Linux RAC environment with two single 3 Ghtz CPUS running hyperthreaded to simulate 4 CPU total in 6 gigabytes of memory utilizing 4-1gb QLA2200 HBAs to access 24-10K 72 gigabyte drives using ASM. Effective SGA 4 gigabytes.

TMSORCL – 64 bit RedHat 4.0 Linux single server with 4 3.6 Ghtz CPUS with 8 gigabytes of memory utilizing 1-4 gb HBA port to access a single 128 GB RAMSAN 400. Effective SGA constrained to 4 gigabytes.

I ran the TPCH on each database (after getting stable runs) a total of 4 times. I will use the best run, as measured by total time to complete the 22 queries, for each database for the comparison runs. For AULTDB the best time to complete the run was 1:37:55 (One hour, thirty seven minutes and fifty-five seconds.) For TMSORCL the best time was 0:15:15 (zero hours, fifteen minutes and 15 seconds.) So on just raw, total time elapsed for identical data volumes, identical data contents and identical queries the TMSORCL database completed the runs 6.42 times faster (642%). The actual query timings in seconds are shown in the following chart. Based on summing the given query times the performance improvement factor from AULTDB to TMSORCL is 6.68 or 668% faster.

As you can see, TMSORCL beat out AULTDB on all queries with a range of 79% up to a whopping 4,474% improvement being shown based on the individual query times in seconds.

During the tests I monitored vmstat output at 5 second intervals, at no time did run queue length get over 3 and IO wait was less than 5% on both servers. This indicates that the IO subsystem never became over burdened, which of course was more of a concern with AULTDB rather than TMSORCL.

Now the TPCH benchmark is heavy on IOPS, so we would expect the database using the RAMSAN to perform better, and that is in fact what we are seeing, in spite of only having a single HBA and being on an older, less performing version of Oracle. So what conclusions can we draw from this test? Well, there are several:

For IOP heavy environments RAMSAN technology can improve performance by up to 700% against a JBOD array properly sized for the same application, depending on number and type of queries.

Use of a RAMSAN can delay moving to larger, more expensive sets of hardware or software if the concern is IO performance related.

Now there are several technologies out there that offer query acceleration, most of them place a large data cache in front of the disks to “virtualize” the data into what are essentially memory disks. The problem with these various technologies (including TimesTen from Oracle) is that there are coding issues, placement issues (what gets cached and what is left out?) and management issues, for example, with TimesTen there are logging and backup issues to contend with. In addition, utilities that use the hosts memory such as TimesTen add CPU as well as memory burden to what is probably an overloaded system.

What issues did I deal with using RAMSAN? Well, using the provided management interface GUI (via a web browser) I configured two logical units (LUNS), assigned them to the HBA talking to my Linux host and then refreshed the SCSI interface to see the LUNS. I then created a single EXT3 partition on each LUN and pointed the database creation with DBCA at those LUNs. Essentially the same exact things you would do with a disk you had just assigned to the system. The RAMSAN LUNs are treated exactly as you would a normal disk LUN (well, you have to grant execute permission to the owner, but other than that…) Now, if you don’t place the entire database on the RAMSAN then you have to make the choice of what files to place there, usually a look at a Statspack or AWR report will head you in the correct direction.

An interesting artifact from the test occurred on both systems, after a couple of repetitive runs the times would degrade on several queries, if I restarted the database, the times would return to near the previous good values. This artifact probably points to temporary space or undo tablespace cleanup and management issues.

I next intend to run some TPCC and maybe if I can get the needed infrastructure in place, a TPCE on each system, watch here for the results.

Atoms to Plowshears (Literally and figuratively)

2008-07-19T19:53:00.000-07:00

I took a trip to Seattle, Washington (well, actually Bellevue) to attend PSOUG Oracle Days (Peugeot Sound Oracle Users Group) last week. The conference was fine, people seemed to get what they wanted from it (according to those I asked.) I wish more folks had come by the booth to ask about Texas Memory Systems SSD technology, but I guess you can’t have everything! I had about 20-30 folks in my presentation: “The New Tuning Universe of Oracle11g” and had some good questions and the audience was very interactive and showed interest.

After the conference I had some time to kill so I decided to visit Magnuson State Park. It wasn’t an arbitrary decision just selected at random from the Seattle area map, I had heard (and seen some pictures) of a sculpture there and decided to visit there if I could as a result. My first set of directions actually took me to the artist’s house, I didn’t stop in and say hi, but just backtracked and went to the park.

Partial Shot of Sculpture

In the picture shown above, if you are not sure what you are looking at, let me explain. From the 1950’s to the current date the USA has been building and using Nuclear Submarines, starting with the USS Nautilus, SSN 571 commissioned in 1954. Both search and destroy (fast attack) and stealth missile deployment (Ballistic Missiles) submarines utilize stern planes and sail planes (the “sail” is what landlubbers would call the conning tower.) The sail planes are also called the dive planes as they are used to cause the submarine to dive and surface when it is neutrally buoyant.

The sail planes have to be particularly ridged and strong as they needed to also withstand the incredible forces generated when a submarine is forced to break through the ice in polar regions, while still being relatively light weight. This strong but light structure for the sail planes was achieved by making them hollow and filling them with special high density foam. The high density foam makes them very difficult to melt down, so when the submarines are decommissioned and scrapped, the sail planes are usually set aside.

In 1998 John T. Young, a Seattle artist, asked the government for any stainless steel scraps he could use for doing sculptures and they gave him the sail planes from several decommissioned and scrapped submarines, he used them to create 2 sculptures, one in Seattle and one in Miami, the submarines used were:

Seattle Fins: SSN 669 Seahorse, SSBN 641 Simon Bolivar, SSN 652 Puffer, SSN 615 Gato, SSBN 620 John Adams, SSN 595 Plunger, SSN 638 Whale, SSN 667 Bergall, SSN 673 Flying Fish, SSN 597 Tullibee, SSN 650 Pargo, SSN 662 Gurnard.

Miami Fins: Sea Devil SSN 664, Pogy SSN 647, Sand Lance SSN 660, Pintado SSN 672, Trepang SSN 674, Billfish SSN 676, Archerfish SSN 678, Tunny SSN 682, Von Steuben SSBN 632, Sculpin SSN 590, Cavalla SSN 684.

I served on two nuclear submarines during the period 1976-1979, the USS John Adams, SSBN 620 and the USS Bergall, SSN 667, so you can see my interest in the Seattle sculpture. The SSBN on the Adams number means she was a ballistic missile boat, we carried up to 16 Poseidon missiles with MIRV warheads (multiple independent re-entry vehicle, meaning each missile of the Poseidon class could hit multiple targets) with the nuclear capability that exceeded the explosive power of all the munitions used in WWII. All this was used to carry out the MAD (mutually assured destruction) doctrine between the USA, USSR and at times Communist (Red) China, although the main targets were predominantly in the USSR. The SSN means the Bergall was a fast attack submarine used to hunt and kill other ships, including hostile submarines.

The MAD concept was that the SSBN type submarines, being undetectable, would be unstoppable launch platforms that would be used to respond to any nuclear aggression from anywhere in the world. Thus assuring we could utterly destroy Russian civilization should they launch a first attack that succeeded in taking out our land based missile systems. The Russians spent a great deal of time, money and resources trying to find ways to beat the SSBN submarines, in no small part they were one of the key technologies that kept the Russians and Chinese from launching a first strike during the worst part of the cold war.

ComSubLAnt (Commander Submarine Atlantic) could communicate with us using radio and LFT (Low Frequency Transmissions.) They kept the encrypted traffic going 24X7 replacing any actual command traffic with 15 word family grams, news and other items to not allow the Russians the ability to sense something was happening by seeing increased communications traffic. Each sailor was only allowed a limited number of family grams per patrol, no reverse communication, from the sailors back to the families was allowed. A patrol lasted 3 months with most of that spent underwater on patrol and the balance in such sun-fun spots as Holy Loch, Scotland repairing what the other crew broke on their patrol. The SSBNs had two crews, the Golds and Blues, I was on the gold crew. You usually spent about 70-80 days underwater with no fresh air, no outside views and no females! Your biggest enemies where boredom and doing qualifications, you didn’t think about the hundreds of pounds per square inch of pressure that were striving to snuff out your life every second of every day while you were on patrol or you would go mad.

We were the warriors of the cold war. The cold war was officially over (at least most felt it was) when the Berlin wall was taken down in 1989, the submarine fleet was as much responsible for that as any president. We were away 3 months out of every 6 from our families, for these patrols, I did 5 patrols and a DASO run for a total of 18 months out of the 33 I spent on the Adams. At just about any time during those 18 months a worn seal, a broken valve, a busted pipe could have killed us all, as it did for the sailors on the two nuclear submarines that didn’t come back, the USS Thresher, SSN 593 and the USS Scorpion, SSN 589. Believe me, listening to the pings and squeals as we went to test and one time to crush depth was a bit unnerving when you realized how much pressure it took to do that to several inches of stainless steel pressure hull. The Russians lost several submarines during that time as well and now most of their fleet lies in ruins silently rusting away at the piers in Vladivostok and other Russian ports.

As I stood there and placed my hand against the only surviving part of the submarine that had guarded my (and your) life both directly when I was aboard her and indirectly through the MAD concept when I wasn’t I couldn’t help but feel a bit nostalgic and melancholy that such a fine ship met such an ignoble end as becoming feed stock for John Deere tractors except for one sail plane in this sculpture garden. Of course the transition from a ship of war to farm implements maybe has greater cosmic import that I realize. The Bergall had both of her sail planes here, but since I only spent a few months and never went to sea on her, I didn’t feel the connection I did with the Adams.

As I wandered the sculpture garden taking pictures I heard and watched a group of children playing on a nearby hill. Later from that same hill I watched them walk down through the sculpture garden toward the beach and right past the last intact piece of the USS John Adams. I wondered if any of them truly understood what that piece of steel really meant? Of course maybe it’s true purpose was so that they never again would have to live under the threat of nuclear annihilation of the entire planet. I hope someone explains it to them, so that the meaning is not forgotten.

The Author beside the USS John Adams SSBN 620 Sail Plane

Lies, Damn Lies and SSD Technology

2008-07-02T12:28:00.000-07:00

As I am now employed by a company that manufactures solid state drives for use by databases and other applications that require high speed, high bandwidth access to data. I have taken to reading articles, blogs and other sources whenever I see they discuss SSD related topics. Through this practice I have found there are woefully uninformed folks making very many untrue statements about solid state drive technology.

Let’s look at some of the highlights:

1. Solid state drive technology is very expensive
2. Solid state devices are best when directly attached to the internal bus architecture
3. Solid state drives will only be niche players
4. You can get the same IO rate from disks as from SSD

First, the myth that solid state drives are expensive was, like many myths involving Oracle and computers, true at one time, however, times change. The huge leap in demand for flash memory with the advent of I-pods, digital cameras and video recorders has created a memory glut. You can get a 4 gigabyte flash memory stick or card for under a hundred dollars for your camera or other flash device. In fact memory prices promise to plunge even farther as mass production techniques and miniaturization technology improves. The cost for a gigabyte of enterprise class disk storage is around $84 at last count, for the most current version of the Texas Memory System RAMSAN SSD technology, using flash memory and regular memory, the cost is around $100 per gigabyte, with further decreases in memory costs, RAMSAN SSD prices will fall even further.

Second, in a recent article a producer of both disk and solid state technology seemed to indicate it works best when hooked directly into the internal bus for the computer and really wasn’t efficient when attached as a SAN would be attached. I am not sure where he is getting his information (other than his company is trying to shoe-horn solid state drive technology into their existing SAN infrastructure) but it has been my experience that rarely if ever do users flood the fibre channels, they may overload a couple of the disk drives, but generally the SAN connections are not the source of the bottleneck when it comes to SAN technology. Using standard fibre channel connections and standard host bus adapters Texas memory Systems achieves over 400,000 IOPS from a single 4U RAMSAN SSD. To get the equivalent IOPS using regular disk technology you would need over 6000 or more individual disk drives, the racks to hold them and the controllers to control them, not to mention the air conditioning and electrical power needed for that many disks.

Next, solid state drives will only be niche players, this is a ridiculous statement. Most clients of RAMSAN SSD technology use them just as they would disk arrays. The RAMSAN SSD technology will replace disks as we know it in the near future and disks will be relegated to second tier storage and backup duties, replacing tapes. Many experts are talking of the tier 0 level of storage and specifically mentioning SSD when they do so. When you can place a single 4U sized RAMSAN SSD into your system and replace literally hundreds or thousands of disks the idea that they will only be niche devices is foolish. This is especially true when you consider the decreasing costs, the ease of administration and the performance gains that you get when SSD technology is properly deployed.

Finally, the myth that with disks you can get the same IOPS as with SSD. Yes, you can, however, you would need X/(IOPS/disk) number of disks where X is the desired IOPS to achieve it, double that number for RAID10 or RAID01. Even high speed 15K drives can only deliver around 100 to 130 IOPS per second of random reads due to the mechanical nature of disk drives, as the late Scotty on the Federation Starship Enterprise used to say (about every other episode): “Ya cannot change the laws of physics.” Disks, without prohibitive cooling technologies, cannot exceed certain maximum rotational speeds, read heads, mounted on mechanical arms can only move so fast and the magnetic traces can only be packed so close on the disk surface. To get 400,000 IOPS you would need at least (400,000/130)*2= 6153 drives in a RAID10 array. At 18 drives per tray that is 341 trays of disk drives at 8 trays per rack that is almost 43 racks needed to hold the drives. Now, even with the largest caches available you still require anywhere from a millisecond to several (up to 5 with minimal loads, higher with large loads or more than single block reads) milliseconds to do each IO, this latency will always be there in a disk based system, the latency on SSD based systems such as RAMSAN are in the hundreds of nanoseconds range (fractional milliseconds).

So, what have we determined? We have found that SSD technology is comparable in cost with enterprise level disk systems and will soon beat the cost of enterprise level disk systems. We have also seen that SSD technology when properly designed and implemented (not shoe-horned into a disk-based SAN) will fulfill the promise of fibre technology and allow use of the bandwidth currently squandered by disk technology. We have also seen that far from being a niche technology, SSD is becoming the tier 0 storage for many companies and will soon supplant disks as the primary storage medium in many applications. Finally, while it is possible to achieve the same level of IOPS using disk technology that SSD technology provides, it would be cost prohibitive to do so, and, even if you did achieve the same level of IOPS, each IO would still be subject to the same disk based latencies.

I am not afraid to say it: SSD technology is here, it is ready for prime time and it is only a matter of time before disks are relegated to second tier storage. Disks are dead, they just don’t know it yet.

Is Hydrogen Really Green?

2008-06-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

The hydrogen economy seems to be full of promise. A high energy fuel that burns almost completely clean (other than water and a bit of nitrous oxide) and can be used in internal combustion, gas turbine and external combustion (sterling cycle) engines as well as fuel cells. However, there are no free lunches, let’s examine what is really involved in the production, transportation and use of hydrogen as a fuel.

Since there is relatively no free hydrogen in nature, hydrogen has to be produced through electro-chemical or catalytic means. The most common means of hydrogen production is the electrolysis of common water, you take two water molecules (2-H2O) and combine them with a jolt of electricity and you get 2 hydrogen molecules (2H2) and one oxygen molecule (O2). In a loss-less system you could then take the hydrogen and recombine it with the oxygen and get back the energy used to separate the molecules back in the form of heat, (the reaction is exothermic, as in gives off heat) or in the case of a fuel cell electricity, and have a waste product of pure water. However, there is no such thing as a loss-less conversion going either way so it takes more energy to produce hydrogen gas than you get from burning it or using it to produce electricity in a fuel cell.

Hydrogen is much less dense (in liquid form) than gasoline, this means that while hydrogen provides more btu of energy per pound than gasoline, a pound of hydrogen takes up more volume. This density difference means that to take advantage of the increased BTU per pound you have to burn or convert a larger volume of hydrogen. How about a 60 gallon tank for your SUV? Hydrogen also must be kept compressed and/or insulated to prevent losses. Hydrogen tends to cause hydrogen embrittlement of most metals so long term storage is also an issue. Liquid natural gas lines could possibly be used to transport the liquefied hydrogen, however, better insulation and the embrittlement issues would have to be addressed before the existing infrastructure could be used safely.

One promising hydrogen storage technology uses metal hydrides such as zirconium hydride that allow storage of hydrogen in interstitial sites in the crystal lattice, some tests show that storage densities exceeding liquid densities by several fold are possible. The use of metal hydride storage would put the fuel tank back at the current size in your SUV and would provide added safety since the hydrogen is not in liquid or gas form.

