pinned down after a short skirmish the previous day
it was too quiet, spirits were dampened
earlier morning brought some hope, help would be coming
which eroded throughout the day, it was not enough
deep in the trenches, we waited still, scounts had not returned
our only option was to retreat and go around
all were hesitant, so i made the move...
summary: i hate jboss seam
or rather we all do at this point
for the past 2 days, we (the entire team including even other teams) have been researching seam issues.
including class conflict issues, instances not matching expected classes, not being able to cast, for seam core classes.
the errors had been occurring for the past few months but not caused any observable issues... until now.
and were threatening to hold up deadlines.
today we found what appears to be the cause: having two seam ears in one jboss 4 server
this apparently causes the apps to randomly step on each other,
including loading/creating core seam components from wrong classloader, from other ear.
eventually, i gave up on trying to find out why, as we all slowly did.
it didn't make any sense, all ear isolation settings had been set and no obvious causes.
many fixes/attempts were made, many possible solutions, but none had any effect.
in the end, i went forward with removing seam from one of them.
since it had been added recently for one and thankfully used very little.
so it was a viable option, and better than setting up a new jboss to run each ear in its own.
... and so the battle was won,
but the war will continue
(haha war, get it? ear-war, ok, over and out).
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Monday, July 2, 2012
More Star Wars Reading
Continuing my earlier Star Wars post,
I finished reading Dark Lord: Rise of Darth Vader and Labyrinth of Evil from the library.
I enjoyed both these stories filling the gap in between the films (before and after episode 3).
I finished reading Dark Lord: Rise of Darth Vader and Labyrinth of Evil from the library.
I enjoyed both these stories filling the gap in between the films (before and after episode 3).
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Walking Dead S2
I finally came back and finished season 2 of the Walking Dead
After recovering from the (disasterous) end of season 1
but thankfully the second season moved a little closer to the comic
Of course there are things i didn't like about season 2
the obvious one is dragging out sophia missing, i know it had a purpose but it was annoying to EVERYONE
It's hard with such a popular show now to avoid SPOILERS (which there are of course some below), so i knew most of the big surprises
and of course the best part of season 2 is the ending.
getting some idea on the rules of zombies and how this all works. apparently romero based with any death resulting in a zombie. and we see zombies eat animals as well.
and then there's the finale with the herd/horde, rick being solidified as the leader, and then a teaser of michonne and the prison.
as for the comics, i am months behind at the moment, not entirely into it being in a slow spell, still back on the hilltop issues and wondering what is to come.
After recovering from the (disasterous) end of season 1
but thankfully the second season moved a little closer to the comic
Of course there are things i didn't like about season 2
the obvious one is dragging out sophia missing, i know it had a purpose but it was annoying to EVERYONE
It's hard with such a popular show now to avoid SPOILERS (which there are of course some below), so i knew most of the big surprises
and on that topic, i didn't like sophia getting turned and killed
sophia made me realize how different the tv show is from the comic,
i think of them now as the two universes or timelines (like Fringe), with the same characters (roughly) but different outcomes, which is good, anything can happen.
it's fitting that rick should be the only one willing to shoot her, making me think back to the beginning of the pilot.
i think of them now as the two universes or timelines (like Fringe), with the same characters (roughly) but different outcomes, which is good, anything can happen.
it's fitting that rick should be the only one willing to shoot her, making me think back to the beginning of the pilot.
the sophia search was an interesting twist, where shane is actually right that it was a waste of time, and rick admits to being wrong, which fits with rick's struggles to lead in the comic.
also fitting that otis was the only one who could have known where she was.
Dale! i was shocked to find out he would be dying this season as well.
the opposite of shane (in many ways on the show), his time was cut short compared to the comic, but close in gruesomeness.
but he avoided being bitten twice and being eaten by cannibals, and eventually was shot (per the comic).
but he avoided being bitten twice and being eaten by cannibals, and eventually was shot (per the comic).
his death fit well with the episode, representing the humanity of the group.
great to have a couple episodes with rick struggling over killing the innocent to protect themselves, where rick fails to shoot in front of carl or to end his friends suffering.
i didn't like that shane was still alive, but this was eventually fixed.
and he was shot by carl matching the comic. well except the was a zombie.
