Google passa a batata quente*

Nas palavras imortais do BB Marco "Nao sei o que andas a procura, mas arriscas-te a encontrar" (Possivelmente a frase nao sera tao imortal quanto isso, uma vez que nao tenho a certeza da citacao estar correcta)

A ideia nao e nova, mas lembrei-me de ver o que e que os desocupados que aqui vem parar andam a procura.

copy run start - Experimenta sem o t no fim. Se correr bem copias a configuracao actual do teu Cisco para a memoria de maneira que no proximo reboot elas nao sao esquecidas.

"list of things white people like" - Isso e aqui

0211fb618b98d794165ceb6dc8f38fbb7d260c1d28dcffc5dd70938fd723222e574ef558f1939482 - Oi?

codigos para desbolquear canais para adultos na meo - (E cerca de 100 variacoes desta query) Experimentem paga-los. There is no such thing as free pr0n.

meo ver conteudos gravados na segunda televisão - Tens de desligar a primeira. Parvo, nao e?

como limpar a cache do teu browser - Do meu? Basta pedires.

o significado segafredo em italiano - Punheta a frio. Ajudou?

what does omoos mean - Se for humus, ve aqui Se for Omoo, E um livro do Herman Melville, sequela do Typee. No meu blog e uma referencia aos comentadores.

Krav Maga - (e referencias a tecnicas, Paulo Pereira etc) - Gosto muito. O mestre Paulo foi das pessoas que mais me marcaram ate hoje (e nem tou a falar das nodoas negras). Para informacoes mais serias procurem aqui ou aqui

*homenagem a uma das minhas blogueiras favoritas. Hey, they say it's the highest form of flattery. Right?

Short explanation on the "M$" thing

Not too long ago I was reading some forum or wickedly long e-mail thread (can't remember) and someone mentioned that referring to Microsoft as M$ was immature or something close to that point.

Well I disagree. I think most people that use the M$ thingy do it because they've grown so used to checking for files with DOS line endings with grep -lR -e '^M$' *
that they just associate DOS with M$... I mean Microsoft. Wait, I'm confused here.

oh gowd.. fail

I might get a bad rep for this one.. but hey all good fun!
http://www.blackboard.com/projectng/ads/video.asp?id=MichaelandWoz

Short description:
Michael Chasen and Steve Wozniak talk about Blackboard 9 (project NG) in a "I'm a PC, I'm a Mac" kind of (read: ripoff) commercial. Seriously now.. Wouldn't hiring some once-great-stand-up-comedian make more sense here?

Spoiler:
Watch the other adds. It gets worse.

Finantial advice

Because I recognize we all live in troubled times, I've decided to share some financial advice I got recently from one of my company's admins*.

If you had purchased £1000 of Northern Rock shares one year ago it would now be worth £4.95 . With HBOS earlier this week your £1000 would have been worth £16.50.

£1000 invested in XL Leisure would now be worth less than £5 but if you bought £1000 worth of Tennents Lager one year ago, drank it all, then took the empty cans to an aluminum recycling plant, you would get £214.

So based on the above statistics the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle.

*actually it was a NT Admin

In repeat

Some people need to be constantly reminded that the world turns around itself and so should they.

Saturday Summer Sail (UPDATED)

Unfortunately it will be a dutch summer...

But I will update this post with some photos!

Oh happy days

Ok, so I went to Den Haag this Saturday just to leave Amsterdam for a bit. And in a good time did I do so. If you don't know already, The Hague (as it is also referred to) is the capital of Holland and one of the most beautiful cities I've ever been.

Even I could pass laws with that view..

If you ever get to go there be sure to visit the big church (Grotekerk) and the parliament house. Really very nice. Also, while in the neighborhood be sure to check the cool shopping district, specially the "Passage". At one end you will find the iFactors Apple Retail Store where you can just walk in and buy an iPhone (at this moment, the iPhone is sold out everywhere in Amsterdam, this is why I was surprised of just going into a store and getting out with one in less than one hour)

It's that one to the right!