It should be obvious that using fossil fuels such as natural gas, oil, or coal to generate electricity to create hydrogen would be a huge mistake. The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2), the major greenhouse gas, which would be created from using any fossil fuels to produce hydrogen would cause far more damage from CO2 emissions than any benefits gained from using the hydrogen thus produced. However, it waits to be seen if some enterprising third-world country (no doubt financed by mainline energy companies) doesn’t use massive coal burning to produce hydrogen for sale to the more industrialized countries.

This leaves us with wind, solar, tidal or nuclear power to provide the needed energy to produce hydrogen in sufficient quantities to make it a viable energy source. What are the economic considerations of each of these energy sources?

Use of wind power

On the surface wind power looks good. You put up a tower (or two, or a hundred) with a wind generator and get electricity and dump the electricity into an electrolytic cell that produces hydrogen. Of course some of the electricity needs to go into compressors to store the gaseous hydrogen, some needs to go into pumping and purifying the water being fed into the electrolytic cell. At current manufacturing costs electricity from wind runs 4-6 cents per kilowatt hour, when the wind blows, it isn’t raining to hard, freezing or being repaired because of lightening strikes. Wind also ties up huge amounts of real estate, causes noise pollution and has reliability issues. Plus to produce the nearly 250 gigawatts of energy needed to produce the amount of hydrogen gas to support just the needs of the USA to replace fossil fuels in transportation alone would require 12,500 2 megawatt wind turbines and a mere 5000 of the new 5 megawatt mega-turbines. Want one over the top of your house?

Use of Solar Power

Let’s look at solar power, it is quiet, produces no waste, perfect right? Not quite. Even if the new high efficiency cells pan out where we double or quadruple the efficiency of existing cells by using new technologies (to 40-60 percent conversion efficiency) we will still only have a cost of 8-10 cents per kw-H, more expensive than wind generation technology. At a solar constant of 1,395 watts per acre and a 60% conversion efficiency yields a back of the envelope calculation of 837 watts per acre. To provide the 250 gigawatts using solar we would need to clear 30 million acres of land and put in high efficiency solar panels, how does that grab you?

Use of Nuclear Power

Nuclear power can produce immense amounts of energy while requiring only small amounts of space. The 250 gigawatts required for the hydrogen gas production would require 150-160 new reactors to be built. At 100 acres per plant this is only 16,000 acres of land, as a comparison, Ted Turner’s ranch properties are estimated at over 1.9 million acres. As to the nuclear waste issues, the new designs for reactors promise to reduce waste and make better use of recycling of fuel. This won’t completely eliminate the nuclear waste problem but may make it more manageable. At 11.1 to 14.5 cents per kw-H it is currently one of the more expensive options until you consider the environmental costs of other technologies. However, using the heat from the nuclear process to facilitate steam methane reforming, biomass gasification or coal gasification to produce hydrogen more efficiently we could reduce the cost, increase the output and reduce the number of needed nuclear plants thus further mitigating the nuclear waste problem.

Summary

So, before we all leap upon the hydrogen technology bandwagon we need to step back and examine the real costs and the real technologies needed to make it a reality. Is hydrogen really a green technology? As with all things technology the answer is a fully qualified maybe.

Opportunities Part Two

2008-05-30T05:47:00.000-07:00

Well, I have started my new position with a flight to Houston, Texas to meet the team at Texas Memory Systems, my new employer. I accepted the position, Oracle Guru, yes, that is my real title and will be on my business card. I guess if Steve Feuerstein can be a PL/SQL Evangelist for Quest Software I can be an Oracle Guru for Texas Memory Systems.

For those not sure what Texas Memory Systems does, check out their website at http://www.texmemsys.com/. One of my duties will be to manage/monitor the StatsPack Analyzer website at http://www.statspackanalyzer.com/, if you have a statspack (or AWR) report you want analyzed, log on and upload it! Also, swing by the forums and have a go at improving our rules for statspack/AWR evaluation. We want to improve the Statspack Analyzer application and we value your feedback.

So, I was actually unemployed for 15 days (11 workdays) but I did have the offer within 36 hours a new record for me. I can’t imagine how I would feel being out of work for several weeks or months as 15 days was disturbing enough (after all, how much Oprah or Dr. Phil can one person take?) To all of those job hunting right now, stick with it, good luck and I hope you have as good a luck as I did in my search.

I am really looking forward to getting in the new equipment down in the dungeon where I can torture it to my hearts content with various tests, benchmarks and other procedures my devious mind can come up, I am looking forward to also publishing the results so everyone can see how really amazing is this SSD technology. Imagine a 146 times improvement in query performance. How about virtually no latency for redo log operations? Take a look at some of the client histories and white papers on the http://www.texmemsys.com/ to see real data.

Anyway, it is great to be part of the working masses once again, unemployment is hard work!

Opportunity

2008-05-18T14:55:00.000-07:00

It has been said that with each problem or trouble comes opportunity. In recent times we have all seen or been subject to the whims of the marketplace. In 1990 I was laid off from the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) from the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant Training Facility, I used that as an indicator to me that perhaps it was time to leave the Nuclear industry and looked to change career paths into the computer industry. Needless to say that my switch to being an Oracle DBA (Database Administrator) proved a good choice and I have been gainfully employed working with Oracle databases as both in-house and consultant.

During my 10 years as a Nuclear Chemist I watched the Nuclear industry grow from a growth industry, to a stable, to a declining one. Now of course with oil prices rising and CO/CO2 emissions on everyone’s mind the Nuclear industry is making a come back. No, I am not returning to the Nuclear industry as my skill set is nearly 20 years out of date. However, for the first time in 18 years I have been noticing certain indicators in the Oracle DBA marketplace that show it may be time for a change.

The indicators of course deal with the increased automation of the Oracle DBA job by Oracle coupled with the large supply of (at least on the low end) DBA services as outsource resources. It is difficult to compete with DBA resources that are happy to receive a small fraction of the salary you need to live on in the USA. I predict that the DBA job for Oracle will cease to exist as we know it within 3-5 years. Perhaps rather than being part of the large out flux of skilled but overpriced Oracle talent at this future date it is time to evaluate where you want to be in 3-5 years.

You may know (or you may not as they are keeping things rather under raps) Quest just went through a large round of layoffs in their Oracle and database areas. Yes, I was caught in the lay off and was officially put in the ranks of the unemployed on May 15, 2008. Perhaps it is a signal that it is time to move to another area of expertise. Don’t worry, I am landing on my feet and already have an excellent opportunity I am considering and unless something else shows up that is absolutely stellar, I will probably take it. The opportunity provides a path to stop feeding from the Oracle trough and move into an area that is more future-proof. I’ll keep you posted as I move forward with this new prospect.

Of course this is a record for me, in 35 years of working it is the longest I have gone without a job (so far 2 full work days) however, I did have the offer within 36 hours of being laid off. So, I plan to use this as an opportunity to step back and really consider where the computer industry is going and look to a position that will enable me to make full use of the skills I have acquired while moving forward into new and exciting areas. Opportunity is knocking, I think I’ll answer.

If you aren't part of the Solution, you are part of the Precipitate...

2008-04-02T13:11:00.000-07:00

I am not one to complain about things unless I can propose solutions (generally speaking.) In my last blog I did a bit of complaining so in this edition let’s examine some possible mitigating ideas for the problems I brought up last time.

In my last blog I basically stated that the western nations could do little to reduce green house gas emissions and that even if we (we as the old established, stable nations) completely eliminated green house emissions that it would make virtually no difference in the long run.

So, what can we do? Well let me list a few items first.

Point 1: Melting of polar/glacial ice is reducing the albedo of the Earth (decreasing our reflectivity) because when the white snow/ice melts it is being replaced by dirt/water which absorb infrared and other energies rather than reflecting it, producing heat.

Point 2: The replacing of trees with manmade, usually dark structures is resulting in urban areas absorbing more heat

Point 3: The highest use of energy comes from air conditioning, heating, and heating of water in most homes.

Point 4: The major cause of global warming is the effect of the nearly circular orbit in this phase of the Earths 100,000 year cyclic dance with the sun resulting in the highest level of solar input to the eco-system in 100,000 years.

Point 5: Burning of fossil fuels for power generation and transportation adds millions of tons of green house gases to the environment.

Point 6: Developing third world countries and China and India have little incentive to reduce emissions.

Ok, what can be done about point 1? Well, we could paint the ground reflective white where the ice/snow has melted and construct large floating reflective surfaces in place of the missing ice, of course this would have to be done over and over again as the calving ice flows smashed down. In addition the angle that the Sun’s rays strike at the poles makes this very inefficient. So, what else could we do?

Hmmm, how about a tax credit for everyone in the USA that is willing to have their dark roofs painted with reflective paint? Since the sunlight reaching the USA (for the most part) is at a more oblique angle than the polar sunlight we would get more efficient reflection. This would also reduce the internal temperature of the houses reducing the cooling loads in the summer months, perhaps something could be done with high tech coatings that, when the temperature dropped below a certain level, these coatings would absorb heat? Hmmm…this also covers some of point 2.

Alright what about point 2? Require builders to not be able to take building sites to grade over 100 percent of the site. At least in Atlanta the first thing builders do to a new subdivision is knock down all of the trees, bushes and grass and scrape away the top inches of topsoil so they can “clear to grade”. Make builders have to justify every tree they remove. Give huge tax credits to “green” builders who build off the grid homes, build underground homes and homes embedded in hillsides. Make it worth their while to not knock all the vegetation to flinders when they build new homes. Penalize them heavily if they do clear to grade. Use of passive solar for water heating, solar panels, and other energy saving techniques should also give tax benefits to those who pursue them.

On point 3, use of the solutions for point 1 and 2 should handle most if not all of point 3. Use of proper passive solar designs can help heat the home, heat hot water and provide for cooling through proper use of convection flow.

On point 4, Ok, this one is tough. However, let me delve into my engineer, and radiation technologist background. The actual percentage of the suns energy that reaches us is quite small. By obscuring even a small (relatively speaking) percentage of this radiation nearer the source it could make a large difference in temperature rises on Earth. As you get nearer the sun the amount of area needed to be actually blocked becomes quite small (a small percentage of the Earths diameter actually.)

Think of a flashlight beam, the width of the beam at the flashlight head is much smaller than if you project the light onto a building 100 feet away. Now, if we assume the diameter of the Sun is equal to the diameter of that flashlight lens, the Earths diameter is 1/110 of that diameter. So, for ease of calculation let’s make the diameter of the lens 11 inches (a really big light!) in this case, the Earth would be roughly 1/10 of an inch in diameter. Now, place the 1/10 of an inch diameter Earth 28 feet away, how much of the flashlight beam is intersecting our 1/10 of an inch Earth? Not a whole heck of a lot, this is equivalent to the actual amount of Solar energy we get out of the ½ of the Sun’s total output (remember, half of the Sun’s output gets sent the other way.)

Everyone has seen or at least heard of total solar eclipses. A solar eclipse happens when the moon (roughly 1/4 the size of Earth) passes between us and the Sun. The moon completely covers the Sun’s disk when this happens. So, assuming that we wanted to block 2 percent of the Solar input we would need a disk roughly the same distance from the Earth as the moon is that is 1/50th the size of the Moon (21 miles in diameter). If we move it out to twice as far as the moons orbit this drops to 10.5 miles in diameter, at 4 times as far, to 5.25 miles in diameter and so forth and so on.

It would be a relatively stupid satellite, only needing to keep itself relatively stationary directly between the Earth and the Sun in a solar orbit, minimal thrusters to combat light pressure and do station keeping. Manufacture it out of used aluminum cans. At only an inch thick, that would require a little more than 685 tons of aluminum (or, make it inflatable out of mylar only a couple of millimeters thick…) you would be surprised how fast temperatures would go down. Build it with shutters so we could fine tune how much we let through, make it solar powered or use the entire thing as a parabolic disk to run a thermionic generator to provide the power to run it…When we didn’t need it anymore (in a couple of hundred years) nuke it into oblivion to restore the solar output, shoot, build in a self destruct after 100 or so years or just turn it edge wise or push it off solar axis in orbit using it’s thrusters.

On point 5, give big tax breaks for companies that show they really are going green. Utilize nuclear energy. Give breaks to companies that produce “green” hydrogen and breaks to consumers who utilize hydrogen burning cars.

For point 6, pay subsistence farmers to not cut down the rain forest. Provide food from all that we waste to feed them and their families. Only give foreign aid to countries that can prove they are doing everything possible to develop “green” technology. Put stiff import trade embargoes on anything that is not produced using green technologies world wide.

Just a few suggestions, and believe it or not, all of them doable and all of them would provide positive and lasting results. Let’s stop gnashing our teeth and solve the issues that we can.

Global Warming

2008-03-14T20:12:00.000-07:00

The other night I watched two shows on different networks that both proposed to show what would happen to the earth should all of mankind just up and disappear. Then another show talked about global warming. Gloom and doom let me tell you!

But all of the gloom and doom got me thinking. I’ve seen the same reports most of you have, and probably a couple you haven’t, I am sure you can say you’ve seen reports I haven’t. Anyway, mashing it all together my mind came up with a few salient points.

Population of China: 1,321,851,888
Population of India: 1,129,866,154
Population of USA: 301,139,947
Population of Europe: 788,000,000
Population of South America: 371,000,000
Population of Russia 141,000,000
Others: 2.5 billion

China and India are charging into an economic growth unprecedented in history. This growth will mean industry, power production, cars, trucks, etc. all on a scale we have never seen.

Even if USA and Europe drop their carbon and other emissions to zero immediately I seriously doubt China, India and South America will go back to the primitive conditions they have striven to climb out of over the last decade or two. So, unless we are willing to force stagnation and no growth on China, India, South America and everyone else who falls into the “third world” category there is precious little we can do about humans global warming contributions.

Of course there are computer models that show that if all human greenhouse gases stopped dead tomorrow, it would make maybe a half a degree or less difference over the next 50 years. The major problem is that the Earths orbit is fairly circular right now, meaning that the solar energy being input into the Earths ecosystem is at a maximum. This happens on a grand cycle of about 100,000 years as the orbit goes from elliptical to circular and back again and as the Earth “nutates” on its access.

One of the well meaning scientists showed a chart of CO2 levels and temperature over the last several thousand years which clearly showed the rise in CO2 levels corresponds to a rise in temperature, as has happened over and over again as far back as can be determined! This means this cycle has been happening since before the industrial revolution, heck, before the agricultural revolution, before the stone age. In short, it is a natural cycle. To my slightly trained eyes the curves looked nearly identical right up to the most current one. Of course he immediately zoomed in the on the most current and blamed it all on man.

The graphic above shows the CO2 curve I am talking about, it shows the CO2 concentrations as charted at Vostok, Antarctica from ice cores. Notice a sudden jump in CO2 about every 100 thousand years (some say corresponding to a long solar cycle where we reach the closest we ever get to the sun.) You can also see we are right on schedule for a sudden jump and are right on path. Of course what usually happens after this cycle is an ice age (are you ready for global cooling?) The graph is the current time on the far left going to 400,000 years ago on the far right. At the low point in the current graph the city recently found submerged off of India, the one off of Cuba and the carvings off of Japan were thriving on what was the sea shore. No telling what other archeological marvels are sitting on the old sea coast at about 120-160 feet deep along the continental shelves.

In fact the largest jumps in CO2 happened well before man was doing anything other than scraping the ground with sticks in most places to plant maze. Now I suppose I could really go off the deep end and propose that these 100 thousand year cycles correspond to previous peaks in heretofore unknown civilizations that because of glaciations and natural decay we have no clue about, but I am afraid the fossil record doesn’t support that.

To think us humans are the sole agents of change in all of this is rather egotistical don’t you think? Especially ironic is that Mars, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn are all experiencing their own global warming, I suppose we are responsible for their problems as well.

Are Humans Intelligent Enough for Religion?

2008-02-01T00:37:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, I am not being flip. I see almost daily new atrocities and stupidities done in the name of religion and it truly sickens me. About the only religion that isn’t participating in one way or another seems to be Buddhism. Almost every religion other than Buddhism seems to think killing in the name of their god is the way to do things. Islam (the religion of peace), Christianity (There is no greater commandment than this: Love your brother), Hinduism, you name it, all seem to be bent on destroying their version of heathens.

Islam used to be the most enlightened religion of its day, encouraging learning, thinking and acceptance, now I suspect its Phophet wouldn’t recognize it. The atrocities done in the name of Christianity over the centuries are many, as are those being done right now both by and to Christians. All of this raises my original question in the title of this blog: Are humans intelligent enough for religion?