we get to know shane a lot more in the tv show. how bad of a person he really is (killing otis). and i think it's a fitting end for him, since he hates zombies so much, it's his worst end.
and he was shot by carl matching the comic. well except the was a zombie.
we get to know shane a lot more in the tv show. how bad of a person he really is (killing otis). and i think it's a fitting end for him, since he hates zombies so much, it's his worst end.
great to have an entire knock down fight episode with shane versus rick.
and of course the best part of season 2 is the ending.
getting some idea on the rules of zombies and how this all works. apparently romero based with any death resulting in a zombie. and we see zombies eat animals as well.
and then there's the finale with the herd/horde, rick being solidified as the leader, and then a teaser of michonne and the prison.
such a great season, despite having its differences with the comic. it's standing on its own.
as for the comics, i am months behind at the moment, not entirely into it being in a slow spell, still back on the hilltop issues and wondering what is to come.
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter
As mentioned earlier,
ever since I heard about Abe Lincoln and vampires being mixed together I had to check it out.
And now 3 months after listening to the audiobook, I finally got the chance to see the film.
SPOILERS below about the film and book.
The beginning of the film including his childhood felt rushed in comparison to the book. It does include his father being in debt to a vampire and the death of his mother but then skips ahead, missing 1/3 or more of the book.
I can't say these were my favorite parts of the book, with his drunk father and moving around. But in the book he avenges his mother as a child, staking his first kill.
In general the film chops out a lot of character development, personal connections, and motivations. Abe's father explaining the truth about vampires is replaced with a rushed version by Henry.
There is no slave friend in the book to push Abe to fight slavery. Instead he sees the truth of slavery with his own eyes, seeing vampires kill slaves on a plantation after an auction.
Actually, there's not much of a link between slavery and vampires in the film. And the film is also missing examples like vampires snatching children as reasons to kill them.
I don't remember silver having any big signifigance in the book, but it is the primary/only weaspon against vampires in the film. For example, although the emancipation proclamation is shown in the film, it is not the cause for winning the war, but instead silver wins the war.
In the end, the biggest missing piece for me in the film is Abe and Henry's relationship.
The film treats Abe like just another vampire hunter to do Henry's bidding. There is no reason given for Henry to save Abe's life or train him. He doesn't even appear to like him in the movie.
And then there is the ending, which was another huge disappointment compared to the book. We don't see anything about Abe's death: we have no backstory on Boothe as a vampire, we don't see Henry fighting Boothe to avenge Abe, we don't see Abe as a vampire in current times.
Instead, we see Henry in current times, but it has no real meaning. To me, it seems like this film should fit into a larger series of vampire hunter films, where Henry goes to recruit famous people from history.
I walked into this movie knowing the Rotten Tomatoes rating of 35% and expecting the critics to be wrong. But this ended up being the percent of the book in the film (small snipets from the the middle), which is strange since it was written by the author of the book.
I personally didn't like the overuse of CG for vampire faces and the chase over horses during a stampede.
My hopes were just too high for this film and it didn't live up to the book.
ever since I heard about Abe Lincoln and vampires being mixed together I had to check it out.
And now 3 months after listening to the audiobook, I finally got the chance to see the film.
SPOILERS below about the film and book.
The beginning of the film including his childhood felt rushed in comparison to the book. It does include his father being in debt to a vampire and the death of his mother but then skips ahead, missing 1/3 or more of the book.
I can't say these were my favorite parts of the book, with his drunk father and moving around. But in the book he avenges his mother as a child, staking his first kill.
In general the film chops out a lot of character development, personal connections, and motivations. Abe's father explaining the truth about vampires is replaced with a rushed version by Henry.
There is no slave friend in the book to push Abe to fight slavery. Instead he sees the truth of slavery with his own eyes, seeing vampires kill slaves on a plantation after an auction.
Actually, there's not much of a link between slavery and vampires in the film. And the film is also missing examples like vampires snatching children as reasons to kill them.
I don't remember silver having any big signifigance in the book, but it is the primary/only weaspon against vampires in the film. For example, although the emancipation proclamation is shown in the film, it is not the cause for winning the war, but instead silver wins the war.
In the end, the biggest missing piece for me in the film is Abe and Henry's relationship.
The film treats Abe like just another vampire hunter to do Henry's bidding. There is no reason given for Henry to save Abe's life or train him. He doesn't even appear to like him in the movie.
