Laurent Schneider

select 
  timestamp '2008-06-30 23:59:59.999999999 Europe/Zurich'-
  timestamp '1998-02-01 00:00:00 Europe/Zurich' 
from dual;
+000003802 22:59:59.999999999
select (
  timestamp '2008-06-30 23:59:59.999999999 Europe/Zurich'-
  timestamp '1998-02-01 00:00:00 Europe/Zurich' 
  ) year to month 
from dual;
+10-05

I will tune my book in July and start a new challenge in August

Since yesterday I cannot login to otn and to the forums

Probably I posted to much there

Since today I cannot login to Metalink

What should I expect for tomorrow?
No access to the internet?

Eddie Awad just tagged me.

1) I was born in 1971 and have a younger brother who will get married this year
2) I was for the first time in San Francisco in 1986
3) In 1990 I visited India
4) In 1991 I had a motorbike accident where I was quite lucky to break only two arms and one leg.
5) I have learnt to play Chinese chess in Vietnam in 2000. I am able to speak some Vietnamese
6) My family-in-law live in the Bakossi mountains in Cameroon
7) My kids are 4 and 5 years old and speak Swiss German better than me
8) My grand-parents live in their house in Jura. My grand-father is 95 and my grand-mother is 92, I love my grand-mother very much and we just opened a bottle of Champagne last Sunday

My turn to tag - in alphabetic order descending
Chen Shapira
Alan Nolan Davies
Tom Kyte
Kamus
Lutz Hartmann
Marco Gralike
Nicolas Gasparotto
Steven Feuerstein

I wish all my readers a very successful 2008

I was just wondering today what is this linked-in good for. I have plenty of contacts, about 77 right now, there are now new groups like Switzerland, OCP/OCE, OCM, Bloggers, Database, and others. Well, many people have many thousands of contacts.

I do not know what LinkedIn is good for. I think it may be useful if a future customer or employer is looking for a reference and know somebody I know too. But well, I am not too sure.

I tried this afternoon to clean up a bit my network (it may sound rude), and I deleted the Linked In Open Networkers (LION). I thought it just growed my network way too much.

I also removed contacts that do not show their connection, as I think it is an unfair deal. There should be an option like : “Do not show your connections to your contacts that hide their own”. Maybe there is. Well, those I deleted.

I hope I did not offense my former contacts, I apologize if someone feel hurted.

Just my two swiss cents on social networking

Anyway, if you know me and if you want to connect to me, click here :

I played the Chinese Chess Championship in Zurich today. It was a all-play-all tournament with Siegfried Huber (2nd with 1.5/3), Luca Rusconi (2nd with 1.5/3) and Beat Sprenger (4th with 0/3). I finished first with 3 wins out of 3 games.

It was an intense day, thanks to Beat for the organization and to Luca for providing the Trophy.

Loïc + unbreakable linux
Originally uploaded by laurentschneider.

Is there any garantee for this one ?

I just arrived at London. I was in the same plane as Mark Rittman and now I have to wait for my flight to Zurich.

On thursday after the Wrap’s party I went to China Town with Henry, and I finally entered the very close american xiangqi federation. I signed up for a free account at www.chinagames.net. Not an easy task ! there is not a single word in english in this site, and yesterday I tried on my notebook, but I do not have the chinese fonts installed, so it is quite a nightmare to download/register/login, but it is a good site, with tens of thousand of people online.

Ok. I will download the Oracle Enterprise Linux soon. It is actually a RedHat clone, as Whitebox, and I read on CNET that it may not be certified as RedHat for non-oracle products. If Oracle patches the kernel, you may lose the certification by other vendors, like Cisco or Checkpoint.

Also it reminds me the Sun Linux 2.0 initiative. A complete flop. Sun tried to tune RedHat on the LX50 blade, and finally the version of RedHat was so old (I think it was RedHat5, 2 Releases before the current one), that very few customers followed the trend.

Still I will wait a few months/years to see the market acceptance. Guess this announcement is going to make the Linux world more competitive

Yesterday was terrible. I had sessions from 7:30am to 8:00pm. I just slept 10 hours in a row (I needed it), and now I have to hurry to Steven Feuerstein session.

After a long long flight via London I finally arrived to San Francisco. I though the journey was finished, but no, it was not.

First, I took a supershuttle. The driver just confused the accelarator with the brake and damaged three vans. The motor started burning and the passagers, me included, had to exit asap. Hopefuly, nobody got injured, the baggage was safe and I found an other drive, which brings be in about one hour to the fishermanns wharf.

As if this was not enough, the reservation for my room apparently did not work, and the hotel was full. So I had to go to another hotel.

After that I thought about eating some fish at the wharf. As soon as I started my beer, I noticed the big rats under the table. So I changed place and order some calamar in a restaurant

Camel
Originally uploaded by laurentschneider.

Loïc is driving a camel

Cannot you see the pictures anymore? Ask me to be your flickr friend !

IMG_2296
picture privacy
Originally uploaded by laurentschneider. Dora started the kindergrten today. I was more anxious than for the OCM practicum …

Lake of Geneva
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Originally uploaded by laurentschneider. Dora driving an electric boat !

Yesterday was August 1st, and we celebrated the 715th anniversary of Switzerland.