It seems humans in general can’t help twisting even the most enlightened teachings to meet their own twisted logic. Of course more at fault are the pathetic followers who swallow teachings of monsters as whole and good even when in their heart of hearts (one hopes) they know it is drivel.

The latest example is the story of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, a student in Afghanistan who shared an article he had read about women’s rights with some friends, was turned in, and now faces a death sentence. Yes, that is right, a death sentence, for daring to read and show his friends an article on women’s rights. If you find this as wrong as I do, sign the digital petition at www.independent.co.uk/petition maybe they will listen if enough of the world stands up to them.
Prove that we are smart enough for religion, take it back from those who twist it to their own means.

Everything I Really Needed I learned from Twilight Zone

2008-01-02T01:35:00.000-08:00

I find myself often wondering where people get the odd ideas they seem to get. I see so many closed minds that almost refuse new ideas to the point of death. After long thought I realized why.

Many places and people where never exposed to Twilight Zone. For those not aware of Twilight Zone it was a 60's era TV series hosted (and sometimes written) by a man named Rod Serling. Rod Serling grew up in Binghamton, New York, not that that has a lot to do with it, but it is an interesting bit of trivia (and every small "idellic" town he used in his stories was based on it.) Anyway, the stories usually took one idea and took that idea to its maximum execution (For example: What if there was a war and everyone died but a single amn and woman...on opposite sides of course.) Each show was designed to make you think, as well as entertain.

Later in the 60's came The Outer Limits, another show that wanted to make you think. Between them they stired the neurons in my young, forming mind around a bit making quite a few interesting connections and forming my immature sense of right and wrond and sense of humor into what they are today. Many of the lessons in the shows are very important.

1. If you don't know what it does, don't mess with it
2. Treat others as you wish to be treated
3. Tolerate new ideas
4. Tell the truth as often as possible
5. Just because something is different doesn't make it bad
6. God might be the next person you talk to
7. Respect everyone; man, woman, child, or alien from Beta Lauri

Maybe if everyone was exposed to as many new ideas and thoughts as these shows pumped into my young mind we wouldn't have as many issues as we do now. If we all could practice moderation in word, thought and deed, wouldn't it make the world a bit easier to deal with?

Anyway, just some musing on this, the first day of 2008. By trhe way, I have been upgrading my picture galleries on http://www.scubamage.com/, stop by and have a peek.

Happy New year to everyone, may this be the year you have been waiting for!

2007-11-02T13:20:00.001-07:00

There are many times in life when you just want to give up. It seems no matter what you try, nothing works. It is very frustrating to try, try, try and have your efforts result in failure.
However, let me suggest something, always give it one more try, it may be the one that succeeds, you only fail when you have stopped trying.

Let me tell you a little story. I was diving in a local lake looking to take some underwater shots of the remains of a forest that had been flooded when the dam that created the lake was built. Unfortunately I was violating a basic tenant of diving, never dive alone. After taking a couple of shots I found a fishing rod and reel lying on the bottom. Securing the camera housing to my dive harness with its carabineer I grabbed the rod and made for shore. After a couple of kick cycles I realized the camera, housing and strobe set up, worth about $3000.00, was no longer attached to my harness. I planted the rod and reel butt end into the mud as a marker and then retraced my path to try and find the camera. I feel sick to my stomach as I realize that I have effectively traded a $3000.00 camera setup for a broken $70.00 rod and reel. If I had been diving with a buddy I can’t help but think he (or she) probably would have seen me lose the camera. You can guess what happens next.

The lake bottom where I dive is covered with a foot thick (or more) layer of fine silt, the slightest movement of the water drives the silt into an all-obscuring cloud. Even at the best times visibility only ranges from 5-10 feet. My previous movement through the area had raised a cloud of silt effectively covering my back trail, I could have passed within a foot of the camera and I wouldn’t have seen it. In fact, on that dive, and on two others that day I didn’t find the camera. I have also promised my wife I will never dive alone again after I confess when she delivers more tanks that I was single diving.

I returned to lake whenever I was able, diving with whatever buddies I could find and searching the area where I first thought the camera to be. It turned out I had miss-identified a buoy I used to mark the location, thus I was not able to locate the fishing rod marker or any other underwater landmark I remembered from the dive when I lost the camera. The area had several lines run along the bottom to help divers to navigate to various structures, the lower lake levels had resulted in boat anchors, or maybe malicious divers, cutting some of the lines leaving entanglement hazards in many locations. It was very frustrating diving.

I prayed that God would help me in my search. On my seventh return dive I got completely turned around (with limited visibility and presbyopia making compass headings at times difficult to see) and ended up many yards east of where I thought the camera was located, I came upon a submerged tree top I recognized, then some saplings arranged in a familiar pattern and finally the fishing rod! I immediately surfaced and retook the bearings on two points. Finally I felt I was close. I submerged and searched the area around the pole, unfortunately I didn’t find the camera on that dive, I couldn’t even relocate the rod once again.

In fact, I didn’t find any sign of the camera or the fishing pole during over 5 more attempts in spite of having the coordinates. Needless to say I was getting discouraged. I was checking Ebay for prices for replacements and had asked for quotes on a new system from online merchants. Even a local county’s search and rescue diver unit couldn’t find the camera or the rod. After helping out several times by acting as a surface watcher when I couldn’t get a buddy, my wife had basically given up, I can’t say I blamed her, I was near giving up myself and every time I wanted to go back out to the lake to search it was getting to be more and more of a struggle. A voice inside my head insisted I keep trying, just one more time.

Plagued with doubts I wondered if someone had already found the camera rig, maybe a fisherman had snagged it and really got a catch of the day, maybe a boat anchor had drug it out to deeper water or maybe it was buried in the silt. Still, I had to keep trying, at least one more time. I set a limit on time, if I didn’t find the camera by the 15th of the next month I would give up.

On the way to the lake I ask God for guidance one more time. I waited at the dive site for two hours for my dive buddy to show, finally he arrived and we donned our gear for the dive. While he tried to get his buoyancy adjusted and worked with some new equipment configurations I searched the final area where I felt the camera could be.

Equipped with magnifying lenses inserted into my mask to make reading the compass easier and a sonar transponder/receiver set (one on the dive flag which I had attached at the coordinate point to a log on the bottom and one on my dive harness) to help me stay oriented underwater in the limited visibility I began another search dive. From the best coordinates I had, the ones from the rod and reel when I found it the second time, I began doing sweeps from 30 feet depth down to 50 feet depth working from east to west from the coordinates. I worked slowly and carefully trying to stir up as little silt as possible. 30 down to 50 and back up to 30 each time only moving west enough to just overlap the previous swath of bottom I could see within the beam of my 10 watt HID light. At 25 minutes into the dive, halfway through the fourth cycle (the second return from 50 feet) I see the camera, it is just sitting there on top of the silt, waiting.

Even though I was under water I said through my regulator “Thank you God” over and over again. I grabbed the camera with my right hand in a death grip and using the transponder headed back to the dive flag. After a safety stop at 15 feet I surfaced less than 15 feet from the dive flag. I carefully carried the camera back to shore, handing it to my dive buddy just long enough to remove my fins. A quick inspection on shore showed that in spite of being submerged at a depth of 43-50 feet (the lake has dropped almost a foot a week) for nearly 8 weeks the Ikelite housing has not leaked a drop of water and the sealed battery chambers on the DS51 strobes appear water tight.

After I got the camera, housing and strobes home I carefully rinsed the silt and slime off of the gear and wiped it dry with a soft cloth towel. Opening the back of the housing I found it was dry as a bone inside, no leakage in over 8 weeks of submergence to 50 feet deep. I removed the camera and touched the shutter button, activating the camera that has been sleeping for 56 days, it wakes up and complains its battery is critically low, I pointed it at my wife and took a picture, the sound of the mirror cycling was the sweetest thing I have heard in a long time. I dried the strobes and carefully removed the battery compartment doors, while the batteries themselves where dead (after trying to keep the strobes active for 8 weeks it was no wonder) the compartments are dry and clean. A quick check with new batteries showed the strobes are both fully operational.

Everyone is amazed that the camera was found, most had given up hope.

If I had given up at 5 search dives, or 10 search dives I wouldn’t have found my camera, it took 13 dives over 8 weeks. It also took many prayers and the help of several friends and acquaintances to eliminate areas until the final area where I found the camera was isolated. All told there where over 20 dives that I know of to search for my camera by 5-6 other divers and myself. There may have been many more that I didn’t know of, I was offering a $200-$300 reward for its safe return. Since I found the camera, I am donating the reward to a charity.

Always give it one more try, don’t allow what others say to discourage you.

Mind over Mussels

2007-10-23T13:32:00.000-07:00

Well, lake Lanier, Georgia is heading for historic low levels while building continues unabated for new home, condos and businesses in and around Atlanta. For those of you who may not understand the connection, Lake Lanier is the main (read only) source of water for most of the Metro-Atlanta area. Of course as Paul Harvey likes to say, there is a rest of the story.

It seems there are two species of nearly extinct mussel and one species of fish that are on the endangered species list. These nearly extinct critters are why the Corps of Engineers says they need to maintain the high flow rates out of Buford Dam on Lake Lanier, flows so high that they are releasing nearly twice as much water as is coming into the lake from other sources. And the hard science these flow rates were based on? It doesn’t exist, but of course the fact that the flow helps keep a small coal fired power plant operating that provides power that the Corps would have to buy somewhere else might have a bit to do with it.

Of course the Corps has not been known for wise management decisions, it seems every year they plan on a huge storm season which never quite develops. In the Corps managed resources in central Florida where my father and brother live, lakes are also at an all time low, thanks to Corps mismanagement and over releasing.

Finally, now that it may be too late to prevent draconian measures, a study is being done to determine if those pesky mussels and fish really need all that water. Of course Atlanta and Georgia aren’t blameless. As I said above the governments of the various communities seem hell bent on cutting down every possible tree and growing houses, businesses and apartment complexes even though they strain already maxed out infrastructures and resources. Commute times of 2-3 hours to go less than 30 miles are becoming common place and water rationing is just around the corner.

I am afraid without a moratorium on new construction, more oversight on the Corps of Engineers and a lot more common sense Atlanta and points south down river are in for a rough, and dry, ride.

The Writers Group

2007-09-04T13:20:00.000-07:00

I recently visited my Father and Step Mother in Inverness, Florida. One of the things I enjoy doing with my father is attending his writer’s group with him when I am able to. The group meets once a week at a community theater and center on the way to Crystal River. The group leader and organizer, a younger lady named Elissa, scours the web to find topics and then she places the topics on slips of paper and places the slips into a small cloth bag. A the group waits she selects a topic at random and everyone gets a chance to write a short essay, story or just their thoughts on the topic. As Elissa’s tastes are rather eclectic, so of course are the topics that catch her eye and make into her little cloth sack.

This weeks Writer’s Group topics where:

“My Workspace” (assigned the week before)
“A Century Old Symbol of Rebirth”
“On Top of the Sky Scraper”
And
“Gold Plated Diapers”

I don’t just sit and watch when I visit the group, I also take part in the writing and critique. I guess my favorite topic from the four above was “On Top of the Sky Scraper” for some reason this brought up an interesting vision for me so I thought I would share what I wrote with you.

“On Top of the Sky Scraper”

The water is calm this morning. You can see the torch of the statue of Liberty through the morning mists. The air is still fairly cool, not like it will be later in the day as the temperature and humidity rise to a crescendo of hot, wet heat that steals your breath and energy, only dying back to livable levels after dark.

The morning sun plays on the water, glittering and dancing as the only breeze f the day runs across the surface far below chasing itself into oblivion. The sky is a hard blue bowl with just the wisp of a cloud here and there.

You can hear the water lap against the stone, slowly eating it. Eventually the water will wear it all away. Over the side I look far down to the water, if you fell you wouldn’t survive more than likely.

“It used to be a lot taller.” The words interrupt my thoughts. “Several stories infact.” My father comes up behind me, old before his time, his face showing the lines of thousands of drifting miles of ocean and the leather of his skin, years of sun. “Then the ice up north and down south melted, of course it was the ice down south that mattered.” He rambles sometimes now, we used to listen, but now it has become part of the background.

We turn and go back to the stairwell, out of the sun which is already getting intense. In the last month the water had climbed another floor down below us and at night the building moans and rattles. Soon we will have to move again.

“People used to pay millions for that view.”

“Millions of what?” I ask, not really caring about the answer. Our footsteps echo from the musty depths of the stairs.

“Never mind, it isn’t important” he answers.

Until next entry, have fun and stay safe!

Mike

A Mazatlan Vacation Review

2007-06-11T11:23:00.000-07:00

Mazatlan as a vacation spot doesn’t offer the same level of options as other Mexican destinations such as Cancun or Cozumel. I would roughly compare it to the Cabo San Lucas area.

The tours in Mazatlan available to the tourist aren’t really very interesting to tell the truth, we took the City tour which ended up being a thinly disguised attempt to get you to buy things from selected merchants, at least in Cancun they call it the shopping tour, we also took the country tour to Coppela. The Coppela tour stopped at a couple of small villages but mostly tried to get you to buy things. The villages weren’t very scenic and overall pretty run down. The traditional bakery in one village was good and seeing tiles made was interesting, but I don’t know if you can build a tour around them. With the large number of abandoned gold, silver, copper and platinum mines in the area I am surprised they didn’t have a mine tour, now that might have been more interesting.

I am afraid the best part of the vacation was at the resort with the pool and beaches and the scuba diving. We didn’t take the third tour we had for free, the Stone Island tour, due to time constraints so I can’t address that one. They also had a Jungle and Bird watching tour available but they took over 8-10 hours each and again, we just didn’t have the time.

In places like Cancun and Cozumel there are numerous family oriented tours available and other tourist attractions including clear water (100 foot visibility is common) diving and snorkeling, tours of archeological sites, cenote’ diving and a better market area for shopping. Mazatlan offers good sport fishing and a relaxing atmosphere that is not as frenetic as its Caribbean cousins and if all you want to do is lay around the pool or at the beach sipping your favorite beverage then Mazatlan may be perfect for you.

The scuba diving in Mazatlan is totally different than the Caribbean style diving in Cancun and Cozumel in that on a good day in Mazatlan the visibility is 30 feet, on a good day in the Caribbean it is over 100. While we were there the best visibility was about 20 feet which dropped to 5-10 feet in the afternoons. There is plenty of sea life and the dives are mostly shallow (less than 30 feet) if you are in to Much Diving (taking macro photographic shots of small reef and bottom dwelling critters) then Mazatlan is the place. If you want wide open underwater vistas with lots of pretty coral and fish, then you will be disappointed. On thing they could do to add some interest to the diving would be to sink a couple of old fishing or shrimp boats out on the deeper sand flats and create an artificial reef area, the problem with the shallow sites was that they were to prone to losing visibility with the shift of the wind or current. The other item that you need to be aware of, at least with the dive operator I used, they had only a small open boat as a dive boat which did not have a dive ladder so you had to alley-oop it over the gunwale to get back on board.

There were several night clubs and many yuppie style bars near the Resorts so there was nightlife for the more swinging individual but having gone beyond that stage I really didn’t try them out, however, they didn’t seem to be quite as crazy as their Cancun counterparts. There were also a couple of nice restaurants one called Espanola even had some great paella I heard but didn’t get a chance to test it out.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed Mazatlan, I enjoyed the challenges of diving and photography there, but that might not be for you. So again, if you want to lay by the pool and go to the beach and don’t mind low visibility snorkeling and diving, then by all means consider Mazatlan as a low cost alternative to Cancun and Cozumel.

For my dive report with pictures go to:

http://www.scubamage.com/files/Diving_Mazatlan.pdf

Mike

Tokyo

2007-05-04T06:48:00.000-07:00

I had the opportunity to spend some time in Tokyo, Japan on business recently. I found the people to be freindly and very business oriented. Of course you must wear a suit and tie for any business there luckily I still have a couple. No doubt you have also heard about their business card ceremony.

In Japan you must have a bunch of business cards with you. Each contact you make will present you his card, writing facing you. You take it, carefully examine both sides and place it somewhere safe, you then hand him your card in the same way. You never write on their cards or treat them with disrespect as the card represents the person.

While I was there I noticed a definate disparity between the generations, maybe more than we see anywhere else, here is a shot I took which probably best exemplifies what I mean:

The youth in Japan seem to be rebelling in dress and mannerisms, I hate to see this happen as I think the culture of respect for others and the concept of "face" are very valuable and I wish more folks ascribed to them.