And then there is the ending, which was another huge disappointment compared to the book. We don't see anything about Abe's death: we have no backstory on Boothe as a vampire, we don't see Henry fighting Boothe to avenge Abe, we don't see Abe as a vampire in current times.
Instead, we see Henry in current times, but it has no real meaning. To me, it seems like this film should fit into a larger series of vampire hunter films, where Henry goes to recruit famous people from history.
I walked into this movie knowing the Rotten Tomatoes rating of 35% and expecting the critics to be wrong. But this ended up being the percent of the book in the film (small snipets from the the middle), which is strange since it was written by the author of the book.
I personally didn't like the overuse of CG for vampire faces and the chase over horses during a stampede.
My hopes were just too high for this film and it didn't live up to the book.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Snow White and Huntsman
Yesterday went to see this in the theater and gave it a mixed rating. Somehow it felt pretty shallow, like the over 2hr running time wasn't enough.
I think it came down to a few specific points:
1. I really enjoyed the beginning, following the classic story setup and some cool fighting/CG. Basically the scenes before Kristin Stewart appeared.
2. The dark forest didn't feel dangerous enough. Scary mostly from trippy mushrooms? Only one troll? And he gives up after losing a staring contest? I wanted more monsters and more threats.
3. Aweful ending? Feels like it rushes to a predictable end and then unsure what to do, just lingers on the last scene. I would have preferred jumping further into the future to show the land and people recovered.
4. So it's not a love story? Not that its a requirement, but there's the love triangle for the last 1/3 of the movie. And its unresolved so she ends up with no one? Is the huntsman the real "prince"? His name is in the title, he revives her, and there is that last look at each other.
Firefox Plugin QA
I was troubleshooting a browser image plugin that would not install, and found a few interesting things:
1. There was no indication that an error was preventing the installer from completing. Message says it completed successfully. Fail.
2. After running the installer step manually from the command line I could see the error, which was simply that the path it was trying to install the plugin didn't exist (Firefox plugins directory). This is a fairly new install of Firefox. It worked after I created the directory, but the installer should have handled this. Fail.
3. After installing, the version of the plugin in the browser showed as different from the installer version, making it difficult to determine when to update. Fail.
Of course I contacted the plugin's site to fix these and hopefully do better testing for their next release.
Friday, June 1, 2012
Star Wars
As I said before, I haven't been much of a star wars fan in the past.
But after read the last Darth book I found more at the library.
I flew through two Darth Bane books including Path of Destruction and Rule of Two.
I really enjoyed them and I'm waiting on the third to arrive.
JMS and UI Automated Testing
My first real experience with using Selenium was not for testing but to automate a process.
ActiveMQ doesn't have a bulk move feature for moving messages between queues, which I needed. It only allows moving a single message in the web UI.
I could have created a JMS queue listener to bulk move messages, but instead I wanted to try some UI automation. My last experience with automation was using AutomatedQA TestComplete and JScript, so it was about time.
So I automated navigating to the queue, clicking the message link, choosing a new queue name in the dropdown, and finally clicking the move link. It was all easy, after I chose to use the deprecated SeleneseTestCase to extend (which just worked as expected) with:
setUp("http://localhost:4444", "*firefox");
I made it a little more complicated by extracting the timestamp and details about the message. To get these I used the CSS and XPath locator formats to pull from the HTML on the page (such as a specific row and column in a table):
The only real issues I faced were timing and browser support.
For example, the page load times varied per environment making me add in extra time for loading to work in all. I used Thread sleep in some cases since the waitForPageToLoad was not always reliable.
Originally I started using Firefox (*firefox) but it stopped working after updating to version 14. I switched to Chrome (*googlechrome) which worked without issue.
ActiveMQ doesn't have a bulk move feature for moving messages between queues, which I needed. It only allows moving a single message in the web UI.
I could have created a JMS queue listener to bulk move messages, but instead I wanted to try some UI automation. My last experience with automation was using AutomatedQA TestComplete and JScript, so it was about time.
