Today Oprah has let everyone know why eating organically is so important. “In honor of our Earth—I love her—I’m asking all of you today to implement just one green idea to help the fight against global warming.” —Oprah  Oprah’s Organic Guru, Sophie Uliano, says you don’t need to buy everything organic, sometimes it’s not available but there are  [...]

Literally.

I was at a friend’s house working on the computer. My son was in the other room crying a bit. So I leaned over to see him… a bit more… a bit more…

POW! BAM!

Holy cow. I fell off the chair. (My wife would be keen to remind me at this point that cows aren’t holy!)

I have some wonderful news to share.  For those of you who have read my previous posts, you’ll know I was diagnosed last year with a tumour in my thyroid and another in my breast and an underactive thyroid which is Hypothyroidism (Hashimoto’s disease). After strong persuasion from my doctor I agreed to a biopsy of [...]

We’re currently in the process of moving our server and changing some of our software. We expect to be finished in seven to ten days. If there is a change in plans, I’ll post a notification here.

If you were an existing member of Rabbit Stew Lounge, then you would have already seen the announcement. If not, then stay tuned for more details. When we’re online again, there will be some interesting changes.

I left for De Jacht from Troon (where I work) at a little past 17:00 to attend a work party at Albert Hall. I went into the Subway to buy a 10 voyage Lijn ticket. I’m not sure if these little tickets have an official name. So from now on, I’ll call it a “jump pass”. Mostly because it sounds cool.

I took my Jump Pass to the bus stop and got on. The bus trip from Troon to De Jacht was uneventful and totally boring. The bus was full — mostly working stiffs trying to get home I suppose. 

When I arrived in De Jacht, I was about an hour early. So I walked around a bit. The intersection at De Jacht was pretty large — something like 6 roads converging. Lots of people. Lots of cars.

I really felt that I had entered the ‘old city’. I got this sense that the structures here predate the structures I see a lot around Troon and Central Station. If I had more time and a camera, I might have investigated further. It’s great how many buildings display their year built on a sign above or beside the front door. 

They let me into Albert Hall a bit early; I was the first one there but did get a chance to talk with some of the event organizers. Before letting me in though, I had buzzed the door and a very nice older French-speaking fellow came out to meet me. I asked when I could go in. He had no idea what I said. Then he said something and I had no idea what he said. I have <em>gotta</em> learn me some French!

Eventually, we resorted to animal sounds and pointing. I pointed to me. Then the door. Then I showed him 6 fingers. Then I shrugged. Something clicked and he responded with a nod, six fingers, and then 3 sets of ten. 18:30. Got it. Merci. Dank u. 10 minutes later, he let me in. Merci. Dank u opnieuw.

The party was our 2008 kickoff event and featured many PowerPoint slides about how we’re doing and where we’re going. half the presentation was in Dutch. I understood a surprising amount of it. The English slides helped. But in IT, many of the words are simply English: Data Warehousing, Service Level Agreement, Project Management, etc…

One conversation I had with a few different colleagues was the etiquette that surrounds the Belgian Kiss. You know, when two strangers, acquaintances, or friends exchange a cheek-to-cheek ghost peck. I asked a few people if extending my hand in a hand-shake could be seen as rude.  I’m not totally comfortable with the Belgian Kiss so I avoid it. Based on my feedback, it looks like I’ll stay the course. No new strategy. Merci. Dank u.

Then the magician came out. Ugh. I find it easy to see the sleight of hand when you don’t concentrate on what the magician is saying. Misdirection is his game. But I was focused on his hands and caught some of his moves. He’s fast, but I wear glasses now and don’t speak his language.

I got home around 00:10. It was a late night. But I enjoyed my short trip to De Jacht and look forward to heading that way again some day.

For the love of all things Holy. Gas prices here in Belgium would make any SUV owner in the US jump off a bridge. Or at least buy a bike.

I just filled my tank last night for the first time since moving to Belgium. 70 Euro.  S-e-v-e-n-t-y! In USD, we’re talking $110.00. Imagine the riots in LA. The extreme-commuters would disappear. People would be forced to take the bus! *gasp*

You might be wondering why last night was the first fill-up here in Belgium (I’ve been living here now since December 22, and my car has been here since February). The fact is, with the company car, I haven’t used the Rabbit so much. Just to get me to the train station (just a few km away) on rainy and super-cold days. So, after a few months of that, I finally needed to re-fuel.

As a matter of fact, the last time I filled my tank, it cost me about $30.00. And I did it back in December!

The moral is to keep using the company car and park the Rabbit. A lot.