Of course there is still beauty all over Japan, even in the middle of downtown Tokyo:

If you get a chance, I do suggest a trip to Japan.

Mike

Anyone up for Lake Meade?

2007-03-22T16:35:00.000-07:00

Like I said in my last blog I will be in Las Vegas for Collaborate 07 (April 15th - 19th) following Collaborate I am going to try and do a dive in Lake Meade and am looking for a dive buddy (or two or three) anyone interested? Just drop me an email.

Mike

Collaborate 2007 - Shameless Plug

2007-03-19T09:57:00.001-07:00

Well, Collaborate 2007 is just around the bend (April 15th - 19th) in Las Vegas, Nevada. I hope I can see many of you there. I will be giving a Full-Day University Seminar, U6: “Testing to Destruction – Benchmarking Oracle” on Sunday, April 14th for anyone interested in learning about the latest benchmarks and how Benchmark Factory can help you with doing capacity planning and SLA management. We will be giving away a free copy of our Benchmarking Book and a fully functional demo copy of the Benchmark Factory product to all participants. The seminar will cover the benchmarks that are currently in use and the new TPC-E and TPC-App benchmarks and will provide demonstrations of TPC-C and TPC-H benchmarks and present case studies of actual client benchmarks including custom scalability testing.

I will also be doing a one-hour presentation on “Beefing up Oracle10g memory” at 09:45 on Thursday, April 19th. In this presentation I discuss the management of memory when you use the new Oracle10g features such as ASSM, ASM and automated PGA management.

I really want to encourage you to attend Collaborate 2007 as it tends to be a very good conference with loads of good technical content from folks who have been there and done that, with real in-the-trenches presentations on real world Oracle issues and topics. Besides, who doesn’t want to go to Las Vegas on expenses?

I hope to see you all there and let’s all have a great learning experience at Collaborate 2007!

Down with the New!

2007-03-11T19:24:00.001-07:00

I live in a nice neighborhood, swimming pool and tennis courts, large lots, established yards and nice trees and shrubs. All-in-all the neighborhood is about 20 years old but has been well maintained, the houses are all in great shape, none are in need of paint, none have old cars in the yards or odd pieces of machinery in the front yards on blocks.

The median price for a house is about $300K in my neighborhood (I got mine 10 years ago when prices were much less) not bad for the Atlanta area, I should be quite pleased. However, I have a gripe (imagine that!).

Within easy driving (or even walking distance) of my neighborhood are several new developments, they may or may not be swim/tennis, none of course have established yards or landscaping and for the most part the houses are so close you can hear your neighbors hair growing (or falling out, whatever the case may be.) In these new houses the square footage is usually less or equal to mine with some that have more of course. What really chaps my rear end is that almost to the last one, all start at prices that are higher than a majority of the homes in my neighborhood. The only thing going for these homes with higher price tags is they are new.

Next home owners meeting I think I will call for a general price increase by 100K across the board in my neighborhood. Instead of being tied to a pricing system that lock steps older homes forcing them to lower prices than inferior new homes. Why do I say inferior? I guess I like a bit of privacy with my house, I don’t like to be able to reach out and touch my neighbors from my window. I like to be able to look at mature trees and not worry if my sod is going to die next time it doesn’t rain for a bit.

In an older home I know my foundation isn’t going to crack, that the pipes that are supposed to carry hot, carry hot and those that carry cold, carry cold. I had a new house where they plumbed the toilet to use hot water, believe me it doesn’t work very well. Usually an older home will have gone through its troubled youth and will not have many problems as long as it is maintained properly.

Anyway enough of ranting I guess. I am sure that the home owners will reject my proposal no matter how eloquently phrased, after all the real estate agents wouldn’t mislead us would they?

Help! I'm Writing and Can't Stop!

2007-02-21T05:48:00.000-08:00

Things have a way of taking on a life of their own. At one time I had a life, I really did. I camped with my kids, did some hunting with my buddies, went on fishing trips, I even spent quiet nights at home with the wife on occasion. I had a dream of writing fiction, even had a couple of short stories published in some regional magazines and had a few rejection slips from my novels. Then I began writing technical.

It started out with just an article now and then, free stuff to magazines like Radiation protection Management. Then I started getting paid for doing product reviews and for documenting things I had done with Oracle and the long slippery side into writing servitude began. Before I knew it I was writing books, I had no weekends, I did no camping, hunting or fishing. I carried a laptop with me everywhere and snuck in a few words whenever I could. I was even writing at work!

Soon I was doing articles, presentations, books and now blogs (I have 3 of them including this one) I can't sit down and feel comfortable without having a laptop in my lap, my hands curl naturally into writing position (or is it arthritis from too much writing?)

I was pulled over the other day, the officer said I was driving erratically, I explained about a deadline and how I had to finish an article, he saw the laptop sitting beside me, how embarrassing, he let me go with a warning and plea that I get help.

I checked my resume, 7 pages of writing credits, this has got to stop I told myself. Is there a 12 step program for writers? "Hello, I am Mike and I am a writer...."

Prime Vendors Take Prime Cuts

2007-01-28T18:30:00.000-08:00

In the February 2007 Readers Digest, Sacha Zimmerman has penned the article Your Money for This? In this article Sacha delineates the outrages allowed to occur within the defense Prime Vendor program. The Prime Vendor program was initiated by the Defense Logistics Agency in response to the abuses reported in the previous spending programs in the defense agencies that resulted in the infamous $600 toilet seats and $400 hammers of yesteryear.

In this article such outrages as $20 plastic ice trays (99 cents for you and I), $1,000 hotplates (last years $450 specials, less than $200 for you and I) and $22,797 mini-refrigerators (similar if not exact matches to the $99 Kmart specials), and these are just a few examples of the outrageous prices charged by the vendors in the Prime Vendor program. It seems whenever one of these defense vendors gets a monopoly they can’t resist bilking the government out of everything they can, and the government allows it! If they are overcharging this much for minor items one has to wonder how much we are being raped for the guns, bombs and other “real” defense hardware. Perhaps we should put the controls in the hands of Walmart with bonuses designated by how much they save us on these bulk purchases based on amount paid below an average retail price.

I believe it is time for a civilian oversight committee, appointed by a lottery system, who is charged with periodic, random overviews of non-security defense purchases. Participants would serve for a term of a year during which time they would be paid the same salary with the same benefits of their civilian job and their civilian job would be guaranteed during that time period to be held for them. All reasonable expenses to perform the required audits would be covered.

If the oversight committee finds that these prime vendors have charged more than a specified amount above the average price for the items they provide, the prime vendors are immediately dropped from the program and are prohibited from participating in government contracts for a period of years, say 5. In addition, if any member of the oversight committee is found to be taking kick-backs, payoffs or bribes of any sort from any prime vendor or prime vendor alternate, then both the committee member and the CEO or president of the company that bribed or otherwise enticed them would be sentenced to a prison sentence of at least 5 years with no chance of parole.

It is time the congressmen and senators that allow and condone these billing practices have the controls removed from their well greased hands and us poor dumb civilians given more of a say into how our money is spent.

Glue

2007-01-05T07:57:00.000-08:00

Mike Ault, Copyright Jan 4, 2007

A recent happening at a local university got me thinking. You see, they had a very expensive sculpture, entitled “Spaceship Earth” that collapsed because it was created with the wrong kind of glue. Seems almost a parallel to our current situation on Earth doesn’t it? Have we created the world community with the wrong kind of glue?

What have we tried to glue our world community together with? In the past, we used the glue of conflict and conquest, of course many would argue we are still using the same glue today, but I would have to disagree. Today we use the glue of economics and only resort to force when economics and its sister glue diplomacy, fail. Is economics the proper glue to hold our world together?

No one would disagree that economics (the ebb and flow of money and resources) is powerful glue, it will force dire enemies to the bargaining table. Unfortunately economics can also destabilize and dissolve bonds just as easily if it is not applied correctly. So economics requires an expert craftsman to produce the desired bonding, as we have seen in the current world, these are few and far between.

So what would a proper glue for a world be? A glue that doesn’t dissolve as many bonds as it makes? How about glue composed of equal parts of compassion and tolerance? Any creed or belief that says it is better or has more right to exist, or that it is the only proper one is not binding glue, it drives disunity, stifles compassion and promotes intolerance.

Of course there are obviously creeds and beliefs that by their very nature are intolerable to society (those promoting human sacrifice, cannibalism or exploitation of the weak for example) must be expunged in civilized society, compassion and tolerance must also be tempered with wisdom and have boundaries. Of course one could argue that if everyone embraced the concepts of compassion and tolerance, such atrocities would not be allowed to occur anyway.

If we don’t find binding glue for the world I am afraid we will meet the same fate as the sculpture “Spaceship Earth”, a pile of ruble in the early morning rain.

Diving a Backplate and Wing with Double Tanks

2006-12-24T11:28:00.000-08:00

By Mike Ault, Copyright 2006

If you have been following my material on scuba diving you know I have been writing about diving, diving dry suits and diving back inflate BCDs (buoyancy compensation device) a natural follow-on is diving what are known as backplate with wing type BCDs and the configuration of tanks, regulators and hoses known as the DIR (Doing It Right) configuration. The main purpose of double tanks is to extend the amount of time one can remain underwater and to provide for redundancies in your air supply.

In normal configuration for an open water certified diver the diver has a single air tank, a primary and backup regulator (known as an “Octo” or “Octopus”) a gauge console, usually including a submersible pressure gauge (SPG), a air pressure gage, a compass and in advanced configurations, a dive computer. The dive computer may or may not be air-integrated, which means it is able to sense and record changes in your air tank volume. The normal configuration may also include one or more low pressure inflator hoses; one for your BCD and one for a dry suit. In a DIR configuration using double tanks, the tanks are connected through a three-valve manifold assembly with a right and left tank isolator valves (called the right and left posts) and a cross connect valve. This configuration utilizes two-primary regulator stages with the various hoses logically configured across the two primaries.

Usually the right hand tank valve has the main primary regulator attached, the main primary has the primary-secondary stage (the one you breath through, normally called the primary) and the fill line for the wing. On the left tank valve (or “post” you attach the secondary-primary regulator you attach the backup secondary regulator (taking the place of the octopus) however now it is simply called the backup. On this left hand regulator you also have (in a “pure” configuration) a single, small SPG (usually what is known as a brass and glass SPG) and the fill line for your dry suit, if needed, since actually in a “pure” setup you would have a small bottle of compressed argon with its own regulator that would fill your dry suit.

Let me explain about this backplate and wing I keep talking about. The backplate is just what its name implies, an aluminum or stainless steel (I guess there may some titanium ones out there, but I haven’t seen any) plate that is specially drilled and milled to hold a single continuous length of nylon webbing that forms the shoulder straps and waist belt. This continuous piece of nylon webbing makes for a simple, easy to maintain, method of wearing the backplate for a diver. Being a continuous piece of webbing this eliminates points of failure present in standard BCDs. There is usually a second strap, called the crotch strap, coming off of the bottom of the backplate. The crotch strap prevents the backplate from riding up and provides a point of attachment for a pull line from a scooter, relieving your arms from having to provide not only steering control but a grip on the scooter itself.

A wing is a flotation bladder with an inflation hose (called a “corrugated hose”) and usually a dump valve (on the back side of the one pictured below.) The buoyancy bladder is encased in a protective covering usually of a rugged nylon fabric. Some wings, Like the Oxycheq Signature 50 pound, have a double layer of fabric for added protection of the inner bladder.

The metal backplate provides a rigid mounting point for either a single tank or a set of doubles. When a single tank is utilized it is more stable to use a special metal bracket called a single tank adapter or STA. STAs are usually made from the same metal as the backplate to reduce the possibility of galvanic corrosion, likewise the attachment posts or bolts should be of the same material, either aluminum or stainless steel.

As its name implies a set of doubles consists of two air tanks connected through a manifold assembly and rigidly mounted to each other through a set of stainless steel tank bands. The tank bands have the attachment fasteners (bolts) that attach the tanks to the backplate and are usually mounted on the tanks with 11 inch centers to allow mounting to the standard backplate.. Using an STA when using a single tank allows for rapid conversion between diving a single tank and diving a set of doubles as it only requires removing two wing or butterfly nuts and swapping out the doubles for a single tank mounted to an STA.

One major difference between a backplate and wing assembly and a BCD is that many modern BCDs have built-in or “integrated” weight pockets, some fixed, some removable, while, generally speaking, backplates with wings do not. This lack of weight pockets requires either mounting weight pouches on your tanks or your harness, wearing a weight belt, or, utilizing a weight harness. Most advanced divers seem to prefer the weight harness over the other options usually with placement of “trim” weights either on the tank or harness straps. Below is a picture of the DUI weight harness I use. The DUI harness has threaded weight packets (see the yellow handles?) you simply pull the yellow handles and it unthreads a heavy nylon cord that holds the pouch in place allowing dropping the weight pouches if needed. The use of the harness removes the weight pouches from the BP/W or tanks unless trim weights are needed.

I purchased a stainless steel backplate from Kraken Forge (a custom backplate provider) and using the DIR guidelines from http://www.gue.com/Projects/WKPP/Equipment/index.html, configured my webbing, buckles and D-rings as specified. I then had my local dive shop (LDS), Sea Sports Scuba, http://www.seasports.com/, configure a set of dual 80 cubic foot air bottles with a DiveRite 300 bar manifold. A bar is a single unit of pressure equivalent to the pressure of the air at sea level (not exactly, but close enough) therefore a 300 bar manifold can withstand internal pressures of 300 times that of the air at sea level ( 4350 PSI, your car tire has about 35 PSI.) I also had them O2 clean and certify the tanks and manifolds so I can utilize Nitrox (air with increased levels of Oxygen.)

I also purchased an Oxycheq 50 pound lift wing and a DiveRite TrekWing 35 pound lift wing with an aluminum backplate. To provide single tank use capability I purchased both a aluminum and a stainless steel STA. Once I had all of the required components, I had the LDS assemble the stainless steel backplate, the Oxycheq wing and the set of doubles. I assembled the aluminum backplate with the DiveRite TrekWing wing and aluminum STA for use with single tanks.

Meanwhile I purchased two Oceanic Alpha 8 PX3 Piston Regulators, a seven foot hose for my primary and a set of inflator hoses and a Sherwood Compact Navigational 3 Gauge Console with Compass from http://www.leisurepro.com/. I realize that a three gauge console with a SPG, depth gauge and compass is not true DIR but I like it simple and having the three in one place makes it easier for me. I then configured the dual regulators as shown on the GUE website.

So, what does it feel like to dive this contraption? Now as you can imagine, dual tanks, a manifold, and a stainless steel backplate are all heavy, to the tune of around 100 pounds with the tanks fully loaded with air. Add to that the needed lead weights to ensure you are neutrally buoyant if you breathed the tanks down to 500 pounds of pressure (where they become positively buoyant) and to offset the possible positive buoyancy of the wet or dry suit you are using for thermal protection, in my case an additional 14 pounds of lead. So all told, about 114 pounds of equipment not counting the weight of the exposure suit, fins, mask, gloves, hood and other paraphernalia. All told, diving a dry suit with a backplate and wing using double aluminum 80 tanks, a diver probably weighs at least 120 pounds more than their normal weight when out of the water.

Lifting the backplate and wing with the doubles from the ground up to your back could result in a hernia, it is much simpler to don it from the back of a SUV or pickup truck tailgate. Once it is in place, and the straps of the webbing are properly adjusted, it actually is not difficult to walk around with, as long as you aren’t climbing stairs or navigating difficult terrain.

Once you get in the water, you must inject some air into your wing to provide flotation, usually you carry your fins and then lay back in waist deep water to put them on, if you don’t inject some air into your wing you could get pulled under by the heavy gear, this nearly happened to me when I lost my balance. Once you are in the water the weight of the equipment becomes negligible due to the buoyancy of the air tanks (a Catalina aluminum 80 is listed at 31.6 pounds with 4.1 pounds positive buoyancy empty. So its real weight is 35.7 pounds, however in water the apparent weight will be about 2 pounds for each tank when full.)

Once I got my buoyancy nearly sorted out (I started out nearly 12 pounds over-weighted at 26 pounds of lead additional weight) the actual diving with the backplate and wing was comfortable and easy. Of course viewing me underwater when I was over weighted you would have thought I was a rototiller. I also had some issues with hose creep with some of the hoses, but as I learn to position them better and clip some of them to the harness assembly that will be reduced. There have been comments about the 7 foot primary being difficult to deal with, I found no such issues when I rigged it as suggested (down the back, under the right arm, across the chest, around the back of the neck to the mouth). The secondary has a bungee necklace attached that is used to hang it directly below your chin so it is available immediately for use. In this configuration you donate the 7 foot primary hose to a dive buddy who has an out-of-air (OOA) situation and then breath off the backup yourself.

