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CEX CON

I walk past a CEX shop on the way to the office from the buis stop every morning. If an attack of boredom strikes, of the need to get a TECH fix, I have a wonder in.

I have never understaood their pricing structure, in the past i have seen

  • 2nd hand Wii’s 30 quid more then a NEW one next door
  • Pink DS 40 quid more than a new on, in stock in Argos

yet today??I was surprised to see them selling SIM packs for 3.99 or 4.99 which are available in the high street for free, or 1.99 (in the case of THREE, and that was direct from a THREE shop)??

What is High Availability? When do you need it? How do you create it and how do you measure it?

I am busy designing and building infrastructure for various “as a Service” service offerings

Web as a Service (IIS)
Data as a Service (SQL and Oracle)
Middleware as a Service

So I thought I would float a few questions

What is High Availability?
When do you need it?
How do you create it?
How do you measure it?

DISCUSS !!

[UPDATE]

Here is my two penneth,

Ah! A bank holiday weekend

One of our famous UK bank holidays is upon us. During which every one who live in a city heads for the country. Lots of people who live in the country head off for a city break. Causing more traffic chaos than rush hour.

Myself,??I am now off for a week, but I might sneak a few?? TWITTER updates in.

Planning to be part of the gridlock on Saturday morning with my ???unit??? comprising a Diesel CRV and a Caravan of all things??? Classic Bank Holiday traditions must be upheld. It makes us proud to be British !

Lets just hope the sister in law does not run up??my phone bill while i am away

Pondering large scale application consolidation

Any one involved in large scale application consolidation or migration may want to consider a few points I have written up here

??

Twitters broke

Saved by Google Cache

The Wife has been busy updating her MySpace Page??and decided to create her self a little shockwave flash slide show, using the myspace tools

There seems to be a small error in the tool set instructions, which ment it did not display the last few steps. so a quick call (shout) to her IT dept (ME) (Note to self, must get premium rate number, Scratch that i would end up paying the phone bill)
Turns out the missing instructions were “paste the text into the About Me Box”
While exercising this “simple” step, I managed to corrupt and commit her lovely pink theme
Deep Deep SH!T situation, How on earth do??I fix this, After a FEW minutes of panic, the penny dropped , Google Cache.
Sure enough Google had the page cached, right click, view source, sorted, my testicles are safe for another day !

Those were the days

My sixth form days (some 22 years ago) involved a major prank at least once a week

From Gritting the ends of the playground ice slides in the winter ( to see if the 1st year’s could cope with the sudden stop), to using a CO2 fire extingushers for air conditioning in the summer

Shame we did not think to turf the common room though

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/north_east/7398211.stm

Top notch stuff

Gloucester Man cuts car in Two

In a world which seem to be full of drug dealers driving stolen or unregistered cars with no TAX, MOT or insurance, the DVLA and the NCP clamp one which is registered, SORNed and ALMOST of the road.

I say almost a, small part of it was overhanging a pavement, so the NCP/DVLA Jobsworths clamped it anyway

Well done Ian, it a shame the BBC have portrayed you as the baddy here

Full Story HERE
Click here for Local Paper article
Click here for the BBC article
Click here for the Telegraph article

It is interesting to NOTE the local paper article is neutral and covers the story in an unbias manor, where as the BBC story is very pro NCP/DLVA making Ian look like a menace.

The NCP man is qouted as saying “He took it upon himself to commit a serious act of vandalism. He put himself at risk and he put other people at risk.”
But Valdalism is “Destroying or damaging, or attempting to destroy or damage, the property of another without the owner’s consent“, but it was Ian’s car, So could Ian now sue NCP for libel

The Wife enters the blog world

Someone has stolen my wife and replaced her with an Internet geek

In the last two weeks she has opened a facebook, a myspace page and a myspace blog

Inventor of first practical transistor dead at 91

According to The Register, Morgan Sparks, inventor of the first “practical” transistor and one of the reasons your cell phone doesn’t use vacuum tubes, died this week at the age of 91

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/08/morgan_sparks_obituary/