What on Earth is Ἀρετή?

I’m very fond of metaphors and idiomatic expressions and I try to use them when ever I can.

The reason I called this blog Ἀρετή (an ancient Greek word pronounced Arete) - Excellence is slightly complicated.
I wanted something that would merge both my professional life (Software Engineering) and my non-professional life (Studies of the Classics, Astronomy, History and Science).

At the cost of being pretentious, I have found that this wonderful word - Ἀρετή - encompasses a lot of my personal philosophy of life.

The word means excellence as a value - living up to your potential, “Being all you can and should be”.

Other expressions I like are:

• Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
• It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.
• The Golden Mean
• Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity

I have found that in the long term, co-operation and mutual aid has helped me advance my goals faster and more efficiently than had I just blundered forward without any regard towards my co-workers.

I don’t pretend that I live a blameless life or that I am a perfect role-model, however, I do make an effort to go through life realizing that it’s a team sport…

I would be happy if this site helps others solve problems they have encountered, broadens their horizons and teaches them something new or even if it just lets a few slow minutes pass enjoyably.

Robert

IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.2 Fixpack 1 - ITM6.2FP1

Well, ITM6.2 FP1 has been released.
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/tivoli_support/patches/patches_6.2.0/6.2.0-TIV-ITM-FP0001

You can read the release notes here:
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/tivoli_support/patches/patches_6.2.0/6.2.0-TIV-ITM-FP0001/6.2.0-TIV-ITM-FP0001.README

There are a couple of pretty nifty things about this Fixpack which should come in handy.
Here are some of the items which I know I'm going to be using...

• CLI for Historical Data Collection Configuration : Today, just getting a list of what historical data I'm keeping is painful. Even if I only use this for reporting and not for managing, it will be very useful.
•  Provide CLI for Maintenance Mode : No more situation floods during upgrades or backup downtime.
• Improved DLA file export : There is a new utility to create an XML file for feeding to TADDM - hopefully this will have all the bugs ironed out :)
• Regular expressions in situation rules - Need I say more?

Not all of these are found in the README, go through the documentation too...
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/tivihelp/v15r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.itm.doc/welcome.htm

Read the "new in this version" that's at the top of every book.

I'll update the Blog with my experiences with this FixPack.

Enjoy :)

Back again

Well, I think I'll be sticking with Blogspot after all.

I like Wordpress and it is certainly friendlier to start things with.

Also, I really do like the static pages which Wordpress has and Blogspot lacks. However, the fact is that Wordpress is more limited from the point of view of template design and I prefer the Blogspot widgets.

So, at least for now... I'm back on Blogspot.

I'll have to make up my mind before I start telling people about my Blog ;)

That Didn't Hurt...

Well, if all went according to plan, this message should arrive in my new blog on Wordpress...

Changing Already?

I've done some research and perhaps I should change my blog to Wordpress?

Well, the whole point of this exercise is to try out new things, so I've created a Wordpress blog and I'll try transferring this blog from Blogger to Wordpress.

 

We'll see if it works...

 

Oh, I'm also using Windows Live Writer to write this instead of doing it in the browser.

Wish me luck!

Buying Books

Bought a few books today...

• Asterix and the Falling Sky : The most recent Asterix book. Virtually all the reviews are not very good, but this is an Asterix book - how bad could it be?
  I always recommend Asterix and I, Claudius for people who want to know a bit about Ancient Rome.
• Star Myths of the Greeks and Romans : For a seminar I'm doing this semester.
• Aristarchus of Samos: The Ancient Copernicus : This is actually for a course I really enjoyed last semester.
• Learn Ancient Greek: a Lively Introduction to Reading the Language : I don't like the textbook I'm using, I bought this as a sort of pick-me-up book.
  

The links I've given have all been from Amazon, but that's just because Amazon has the most information about books on their site.
I use www.bookfinder.com to find cheap copies of books (both old and new)

I especially like it because it includes the postage and handling in the price AND converts to shekels for me.

I've just noticed that even the Asterix book has an astronmical connection ;)

The Mythical Man-Month

I ran across a copy of "The Mythical Man-Month" in a second hand book shop yesterday.

Despite being written back in 1975, the book is a still Delphic oracle of software engineering. I credit it (and the friend who introduced me to it) with starting the boost me from a code-monkey-programmer to a software engineer.

The largest theme of the book is that adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
i.e. if you're behind schedule, adding a newbie is NOT going to help.

Sounds like a truism in these days of XP/Agile/Scrum and so on, but it was revolutionary back then.