So, cutting a short story shorter, I am now a proud owner of a black 16 GB 3G iPhone. Hurray for me!

I still haven't played enough with it to make up my mind if this was actually a good buy or just a long time fetish that I could finally obtain (god knows I've had this doubt in my mind for several other items...) but so far, with the help of some really cool free apps I've been having a blast with it. At the very least it will replace my old iPod in my pocket everyday.. not sure if I want to give up my "normal" much lighter, much smaller phone yet.. And the PSP might stay at home more often, at least for those short train trips it's not worth the bother anymore since I'm not even that much of a player...

Either his hands are bigger or his iPhone is smaller...

Ich wuenschte du waerst mit mir da gewesen

Some pics from the Amsterdam gay pride night out. Lekker dings all of us, i know.

you call _that_ dancing

andy comes out (a bit)

lekker lekker lekker

Major Matze and his woman

choose what life?

me and Connie

Thanks for the (good) photos Matze.

Now all I need is time.

So this is permanence, love's shattered pride.
What once was innocence, turned on its side.
A cloud hangs over me, marks every move,
Deep in the memory, of what once was love.

Oh how I realized how I wanted time,
Put into perspective, tried so hard to find,
Just for one moment, thought I'd found my way.
Destiny unfolded, I watched it slip away.

Excessive flashpoints, beyond all reach,
Solitary demands for all I'd like to keep.
Let's take a ride out, see what we can find,
A valueless collection of hopes and past desires.

I never realized the lengths I'd have to go,
All the darkest corners of a sense I didn't know.
Just for one moment, I heard somebody call,
Looked beyond the day in hand, there's nothing there at all.

Now that I've realized how it's all gone wrong,
Gotta find some therapy, this treatment takes too long.
Deep in the heart of where sympathy held sway,
Gotta find my destiny, before it gets too late.


Joy Division - twenty-four hours

By the way, and because I don't like anyone to feel bad for me... This past few nights I've had the very best time in a very long time. Thank you Siouxie. Getto rocks! Amsterdam rules!

Let's get the party started!!!!

help me i'm in hell

My kitchen is dirty as hell.. i swear i can hear voices that are either satan trying to tell me something, or the plumbing needs fixing.

há 12 anos

... tinha eu 16 anitos. Lembro-me que acreditava piamente que havia muito mais para lá da realidade palpavél. Do quotidiano. Do mundano. Dizia saber que a realidade não era a verdade. A verdade esconde-se sempre por trás do que conseguimos (ou queremos) acreditar, daquilo a que chamamos "a nossa realidade".

Other planes lie beyond the reach
Of normal sense and common roads
But they are no less real
Than what we see or touch or feel

Como é que eu me esqueci disso, é um misterio. Porque é que eu tive de ser recordado agora, é o destino.

The lyrics of Shortbus pt II

Is you is or is you ain't my baby
Well, the way you're acting lately, well it makes me doubt
You were still my baby, baby
But it seems like my flame in your heart, well it's just gone out

A man is a creature
That has always been strange
Just when you're sure of one
You'll find that he's gone and made a change

Is you is or is you ain't my baby
Well, maybye my baby found somebody new
Or is my baby still my baby too

Anita O'Day - Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby?

The lyrics of Shortbus pt I

I walk a tight rope
and live with a high hope
that somehow we still feel the same
through this catastrophe it's quietly telling me welcome that first word again

I don't care if the worlds upside down if you're lost or you're found
I know your feet will stay far from the ground
If you just stick around

I know the shots you call gentle
cause I could fall and break
you'll hear what they say

I read between the lines
It's just like a hate crime
And tell me the dateline today

I don't care if the worlds upside down if you're lost or you're found
I know your feet will stay far from the ground
If you just stick around

Scott Matthew - Upside Down

Things white people like

I just found out this morning that I'm a cliche. To be more precise, I'm a white guy.

Reading trough the list of things white people like I had 61 hits out of the 103 items.

Among the ones that I felt mirrored my own tastes, I would point out the following based on accuracy or just how funny their importance to _me_ is described.

