The Realm of Ken Masters … Part II

Sorry for the late post.. but happy 2010 to everyone.

This year I went to watch the fireworks at Gazza’s place down at Ryde. Which was just around the corner from my work. I didn’t know you could see the city sky line from there.. but you can. It was far away, but it was nice. After watching the 9pm fireworks we played some Scattergories. Man, I sucked at that game!

Afterwards it was a friendly game of Texas Hold Em… I didn’t win. boohoo.

Anyway, hope this year was better than the last!

Why is it that I’m such an idiot at times..? ..  I seem to hurt the feelings of the ones I love .. why am I never satisified with what I have right now, and instead look to the future, and at times to the past? … sometimes I feel that I need to do what I want to do, and sometimes I feel I need to do what my family says to do .. I’ve just come to the realization that I’m such a decisive person, and most of the time I try to take the path of less resistance. Why am I like that.. ?

More boring work stuff… ! Sorry… I’ll post something better soon.. .. so something interesting from AskTom:

You Asked

Hi Tom

I have been trying out Oracle 9i these couple of weeks, I notice that when I set sga_max_size to a size then whenever I start the instance that amount of SGA is assigned no matter how big are my data cache or shared pool. Are they pre-allocated?

For example if I set sga_max_size 200M, db_cache 50M, shared pool 50M, java pool 10M, large pool 10M. When I start the instance and do show SGA it actually says 200M assigned instead of around 120M. At OS level I havent tested it still but is this 200MB assigned to Oracle? Or Oracle memory consumption will only increase only when we increase shared pool or db cache?

and we said…

It depends on the platform/operating system.

On Windows — it has to pre-allocate it. On Solaris, where we can dynamically create and destroy shared memory segments — we do it on the fly.

But — it should be JUST FINE, since windows will not actually give us the physical ram until we use the physical ram, it is just in your paging file.

———————————————————————-

I had to search this because I was baffled as to why an Oracle 9i instance for DEWHA was using only 300MB of RAM, but had 1.5TB VM reserved… now I know!

Just found out from Bill that he is expecting Bill jr.  next june… (well it could be Maggie jr) ! … so congratulations to both of them.. very happy for them.

Hearing news like that makes me pretty unhappy about my own situation .. I could have been in his situation right now (being a daddy that is), but so many bad decisions I made in the past that I regret so much.. but what can you do.. what’s done is done right.. ? It’s so hard to say goodbye to yesterday. :(  …

Learnt a nice command from Mike B today .. the follow command checks the disk I/O of a server:

sar -d 1 5

Also, on Solaris, the equivalent of the command “top” is

prstat

Cya!

Encountered a SQL Server 2000 database with no enterprise manager installed on it today..  I’m not too experienced with SQL without the tools, so I asked Michael for some help to find out what version it was running. Due to some creditial problems, I had to use osql to access the database:

osql -s <server_name> -E

Then from here onwards it’s pretty much like sqlplus but in SQL style. To find the version of SQL Server:

select @@version

And to find the type of SQL Server it’s running:

select serverproperty (’edition’)

For my case, the result returned: “Desktop Engine”, which mean it was running MSDE edtion of SQL Server… (freebie!)

AstroBoy returns..

Watched the new AstroBoy tonight.. hmm.. I thought it was good, but it could have been much better if it was targeted towards a older audience. Being more of a kids movie it’s 95% happy joy joy…! I would have liked some drama. It felt too much like a Disney movie than a Japanese anime, and because of that I didn’t enjoy it as much.

7/10

11-6 vs. Wild Gnomes …

Wow, 2 game winning streak.. :D .. the full team turned up yesterday, and that meant we had 4 subs… the biggest team we’ve ever had I believe. However, Troy will be leaving the team in week 4 as he won’t be working in North Ryde anymore… he’s not an explosive player, but from what I’ve seen, he is solid. Think of him as the white Big Nick and you should know how he plays!

The Wild Gnomes only had 5 players to start off, and we took full advantage of it, running in 3 quick tries in the first 5 minutes… after that they got some players from the previous game to fill in, so they had a full team. 2 of the non-official players were actually quite good as they were quick and agile.. We were a bit sloppy on the field, both in attack and defense, I believe that’s mainly due to 4 of the guys being newbies .. and this led to the opposition getting 3 tries in the 1st half, but hopefully this will improve over time..

It actually started sprinkling at the start of the game, but luckily it didn’t affect our ball handling as it usually does.. it did effect the opposition’s though, as one of their players who was build like Jonah Lomu kept trying to ran with the ball cupped and must have dropped it 4-5 times…! … I believe most of their team were touch players converting to tag as you can tell from their style of play. Touch players always try and rush the opposition with quick plays of the ball as soon as they’re touched, and that doesn’t translate well to tag as you need to play the ball exactly at the position they are tagged (there will be a marker). So usually touch players would get tagged, and due to their momentum carrying them forward a few more metres, they will try and play it as soon as they stop, which is off the mark, and will result in a penalty to the other side.