Is Hillary Clinton just as stupid as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/ … nnel=10112

Happy Earth Day everyone

From wikipedia:

In September 1969, at a conference in Seattle, Washington, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin announced that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on the environment. Senator Nelson first proposed the nationwide environmental protest to thrust the environment onto the national agenda.” “It was a gamble,” he recalls, “but it worked.”

Five months before the first April 22 Earth Day, on Sunday, November 30, 1969, The New York Times carried a lengthy article by Gladwin Hill reporting on the rising tide of environmental events::

“Rising concern about the environmental crisis is sweeping the nation’s campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam…a national day of observance of environmental problems…is being planned for next spring…when a nationwide environmental ‘teach-in’…coordinated from the office of Senator Gaylord Nelson is planned….” Senator Nelson also hired Denis Hayes as the coordinator.

Each year, the April 22 Earth Day marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970. Among other things, 1970 in the United States brought with it the Kent State shootings, the advent of fiber optics, “Bridge over Troubled Water,” Apollo 13, the Beatles’ last album, the death of Jimi Hendrix, and the meltdown of fuel rods in the Savannah River nuclear plant near Aiken, South Carolina — an incident not acknowledged for 18 years. At the time, Americans were slurping leaded gas through massive V8 sedans. Industry belched out smoke and sludge with little fear of legal consequences or bad press. Air pollution was commonly accepted as the smell of prosperity. Environment was a word that appeared more often in spelling bees than on the evening news. But Earth Day 1970 turned that all around.

On April 22, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment. Denis Hayes, the national coordinator, and his youthful staff organized massive coast-to-coast rallies. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values.

Mobilizing 200 million people in 141 countries and lifting the status of environmental issues onto the world stage. Earth Day on April 22 in 1990 gave a huge boost to recycling efforts worldwide and helped pave the way for the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

As the millennium approached, Hayes agreed to spearhead another campaign, this time focused on global warming and a push for clean energy. The April 22 Earth Day in 2000 combined the big-picture feistiness of the first Earth Day with the international grassroots activism of Earth Day 1990. For 2000, Earth Day had the Internet to help link activists around the world. By the time April 22 rolled around, 5,000 environmental groups around the world were on board, reaching out to hundreds of millions of people in a record 184 countries. Events varied: A talking drum chain traveled from village to village in Gabon, Africa, for example, while hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., USA.

Earth Day 2000 sent the message loud and clear that citizens the world ’round wanted quick and decisive action on clean energy. Earth Day 2007 was one of the largest Earth Days to date, with an estimated billion people participating in the activities in thousands of places like Kiev, Ukraine; Caracas, Venezuela; Tuvalu; Manila, Philippines; Togo; Madrid, Spain; London; and New York.

Founded by the organizers of the first April 22 Earth Day in 1970, Earth Day Network promotes environmental citizenship and year round progressive action worldwide. Earth Day Network is a driving force steering environmental awareness around the world. Through Earth Day Network, activists connect change in local, national, and global policies. Earth Day Network’s international network reaches over 17,000 organizations in 174 countries, while the domestic program engages 5,000 groups and over 25,000 educators coordinating millions of community development and environmental protection activities throughout the year. Earth Day is the only event celebrated simultaneously around the globe by people of all backgrounds, faiths and nationalities. More than a half billion people participate in Earth Day Network campaigns every year.

I just learned today that practically right across the street from where I work (in the Troon area in Brussels) is the US Embassy building (which is in the Kunst-Wet area). I had been wondering where this was in relation to my building. I need to go to the US Embassy some day soon for my daughter’s paperwork.

It’s a lot of fun getting to know the lay of the land. I feel pretty good about the Central Station / Troon / and Kunst-Wet triangle now. I’m also a trained professional at buying cheese pizzas from the Pizza Hut around the corner.

And, to top it off, today is absolutely beautiful out. I’ve learned to really appreciate the nice days here!

I posted a review of the book “SOA Approach to Integration” by Matjaz, B. Juric, Ramesh Loganathan, Dr. P., and G Sarang (published by Packt Publishing) over at Amazon this past weekend. Please check it out if you get the chance. Unlike my last review, this one is more favorable!

I wanted to read more about SOA for two reasons: curiosity and to round-out my knowledge of various integration strategies. Those who know me, know me as a “data guy”. I like to design data models, create databases, normalize things, and sketch integration strategies in UML. Boring. I know.

I suppose this comes directly from my background as a VFP application developer. In the nineties, I developed a dozen or so customized, vertical applications that existed for the most part in departmental islands. Their purpose was to solve business problems, usually at the process level. I soon began writing code to integrate these applications, the fancy term is “Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)”, but I never really called it that. Using Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) and shared objects, I was able to build point-to-point bridges allowing these islands to communicate with one another.

