Raj’s Blog

I officially boycott every Microsoft Product.  I’ve been suffering from viruses and poor performance for many years.  I’ve been running Ubuntu linux on my 6 year old laptop for six months now and I don’t see any need to boot into windows anymore.  Except for quicken and I will switch as soon as a decent product comes out to replace it on linux.

I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while, but the thing that really pushed me over the edge was the purchase of a Motorola Q phone running windows mobile.  This thing is so bad that at times it is so sluggish that you cannot even answer the phone let alone dial.  If you use their Active Sync technology, the phone is locked up for at least 5 minutes when you disconnect.  I won’t even buy a car that has a microsoft sync radio - I have visions of trying to change the channel and it not working.

The second night of my vacation in Buenos Aires, I was starving so I decided to head down the street to look for some munchies.  I saw a pizza joint and headed in. 

I pointed at the menu and said I wanted a “caprese” - she said it in spanish that it was enough for 4 people and said “si”.  She asked me a bunch of questions that I didn’t understand and made the motion of carrying something.  I said “si”.  Then she asked me for “su nombre”(your name) - I thought she was asking me for my telephone number, so I said “no telephono”. 

At this point the transaction was about to abort - I didn’t know why they needed this informacion - so I gave her the business card and pointed to the address of where I was staying.  Then I paid my money and they said “ciao” which means good buy.  At this point I understood what had happened, somehow I negotiated for the pizza to be delivered to my hotel.  Not knowing enough spanish to change the terms of the arrangement, I headed back to the hotel and waited out front for my pizza…

Presentations

The EJB 3.0 presentation that I gave 2 weeks ago at the Gateway JUG is available online here .

For some serious tech discussion:
Harpoon Technologies blog

So the office depot rebate scam continues, I called back to follow up
a request that I send fax them a UPC symbol that they said
that I didn’t send them.   This was 3 weeks ago and they
said yesterday that it is taking them 6 weeks to process
new faxes.  Theives!  I will never buy a product with
a large rebate again.

Somebody recently asked the following questions about
traveling in southern spain.  I am posting the responses
here so other people can benefit:

1) What is the weather like in late Dec and early Jan?
Not sure, this would be easy to lookup.

2)What do you guys know about Malaga or the Andulucian province in the
south?
I went to the Costa Del Sol which was extremely touristy and pretty
much everyone spoke english.

3) Is it very touristy there?
In southern spain yes, if you want something less touristy
I high recommend Sevilla, extremely beatiful.  Once you
get off of the southern coast, probably around 30% of the people
speak limited english - usually the hotel staff speaks
good english.  I was able to get around with very limited
spanish.  I would recommend getting a phrasebook.

4) Is it expensive to eat out everyday?
Not sure where you are from, but I found that food prices
were comparable to the US.  Tapas are served for dinner
and they are quite reasonable.

5) Can one get vegetarian food?
I am not vegetarian, but I had a friend that was.
She was able to eat fine in most restaurants, but
sometimes she would have to settle for just veggies
because that was all they had.

6) Is there high crime in the south that we should watch out for?
Not sure, We didn’t have any problems.  Some areas have
a gypsies with you just need to avoid eye contact with.
Some try to give you a sprig of some herb, put your hands
in your pockets when you walk by other wise they will
put it in your hand and demand a few euros.  If you
don’t pay them, they will threaten to curse you.

7) Can we manage in Malaga without a car but local transportation?
Usually you can walk to a bus station anywhere in spain.  I found
the transportation to be superb.  Just make sure you hotel is close
to the transportation routes.

8) How are Spanish buses and trains?
see above.  I would also like to add that intracity
buses and trains are very reasonable.  I think it
cost me 15 euros to travel 70 miles on a train.

9) Can we get by on limited Spainish and lots of English?
Of course, you just have to be patient.

I recently gave a presentation on EJB 3.0 at my
local javasig.  They were an astute crowd
and pretty much asked me everything that
I chosen not to cover.

However they did not ask me why they should use
EJB3 over spring + hibernate. The main benefit
of EJB3 is that it will be standard based.  But
functionally spring + hibernate has it beat.

Here is my presentation for anyone who is interested:
EJB3 Presentation

I just found out that the circuit breaker box that I have installed in my
place just doesn’t work.  How do I know?  Recently I had a situation
where the breaker should have tripped, instead it burnt up the wiring
in the receptacle.  Really scary considering it could have caused a fire.

The brand is Sylvania which I found out used to be Zinsco.  The breaker box
was 25 years old and they did discontinue the defect breaker at some point.
So if you have an older Zinsco or Sylvania breaker get it checked out by an electrician.