I recently moved to a new flat in Birmensdorf, which is a village close to Zurich. The village offered free Potatoes salad and Fleischkäse to the inhabitants, delicious

Due to the hot weather and lack of rain last weeks, they prohibit fireworks in canton Zurich. So in the night, we went to Canton Aargau, where I could launch some rockets and watch a big fire

Loïc
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Originally uploaded by laurentschneider. It is the first time we swim outside this year, and it is cool (16°C) !

No more wheels
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Originally uploaded by laurentschneider. A sunny sunday, a bike without training wheels, an unique experience

Ice Cake
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Originally uploaded by laurentschneider. Dora at her fourth birthday

Partner Chocolate
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Sadly, my dear friend, blog reader and former collegue Marc Soth passed away last monday. I am profoundly affected. I wish his familly comfort during this difficult time.

I wish all my readers and their family a merry christmas !

Yesterday I was by my grandparents, with all their 4 children, all their 4 grandchildren and all their 4 grandgrandchildren.

It was a wonderful Christmas Eve, a beautiful tree my grandmother planted a few years ago, christmas songs, a prayer, a Father Christmas and lots of gifts for the children… and a few for me too

First snowman this year in Zürich
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As requested, I will do some swiss geography today

I am now working in my company, LC Systems, in Thurgau. Thurgau is a large canton in switzerland. There is also Zurich, where I do live, with over 1 million people, Basel, which is divided in two half-cantons, Basel-City and Basel-Campaign, and Bern, where the governement resides, and also Geneva, where I was born, and quite famous because of the many international organisation like the United Nations, the World Health Organisation, the International Labor Organisation and a few others.

Well, yesterday I was in Frauenfeld, which is the biggest city of Thurgau, with more than 20′000 people. No no, it is no joke, I did not mean 20 millions, it is no mistake of mine! I had a beer with a collegue. When we arrived in the pub, he first met a school friend at the table next to our. Than the people at our table hear about that and asked he would not be the son of Rolf (of course he was), and on the other table he met an other school friend. Nothing to do with the big city where you never know the people when you go to restaurant. Anyway, after a few gallons of refreshment, a policeman stopped me because I was walking on the road. Incredible. Of course my friend knew him, because his previous girlfriend lost his bag one day and he already stopped him because he was ridding mountain bike on a road where traffic is prohibided. I just had to laugh. This guy was not even working! He was just going home with his sport car, and found that, as a policeman, he was allowed to make me a comment! What a Moron !

Anyway, I am now in my office, with a beautifoul seesight. The office is located about 5 meters next to the lake of Constance (that is why my company is called LC, Lake of Constance), and I can see Germany from here when the weather is better than today. The lake is actually located between Germany, Austria and Switerland. It is quite big, about 540 km2. The biggest here is the lake of Geneva. Located between France and Switzerland. The largest 100% swiss is the lake of Neuchâtel.

In our small country, one of the smallest in Europa -apart from micro-country like Vatican or Monaco- we have the largest lakes and some of the highest mountains of Europa.

I feel that I must publish a picture today :

Well, I just googled to find this one. I may remove the link above one day.

Ok, today I am trying to install Oracle Internet Directory (LDAP). I finished unzipping the files and will start installing soon.

I just came home. While rebuilding the bathrooms, they did cut the phone (nobody knows about that), the DSL, there is no water. I have water in the stairway, but I just got locked outside yesterday night and add to hurl (ring is also disabled) to get a neighbour opening the door. I have no fridge, but hopefully, the outside temperature is cold enough for the beer. I will survive.

I restarted working this morning. A few new downloads : oem 10.1.0.4 aix 5L and critical patch update october 2005. Still waiting for 9.2.0.7 aix 4.3.3

I will have a rest in Torgon/Switzerland with my family next two weeks. In my flat in Zurich, they are going to completely renew the kitchen and the bathroom, and two weeks without water (to drink) and cool beer (to take shower) is not possible

Just come back from my first visit to Munich/Germany, where there is a very big party called Oktoberfest.

There is only one size of beer : one liter. After a few beers, I went to my friend Uli and his family.

It was a huge party and and I enjoyed it very much…

I had a very long travel. the queue for checking was even longer (in time) than the one for larry ellison and this SFO airport is terribly badly organized…

The seats in the economy classes were ridiculously small, just impossible to sit correctly. I arrived on time in Atlanta. But then the troubles begin. Wrong plane waiting on the wrong gate, baggage container electric door defect on the new assigned airplane, which took about one hour to close in Atlanta, and one hour to open at sf. Not too mention the hot cup of tea the stewardess put on my jeans. In Zurich, 2 hours late, I took the wrong train and finally exited in the middle of nowhere and took a taxi to come back home.

Well, completely tired, but so happy to see my family ! Well, it is 19:36 local time, 10:36 pacific time, kids just do not want to sleep.

I just arrived in Moscone West. RAC Xtreme Session will start in about 2 hours. I have my bag, my t-shirt and my badge!

My hotel too, just shocked to pay 25$ to have a breakfast with no cheese, no croissant and no bread!!!

A bit suffering from the long journey of yesterday and the 9/hours time offset… everything will be alright!

End of the day, start of the holiday. cu-soon