When I had the chance to start developing data warehouses, I jumped. I no longer write applications, instead, I do a lot of data modeling and I write code and design workflows to integrate data from any number of disparate applications spread out across an enterprise. I find this work more than just “satisfying”.

SOA is a different approach to integrating an enterprise. It is like EAI in some ways, but overall, the SOA approach is more advanced and scalable. Up until I read this book, I could not easily draw the line between exposing a few functions in a peer-to-peer api/RPC scenario, to this “Enterprise Service Bus” that coordinates and orchestrates entire business processes off in some far off place using XML and web services.

As you know from my postings and articles, I talk a lot about “Business Processes” in regards to dimensional modeling. This book brought me greater insight into what a “process” is and what it could be. In Dimensional Modeling, we take a bottom-up approach to building an enterprise database. Using conformed dimensions, we start process-by-process to construct a complete data warehouse. Unlike what some detractors and skeptics conclude (are there really any of those still?), we’re not creating new silos or islands, but rather an integrated, highly valuable data warehouse organized by business process, facilitated by the use of conformed dimensions. SOA looks at the business process in much the same way, but while the data warehouse typically gets a hold of a transaction after it occurs, SOA is part of the transaction. They’re two pees in the same pod.

While I agree that SOA is necessary for real-time transactional and document-related (”doc-literal”) integration, I don’t feel that data warehouses are threatened by the emergence of this “technology”. SOA solves a “business logic” problem, where business logic is spread out across an organization. Data warehousing solves reporting, analytical, and data exploration problems. A fully integrated organization will rely on SOA and data warehousing.

To buy this book, click here.

Check out these other reviews as well:

Tech Initiatives
Ken Guest’s online diary
Enterprise Architecture SOA and More

I’ve been hearing snippets of news lately on some of the things that have gone on in prison country, er, I mean Australia. While the news ranges from forced conversions to christianity to state-sponsored child abductions, this latest story seems to be indicative of a sordid Australian past (and to some degree, its present):

Aborigine rights campaigner Kathleen Mills said she had heard of children being injected with a leprosy treatment and becoming very ill.

[…]

Earlier this year Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a formal apology for the past wrongs caused by successive governments against Aboriginal people.

This is awful. I hope it receives international attention so that something can be done.

Kyrgyz Babies Pass HIV to Mothers
By LEILA SARALAYEVA

Associated Press Writer

Not long ago, she was a wife, mother and teacher. Now Dilfuza Mustafakulova is HIV-positive and has lost her husband and her job. Mustafakulova’s baby son was among 72 children infected with the virus at two Kyrgyz hospitals. Sixteen mothers also have contracted it - in some cases by breast-feeding their children.

The scandal has led to charges of negligence against 14 medical workers in the impoverished former Soviet republic, where investigators suspect the children were infected by tainted blood and the reuse of needles.

Although HIV infection from breast-feeding is rare, it is possible, usually when the baby has mouth sores and the mother has lesions on her nipples, according to AIDS experts. Mustafakulova, whose son was 7 months old at the time, said her breasts were cracked and bleeding.

Now, abandoned by her husband and shunned by her in-laws, she struggles to feed herself and her three children with little government support.

Since the first cases were discovered in July, hundreds of children and their parents have been tested in southern Kyrgyzstan. Health Minister Marat Mambetov announced Tuesday that the infections, which began in the summer of 2006, had been contained.

Some 1,600 people are infected with HIV in the Central Asian nation of 5 million people, according to official figures - 15 times more than in 2002. AIDS experts estimate the real number is closer to 6,000. The majority of cases stem from intravenous drug use.

The infected children are getting free antiretroviral drugs, but their mothers have been denied treatment.

The full article:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/n … cation=rss

Speaking to the BBC, Professor Richard Falk said he believed that up to now Israel had been successful in avoiding the criticism that it was due. He compared Israel’s actions in Gaza to how the Nazis treated the Jews during the holocaust years.

He said: “If this kind of situation had existed for instance in the manner in which China was dealing with Tibet or the Sudanese government was dealing with Darfur, I think there would be no reluctance to make that comparison,”

Any thoughts to the current protesting? Or the Olympics in China in general?

One interesting question that I have is whether or not it is appropriate to protest politics by snuffing the flame. Personally, I think the whole torch thing is stupid and stinks of the nazis. But it exists. Should the torch be “abused” for political protesting or should it be off limits?

Should the Olympics in general serve as a platform for various protests? That certainly has been the tradition.