The original idea behind the 7 foot hose on the primary is that in situations where there may be restrictions, such as in a cave or wreck dive, you would not be able to share air with an OOA buddy if you were tandem with a short hose. A long hose used in an OOA allows for two divers to swim in tandem formation (one in front of the other.) If the diver never does cave or wreck a 5 foot hose on the primary should be sufficient.

Another question asked usually goes something like “In my open water class we were taught to give the octopus (backup regulator) to an OOA diver, why do you give the primary?” The answer to this is simple, many times an OOA diver will be near panic, he or she will grab your primary as it is usually the most readily visible air source. It is also easy to just take the primary and pass it properly oriented and you know it works, so it just makes sense to pass the primary, dip and grab the backup that is bungeed around your neck and resolve the OOA divers problem, then assist him or her to exit the water.

Once the buoyancy weighting is determined and proper trim weights (if needed) are mounted, diving a backplate and wing is just as comfortable, if not more, than a vest or back inflate BCD. In fact I am finding it takes less weight to get me neutral with the backplate and wing with doubles (about 14 pounds) than it did diving a back inflate BCD with a single tank (18 pounds) while offering more freedom of movement and more secure tank mounting.

So the main downside to the BP/W with doubles is that it is more bulky and heavy on land. With proper planning you can overcome the cumbersome nature of the BP/W with doubles and once you are in the water will really enjoy this configuration.

It should be stressed that before you use a set of doubles with a manifold that you be properly trained in the manipulation of the three valves in emergencies such as a free flowing primary or backup, rupture disk rupture, or ruptured hose. These “valve drills” as they are called usually involve switching to the backup regulator (if the primary was the one that failed) then isolating the free flowing hose or tank by use of the tank valve and isolator valve (the one in the middle). Reaching the valves in a dry suit or thick wetsuit can be tough and you should practice stretching exercises to ensure you are limber enough to reach them.

For the compete article with photos go to:

http://www.authorsden.com/ArticlesUpload/26132.pdf

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years! Happy Holidays!

Personal Responsibility

2006-11-21T09:33:00.000-08:00

Mike Ault, Copyright 2006 (Edited on 11/21/2006 to add a seventh item to list, thanks Robert!)

Since taking up scuba diving as a hobby I pay a lot of attention to diving accidents and near misses, always striving to improve my dive skills so I don’t become a statistic. Many of these accidents begin with typical behavior I would expect from teenagers; dares, trying to do things beyond your skill level, just doing dumb things. The scuba accidents that happen because of equipment failure are few and far between and can usually be traced back to improper maintenance or knowledge of operation. Of course accidents caused by health issues also occur, but that is beyond the scope of this blog.

In many of the follow up posts abut these accidents and incidents people are quick to jump on the instructors, dive masters and other professionals, blaming them for the people who are with them’s mistakes. Many folks seem to believe that unless someone tells you don’t do something stupid, they are responsible for you doing something stupid. Many times it seems our whole tort system is based on that premise.

For those not familiar with the Scuba certification process, the process involves classroom, self study and practical factors. All of the certification agencies provide training materials that are a part of this certification process. There are also many third-party books available for diving.

Let’s examine two divers:

Diver A:

Took a quick Resort Dive cert, decided he loved it. Upon getting home from vacation Diver A enrolled in a full certification class, went to the local library and bookstore and picked up several diving instructional books. Diver A read all that he could and visited many online sources to find out everything he could before class. Diver A read all of the manual, answered all of the questions and participated in class as much as possible.

During the water certification phase Diver A practiced as much as possible and asked questions, even dumb ones.

Diver B:

Took a quick Resort Dive cert, decided he loved it. Upon getting home from vacation Diver B enrolled in a full certification class. Being a very busy person diver B didn’t have time to read the materials or do the questions, he got his answers from folks he knew had taken the class before. Diver B did the minimum needed to get certified. Knowing that questions only delayed the class, he didn’t ask any questions and often made others in the class feel stupid for asking them.

During the water certification phase Diver B did the minimum required, never feeling totally comfortable during the sessions but figured he could pick it up later.

Ok, which diver would you want as a buddy?

Diver A takes responsibility for his actions and his life, he posts his mistakes to his favorite scuba board and asks for criticisms so he can improve. On dives he does his best to be self-reliant and watch out for his buddies. He carefully monitors his air and depth and pays attention to his dive computer. If the dive starts feeling wrong, he aborts it.

Diver B is rude and arrogant hiding his lack of knowledge by being condescending and belittling those around him. In the water Diver B has poor buoyancy control, sucks down air like he has an unlimited supply and expects everyone to help him. He never checks his air pressure or depth figuring that the dive master will take care of that. Diver B depends on the DM for making sure he doesn’t exceed limits, doesn’t have a dive computer and barely remembers where he put the recreational dive planner charts, let alone how to use them.

Which diver do you think will immediately think of suing someone if they get bent or have an accident? We all need to take responsibility for ourselves and our actions. I would say more than half of the problems facing the USA, and the World, today are because we don’t practice self-responsibility. It is always some one else’s fault.

Students don’t learn, we blame the teachers, kids misbehave, we blame video games. No one wants to say Johnny can’t read because Johnny didn’t apply himself to learning to read. Sure, children learn from their parents, however, after a certain age, they have to take responsibility for their actions. We spend too much time finding others to blame for our problems when the person we need to point the finger at is right in the mirror in front of us.

So, what do I believe needs to be taught? These seven basic values:

1. Everyone cannot be a winner
2. Win and lose gracefully
3. Nobody owes you anything
4. Accept criticism
5. Take responsibility for your actions
6. Treat others like you want to be treated, even when they don’t
7. Life isn't fair, don't expect it to be

If these seven things were taught to everyone at an early age more than half of the problems in our society would disappear. The only way to build true character is through both winning and losing. We seem to concentrate on nobody ever having to face defeat, we mustn’t harm Johnny’s self-esteem. Some of my most valuable lessons came from my defeats, not my victories. We have games where no one is allowed to win and everyone gets a trophy, we have to promote students who don’t earn it and we reward benefits to those who have never worked to earn them. And we wonder why society is going to hell in a hand basket? You can’t give someone self-esteem, it has to be earned from both winning and losing and dealing with both.

An old saw says that when you point at someone else, there are three fingers pointing back at you. You have to take responsibility for whatever you do. You are responsible for your life, your learning and your safety, no one else.

Ebay Comments

2006-11-15T09:04:00.000-08:00

I do a lot of buying and some selling on Ebay. One facet of Ebay is the comments section where you can enter a comment and rating for a buyer or seller with whom you have had a transaction.

About a month ago I bought some hard drives for my Nexstor 18fc array from an Ebay seller. According to his listing these were Seagate model ST118202FC hard drives. The SAN array I use for my real work (believe it or not I do have a real job) uses this model of drive and I needed to increase my storage space (well, actually I wanted to increase my input/output rate and the increase in storage space is a side-effect.) I found a companion drive to the ones currently in the array (I thought) so I put in my bid, got the drive for a very good price and when I received it, it installed just fine in my array and spun up with green lights across the control panel.

So from the previous paragraph it would seem all was right with the world correct? Well, then I tried to access the drive to format it and make it useful for the system. I am afraid the drive would not respond to any of the low level format or high level commands I issued. I looked carefully at the startup file log, sure enough, was a ST118202FC hard drive, but wait, there was a CLAR18 following the designation. What this means was that the firmware for the drive was modified by a SAN provider (in this case I believe EMC) to be specific for a particular SAN, in this case a CLARIION system. No biggie I thought to myself, I’ll just reburn the firmware, well, you can’t do that with EMC firmware unless you go to another version of EMC firmware, which kind of defeated the purpose for me. Here is how the listing described the drive:

You are bidding on a Seagate Cheetah 18.2GB Fibre Channel 10,000 RPM Hard Drive with a Dell Tray.
Seagate Model #: Cheetah / ST118202FC
Technical Features:

External Data transfer Rate: 100MBps
Seek Time: 6 ms
Average Latency: 3ms
Buffer Size : 1MB
Interface: Fibre Channel

Happy Bidding!

Manufacturer: SEAGATE
Model: ST118202FC
CHEETAH 18GB HARD DRIVE

As you can see, no mention of the CLAR18 designation that would be critical to determine compatibility.

Ok, obviously these EMC drives were not going to work for my Nexstor array.

On their shipping receipt they put:

“If, for any reason, you are unsatisfied with your purchase, please contact me at ebaysales@threesalegroup.com with your order number 12551 and the reason for your dissatisfaction. I will make all reasonable efforts to resolve the issue.”

I emailed the representative from the company I purchased them from, explained the situation and asked to return the drive. Here is the email trail:

Subject: eBay Item #170024231254
This disk appears to be a pull from an EMC Clariion or related architecture. Unfortunately that means that it has EMC proprietary microcode burned into its firmware rendering it useless in anything but another array of a similar type. It identifies itself as ST118202 CLAR18 on spin up and won't allow format commands or partitioning commands (reports its size as zero) afraid this is just so much spinning rust and DOA as far as I am concerned. If you don't have something that you know can be accessed by normal arrays then I will return it for my money back. Thanks.

Their Customer Service wrote:
This item only has a DOA warranty. The auction states: This item is represented as accurately as possible; we do not guarantee compatibility please check your part numbers.

(Right, like deliberately leaving off the CLAR18)

To which I responded:
You did not provide the complete part number, the other drives in the array have the same part number except that they do not have the CLAR18 add on which indicates yours were pulled from a Clarion array and which you left off of the description. Had I known the full part number (which I assumed you had provided) I wouldn't have bought them. You did not provide accurate information.

Their Customer Service wrote:
Why didn't you ask? That is what the terms tell you in the auction that you should do. It also states that you should not assume anything.

(So I assume I would need to have a complete list of all incompatible possible microcodes and SANs and call them with a detailed question about this…like their order taker on the other end would know…)

To Which I responded:
You know what? Forget it, I'll just note this in my feedback on Ebay and then resell it, properly labeled and probably get more for it than you did. Thanks for nada.

Their Customer Service wrote:
No problem, just remember that the feedback goes both ways. Thanks...

So, basically I was told that I should have foreseen that the drive might have had its firmware overwritten by a vendor and I should have asked before I bought it. I explained there was no way of knowing this without seeing the full model number (which they hadn’t provided) which required me to install the drives before I could see the serial numbers. Essentially I was told to pack sand and they wouldn’t take the drives back or refund my money.

Being a man of my word I entered the following comment for them on Ebay:

“Was not satisfied, didn't give complete description of item, would not take back”

And here is how they responded:

“BEWARE - ATTEMPTED EXTORTION BY FEEDBACK - BLOCK THIS USER - SELLERS BEWARE”

Extortion? Asking them to stand by their product or I would tell people they didn’t, extortion? A bit of an over reaction I felt. Who was extorting who? Oh, and what was the transaction final amount?

$14.99

This company, Three Sale Group LTD, I will never have dealings with again, nor will I recommend them.

I also purchased 6 additional drives from a second source on Ebay, unfortunately they also were CLAR18, which also wasn’t indicated in the description, but, when I pointed that out, they handled it as a DOA and fully refunded my money, this company, Online Data Solutions, Inc., I will recommend to others and will use again in a heartbeat.

However, this all has a happy ending, I found 18-72 gb drives for my array on Ebay from Morgen Industries, Inc., they were professional, courteous and knowledgeable and I would buy from them in a heartbeat and recommend them to others.

So remember, Caveat Emptor and ask every possible question you can think of from Ebay sellers unless their description of the object being bought is detailed and precise.

Anyone need some Clariion compatible 18 gb drives? Cheap! I also have some 18 gb Nexstor comaptible drives and a complete Nexstor 8s array....if anyone is interested

The Housing Market

2006-11-10T14:03:00.000-08:00

Mike Ault, copyright 2006

I read how the home market is imploding, the bubble has burst, home prices have peaked. It seems to me the home industry really shot themselves in the foot. Have you looked at what they call a home these days? There was a time when a home meant a yard, a garage you could park in (maybe twice) and enough room to move around a bit once you got inside. It wasn’t a re-labeled apartment, it wasn’t within arms length of its neighbor and prices made sense.

Call them town homes, condo’s or whatever else, they are still apartments. You can still hear the person beside you, under you or over you. In these re-labeled apartments you can’t run a router in your living room if you want or knock out a wall and add a room. Yet at least here in Atlanta they want to charge you for the privilege of living in these ant farms at the same rate as if you where in a real house. Less than a mile from my house (on a corner lot, about a quarter acre, two and half car garage and 2700 square foot of space) they want to charge you the same price as for my house for an apartment.

Even when they build a house they now all build them what I call “California” style, seven to an acre. One right up next to another the 300K houses line up all in a row. Again, if I wanted to be that close to my neighbor I would invite them to live with me.

It seems here they prepare the land by raping it down to the bare soil, planting a few small trees and running sod over the exposed red clay (the sold all the top soil when they cleared the land.) I guess I am old fashioned, I like a tree to be a tree before I am ready to retire, not long afterwards.

I guess what I am trying to say with all the above is that if they were really giving people what they wanted, then they probably wouldn’t have had a bubble, but a nice steady growth. People are waking up to the fact that they are spending more and getting less. The builders will need to get smart and go back to what really makes a house a home.

On Becoming a Grandfather

2006-11-02T06:11:00.000-08:00

At the tender age of 50 I have become a Grandfather. After a diligent effort of several years my youngest daughter and her husband have given birth to a wonder known as a Grandson. Michael Caleb Bojczuk took his first breath on 29 October, 2006 and came into the world at 7 pounds 6 oz. and was 20 inches long.

Mikie (as he will be called I am told) is coming into a world full of both great conflict and great hope. In many parts of the world deliberate ignorance and intolerance are causing untold strife, ecological ruin and untold suffering. Yet with all of this there is still great hope for mankind. We have more, greater scientists and doctors alive today than we have ever had in all of history.

In the next few years more inventions and progress will be made than in any previous equivalent time frame in history. We are solving medical problems, finding alternative energy sources, finding new ways to grow and distribute food. Remember that the problem with starvation in the world today is not one of food production, it is one of food distribution. We have decoded the human genome and seen to the end of the universe as well as glimpsed its beginnings.

It is sad that a few (in the entire count of humans on the planet) people are causing so much trouble in the World. The majority of us just want to be left alone to raise our families, worship as we see fit and just enjoy this great gift called life. As I look down on the sleeping face of my Grandson I see the future. I prefer the future where men treat others as equals regardless of skin or belief. I prefer a future where a person is judged by who they are and what they do, not by their religion or skin color. I hope Mikie lives to see it.

We stand on the brink of either the abyss, where a continuing cycle of violence, intolerance and ignorance drags us down to the apocalypse, or the edge of paradise where we provide for the needs of everyone and practice tolerance. It is our choice.

I know it sounds to be a contradiction but we cannot allow those who make intolerance a mainstay of their belief structure to flourish, we must be intolerant of those who preach ignorance as the way of salvation. Anyone who proposes to treat men as 13 year olds and women as slaves has no place in modern society. Anyone who takes away choice and substitutes blind faith where human life is devalued to the point that the worth of innocent lives is measured in how many headlines you can receive from taking them must be exiled to the damnation they deserve.

Holy books are not hammers to beat men into submission, but tools of persuasion. Too many clutch the holy books in fevered hope that mere contact will save them, but neglect to read what is truly inside them. Many believe that the words written inside are intractable, immutable and unchangeable when even a short look at the history of the books will show this is simply not true. The context is what is important, not the words. Many of the words have come down the ages through many minds and hands, going from one language into another, into another, to get to the original words you would have to see the original works and understand the original language and context in which they were written.

I see ignorance and fear driving people to blind faith. Blind faith is easy, it requires no thought. It is the questioning, seeking, thoughtful faith that is hard. The world is filled with infinite wonders that God in his wisdom guided and formed though the crucible of evolution. He provided all of the needed clues for us to decipher his work throughout the billions of years this universe has been in existence and provided us the tools through intellect and curiosity to begin to understand them. We stand on the threshold of wonders.

I intend to see to it that Mikie is raised as a thinking, feeling and loving person who looks beneath the surface of things for only when you are armed with truth and knowledge can you truely believe and are you truly free.

