My first day was over a month ago (depending on how you reckon it - I count by when I was "onboarded" in Burlington, MA in late March), but I am finally settled in enough to have a Sun blog. It's been quite a ride.

This could (and may) be the subject of many posts in this space, but I thought I would start this one with some observations of what it is like going from a smallish company (MySQL was ~60 when I started and ~400 when we were acquired) to a largish one (Sun is close to 34,000 today).

Sun is big. I remember a statistic from 9th grade physics that the number of basketballs you can fit in the Earth is roughly the same as the number of Earths you can fit in our local star. I think there is a similar ratio for the number of MySQLs (offices, people, servers, etc) you can fit in the terrestrial Sun.

Some interesting first-month facts:

• My local office …

Inspired by the Rail Spikes:

bash-3.2$ history 1000 | awk '{a[$2]++}END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}' | sort -rn | head

228 cd

167 git

10 ssh

10 DEPLOY=production

6 sudo

6 pwd

6 ./script/import_views.rb

5 rm

4 rake

4 mv

bash-3.2$

Really interesting stats, I’d never guess that git is used more than ssh on my desktop (I’m a remote worker and mysql consultant so I ssh really often).

Well, I decided to take the plunge and migrate from Windows XP to Ubuntu. Now, technically, I have been wanting to do this for a while, but I was dependant on my windows to dial up to my internet (some problem with my ISP here). I tried to do it in Ubuntu a few months ago, but it was too complicated for me. However, it left me with a yearning to try again.
So, I waited for the new Ubuntu to come out and in parallel fixed my router.

Why?
The reason I thought it was a good idea to move to linux was mainly for self-improvement.

I recently read some blogs (couldn't find them now) that mentioned that with all the new web apps, there will be less and less emphasis on the OS. In 2011 (gartner says), this will hit a crucial point.
I was thinking, maybe more people will adopt free linux when everything important will be in "the cloud" and all you really need is a browser anyway. So I know how to use linux, I …

“Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome to this presentation regarding the acquisition of the company MySQL AB by Sun Microsystems.”

Since my speech on Sun / MySQL integration for about 400 people in Beijing last week, I have been asked a few times about what it’s like to give a speech in Chinese. Well, I wouldn’t really know, as all I did was read aloud a text for 8 minutes. I remembered what passage was about what topic, and I had noted which words to stress, when to raise my hand etc. But of the actual words, I understood perhaps 5-10 % (based on them being repeated often enough). So I know I am a fuzongcai (Vice President) with Sun Microsystems, I know the difference between a kèhù (customer) and a yònghù (user). I live …

Ok, one more human interest post before diving into the technical stuff. Let's have a look at the Falcon team as it stands today.

Kevin Lewis, Falcon Team Lead

Kevin joined MySQL two years ago, following a ten-year run as an engineer on the MicroKernel Database Engine team at Pervasive Software, (Btrieve, Pervasive.SQL) in Austin, Texas. He ascended to team leadership when Calvin, our project manager, left MySQL in January.

I worked with Kevin for five years at Pervasive, where he started six months before me, just as he did at MySQL. Kevin's a good friend and has at various times served as something of a father confessor to me, patiently indulging some of the more, shall we say, unsettled phases of my life.

…

I joined MySQL and the Falcon project a year ago January, after five years writing and testing firmware for implantable heart devices (pacemakers, defibrillators.)

In the summer of 2006, Calvin, a former colleague from Pervasive Software, asked if I'd consider joining him at an open source company, MySQL. I declined at first because I'd spent the last five years learning a new domain, had just been promoted to Principal Engineer, and really enjoyed working in research.

I also really liked the idea of my code running inside someone's chest ("Step aside folks. I can debug that man."), plus I'd already done the database thing at Pervasive and didn't feel it would be all that challenging.

Huh.

But after another chat with Calvin, I was sold on MySQL. Not only was I sold, but I realized (and I'm lucky this way--sometimes realizations are just handed to me), that it was clearly time for a change. I did the New …

Download MySQL Cacti templates

As promised, I’ve created some improved software for monitoring MySQL via Cacti. I began using the de facto MySQL Cacti templates a while ago, but found some things I needed to improve about them. As time passed, I rewrote everything from scratch. The resulting templates are much improved.

You can grab the templates by browsing the source repository on the project’s homepage.

In no particular order, here are some things I improved:

• Standard polling interval and graph size by default.
• Full captions on every graph; you don’t have to guess at how big the values are. Each graph has current, max, and average values printed at the bottom for every value on …

I've finally succumbed to a few requests and just added some simple forums. There's only a few at the moment - General, Jobs (mainly because I want one...), Javascript and Suggestions. If they don't fit your poser, suggest a new forum and bung your post in General. I may move it (I probably won't though).

"The two metrics that are most important to me are first customer satisfaction and second growth." - Don McAskill

Today, I noticed Don is featured on Sun's customer success stories page:


Don McAskill is the CEO and Chief Geek of Smugmug, a photo and now hi-def video (using H.264) sharing site with a successful business model behind it.

I initially met Don last year at the MySQL Conference when my then boss told me that he is interested in meeting him. That was my introduction to Smugmug. I was impressed by SmugMug's presentation of photos and the care they took to make your photos and galleries look awesome.

This year, as a member of Smugmug, me and my wife got to interact with Don on a personal level.

We had several suggestions related to how our …

I've finally succumbed to a few requests and just added some simple forums. There's only a few at the moment - General, Jobs (mainly because I want one...), Javascript and Suggestions. If they don't fit your poser, suggest a new forum and bung your post in General. I may move it (I probably won't though).