Minimizing Rebuild Time with Benchmark Factory from Quest

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.