Jobs and Degrees

2006-10-18T15:43:00.000-07:00

Mike Ault, Copyright 2006

I read an article in the Atlanta paper recently by a young, recent (within the last 5-6 year) graduate who had been let go from their job as a magazine editor and hadn’t been able to find a position in six weeks of effort. This young person is now taking unemployment as they look for a position. It reminded me of another article in a women’s magazine a year or two ago about a young person who decided to take six months off after getting their soft degree in college and sail the Great Lakes rather then pursue a job, they complained that all the good ones where taken when they got back and how unfair it was.

I guess I am lucky in that the longest I have ever been out of work in 34 years was 2 days, over a weekend. Of course I also believe you make your own luck by hard work and planning. I have had over a dozen different jobs and each paid more than its predecessor. Up until 1991 I didn’t have a degree. Of course I had the benefit of military training from the US Navy in the Nuclear Field which some viewed as equivalent to a BS in Nuclear Technology. However, when I left the shelter of the Nuclear Industry in 1990 I realized I would need a degree to validate my skill set and got a BS in Computer Science.

So many young people today are getting essentially low-worth degrees, I call them feel-good degrees. Degrees in the Arts, English, Communication, Biology, many of the sciences and many other “soft” subjects have limited market appeal and unless you can find a job in publishing, teaching or a museum, especially at the Bachelor level they aren’t going to do you a lot of good unless you have some real experience to back them up. I’m afraid the days where there were jobs as tutors for the idle rich are mostly gone.

In order to make it in today’s world you need a marketable skill or degree, something with some meat on it. Degrees in Engineering, Computers, Management or advanced degrees in the Sciences (Doctorate level) are most marketable. However, you also have to be careful about overloading your degree.

An example of an overloaded degree is a PHD chemist applying for a lab position at a power plant chemistry lab. Most of the chemistry done in industry is cook-book chemistry where you follow a recipe and get a result. This is where many of the BS in Biology folks end up. When I worked in Nuclear Power Plant labs we passed over Doctorate level folks for interviews because we felt they would get bored and leave as soon as something better came along.

You also need to show a bit of good old fashioned gumption. You probably need to consider leaving the comfortable nest of places and people you know and go where the work is. I have moved over 20 times if you count cross-town type moves. I hear of well qualified people who “can’t” get a job, later to find out they couldn’t get one because they wouldn’t move to find it. In today’s mobile society I am afraid living, growing up and working all within 5 miles of your childhood home is a rarer and rarer thing.

You need to get a degree in something marketable and minor in something you enjoy. I pursue my interest in writing by writing part time and make a pretty good second income from it, without a degree in English. I make a majority of my income in computers, right where my degree sits. Of course, I enjoy working with computers and databases and problem solving, I also enjoy writing.

In the Navy (back in 1973-79) I made about $500/mo take home to start, after six years I was maybe up to $1000/mo. I guess that was my “trench” time. You have to put in your trench time, earn your dues, whatever you want to call it. You can’t expect to make 60K out of the gate, if you start at the top, there is only one way to go.

Many times it is not a case of not being able to find a job, it is not being able to find a job a person likes. Bills don’t care whether you like your job. Feeding your family (or just yourself) doesn’t mean you are in rapture at work. That’s why they call it work, if it was fun, they would call it play and charge you for it.

There was a show on TV called “Night Court”, in it a young lawyer got appointed to be the Judge for Night Court simply because he was the only one who was home to answer the call. Similar to that I got my first position as an Oracle DBA (at least I believe it to be so) simply because I was willing to show up, in Iuka, Mississippi, for the interview and was willing to relocate there (well, actually to Florence, Alabama and a 45 mile commute.) What I am trying to say is, sometimes just by showing up, dressed properly and ready for the interview, will carry you a long way towards a job. It isn’t selling-out, it’s showing your intelligence to take the time to figure out what the job requires and meeting those requirements.

Am I saying don’t get a degree in English or Biology or something you love? No, but be aware you may not be able to work in that field unless you have an advanced level degree, want to teach, or already have something lined up. College is to prepare you to take your place in society, not to make you better at your hobbies.

That's a Secret, Agent Man!

2006-10-09T05:56:00.000-07:00

Mike Ault, Copyright 2006

And if I told you I would have to kill you…well…probably not so I will any way. After my fun with getting Grid Control for Oracle10gR2 re-installed and working I needed to get the new and improved more stable more reliable, able to fix your coffee and press your suit intelligent agents running on my RAC nodes so I could monitor them. With their usual aplomb Oracle has provided almost enough documentation to achieve this, almost.

I downloaded the agent install files for Linux and then unzipped them on both of my Linux nodes. I also downloaded the proper install files for my XP server where the Grid Control was installed. First, I attempted the “silent” install which involves using the:
“agentDownload.linux –b /home/oracle/linux –c “aultlinux3,aultlinux4” –n crs –m rem208742 –r 4889” command (-b is for the home for the agent, -c is the nodelist for the cluster, -n is cluster name, -m is the master node for the OMS and –r is the port to attach to on the OMS node). It started like gangbusters then stalled complaining that the “linux\oui\oui_linux.jar” file was missing. I checked on the XP box and sure enough it was missing, however, guess what, it was on the Linux platform where I started the command from! So, I copied the file and directory over to the XP box and reran the command, then it complained about the agent directory and its contents being missing, notice a pattern here? Yep, it was on the Linux platform. So, being of almost sound mind I decided that I needed to copy the entire directory structure that the instructions seemed to indicate belonged on the Linux side over to the XP side.

Once the directories where copied the command was quite happy to recopy and uncompress all of the files back to the Linux side and then attempt to start the universal installer in silent mode, which it did, however…it insisted it needed a new inventory location (why it couldn’t just add its entries to the existing inventory is beyond my ken. Anyway, no matter what I fed it, for example it has a –i option to provide a file containing a pointer to an alternate inventory, however, as usual, the instructions say “file containing pointer to inventory location” but no directions on formatting the entry. After several unsuccessful attempts I decided I had beat the dead horse enough and fired off the “runInstaller” command to install in real time. I am pleased to say other than requiring a different inventory location it worked fine and soon my “intelligent” agent was running happily along.

However, a word about the emctl program is in order, there will be at least two versions of the program on a machine running the agent and Oracle database software; one will be for the database control and will reside in the ORACLE_HOME/bin and the other will be for the Grid Control and will reside in the ORACLE_OMSHOME/bin location, they are not interchangeable. You must use the ORACLE_OMSHOME/bin version to control the agent for the Grid Control. Ok, back to the “intelligent agent”, a quick check of its status using the “emctl status agent” command on each node showed that while the agent was indeed up and running, it had no clue how to talk to the OMS host, couldn’t exchange heartbeats and couldn’t upload its various XML delicacies to the host.

It seems the OMS host (the XP box) had a full domain specification (it is a work machine and came configured that way) so when the agent installation asked for the host, it merrily supplied the host and full domain. Since my home office, while it is my domain, doesn’t have a domain of its own, the agent got a bogus address. In addition, while it started the agent, it didn’t start it as a secure agent. Another problem was that the XP host starts up the network connections with a firewall enabled that blocks all attempt so cuddle up to the machine from all comers.

So, first I turned off the firewalls on the network connections for the XP host, that at least let me communicate with the box (I could now ping it from both Linux boxes and get a reply). Next, I looked in the ORACLE_OMSHOME/sysman/config/emd.properties file and adjusted the various URLs there to eliminate the bogus domain specifier and finally I made sure all of the time zone specifications where set according to the specifications in the ORACLE_OMSHOME/sysman/admin/nsuppertedtzs.lst file. So now I had the proper host address in the REPOSITORY_URL and the proper timezone in the agentTZRegion entry, it was time to secure start the agent.

I issued the following commands:

emctl stop agent
Then you cleanout all files relating to upload:
rm -r /sysman/emd/state/* rm -r /sysman/emd/collection/* rm -r /sysman/emd/upload/* rm /sysman/emd/lastupld.xml rm /sysman/emd/agntstmp.txt rm /sysman/emd/blackouts.xml rm /sysman/emd/protocol.ini

emctl secure agent (this reloaded connection data into the emd.properties file)
emctl clearstate agent
emctl upload

Well, the upload failed, notice the note in section 2 about reloading connection data? Well, when the emctl secure agent command executes it goes out an gets the new connection data and password encryption and writes it into the file, so, since I figured that it was going to do this in the future I placed an entry in my /etc/hosts file to point to the proper IP address with the fully qualified host and domain. I figured I finally had it licked, but a emctl status command quickly disabused me of this fallacy.

A light went on over my head, this was a secure connection and I hadn’t exchanged certificates with the XP and Linux hosts. I pulled the URL from the REPOSITORY_URL setting and plugged it into a normal browser session, it pulled the proper certificate from the XP machine and placed it into my Linux boxes wallets. After that…viola! Finally, after several hours of looking things up on Metalink, Google and plumbing the depths of my own somewhat poorly organized mind, I had a working Grid Control with remote agents monitoring my RAC cluster.

Some notes you may find useful from Metalink:

Note: 362199.1 – Concerns setting the hostnames properly
Note: 330932.1 – Concerns setting the REPOSITORY_URL and Time zone properly

Have fun!

Reinstalling Oracle10g Grid Control

2006-10-05T08:23:00.000-07:00

I recently went on a very nice vacation to Curacao. Before I went on vacation the Oracle 10g Grid Control (10.2.0.2) I had installed on my Laptop for monitoring my home office systems was working. I took my laptop with me to allow offload of pictures from my cameras and to track email while I was away. When I returned home and hooked my laptop back up to my home network Grid Control wouldn’t start and of course even with the excellent (not!) troubleshooting capabilities Oracle has provided for when this happens I was unable to get it to restart leaving me up the creek as to Grid Control.

Ok, so Grid Control is down, simple, just deinstall using the Oracle Universal Installer and reinstall right? I ran OUI and selected the agent and OMS homes for deinstall, the OUI GUI puttered around a bit and then notified me it had successfully removed the selected product. Right, except for directories and registry entries. Ok, so I manually remove the remaining directories and the registry keys and reboot to eliminate the services that OUI didn’t deign to cleanup. Now finally, I can reinstall; no software, no registry entries, no directories and no services to cause me heartache.

So starting up OUI I begin the reinstall of the Grid Control. It gets all the way to the Configure the OMS Repository and then falls over dead with cryptic error screens pointing you to not one but two log files. Believe me the most important is located in: $ORACLE_OMSHOME$\oms10g\sysman\log and will be named something like:
“emca_repos_create.log”. Guess what? OUI also doesn’t remove the SYSMAN (the repository owner) user. Ok, no biggie, I just issue a “DROP USER SYSMAN CASCADE;” command and do a restart.

Oops…OUI now complains that there is a pesky ROLE it wants to recreate…MGMT_USER. Ok, I drop that and restart the repository build. Another 10-15 minutes later it complains about a public synonym that starts with MGMT…so I build a script to drop all public synonyms that begin with MGMT and then restart.

Oops…OUI now complains about another set of synonyms that begins with SMP, so I delete all of them. You guessed it, another restart, another 15 minutes and it complains about public synonym ECM_UTIL, so again I drop the synonyms (only 1 this time) beginning with ECM and restart…finally it completes and goes on to the end.

Here is the script I finally ended up with:

drop user sysman cascade;
drop public synonym MGMT_ADMIN;
drop public synonym MGMT_AS_ECM_UTIL;
drop public synonym MGMT_AVAILABILITY;
drop public synonym MGMT_COLLECTION_PROPERTIES;
drop public synonym MGMT_CREDENTIAL;
drop public synonym MGMT_CURRENT_AVAILABILITY;
drop public synonym MGMT_CURRENT_METRICS;
drop public synonym MGMT_CURRENT_METRIC_ERRORS;
drop public synonym MGMT_CURRENT_SEVERITY;
drop public synonym MGMT_DELTA;
drop public synonym MGMT_DELTA_ENTRY;
drop public synonym MGMT_DELTA_ENTRY_VALUES;
drop public synonym MGMT_DELTA_IDS;
drop public synonym MGMT_DELTA_ID_VALUES;
drop public synonym MGMT_DELTA_VALUE;
drop public synonym MGMT_DELTA_VALUES;
drop public synonym MGMT_GLOBAL;
drop public synonym MGMT_GUID_ARRAY;
drop public synonym MGMT_GUID_OBJ;
drop public synonym MGMT_IP_TGT_GUID_ARRAY;
drop public synonym MGMT_JOB;
drop public synonym MGMT_JOBS;
drop public synonym MGMT_JOB_EXECPLAN;
drop public synonym MGMT_JOB_EXECUTION;
drop public synonym MGMT_JOB_EXEC_SUMMARY;
drop public synonym MGMT_JOB_OUTPUT;
drop public synonym MGMT_JOB_PARAMETER;
drop public synonym MGMT_JOB_SCHEDULE;
drop public synonym MGMT_JOB_TARGET;
drop public synonym MGMT_LOG;
drop public synonym MGMT_LONG_TEXT;
drop public synonym MGMT_MESSAGES;
drop public synonym MGMT_METRICS;
drop public synonym MGMT_METRICS_1DAY;
drop public synonym MGMT_METRICS_1HOUR;
drop public synonym MGMT_METRICS_COMPOSITE_KEYS;
drop public synonym MGMT_METRICS_RAW;
drop public synonym MGMT_METRIC_COLLECTIONS;
drop public synonym MGMT_METRIC_ERRORS;
drop public synonym MGMT_METRIC_THRESHOLDS;
drop public synonym MGMT_NAME_VALUE;
drop public synonym MGMT_NAME_VALUES;
drop public synonym MGMT_PREFERENCES;
drop public synonym MGMT_SEVERITY;
drop public synonym MGMT_SEVERITY_ARRAY;
drop public synonym MGMT_SEVERITY_OBJ;
drop public synonym MGMT_STRING_METRIC_HISTORY;
drop public synonym MGMT_TARGET;
drop public synonym MGMT_TARGETS;
drop public synonym MGMT_TARGET_BLACKOUTS;
drop public synonym MGMT_TARGET_MEMBERSHIPS;
drop public synonym MGMT_TARGET_PROPERTIES;
drop public synonym MGMT_TYPE_PROPERTIES;
drop public synonym MGMT_USER;
drop public synonym MGMT_VIEW_UTIL;
drop public synonym MGMT$DELTA_ORACLE_HOME;
drop public synonym MGMT$DELTA_OS_COMPONENTS;
drop public synonym MGMT$DELTA_OS_COMP_DETAILS;
drop public synonym MGMT$DELTA_OS_KERNEL_PARAMS;
drop public synonym MGMT$DELTA_PATCHSETS;
drop public synonym MGMT$DELTA_PATCHSET_DETAILS;
drop public synonym MGMT$DELTA_TABLESPACES;
drop public synonym MGMT$DELTA_VENDOR_SW;
drop public synonym MGMT$DELTA_VIEW;
drop public synonym MGMT$DELTA_VIEW_DETAILS;
drop public synonym MGMT$ECM_CURRENT_SNAPSHOTS;
drop public synonym MGMT$ECM_VISIBLE_SNAPSHOTS;
drop public synonym MGMT$GROUP_DERIVED_MEMBERSHIPS;
drop public synonym MGMT$GROUP_FLAT_MEMBERSHIPS;
drop public synonym MGMT$GROUP_MEMBERS;
drop public synonym MGMT$HA_BACKUP;
drop public synonym MGMT$HA_FILES;
drop public synonym MGMT$HA_INFO;
drop public synonym MGMT$HA_INIT_PARAMS;
drop public synonym MGMT$HA_MTTR;
drop public synonym MGMT$HA_RMAN_CONFIG;
drop public synonym MGMT$HW_NIC;
drop public synonym MGMT$METRIC_COLLECTION;
drop public synonym MGMT$METRIC_CURRENT;
drop public synonym MGMT$METRIC_DAILY;
drop public synonym MGMT$METRIC_DETAILS;
drop public synonym MGMT$METRIC_HOURLY;
drop public synonym MGMT$MISSING_TARGETS;
drop public synonym MGMT$MISSING_TARGETS_IN_GROUPS;
drop public synonym MGMT$OS_COMPONENTS;
drop public synonym MGMT$OS_FS_MOUNT;
drop public synonym MGMT$OS_HW_SUMMARY;
drop public synonym MGMT$OS_KERNEL_PARAMS;
drop public synonym MGMT$OS_PATCHES;
drop public synonym MGMT$OS_SUMMARY;
drop public synonym MGMT$SOFTWARE_COMPONENTS;
drop public synonym MGMT$SOFTWARE_COMPONENT_ONEOFF;
drop public synonym MGMT$SOFTWARE_COMP_PATCHSET;
drop public synonym MGMT$SOFTWARE_DEPENDENCIES;
drop public synonym MGMT$SOFTWARE_HOMES;
drop public synonym MGMT$SOFTWARE_ONEOFF_PATCHES;
drop public synonym MGMT$SOFTWARE_OTHERS;
drop public synonym MGMT$SOFTWARE_PATCHES_IN_HOMES;
drop public synonym MGMT$SOFTWARE_PATCHSETS;
drop public synonym MGMT$TARGET;
drop public synonym MGMT$TARGET_COMPONENTS;
drop public synonym MGMT$TARGET_COMPOSITE;
drop public synonym MGMT$TARGET_PROPERTIES;
drop public synonym MGMT$TARGET_TYPE;
drop PUBLIC SYNONYM SMP_EMD_AVAIL_OBJ;
drop public synonym EMD_MNTR;
drop public synonym SMP_EMD_AVAIL_OBJ;
drop public synonym SMP_EMD_DELETE_REC_ARRAY;
drop public synonym SMP_EMD_INTEGER_ARRAY;
drop public synonym SMP_EMD_INTEGER_ARRAY_ARRAY;
drop public synonym SMP_EMD_NVPAIR;
drop public synonym SMP_EMD_NVPAIR_ARRAY;
drop public synonym SMP_EMD_STRING_ARRAY;
drop public synonym SMP_EMD_STRING_ARRAY_ARRAY;
drop public synonym SMP_EMD_TARGET_OBJ;
drop public synonym SMP_EMD_TARGET_OBJ_ARRAY;
drop public synonym ECM_UTIL;
drop role mgmt_user;

Now some of the drops may be not needed such as the MGMT$ synonym drops, but I left them in anyway.