# Film Festivals
# Coffee
# Diversity
# Asian Girls
# The Daily Show/Colbert Report
# Indie Music
# Apple Products
# Living by the Water
# Irony
# Vintage
# Japan
# Modern Furniture

Funnily enough.. they forgot indie cartoons.



BTW, do you know these guys?

We drink and dance and smoke and die of a stroke

... living like steamers, some sirens screamed and we started singing: nous sommes derrangés toujours par des mirages, mais ça fait réver plus, ça donne du courage! Jungle life is quite absurd if you haven’t got a knife!



Mais letras de JPS aqui

Ah well... you know...

Ich hoffe dass diese Nachricht Dich erreicht, wo immer Du auch gerade bist.

SQL Server Performance, pt I

If your in Amsterdam, you have to look at windows.

Ok, so my career brought me back to Windows and Microsoft products. Bummer. One of my tasks recently required me to go over SQL Server 2005 Performance guidelines and Troubleshooting techniques and attending a lab of some sort where this performance guru shared some really nice tips.

It was actually very pleasant, and I want to share with you all some of the things I got from the training and if MS SQL Server is your thing, maybe you'll get some value out if this post.

So, first things first:
1 - tempdb: You can read more about it in this Technet article. The default size for this very important db is only 8 MB. Change it according to the few basic rules outlined in the link above.

2- Gathering generic performance statistics. MSSQL Tips gives a very nice overview on how and what kinds of statistics you can gather in MS SQL Server. I find this very useful to start a performance evaluation. Better yet, the Performance Dashboard add-on that can be downloaded here. It's too big and complex for this post, but if you need some pointers, ask me. Another really useful set of tools, jointly referred to as RML Utilities for SQL Server can be found here. Do some read-up on them and enjoy.

3 - I/O. This is one one the key elements in performance for just about any application. This might be a good time to introduce you to the SQL Server Best Practices
. The whitepaper on Predeployment I/O Best Practices is a must read if you don't know the basics on how to measure and improve this performance parameter.

4 - Isolation Levels. Be sure to read the Books Online on the 6 supported isolation levels in SQL Server 2005. Read uncommitted (or nolock), read committed, repeatable read, serializable, read committed snapshot and snapshot. Understand how these different levels affect concurrency.

5 - Stored Procedures. In most situations, SP's will provide better performance over queries any day. The reason for this is two-fold: The Data and Procedure caches, aka Memory Hogs R' us. A nice article I found on this can be read here.

There is so much more to say about this topic that I might consider transforming this in a series of posts. It would be just too much for a single post and there are several areas that I find would be really interesting to go over in depth, provided that I have the time to actually write something that is. :-)

Managing MS SQL Server is much more than pointing and clicking and therefore it is very easy to get it wrong. On the other hand, this is really valuable knowledge if you're considering a career as a performance engineer / consultant. Or even if you're just writing a Web App (RoR springs to mind) that you just can't figure out how to go about squeezing out every last bit of performance of, really knowing what you can do with the database layer is a definite plus.

Talking about the weather

Hoje foi um dia muito quente. As pessoas andavam meio loucas, a roupa pesada (e a comprida... e em alguns casos a, vá, decente) ficou em casa... E lembrei-me de coisas quentes. O verão em Portugal, por exemplo...

A proposito, a partir de hoje não se pode fumar tabaco em recintos fechados em Amsterdão. Se fôr numa coffee shop pode-se fumar erva, mas sem misturas, claro.

yesterday a fever, tomorrow St. Peter

Real friends

Beautiful bride

Yet another real friend

Best view of the city

Ou como eu digo, ontem Manique, amanhã Munique.

A proposito, sim estou em pulgas com o iPhone v2.

Lisboa

Hoje volto a ver a minha amada Lisboa. Ou como diria o Cartman, "Screw you guys, I'm going home!"

O casamento da minha melhor amiga vai-me fazer perder a Amsterdam Tattoo Convention... mas vai ser muito bom voltar a Portugal, mesmo que seja por pouco tempo. Ou se calhar por causa disso mesmo.

Ok, I got an early start