The personal blog of Mauricio “netmask” Teixeira

I always suspected that there was something wrong with American, and I avoid flying with them as much as possible. Now I am sure that I’m not paranoid.

American Feels Pinch of FAA-Ordered Groundings

“American has grounded the flights while it inspects its fleet of MD-80 airplanes to make sure the wiring in the wheel wells is properly protected from chafing. Unprotected wires potentially could result in a short or spark that might ignite, explains Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura J. Brown. “It’s a very low-probability risk, but it’s an extremely high-consequence issue,” she says.”

American grounds MD-80s a 2nd time

“Less than two weeks after grounding its MD-80 fleet for safety inspections, American Airlines said Tuesday that it again needed to take those aircraft out of service to address the same issue: how wires in the wheel wells are secured.”

Opa! Já temos TV digital em stick USB. Pena que oficialmente só tem suporte a Windows. Se alguém aí tentar no Linux, comenta aqui.

O documento abaixo foi escrito por uma colega de trabalho (Eliane Iwasaki), como monografia do seu curso de pós-graduação. É um texto muito interessante, e vale a leitura.

MOVIMENTO OPEN SOURCE: a importância da comunicação e da relação entre empresas e comunidades para o mercado.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo compreender o modelo de produção do software livre, motivações de colaboradores de comunidades open source e sua influência no mercado de TI. Para a realização deste estudo, a internet foi amplamente utilizada como fonte de informações sobre comunidades, mercado de TI, tecnologia e de duas grandes entidades representando empresa e comunidade: Red Hat e Fedora. Complementei esta pesquisa bibliográfica com meus conhecimentos obtidos por meio de participação em palestras e eventos, além do acesso a informações e pessoas dentro das entidades citadas, devido a minha atual posição no departamento de Marketing da empresa Red Hat Brasil. A conclusão obtida a partir dos resultados da pesquisa afirma ou contesta hipóteses levantadas no início do estudo, esclarecendo muitas questões a respeito deste movimento revolucionário e inovador. Pode ainda contribuir para a relação entre empresa e comunidade open source, visando a continuidade e crescimento deste mercado.

Veja mais, e faça o download do texto completo no Dicas-L.

Yes! We have Fiber To The Home in Brazil! The new 30Mbps access it currently limited to a very limited (and wealthy) region in São Paulo, but it is a good start. It means it is a commercially viable solution in our country. This is great. Can’t wait for it to reach my neighborhood (if I can afford it).

I’m now an ITIL Foundations v3 Certified! Just passed the test a few hours ago. This is so great!

Along with that being a new certification owned, this is a new professional frontier. ITIL feels so organic, so obvious, so interesting, and I want to start working on implementing some of it’s concepts.

New challenges ahead!

I had an excellent weekend, and I’m very thrilled with everything that happened! It was just another Saturday, with housing duties, but I took some time to go take a look at the FIFA Interactive World Cup 2008 (FIWC 08) that was going to happen in São Paulo. So close to home that makes me think: “why not taking a peek?”

<Flickr gallery>

My intention was just to go there and take a look, but when I came to the place the subscription line was not so big, so I decided to subscribe myself and have some fun. Well, it didn’t look so bad: even though it was based on PlayStation3, the game is FIFA08, which I play regularly on my Xbox 360 at home. The only thing that seemed would be a problem was the controller, so I was completely OK with the fact the I was not going further than the first round knockout.

Overview of the competition:

• 200 participants
• Single-elimination tournament
• FIFA08 on PlayStation3
• Few people from other states, only two foreigners (Mexicans)
• Qualifier to choose the Brazil representative for the world cup in Germany

As I said, it was just fun for me, but at the end, I went all the way through the eighth-finals! That’s awesome! This puts me among the 16 top FIFA players in the country. Who would imagine that?

Well, apart from what happens to me, that was a very interesting and thrilling competition, and also very friendly. No problems with competitors, no disqualifications, everything seemed to work pretty well.

It’s unfortunate that the winner was a Mexican. I think the official FIFA note would explain better than me:

“Ruben Morales Zerecero from Mexico was crowned the champion of the Brazilian FIFA Interactive World Cup Final 2008 today after defeating previous champion Andre Buffo and new challenger Richard Riviere in a sensational event in Sao Paolo. ” (read more)

Never the less, this was a great weekend. I’m still waiting for the official record of my final position, so I will write a little more about it in future posts. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, take a look at my gallery on Flickr!

[Apr/01]
- I found a website with press coverage. That’s me on the second photo. You can see some videos too.
- Another one, with me on the 4th photo.

Fedora 9 Beta is out. That means it’s almost done. Announcement on this link.

Começa a operar no Brasil mais uma das novidades que eu mencionei para 2008: WiMax. De acordo com o portal Teleco:

Rede WiMax da Embratel
Início de operação: Março 2008.
Cobertura inicial: Belém, Belo Horizonte, Brasília, Curitiba, Fortaleza, Goiânia, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, São Luiz e São Paulo.

Por enquanto o serviço está disponível apenas para empresas. Claro, assim eles podem cobrar mais caro, e compensar os investimentos.

Bom, com isso concretizam-se todas as minhas previsões.

I suspected that already, but now I’m sure.

This morning I heard on the radio the 8 signs of being workaholic:

1. Works when doesn’t need to (weekends, holidays, extra hours).
2. Leave family and group activities aside (lack of social and family life).
3. Suffers of abstinence syndrome (anxious when not doing anything “useful”).
4. Do many things at the same time (some times not even related to each other).
5. Talks about work most of the time (or things related to work).
6. Difficult to relate to colleagues (critic, demanding, perfectionist).
7. Frequent health problems (flu, stomach, and stress related illness).
8. When finally finds something as interesting as work, gets addicted to it for a while, then get back to work.

I won’t say that the above items describe me perfectly, but I’m pretty sure more than a half of them fit me very good.

A few minutes ago, while trying to work from home, I started browsing around the internet and found out my level of workaholism. According to this test, I’m 73% workaholic (if that’s something you can measure in numbers).

“Your score is 73. You are a workaholic. You could be on your way to burn-out, and family members may be experiencing emotional repercussions as well.”

True or false, that really makes me think if I’m really there, and if what I’m doing is being worthwhile.

What about you? Do you feel workaholic? Do you relate to the signs above? Did you get a score higher than 50% in the test? Please, share your thoughts in the comments area.

Oh, and by the way, I do like my job.

I read an interesting comment by Matt Asay, on C|Net Blogs, with title “What is the world’s defining software company for the 21st century?“. What are the interesting points in it?

a) It’s a very biased observation against Red Hat’s mission statement.

b) It mentions Kiat Huang, my friend and former manager.

So, you go and read the comment for whatever reason you have to.