So, hopefully if you run into the same issue I did with OEM this little script will help you to get it reinstalled.

Diving With a Camera

2006-09-11T14:29:00.000-07:00

Ah, to capture all the wonderful underwater scenes to share with everyone! It is the dream that many divers who are just starting out seem to have. We rush out and buy a camera and underwater housing and strobes and arms and all the gadgets that can be found. Once we have all the equipment we are ready! Or are we?

The first and most important aspect of underwater photography has nothing to do with f-stops, focus, subject or lighting, the most important aspect is proper buoyancy control. Buoyancy control is the difference between photographing that delicate coral frond and smacking into it and breaking it, it is the difference between floating gently to a stop at depth and smashing into the bottom stirring up silt and destroying visibility. We must have proper control of ourselves before we can hope to take that perfect shot.

In order to have control underwater you must be properly weighted to maintain proper trim in the water. Proper trim is usually horizontal with the head slightly up and feet slightly down, not more than a 5-10 degree up angle. Having A feet up posture or a too-vertical heads up posture (the “Marching Through Georgia” posture I call it) results in too much effort, too large an air consumption rate and lack of proper depth control. Flailing arms, bicycling feet, bouncing like a yo-yo are all signs that you aren’t in control underwater.

So, first, if you have no clue as too how to get control, take a buoyancy control class and take control of yourself underwater.

The next thing that is critical is learning to take the time to smell the anemones …well... anyway look real close at them. If you are rushing underwater you will never take good photos. Find a dive buddy that doesn’t mind spending an entire dive on one coral head and relax and enjoy it.

Finally, take a long time to learn good technique. I took pictures on land for years before I took my first underwater pictures, yet I learn more each time I take a camera underwater. Learn good composition and it will help your underwater shots.

Once you take good photos on land then you can take good photos underwater, know your equipment.

I began with a manual Nikonos IV film camera. Knowing that I had a maximum of 24 or 36 shots forced me to be sure that a picture was the picture I wanted before I took it. I admit, now, using a digital camera, I tend to shotgun my shots, taking many more than I should in the hope that one will turn out, usually because I am rushed and can’t (or won’t) take the time to frame a good shot. Just because you can take 200 photos in a single dive doesn’t mean you should, if you want that many shots, shoot video.

Be careful, be courteous, be the type of diver you want to dive with. If you are meant to get the picture you will get it whether you push your way in to others shots or in on their view of that which you what you want to take a picture. Everyone hates the camera toting moron that thinks just because they have a camera they have an intrinsic right to barge all over the reef, latch onto delicate coral to anchor themselves for what usually turns out to be a mediocre shot at best. Be patient, take your time, if you wait, have good buoyancy and don’t disturb the water, guess what?...most shots will come back. Don’t chase shots, believe me all underwater life that is mobile can easily out run you.

Ok, so you got the shot (you hope) you put it on the computer, open the file and…wait!...it’s all blue! I am afraid that the human mind is a great fooler, it fills in color it “knows” is in there, unfortunately cameras do not. Unless you shoot with special filters and lights your shots will end up with more blue than you would like due to the absorbing of light frequencies like red, orange and yellow at depths of 20 FSW and greater. However, don’t despair, this can be fixed, you will need a program such as Photoshop. You use the color correction option to add in a bit of red (actually, what it does is increase the value for the red pixels already in the picture for digital shots) and turn down the green and blue values. Adjust them just until it reflects what you saw, resist trying to make it better. In some cases a picture may appear to be completely useless, however, try adjusting the levels to bring out the background details.

If you can get your buoyancy under control, be polite and patient and learn a bit of basic photography techniques your underwater photography work should be enjoyable, both for you and the people you dive with.

(For a PDF versions with pictures go to: http://www.authorsden.com/ArticlesUpload/24113.pdf)

Using Back Inflate Boyancy Compensator

2006-08-21T12:52:00.000-07:00

I recently purchased a back inflate buoyancy compensator (BC), an Oceanic Flex QLR. A BC is a jacket or vest that contains an inflatable bladder used to offset the weight of equipment (usually the air in the tank on your back if you are properly weighted), the bladder can be mostly in front in the “wings” of the vest/jacket, or, mostly on the back plate area (usually surrounding the tank area) or a combination of both. As many advanced divers utilize a BC known as a back plate with wings (BP/W), which is essentially a steel back plate designed to hold either a single or double tank rig surrounded by an inflatable bladder that is completely on the back of the diver. The advantage of a BP/W is that the steel plate can be made of various thicknesses of steel to allow the back plate to eliminate the need for extra lead weight that most divers have to carry in order to become neutrally buoyant. In addition to the weight benefits of a BP/W they are less encumbering and work well with a dry suit.

The Oceanic model I purchased (used of course) is a vest style with a hard, single tank plastic back plate and an inflation bladder that surrounds it. All-in-all the new BC seems to weigh about 4 pounds more than my old Calypso jacket style that utilized flotation bladders that surrounded you. This last weekend I decided to dive the new BC for the first time.

About an hour’s drive from the house is the Dive Haven Quarry in White, Georgia. The Dive Haven operation just started offering dive services to divers this year, previously we had to dive in Lake Lanier or go to quarries out of state in Tennessee or Alabama or lakes equally far away. In the Dive Haven quarry is an old diesel shovel/crane, it is about a 200 yard surface swim across the quarry then a 20-30 foot dive to the top of the crane arm. My dive buddies and I decided to try an underwater navigation at 20 feet deep (swimming underwater in full dive gear is easier than swimming on the surface.) Once at the crane I would do some photographs while they looked around, then, if air supply and time permitted we would look for the old car in about 20 feet of water nearby, after that we would once again do a 20 foot deep return dive utilizing compass and a sonar transponder I had placed on the dock to easily cross the 200 yards back to where we started.

One additional feature of the Oceanic BC is that it has an integrated weight system. In my old Calypso BC you needed a separate weight belt, which acted as a natural air dam to prevent excessive air in the dry suit from flowing to your feet, the new BC eliminated that. I loaded the Oceanic with 22 pounds of lead (this was what I had dove with using the Calypso and my dry suit) putting two 6 pound shot weights in the front, droppable weight pockets and two 3 pound shot weights in the non-releasable rear pockets. I then put two 2 pound weights in the BC pockets to bring me up to 22 pounds. Unfortunately I forgot to account for the additional 4 pounds of weight the Oceanic itself contributed to the overall weight of my gear and for the reduced profile (and hence reduced buoyancy) between the Oceanic and my Calypso. Looking back I figure I was over weighted by around 6 pounds.

As you can guess that 6 pounds made buoyancy control a nightmare. At the start of the dive you vent all of the air from your BC and dry suit and submerge, if you are properly weighted you will be slightly over weighted at the start of the dive because of the weight of the air in the tank or tanks, and, at the end of the dive just neutral with 500 pounds of air left. Unfortunately I sank like a stone and overshot the 20 foot target depth finally gaining control at 30 feet of depth. With the Calypso I was used to just giving a puff or two of air to halt a descent, of course being over weighted I had to give it quite a blast on top of the air I added to the dry suit to eliminate suit squeeze. Of course I over compensated then shot up to 15 feet or less before halting the rise. Finally I got the buoyancy set near right and we started for the crane.
It wasn’t long before I discovered one of the other joys being over weighted, my SAC rate (air consumption) was too high and the amount of effort I needed to expend to keep up with my dive partners was large. I was also now having to deal with air collecting in my legs and feet (officially called “having floaty feet”) if I put too much in to compensate for dry suit squeeze, it wasn’t a major problem, just one additional thing to deal with. Of course the fins I was using didn’t help matters much, they were older model stiff Scuba Pro’s, non-split, which means they were equivalent to strapping two boards on my feet. So between having to kick like a bee-stung mule and bouncing up and down like a cork because of the dicey buoyancy control I ended up doing the second half of the transit to the crane on the surface doing the back paddle (well, actually the back kick).

We got to the crane and I descended first. Visibility was only about 5 feet so with a descent rate of just under light speed due to being over weighted I nearly crashed into the crane arm having to push off from it as I rocketed past. Arresting my descent 10-15 feet deeper than I planned I then of course over compensated and shot past where I had wanted to stop and begin taking photographs. With reducing oscillations I finally managed to get where I wanted to and take a couple of shots. However, with my limited buoyancy control I was hesitant about going deeper to look over the cab and other parts of the crane since there were still cables and such that would just love to snare an unwary diver.

After taking the shots I felt safe doing I ascended and my dive partners then went down to have a look. By the time they returned we decided to forego the car and just return to the dock. We submerged to 20 feet and began the transit, again with me falling behind (got to replace those darn fins!) and I finished the last third of the transit on the surface once again as I was down to 500 pounds of air by that time.

On the second dive I removed 2 pounds of weight, I was still a bit over weighted but nearly as bad as before. We just puttered around at about 20-30 feet working on buoyancy control. Looks like I should pull at least another 2-4 pounds out to get where I need to be. Darn, looks like I might have to go diving again next weekend…

A New Job

2006-08-03T07:20:00.000-07:00

Well, on August 1, 2006 I started a new job. I am now an Oracle Specialist for Quest Software. The grind of 1099 consulting just got to be a bit much and the uncertainties of 1099 payments a bit wearing. So I will still be working head and shoulders deep in Oracle technology and still putting up Oracle tips and discoveries I just won’t be traveling as a consultant.

According to those folks who specialize in such things a job change can be as stressful as a death in the family. I prefer to think of it as a birth of new possibilities, adventures and opportunities. Much of the job will be learning what the Quest tools do verses those provided by Oracle and other Oracle tool vendors, a lot of experimenting, working with databases, writing white papers and tech sheets and just raw learning. All of the above I enjoy immensely when I have the time to do them and that is supposed to be built into this position.

For those who have a feature they just want to see added to Quest tools, something that just annoys them about an existing tool or any other constructive suggestions for the Oracle (or non-Oracle) quest toolset, send it in to me (mike.ault@quest.com) and I’ll see to it that it gets to the right person to take action.

I will miss some of the consulting work, the fun of helping folks get the most out of Oracle, the thrill of chasing down that illusive performance issue and the joy of teaching Oracle technologies such as real application clusters to folks in the field. However, there may still be a bit of that going on so it isn’t a complete sea change.

So it is time for the next chapter in my life and time to close the previous one. For those of you who I got to work with or for during the consulting period, thanks for the interesting assignments and work, and yes, I am still available by emails for questions. Hopefully in this next phase of work I will be able to help even more folks learn about Oracle and share even more Oracle knowledge than before.

Note: The opinions expressed on this web page are those of its author and not those of Quest Software, or its affiliates.

Cancun Vacation

2006-07-18T09:58:00.000-07:00

Well, I am back from vacation. 8 days of no technology (well..other than digital cameras and a Sony picture vault mini-disk photo storage device.) I enjoyed Cancun and got to do several dives while I was there (six in all) of varying levels of difficulty. I dove my first two-tank dive concurrently with my wife and son-in-laws resort certification single tank dive. A double tank dive means two-one tank dives with a short interval on the surface between them. A resort certification is a 1-2 hour introduction to scuba with a pool session to help master basic skills and usually followed by a single tank “real” dive to no more than 30-40 feet of depth.

The first two-tank dive was a little bit of a disappointment due to the damage caused the reef from the large storms last year, much of the coral was showing signs of bleaching and there were many broken coral bits lying around. Usually the sea fans have a healthy purple color to them, the ones on the first dives were brown and looked rather ragged. There were lots of small juvenile fish, but not many large, mature fish. This first dive was on the Cancun side. We saw no rays, moray eels or other “staples” of a typical dive in the Caribbean.

The second two-tank dive was on the Cozumel side and I did it with my wife and son-in-law, which of course meant I couldn’t do the more advanced wall (deep) dive but had to stick to the shallow divemaster/instructor led dives. The coral looked healthier and there were more mature fish to be seen, but it was still not as good as I remembered from before the storms of a year ago. The highlight was a small octopus that we caught a glimpse of who was sleeping inside a coral formation (octopus are nocturnal by nature and sleep for the most part during the day.) The divemaster also showed my wife one of the small long-legged shrimp and let her hold it.

On the third two-tank dive I got to go on an advanced wreck/drift dive. The first dive was to about 80 feet deep on the C-58, the General Anaya, a sunken mine sweeper. The wreck had been a single site before the two large storms of 2005, but the first storm twisted the wreck in half and the second moved the bow about 100 yards away from the stern were it lays on its side with the bow now facing the same direction as the stern. On the stern section we did a swim through. As we swum though the upper structure (we didn’t do a penetration, we were in sight of an externally sun lit exit at all times) I couldn’t help but think back to the USS Haleakala, AE25, the first ship I was posted to when I was in the Navy. Although the two ships were totally different in purpose and design, the internal corridors where eerily similar, especially when we came upon a ladder (a set of steps) going up to an upper level and I noticed that they were identical in construction to those I used hundreds of times on the Haleakala.

Once we were done with the swim-through we followed the divemaster to the bow section. In station over the top of the bow were about a dozen greater barracudas. Since the bow was laying on its port (left) side, we didn’t do a swim-through (it also looked pretty ragged from being rolled/slammed along the bottom by the storm) we swam around the torn section behind it (to the topside, the keel was pointing back toward the stern section) and swam up to the bow sprint. We could see the current whipping material past, but we were shielded from it by the wreck, I was relieved when we retraced our path going behind the wreck instead of trying to swim across the current. However, this relief was short lived.

Once we got back to the section of the hull where it had been torn in half, we pointed into the current and started the swim to a reef that was several hundred yards away (at least it seemed that far in the current) we were moving on a diagonal to the current so we weren’t directly fighting it, but it was a bit of a workout for a 50 year old. We got to the reef structure and immediately saw a small sea turtle (about 2-3 foot shell size) who allowed us to photograph it and then nonchalantly swam away. We also saw a batfish (who uses two large, fleshy looking fins located on its top and bottom sides to move through the water) and a small nurse shark. This was the healthiest reef ( at 50 feet deep or so) with the largest fish and best looking coral. At one point we came up over a coral head and in a current-protected area saw a school of thousands of yellow-striped grunts that allowed us to swim in amongst them showing little fear of us.

The second dive was a drift dive over a reef. Again, the coral on this dive (at about 50 feet) was in much better condition that at the other sites and there were more mature fish and healthy coral and sea fans.

