Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Interesting findings for 2007 public holidays

Working on a project, I found some interesting things about 2007 public holidays for countries. The data may not be accurate since not all countries are counted.

Top 5 countries with most public holidays:

  1. Thailand (27)
  2. India (21)
  3. Puerto Rico (20)
  4. Brazil, Swiss, Hong Kong (18)
  5. Sweden (17)
Top 5 countries with least public holidays:
  1. USA (6)
  2. Panama (7)
  3. United Kingdom of Great Britain (8)
  4. Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Ireland (9)
  5. France, New Zealand, Czech Republic (10)
Where is China? China is close to the least end. Unbelievable! :-)

Hong Kong is not bad, after all.

Thursday, April 5, 2007

更上一层楼

我抱我女儿的本事又长了。现在的情况整个一跟以前完全倒转。怎么说?本来在我老婆怀里是哭的,到我怀里就不哭了!不仅不哭,还能在我怀里美美地睡去。我老婆哄她睡觉,看着着了,放下,人家又醒了。我哄她睡觉,睡得沉着呢,放下也不会醒!现在小宝就认我,我抱她就不哭,我抱她就她就能睡着。嘛叫登峰造极啊,jie奏叫!而且,现在慢慢也摸着一些路子了,经验也慢慢累积起来了。每次必待她从浅层睡眠过度到深层睡觉才把她放下,这样她就不容易醒。

小宝也开始喜欢上洗澡了。洗澡的时候都很乖,不哭不闹。就是相当紧张,生怕自己掉到水里。小手使劲抓着我的衣服,轻易不肯放手。特逗!

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

A pitiful DBA, ME

For years, I just can't fully dedicate myself to my own work. My title is Oracle DBA which is I am passionate on and what I was looking for. To be an Oracle expert was my career goal once. Maybe it still is. Maybe not. I am not quite sure right now. Seems like nobody in this company knows what a DBA is, what a DBA is supposed to do and how important a DBA is to business. In this company, particularly in this department, nobody makes me feel like a DBA but more like a database operator, or even a database programmer. e.g. I told my manager I was going to apply CPU(Critical Product Update) patches to all our Oracle databases. I explained to her how important it is to do so. And this is to comply with company security policy. Her response made me feel "What hell is the CPU patch? Why do we need to apply those damn patches? Is it really important? Why don't you just put aside that and spend more time on more useful things like programming?" Forgot to tell you the funny thing is I am working for a development team even I take care of all the databases from development to UAT to production. So this development team manages all the related systems from development to production as well. What a mess! From my point of view, nobody here has production support experience. So they think production support is an easy job. Nothing needs to be done as long as the systems are running well. In other words, as long as there is no problem, they think you have done nothing. They think people like me (DBA, UNIX Admin) live an easy work life everyday. They think the production support doesn't take time at all. Only development work is very important. Only development takes time and creates value to business. That's what in these guys mind. So they always demand me to get involved in the programming work, whenever possible. They don't care if I have some other work to do or not. As I say, actually on their mind they think I don't have work to do at all. So when they assign work to me, they don't even ask me if I have some other work to do or not. They just assign. They just tell me to complete what they assign to me. Whenever I tell them I need to do my own job which is a DBA's responsibility and I don't have time to spend on programming, they think, at least they make me feel I tell them a lie and I don't want to write programs for them. Gosh! I miss these days in my previous company. During that period, I was working on shift and really tired physically. It's around 2000 and people were nervous about the millennium worm problem. However, I was happy since I felt being taken care, being respected. Management really appreciated my work. Developers also respect DBAs and often ask us for advices and how to improve the code performance. They all know how important DBAs are and the great value DBAs have to a business success. But here in my current company, I feel really tired both physically and mentally. What I did have never been appreciated. I don't feel being respected at all. Nobody asks me about the code performance, the data model design, never, ever! So it's really a mess in our databases. I told them many many times and they don't care. They think I try to slow down their work, try to stop them from creating revenue for the company. Finally I gave up. What can I do? They threatened me and they told me to stop. 7 years, I've been working for this company this long. I've never get promoted. Actually, I got degraded once due to the office politics. I feel really frustrated working in this company, particularly in this department. I can't see a bright future for my career if I continue. A pitiful DBA!

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

松了一口气

今天又是老婆带女儿去医院复查的日子。自打女儿出生以来,一直都要定期去医院复诊,因为她的新生儿黄疸有些偏高。这个问题也着实一直困扰着我和老婆,想尽办法想把她的黄疸指数降下来。虽说这是一个出现在新生儿中相当普遍的现象,可身为父母,依然免不了担心紧张。上午11点,老婆从医院回到家打来电话说不用再去医院复查了,女儿的黄疸指标已经降了下来。听到这个消息,终于松了一口气。相信老婆在听到医生告诉她这个消息的时候,也必定是喜出望外。我们的小宝终于从黄疸的阴影里脱离了出来,更加健康地成长!

女儿让我有了成就感

女儿让我有了成就感!

话说前天晚上,我闺女哭得正酣畅淋漓呢,我一抱她,嘿,居然不哭了!这可把我给乐坏了。要知道,之前是不管什么情况,只要我这当爹的一抱她,她就开始哭个不停!现在倒过来了,我能不美嘛?!不仅不哭了,而且乖乖地在我怀里躺了一个多小时之多!

真有成就感!没什么追求了,我!

Unbearable workplace

I just can't stand it any more. The workplace sucks. Full of unfairness, politic conflicts and unawareness on purpose. I know I must do something, I must ...

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