So I automated navigating to the queue, clicking the message link, choosing a new queue name in the dropdown, and finally clicking the move link. It was all easy, after I chose to use the deprecated SeleneseTestCase to extend (which just worked as expected) with:
setUp("http://localhost:4444", "*firefox");
I made it a little more complicated by extracting the timestamp and details about the message. To get these I used the CSS and XPath locator formats to pull from the HTML on the page (such as a specific row and column in a table):
css=div.message pre
xpath=//table[@id='header']//tr[11]//td[2]
These allowed me to add more logic, such as deleting messages before a certain date or not moving messages with specific content.
The only real issues I faced were timing and browser support.
For example, the page load times varied per environment making me add in extra time for loading to work in all. I used Thread sleep in some cases since the waitForPageToLoad was not always reliable.
Originally I started using Firefox (*firefox) but it stopped working after updating to version 14. I switched to Chrome (*googlechrome) which worked without issue.
TV and Movies Recap
TV Season finales with shows including Fringe and Supernatural, I've been enjoying delayed on Hulu (well not enjoying the delayed part).
I feel like Fringe really stepped up in season 4 and delivered. And wow on the jumping to the future for the one episode filled with Observers, bringing back Bell and tying pieces together. Looking forward to season 5, though sad it will be the last.
For Supernatural in season 7, glad to see Castiel come back and Bobby as well, though different and shortlived apparently. I wasn't into this season a lot, including the leviathans. Different to have an almost-invincible and smart enemy (bent on global domination), contrasting the monsters of the week. I think the episode with Felicia Day was the highlight of the season. Exporing purgatory in next season 8 sounds interesting.
Season and series finale of House! It was a nice ending to an awesome show.
For Castle, all I can say is finally! and hopefully we find out more about the mysterious assassin/conspiracy. Not sure how I feel about that whole story now, but I did enjoy the episodes this season with superheroes, ghost hunters, and zombies.
Finished getting caught up on Californication, a fun rollercoaster season and cliffhanger ending. Made me think back to the previous season 4 that had Hank almost die from drinking/drugs and drowning.
Now getting caught up on Being Human (US version).
Still enjoying Game of Thrones as well, such a dark and awesome show. Sad to say there is only 1 episode left this season (too short).
Seen a few movies in the theater lately including Lockout and Avengers.
As expected, Lockout was an ok action movie, I went in with low/no exceptions so no way I was leaving disappointed. But yea, bad story, bad CG or editing, but some actors I enjoy. I really wanted to see Gilgun from Misfits in it.
Avengers was better than expected, again I went in with low expectations. But it surprised me in a good way.
On Netflix, I checked out 13 Assassins which I really enjoyed.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Comp Maintenance: No Good Deed
Almost 2 months ago...
I was cleaning/fixing a 12 year old dell machine.
And forgot to bring it back.
On a whim, I tried to pick up a replacement (at walmart of all places), emachine for $300. It was about time for a newer comp anyway.
All went fine setting it up until trying out the internet. Weirdly it wouldn't load most webpages, really only google would load.
I tried using network tools, pinging worked for some, it was just confusing.
I brought it back home, tried on my network here (check if different from the dsl network) and all was fine.
So I went back and tried it again.
This time there was a different network issue, had to reset the modem because of changed security.
Afterwards, same issue, could not connect to some sites.
I hooked up the old dell machine on the network and it worked, everything worked.
So in the end I gave up on the emachine and brought it back, and I'll never buy one again.
I was cleaning/fixing a 12 year old dell machine.
And forgot to bring it back.
On a whim, I tried to pick up a replacement (at walmart of all places), emachine for $300. It was about time for a newer comp anyway.
All went fine setting it up until trying out the internet. Weirdly it wouldn't load most webpages, really only google would load.
I tried using network tools, pinging worked for some, it was just confusing.
I brought it back home, tried on my network here (check if different from the dsl network) and all was fine.
So I went back and tried it again.
This time there was a different network issue, had to reset the modem because of changed security.
Afterwards, same issue, could not connect to some sites.
I hooked up the old dell machine on the network and it worked, everything worked.
So in the end I gave up on the emachine and brought it back, and I'll never buy one again.
And the old dell would have to do for a bit longer.
Almost a month ago...
I picked up a refurb compag desktop off newegg for a great price (better than the emachine),
fast shipping and it has worked great since, no issues.
I picked up a refurb compag desktop off newegg for a great price (better than the emachine),
fast shipping and it has worked great since, no issues.
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