At half time the score was 6-3… our 2nd half was pretty much the same as our 1st half, our players weren’t running onto the ball, but luckily the opposition was worse, as we ran away with the game 11-6. Next week’s result is going to be important as we want to stay in division 2 this year and not move up (first 3 weeks is grading weeks). So we’re going to have to play bad and lose somehow … maybe we’ll put on all the newbies + Kris, Louie, Nick, Locky and see how they go…  … if we stay in div2, I guarantee a premiership… and you can quote me on that!!

Comedy moment of the night: In the 2nd half, Newbie Ed made a break and proved that his speed not much better than Nick Ho’s! It was like watching a slow-motion replay, except the players around him were at normal speed! After that run he subbed straight off and he was finished… he said he said dinner before the game, and he almosted chucked up!! Schoolboy errors…  never had a big dinner before the game..

11-3 vs. The Rose & Crown Hotel

I’ve missed playing oztag.. its been over 7 weeks since our last game! .. However we’re playing at Ryde this season, this was due to a stuff up by the organisers, losing our team nomination form. By the time we found out it was too late and the Tuesday night competition was filled up. Nothing we could do about that, so we decided to go play at the Ryde competition.

A few changes to the team, with Mickos (too far to go), Jerrett (work) and Big Nick (uni) out this season meant that we had big gaps to replace as all 3 players solid and reliable… Jerrett was our main play maker so that means someone else will have to step up. Same with Mickos as he is our main dummy-half.

Henry informed me that he will be bringing in 2 players, and Nick H would be bringing in 1 as well. I also recruited 1 player from work, Troy (he is like the white Big Nick, in size and speed), so we should be covered when it came to the number of players, as the final count was 11. Troy is not 100% certain he will be able to play the season as his contract is finishing up so he might be not be working around Ryde area anymore.

First game was on at 7:45pm so I decided to stick around work. Come 7pm it was time to go so Troy and I convoyed it down to the fields. Initially we went to the wrong place as the website hadn’t been update in years, but luckily the real venue was only 2 minutes away…

We only had 8 players for the first game, and out of the 8 only 2 were new, so I knew we would be competitive. As we were walking to our field, we noticed the other team and they had at least 8 subs! ..  woah.. they won’t be short of energy..

I won the toss and chose to kick off. At this comp, we get to kick off on the half way line, which was a surprise as we were used to kicking 10 metres behind it at the city comp. After 2 tags it was evident that we would dominate the game as the other team are a bunch of touch football players, the tactics and rules are different and it would be a struggle for them as they transition to the ozTag way of playing and rules.

Through-out the first half we were dominating them and went into the break up 6-2. Both newbies played very well and it was hard to find too much fault in the team besides the 2 tries we let in. I hammered into our boys to keep up the good work and not to let our guard down. I challenged them to limit the opposition to only 2 more tries. After the break, they answered the call and we continuted where we left off. The final score, 11-3.

The next day I told Mickos about our dominating win and it couldn’t take it anymore, he is now back on the team .. He wouldn’t be able to take it if we win another premiership without him.. hehe.

Fantasy NBA

Back for another year!

Fantasy NBA is always fun, as long as you play it with the correct crowd. It’s the art of managing a NBA without the hassles of the fiancial side of the game… Every year, all teams participating start off with a blank basketball squad. A random order of the teams get generated and teams take turns in drafting players from the pool until you have filled up your team. Obviously, getting the first pick what everyone wants, but bear in mind the selection order is set so that for even rounds the order gets reversed (ie. 1-2-3-4-5-5-4-3-2-1-1-2-3-4-5 .. etc.. ).

This year we have a change in the draft type, in that it will be an “offline draft”. This is the first time we’re doing this, and it means that we get to draft our players in semi-real time (as opposed to making a ranked player list previously). Which means that we careful drafting, you should not end up with a team of fowards! ..  Anyway, I was hoping for a top 5 pick this year as I’m never ever lucky enough to get a high pick, and what do you know.. the random draw comes out, and I get last pick (12th) .. !! .. oh well … the only consulation I have is that instead of getting 1 superstar player, I get 2 all-star players instead…

The scoring is based on player statistics, and is broken down into a few categories. POINTS, FG%, FT%, 3PT, RB, AST, BLK, STL & TO. Each team will have the following positions to fill - PG, SG, G, SF, PF, F, C, C, UTIL, + 3 BENCH/Reserve slots (12 in total). Each week you will go head-to-head against another team and depending on how your real life counterparts play during the week, statistics are accumulated and if you beat your opponent for a particular category then you score 1 point. Since there are 9 categories, each week there is 9 points up for grabs for each match-up. Easy eh?

hmmm … Scardy Cat Samson got 3rd pick.. where is the justice in that? … he is known to be a very dodgy GM … ugh.. !! Doesn’t matter, I will build an awesome team to win the whole thing and prove its possible to win from 12th position.. !!