Overall the dives were fair to good, however, I have to give AquaWorld some negative feedback, my son-in-laws primary stage on his regulator (the primary takes the 3000 PSI air in the tank and drops it down to 140 PSI to feed to the secondary stage that you breath through and the various fill hoses you may use for your equipment such as the BCD or a drysuit) gave out at 20 feet down and stopped giving air, even though his SPG (submergible pressure guage) indicated he had 500 PSI in his tank. This wouldn’t have been a real problem if the dive masters assistant had been where he should have been to provide a spare air (octo) but instead my son-in-law was basically by himself , luckily we were only in 20 feet of water at the time and he had just exhaled out all his breath, he basically did a free ascent to the surface, but I don’t think he remembered to try to blow out all the way up. Had he not just done a complete exhale, he might have severely injured himself from a lung over-expansion injury. Usually first (or primary) stage failure, especially of this type, is due to allowing saltwater to get into the first stage causing the corrosion of the components and possible buildup of salt crystals which can jam air pathways in the internals of the regulator. Once on the surface the regulator breathed OK and the tank indicate 1000 PSI (remember that the pressure gage hooks up through the first stage so anything that blocks the primary air intake port will affect the pressure gage and the primary stage.) My son-in-law also experienced dump valve failure on his rented BCD on his second dive, another failure that shows lack of proper equipment maintenance. Since he was only in 20-30 feet of water, again, it wasn’t a big issue, but had he been a more experienced, certified diver and the condition occurred at 80 or 90 feet down, it may have resulted in an uncontrolled ascent and possible DCS (decompression sickness) hit.

These types of problems are why I am a strong supporter of owning at least your own regulator and BCD where you know the stuff is maintained properly.

I watched the divemaster on one of my dives take my BCD/regulator assembly from the expended tank and place it on the full tank for my second dive. I went over to record the pressure for my log and when I turned on the tank valve, could hear the distinct hiss of a air leak through the o-ring seal of the tank, when he did the pressure check he appearently hadn’t heard it. I pointed this out and he removed my rig to replace the o-ring on the tank valve. While he went to get a new o-ring, he just left my regulator lying where it was in a splash area from the forward motion of the boat through the waves, with the dust cap off. The dust cap keeps dust and debris, as well as water, from entering the first stage. I went over and replaced the dust cap on the regulator myself. On another dive where I had let them rig the second tank, they had neglected to remove the masking tape they used to cover the tank valve opening and had just put my rig over the top of it, why it didn’t leak like a sieve I don’t know, if they did this all the time, it could also explain the failure of my son-in-laws regulator as sections of the masking tape would plug up the filter on the intake port.

We also took a sub-sea and snorkel tour with the entire group of us trooping over to Paradise Island. The sub-sea adventure is little more than a more sea-worthy version of the old Nautilus ride at Disneyland. My major complaint was that the seating was designed by the same folks who designed the windows for airplanes, if you where five foot tall it was perfect, otherwise it required you to crane your neck uncomfortably for the entire tour to see out. They also went too fast, I understand having to maintain steerage, but they seemed to rush it a bit. The snorkel tour which followed was more like the coral 500 race as the guide seemed more interested in getting finished with his part of it rather than allowing us a leisurely snorkel through the reef.

The best thing we did with Aquaworld was the fishing trip my son-in-law and I took with them. Of course of the 6 hour fishing trip, probably an hour and a half was spent getting out and back and another hour was spent watching the Captain and his Mates catch the bait. However, even though we only fished for 3 hours out of the 6, we (there were 5 of us on the charter) caught 25 amberjack with the smallest at a bout 10-15 pounds the largest at about 30) and two Rock fish (one at about 10 pounds the second at 30 pounds). Needless to say, had we had a complete 6 hours of just fishing, I probably wouldn’t have been able to raise my arms. I was a little disappointed to hear we couldn’t get any of the meat because of the warmth of the water causing certain types of poisonous algae to be present and certain parasites to be in the fish (he showed us some worms he had removed from one of the fish.) I can’t really imagine the water temps being that radically different (lower) in the months with “r”s in them that far south, but supposedly it was an issue. The Captain said they gave the fish to poor who would spend days preparing the meat to make it edible. With our catch we must have fed 10-15 families if what he said was the truth and I have no reason to doubt him.

We also did some shopping at the various markets, Usually you can get some really good bargains if you are willing to haggle a bit, but I noticed overall the prices where quite a bit higher than my visit there 2 years ago and higher than the prices in the Cabo San Lucas area last year.

So now it is back in the saddle. Hopefully next entry I will have some juicy Oracle tidbits for you.

Mike

Oracle Timestamp Math

2006-07-05T15:58:00.000-07:00

Had in interesting query from a client today. They have been storing start and stop times from a process in Oracle TIMESTAMP format and now want to get milliseconds out of the difference between the two timestamps. Seems pretty easy right?

Ok, first we create a table with two TIMESTAMP columns and an index value:

SQL> select * from check_time
SQL> /

TIM_COL1 TIM_COL2 TIME_INDEX
---------------------------- ---------------------------- ----------
05-JUL-06 05.00.42.437000 PM 05-JUL-06 05.01.54.984000 PM 1
05-JUL-06 05.03.14.781000 PM 05-JUL-06 05.03.39.328000 PM 2

Now, if we were just using DATE we could subtract the dates and use the proper multiplier to convert the fractional return to the proper time unit. However when we subtract TIMESTAMPs:

SQL> select tim_col2-tim_col1 from check_time;

TIM_COL2-TIM_COL1
------------------------------------------------
+000000000 00:01:12.547000
+000000000 00:00:24.547000

We get a hideous time interval upon which you can’t do math:

SQL> select sum(tim_col2-tim_col1) from check_time;
select sum(tim_col2-tim_col1) from check_time
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00932: inconsistent datatypes: expected NUMBER got INTERVAL

So what can be done?

In steps the new interval functions that allow extraction of timestamp components, such as DAY, HOUR, MINUTE and SECOND…but wait there is no MILLISECOND! Of course a short trip to the documentation shows that the SECOND has a fractional component that allows us to specify the number of decimals after the second thus giving us access to the milliseconds, even down to microseconds in the interval value, look here:

SQL> l
1* select sum(extract(second from tim_col2)-extract(second from tim_col1))*1000 from check_time
SQL> /

SUM(EXTRACT(SECONDFROMTIM_COL2)-EXTRACT(SECONDFROMTIM_COL1))
------------------------------------------------------------
37094
Well, that is more like it! So now we can get the milliseconds between and do the aggregation functions such as sum() and avg() on the results.

Diving A Drysuit

2006-07-01T20:46:00.000-07:00

I am sure almost everyone has heard of a wetsuit. A wetsuit is basically a skintight neoprene rubber suit that divers wear to shield them from heat loss. A wetsuit shields the diver from heat loss by controlling the amount of water that comes in contact with the diver, limiting it to just enough to allow the divers own warmth to keep the water warm. The thickness of the neoprene determines how cold the water outside the suit can be and the diver still be comfortable. About the maximum thickness is 7 mm (about ¼ inch) and that will protect a diver in water in the range of 50-60 degrees.

50 to 60 degrees you say, that doesn’t seem so cold…well…the water transfers heat at 20 times the rate that air does. At 50 to 60 degrees a person will go hypothermic in a matter of minutes without a proper exposure suit. At 70 degrees you can get hypothermia as well, it may take a bit longer.

Now, what if the water is colder than 50-60 degrees? You could go with thicker wetsuits but then your mobility will be greatly restricted. The answer is called a drysuit. As its name implies a drysuit has seals that eliminate all water movement, that is, no water gets in, hence its name, drysuit. A drysuit provides no insulation, the diver must wear essentially, “long underwear” that provides the needed insulation, keeping the diver warm.

I recently got to dive a drysuit, the one I purchased was a great deal from www.divetank.com. I highly recommend them by the way, I purchased a Bare Nex Gen 200Z 2006 drysuit, it is made from trilaminate material, very light weight, very flexible and very easy to don and remove. Divetank provided the suit, neoprene dive hood, fill hose and the bag to carry it all for less than $650.00, I needed it right away so I had to fork over a bit for the next day shipping, but considering most drysuits run greater than $1,200.00 this was an outstanding deal.

First I prepared the buoyancy control device (basically an inflatable vest), the regulator and the air tank. You do this first because if you put on the full suit before setting up the rest of your equipment you risk getting heat stroke or becoming dehydrated while doing the setup operations.

To prepare the suit for use, first you must be sure the seals (in this suit at neck and wrists) are properly trimmed, otherwise you could choke, trigger various physical problems, or cut off circulation. Most seals are either neoprene or lycra (rubber). The rubber seals are marked with rings that provide cutting guidelines. For my suit I had to remove 1 ring from the neck seal which I did by placing the neck seal over a scuba bottle and then carefully following the ring boundary with my dive knife (which is razor sharp.) The wrist seals fit without trimming. A hint (provided by a fellow diver), use mild baby shampoo as lubricant to allow your hands to slip easily into the seals. Also, before each dive, you treat the zipper seal with bees wax to help seal it.

Once the seals fit I put on my lycra dive skin, the fleece under suit (provided with the suit) rather like a fleece jogging suit, my dive socks, then donned the drysuit. Then, before pulling the neck seal over my head and sealing the suit up, I put on my neoprene over booties over the soft boots that were part of the drysuit. My suit is a rear entry suit meaning the sealing zipper is on the back. My suit has the zipper across the shoulders, requiring a second diver to help. My dive buddy closed the zipper and seated the zipper pull into the seal.

Next, you put on your weight belt if you are using one (some BCDs have built in weight pockets, and some drysuit divers prefer a weight harness instead of a weight belt) and then don your BCD/regulator/tank assembly. Since we were diving a quarry (Dive Haven, White Georgia) we carried the mask and fins down to the waters edge to put them on, however, don’t, as I did, drop your second fin into deep water while putting on your first, necessitating your dive buddy do a search and recovery operation!

I also just bought a new mask strap, it has the full neoprene pad on the back and rather than rubber or lycra straps, uses nylon straps. I had problems with mask flooding as a result until we made sure that the mask was properly tightened and that no neoprene from the dive hood was stuck under the edge of the mask seal. After the mask issue was dealt with the dive went without a hitch.

We then did several ascents and descents to allow me to get a handle on using the combination of the drysuit and BCD to control suit squeeze and buoyancy. One issue many new drysuit divers trained using PADI have is that the PADI material says to use the drysuit to control buoyancy. This is incorrect.

You see the drysuit has an attached fill line from the low-pressure side of the first stage regulator, this is supposed to be used to relieve what is known as suit squeeze. Suit squeeze is caused by the pressure of the external water pressing the suit up tight against your body, a short burst of air provides for a thin layer of air in the suit to eliminate this. However, the suit should not be used for buoyancy control! You still use the BCD just as with a wetsuit. The suit also has an outlet valve that controls how much air is retained in the suit, it ranges from all the way shut to all the way open and adjusts by clicks, we set mine to 4 clicks off closed.

Once I got at least a beginning understanding of this needed control (after 5 ascents/descents) we did a normal dive at about 30-40 feet (51 degrees) and let me report I was comfortable except for my hands, I forgot my 5mm gloves and only had my light weight reef gloves to wear for the dive.

Overall I enjoyed the dive, learned the fundamentals of drysuit diving and had a great day with the other members of the Lake Lanier Loonies (we are considered Loony because we dive Lake Lanier year round.) I am also looking forward to my next drysuit dive (probably on July 4th.)

50 Years and Counting

2006-06-13T05:59:00.000-07:00

Well, I had a milestone of sorts last week, I turned 50 years of age. Odd, I don’t remember it like it was 50 years, and I don’t feel (mentally at least) like it’s been that long. Of course since life expectancies keep increasing and mine is a long lived family I may not even be middle aged yet…

As a teenager just getting into the work world I dreamed of being an oceanographer, then that morphed into a physicist or nuclear scientist. I worked in the Navy (1973-1979) as a machinist mate which actually means I repaired machines (vice a machinery repairmen who did machining work) and, since I was on a nuclear submarine, did laboratory and health physics work. Health physics means taking radiation surveys, cleaning up spills of radioactive water and materials and things dealing with keeping the rest of the crew (and outside world) from getting contaminated by the reactor. As a chemist I was responsible for maintaining the chemical balance in the non-radioactive steam plant and in the radioactive reactor coolant to help reduce corrosion and monitored the coolant loop for levels of radioactive material.

So, I was a nuclear chemist and health physicist for a while, then got out of the Navy and concentrated on being a Nuclear Chemist (1980-1990). Essentially I followed recipes to test water samples. The most fun part of the job was gamma spectroscopy. Essentially a gamma spectrometer was a chunk of ultra pure germanium super cooled by liquid nitrogen with a 2000 DC volt charge across it. When gamma rays interacted with it they would be absorbed (a certain fraction of the time) and during this process electron-hole pairs would be formed, the charge differential would sweep the electrons to the charge collection system which would amplify the signal. Some other electronics would then convert this analog data into a digital signal and result would be a number that through various mathematical convolutions you could use to determine the energy level of the original gamma ray.

Of course any one sample from a nuclear reactor coolant loop could have dozens of radioactive elements in it, each giving off one or more gamma rays, plus the normal background radiation (which we mitigated with lead shields). So a given gamma ray spectrum from a sample could hold dozens of gamma ray energy lines. I have included an example below. These lines could lay virtually on top of each other. In the beginning of the nuclear age a sodium iodine detector (essentially a chunk of salt) was used and it would produce scintillations whose brightness would correspond to the energy of the incident gamma ray, however the peaks produced would be wide (20-30 Kev FWHM) and difficult to analyze. The peaks would be hand plotted then the areas under them computed on a slide-rule and it would take days to analyze a single sample. With the germanium detectors the peaks would be nice and crisp (1-2 Kev FWHM) so it would be easier to see the peaks. However, we used computers to do the analysis of the germanium spectrums and what had taken days now took 11 seconds.

Fission Product Spectrum (From: Gamma Ray Spectrum Catalog, 1974, Aerojet Nuclear, R.L. Heath)

The first article I got an award for was “Gamma Emitting Isotopes of Medical Origin in Sanitary Waste Samples”, a real page turner. Anyway when I started in the civilian nuclear field I did about 90 percent chemistry and 10 percent computers, by the end of the 10 years I worked in the civilian field I was doing 90 percent computers and 10 percent chemistry. I was working at Tennessee Valley Authority when Marvin Runyon ( unaffectionately called Marvin Runyaoff ) was brought in to clean up TVA. His clean up, due to union rules and contracts, consisted of firing (laid-off) all of the junior people (read, the ones with the new ideas, new concepts and new ways of doing things) and keeping the old timers ( status quo, keep things the way they are, let’s not types) since I only had 3 years of staff time, I was let go.

I determined that Nuclear power had limited upward mobility so taking a deep breath I leaped into the computer world. I had been working with the Informix and Ingres databases and had been the database administrator and developer for the VAX-VMS based systems in the Sequoyah Nuclear Training center, I saw an advertisement for an Oracle DBA job working with Aerojet on a NASA project so I sent in my resume. I was called in for an interview so I quickly picked up the book (at that time there was only one) on Oracle and read it on the flight to the interview. I believe I got the job because I was the only one who showed up for the interview. The job was in Iuka, Mississippi at the old Yellow Creek nuclear site, sold by TVA to the government to be the site for the factory building the replacement boosters for the space shuttle. I guess you could say that ultimately I owe my career in Oracle to the Challenger shuttle disaster since the Iuka plant was a direct result of that incident. I finally finished my degree in ’92 in computer science with Kennedy-Western University. I had over 140 credits from various classes and courses I had taken or CLEP’ed while I was in the Navy, but no clear concentration to give me a degree. I took that and a bit of life credit and some additional course work and parlayed that into a computer science degree.

Since then I have worked exclusively with the Oracle database system on VAX-VMS, HPUX, Sun Solaris, AIX, Linux, Windows (various) with Oracle versions 6.0.22 to 10.2.0.2. I have been to 14 countries, 20 States, two sets of Islands (The Canaries and Los Rochas Archeapeligo) given dozens of lectures and presentations, taught thousands of folks how to use, tune and maintain Oracle, and wrote 2 dozen books. I’ve even had a couple of fiction short stories published.

During this 50 years I also met and wed my wife of 32 (almost 33) years, Susan, had two wonderful daughters (Marie and Michelle) and come this October will be a Grandfather.

It has been quite a ride, this first half (third?) of my life. I have ridden and repaired (and steered) nuclear submarines, stood next to a nuclear reactor, flown in jet aircraft, sailed on surface ships and cruise liners, parasailed, driven bicycles, cars, motorcycles, trucks, boats learned to fish, hunt, scuba dive, dance, sing, play the guitar, play the dulcimer, work with wood, work with chemistry, and work with computers. I’ve watched my daughters be born, grow up, get married and now get to watch as they bring new life into the world. I’ve dealt with the death of loved ones, the horrors of the world, the joys of life. I’ve read well over 3000 books, attended 14 different schools from kindergarten to my college degree. I’ve learned a bit of tolerance, how to love and thankfully not too much how to hate, learned to love God and praise powers higher than myself.

I’m looking forward to what the next 50-100 years brings.