I was playing the CNN.com Presidential Showdown Game and what I thought was the most likely outcome looked like this :

   To my big surprise, when I tried to figure out what the result would be, it was 269 electors for Kerry and 269 electors for bush!

    If that happens, well, then the decision would go to the House of Representatives, with one vote for each state, which most certainly will mean a victory for Bush... He would then be the only president in US history to be miselected twice. Even more surprising is that in that case, the most probable vice-president (decided by the senate) would be John Edwards!

    Also interesting to note is that, if that was ever to happen, then don't expect to know who is the president before January...

    Let's hope it doesn't come down to this scenario (by the way, I looked in the "Internets" and found another prediction of a tie that uses a different electoral map projection, and another one one more that bank on elector Richie Robb from West Virginia voting for Kerry)

10/30/2004 9:41:27 AM UTC    Comments [0] 

   I have been puzzled by what has been happening in the US election compaign this past week in Florida. It really looks like the more Bush compaigns there, the more the state leans closer to Kerry (today, Survey USA is giving Kerry 50%, Bush 49%)... Well, maybe the Kerry compaign should send Bush to more battle states...

10/19/2004 11:48:27 PM UTC    Comments [0] 

According to Netcraft, LinuxWorld Expo (which defines itself as :"LinuxWorld Conference & Expo® is the world’s most comprehensive marketplace for open source products and services.") runs on Windows 2003...

They also say "LinuxWorld Conference & Expo is where open minds meet." I hope this openness will last...

10/18/2004 5:23:05 PM UTC    Comments [13] 

   As strange as many might think it to be, Microsoft has open source initiatives... They just announced yesterday a new Open Source initiative called "FlexWiki". It concerns software for making Wikis... A quick look at the developers for the project (on source forge) and you see the inventor of Wiki, Ward Cunningham (of the Platform Architecture Guidance team at Microsoft).

   This is not the only project by Microsoft at source forge. Some of the earlier releases this year include Windows Installer XML (WiX) ans Windows Template Library (WTL).

9/28/2004 11:08:23 PM UTC    Comments [19] 

   Today, I had a call (on IM) from a friend in deep trouble. As usual, it was their fault completely... They did not make any backups for their DataBase !!! and sure enough, they didn't relize what they were doing until disaster happened... Looks like they didn't make it a requirement during a test phase (foolishness!) and didn't make any new requirement when going to production !!!

   Anyway, the DataBase guy claims that all of a sudden the DataBase (on SQL Server 2000) wasn't there anymore. the .mdf and .ldf files where still there... he tried to attach the database, but it wouldn't work (they wheren't properly detached)... So they called on my friend, who had built the solution for them. She didn't have any database recovery skills (neither do I for that matter), and she pinged me. I tried the usual recovery techniques, like starting from an old database and try to recover from the transaction log, but it didn't work (transaction log corrupt). Then we tried the sp_attach_single_file_db with only the mdf file, but it kept asking for the ldf file. I googled a bit, and stumbled on DBCC Rebuild_Log. At that point, our problem was not to have consistant data, but to have any data at all, so we were ready to try desperate moves... However, before doing the trick, we needed the DataBase to be attached (even if it is in a suspect state). So what we did is create a new DB with the same name and file locations, stop the SQL Server, and replaced the mdf of the new empty database with the mdf from the broken database, and restarted SQL Server. The DataBase showed as suspect. then We executed a DBCC Rebuild_Log. Restarted SQL Server, and the DataBase showed up. After checking consistancy and the data, it looked like everything was there...

    Well, I hope they learned the lesson, and that the first thing they would be doing tomorrow morning is creating a Disaster Recovery plan and testing it correctly...

    I am quite happy I could help on a disaster recovery on SQL server... never thought that could ever happen.

9/24/2004 8:28:53 PM UTC    Comments [12] 

With Lim Say at the Microsoft Office in the Petronas Towers (tallest building in the world)

Steven is Huge in Japan...

The stairs to the Batu Caves

Entrance of the Batu Caves

Monkay...

Kimberly, Goksin and I Blessed by the priest...

At the Petronas Towers KLCC

With Kimberly at the Menara Kuala Lumpur (one of the highest telecommunications towers)

Eating out on the street in China Town

Petaling Street

At the Chinese lantern Festival (Adam, Goksin, me, and Ee Von)

Brian, Eevon, Richard, Adam, Kimberly, me and Goksin at the Palace of the Golden Horses

9/23/2004 12:17:24 AM UTC    Comments [11]