Helmut K. C. Tessarek's personal blog

It has been more than 3 months since my last post. I know, not very nice of me, but there were quite some things going on.

After my business trip to Switzerland I was working to get some performance improvements into the DB2 code, which made it into Fixpack 2 of DB2 9.7. In April I had another business trip to Plano/Texas.
In May/June my sister Angelika was visiting for 3 weeks and it was great. We had a good time and I think she enjoyed her stay in Toronto.

One week ago my Internet provider suspended my Internet account due to some obscure reasons. After a lot of talking, I figured that they are just a bunch of stupid low-lifes, but then I managed to get it turned back on. Too bad that I can't change the provider, since my apartment building has no proper infrastructure available. I just hope this changes in the near future.

I also have some sad news. My cat Benji was killed by a car 2 weeks ago. I really can't help it that I don't understand how this was even possible. He was always so cautious when crossing the road and this has served him well for the past 12 years.

I'll be in Austria at the end of August and I'm going to post the exact dates at a later point.

Until then, live long and prosper.

I'm owner of a BlackBerry Bold 9700 since December last year. I was never really into all this smartphone stuff, but I have to admit that it has its advantages. My primary usage of a phone is, you might not believe it, making phone calls, storing phonenumbers and addresses. Therefore I never really had the need for a smartphone but my old phone was more and more falling apart, so I decided to get a new one.
It's unbelievable how many features this little thingy has. The only two features which I really miss are support for remote calendars via webDAVs or calDAVs and support for gpg. I'm using my BB without an Enterprise server and it seems that RIM does not really care about customers who want to use the phone for personal matters.
My top 5 applications are: SmartWifi, BeejiveIM, Poynt, GoogleMaps, and LogicMail. The only reason why Atomichelix OpenPGP did not make it in my top 5 list is the fact that it does not work on my BB OS 5.0.0.423 due to a bug in the OS.
Unfortunately there is not really a good and above all working Skype client available, but Skype is in the progress of shipping one and BeejiveIM plans to integrate the Skype protocol as well.

This brings me to my actual topic 'available everywhere, anytime'. With BeejiveIM I'm online in ICQ, GoogleTalk and Yohoo! Messenger.

I know I haven't posted for quite a while.

I've been busy at work and today I'm flying to a customer in Switzerland. Unfortunately I won't be able to visit my family and friends in Austria.

Anyway, I need to go. Taxi is going to be here in an hour and I still need to pack my luggage.

Three days before we left to Cuba, we were joking about our trip. We were seeing each other, zipping on a cocktail while laying on the beach and enjoying the sunset with a breeze of air from the sea.
Far from it!
After a rather unspectacular flight we landed in Havanna. Right after that we found out that western civilization came to an end. Not that it was too bad, since I was smoking at the airport while waiting for my luggage next to an 'Do not smoke' sign, without having airport security running towards me. But customs were almost the same as in the US with them having taking pictures of every single person entering the country.
After exchanging some money we headed to our 'casa particular' which was organized by a person from the Cuban embassy in Austria. Well, the ride in the cab almost reminded me a little bit of driving in Cairo, but we survived.
We got our room right away, although missing the basics of Spanish and found out that water seems to be something special. Anyway, we rested for a while and Max and Berni went out exploring the neighborhood and returned quite shocked. We definitely were not located near any tourists and therefore the area was not as sturdy as expected. Walking up and down the street did not help us find any eatable food and so we stopped at a nearby kiosk that sold beer. What else could we want after coming from Canada?
We still managed to get some food in China Town, which was not too bad. At least that night. Next day I even had glass in my dish and it took some conversational experience to make it clear that I won't pay for that.

You can't imagine how relieving it was to be in Vinales, where we had our first good dinner in days...

There are so many things to write about and as you can think, I'm too lazy to write down all of them, so just have a look at the gallery and enjoy the pictures we took.

Berni, Max and I went out on Halloween and it was quite interesting to see so many people in costumes. Earlier that night, Berni cut my hair in anticipation of our trip to Cuba.

This entry is for anybody who knows Berni and Max.

They have finally created a travel blog which they will hopefully use to keep us up-to-date on their journey.

Max and Berni are finally in Toronto! Yeah!!! They took a bus from New York and arrived a little bit late in Toronto.

We will post more pictures in the future. No worries.

A colleague of mine released a version of MediaWiki with DB2 support.

Download MediaWiki with DB2 support
Installation instructions
Link to Leon's blog entry

Yessss!!!

Yesterday I picked up my new car and I don't really know what to tell you, except that it's awesome. After 5 and a half months waiting, it's great driving finally new wheels.