So there is a good chance I will get to go to Japan the week of August 11th. Work is sending me so that takes care of airfare and of course I will stay a few extra days just to be a tall strange tourist. I have to spend 3-4 days in Tokyo and after that I will be free to move around. I am thinking Osaka will make a good destination but I am open to suggestions. Where do you think I should go in Japan ?
I’ve been to some scary and cool places for work. And let me tell you Apple has the best cafeteria I’ve been to so far. Beside having wireless access all over the place everything you get to eat is custom made for you. From burritos to pizza to sandwiches to sushi to carved ham. And no I didn’t run into Steve Jobs but I was in the same building as his office. So that’s my claim to fame.

Oh and finally if you ever wanted to know where I spent a good chunk of my time as a kid here’s a map centered at Kermanshah
Don’t you love the internet ?

It was actually pretty good, beside learning about sales it taught you how to deal with personal issues. How to take responsibility for yourself and your own actions instead of just blaming others. So for today take a piece of paper, make two circles, one on each side.
On one side write everything you want out of life that you don’t have, car, girlfriend, boyfriend, house, money… then stop close your eyes and just imagine which one of those things you want the most. Put it in the circle.
On the other side write everything you would like to change about yourself, stop close your eyes and think for about 5 min. The write the one thing that stands out in the circle.
Now you have to realize that all of things that are holding you back are for the most part of your own doing.
Think for example how an elephant is trained, they tie the elephant with thick chains and tie it down, it will try to escape over and over again. But the chain is too thick; once the spirit of the elephant is broken you can tie it down with a very thin chain. It will never try to break the chain again since as far as it’s concerned that’s not possible.
It’s the same with your list, you can change the list.
You have two choices; you can have either results or excuses?
Which one do you have?

Is always hard, it’s amazing how set your mind can be in one particular pattern. But we will see how the current training I am going through will work. I am being as open as I can to it, and apparently it has paid off in the past for other people.
If I am sales engineer of the quarter by christmas I am taking you all out for drinks
In the meantime back to the power point presentation.

The following was written by norman who graciously allowed me to post it here.
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The feeling of debauchery in Vegas�

Testosterone induced money driven creatures reckoning with plastic realities and empty bags of skin. There is no true smile within the city limits. If this is the appeal- the fake cones, extensions and press ons, what does this say for the human race? What is the data point to extract? I have never seen much peroxide and silicone in one place. I must admit, it was pretty cool for the first 10 minutes as is any cheesy radio one hit wonder. But can we consider that to be a formula to enlighten if even for a moment the morality of the United States? Other countries have a cultural divide that they have respected for generations. We have a track record of change external to logic or reason.

The first night was a gathering of men in a dinner suitable for extravagant tastes. Martinis, wine, scotch, prawns the size of third world children and filet minion blood fucking rare. Our group was in the middle of the restaurant sitting next to LA Guns and Ratt that happened to performing at the Hard Rock Hotel that night. Our crew did catch the eyes of the groupies that went one after another in to the women�s restroom with a different band member to pay their respects. On the other side was a table of off duty �entertainers� all female of mixed ethnicity drinking Dom. I know the only in America would not be correct simply because I am not ignorant to the fact that Amsterdam has more freedom per square inch than the US could ever have…but nonetheless, we tell ourselves that to give merit to our home that is as faithful to its people as venereal disease. Speaking of our table where statistics would dictate that at least three of us had an std considering the fact we all were making decent money, in sales, and single- we had all ordered Ahi and filet minion or something that was over forty per entr�e and it after five rounds of cocktails, had arrived. �A toast, to all you fools who flew in from disparate parts of the country�may the world treat you well and may your next deal break two mil�� this summed up the mindset of every person at the table. We raised our drinks and indulged. �To a man who has had two prior bachelor parties with no wedding prior to date, we can say with confidence that even if he is married, we will do this again in two years.� A statement only a hard core single can appreciate. We drank and killed the charred carcass in front of us. A round of tiramisu and single malt scotch later we went straight outside to the stretch excursion limo that was filled with Dom, and top shelf everything destine for the first strip bar of the evening.

We left about midnight, and made it to the club in two rounds of alcohol and controlled substances. Walking in on the limo discount on cover charge, a corner of the club is waiting with five tables and the houses best ladies. The first toast was tequila, the next some pink mixer I did not catch the name of, and the third was goldschlager in a ten minute timeframe. We felt no pain. The group dispersed for about two hours and them magically a member of the group I recognized pulled a dancer off me in mid performance and dragged me to the next strip club. The next place aptly dubbed the �Sperming Rhino� (ed: it’s the spearmint rhnio, and yes they do rock) we had a back door VIP entrance that was greeted with Les Claypool screaming �girls for a single man�� By this time in the journey, I had lost track of my account and who had made it to this club. We were still about nine strong and had no concept of actually arriving at 3am. The survivors were in their element and did not seem to be losing steam. I was proud to be a member of team setting precedence for other bachelors to experience. Listening to messages on my cell that I could not quite make out other than it sounded like a guy I was sitting next to at dinner, I tuned off my cell and went into close mode for the evening. I was not sleeping with out a confirmed close for the night.

I heard the joke on my way, � Who are the only ugly women in Vegas?? The ones you bring�� and in retrospect they are also the only ones able to have a non-biased conversation.

Woke up at 5 am to discuss the NFS problem with 2 developers one in India and one in the UK.
We had finally diagnosed the problem, it seemd that making a readdirplus call (df or ls -l) from a client that had not been given specific share privilages from the dst NAS server was resulting in a stale NFS file handle which was killing the transaction. One solution was to send a mount call before the readdirplus call and so the dst server would know about the client before the call came in and it would respond with the proper answer instead of the stale NFS filehandle answer.
It seemd that the protocl was open as to what the proper response should be so any response was valid. This had taken 3 days and about 20 gigs of ethernet traffic to diagnose.
I think adding the specific client in the exports of the dst server will finally solve the problem not because it gives them any additional privilages but because the code path taken for clients that have explicit permission is different from that taken by clients that have implicit permission ie. the dst server is open to the world. So you will get a different response and that will allow the transaction to go through. In either case it’s a configuration change and not a code change which would have required a lot more QA (mainly me testing).

Just wanted to share a day in my life with you guys.

are up here. It was a hell of a hot hike, hope you like the pics, there will be a longer entry later during the week, I’ve just been busy the last few days.

Sister day
Today is Sister day, what does that mean ? Well it means that you have to write something nice about your sister. How did this day come about ? I just made it up on the spot live with it. Don’t complain, do go and look up to see if there is a sister day already. July 1st is going to be sister day from now on. I don’t want to hear any arguments about it.
My little sister lives in the big city of NY, that’s right the big apple. She lives on the 23rd floor of a large high rise on the upper west side right by the Lincoln tunnel. Lately I’ve been thinking about which one of us has it better and I think she’s winning. Her commute sucks but she lives right in the middle of Manhattan, a few blocks away from times square. And she dresses more fashionably than I (or is it me ? I always forget which one I should be using).
I went to visit my little sister last weekend and man let me tell you she has grown up. She’s really become a consultant, she even talks in their wacky lingo. Beside the fancy cloths and the cigarettes and the constant coffee she’s really grown up to be almost as cool as her older brother. So remember today is sister day be nice to yours.