又一个日曜日的傍晚

日曜日的傍晚，又是上京时。
喂座驾以足食。
日已落、天凉气爽、犹如雨后、其实无雨。
油站冷清客稀、四周旧楼添诗意。
燕群鸣不已、翼声不绝。举头 - 落寞高楼现，昔日斗气作、今日玄鸟巢。
回忆深深、来年茫茫、不胜唏嘘。
此景焉能永恒？

Classloading in Websphere Administrative Console

I have this web service server application which has been running fine at a Websphere Process Server. One day, my application's log was writing to another application B's log. That is really weird. I checked and found out that this B was recently deployed to the server only. The cause for my application to write to B's log is due to B's log4j jar file was put in the server's common directory ! If we do not change the classloading policy, which is default to PARENT_FIRST, then Wepshere's classloader will load that common directory first only will load the jars in our application's WEB-INF/lib directory.

Hence i logged on to Websphere Administrative Console, went to my application's war file and changed the classloader policy to PARENT_LAST. By doing this Websphere will find and load the neccessary classes from your web module's WEB-INF/lib(web module classloader) first, also you must ensure that the jars you put under your application's WEB-INF/lib folder do not clash with the one at server's common directory, else you will get a java.lang.LinkageError exception due to classloader is trying to load duplicate class.

One year already!!

Time flies. It has been one year already since i joined this company in KL. Also it is my 1 year in KL.

I have been working on ESB/SOA stuff since day 1. Back then i was really blur of all these queue/web services/broker/adapter stuff as i was from web development background. I am glad that i was given the chance to get exposed to this area. Thanks to the support from my colleagues. They are really great!

Since i am doing integration job, i often have to liaise with a few parties. Hence the interaction between me and them is quite important. The communication between me and them has to be effective to ensure that i am able to deliver the right solution as according to what business users need. This part has troubled me a lot. I think i still have much space for improvement in this area. Perhaps i need to take some psychology course. Hahaha.

I am quite lucky to witness the outsourcing process. My client - a telco company has outsourced its IT department to my company some time back. Things have turned quite messy at the first few months after the outsourcing. For example my project manager has changed 4 times in 3,4 months time and the process is no longer as clear as the one before the outsourcing. Fortunately i can see things are getting stable now.

Just looking forward to learn more things as long as i have not left this company. I hope can get high pay with minimum workload. Hahaha.

昔华中学杰出校友

目前为止所知道的杰出校友有数位如下：

1. 黄子。他常在报章电台等媒体发表意见。他在电台上的说话方式非常滑稽，常常反讽时弊。他现时在南洋商报有个专栏。
2. 杨善勇。自多年前就常在各报章看到他的文章。从中得知他的专长乃城市策划。近来他在东方日报有个专栏。
3. 后起之秀彭靖岚彭靖雯两姐妹。他们的部落格/博客/网志在本地非常受落因而累积了一些知名度。2年前我偶然间于凌晨在国营电台听到他们的声音，原来是当天的嘉宾。

就只知道这数位，有待日后补充。

Ai FM's DJ was crying over Yasmin Ahmad's death

I was driving back to KL from my hometown. I was listening to Ai FM(a mandarin radio) as usual. 10.05pm was DJ Ji An's programme. He was talking about a lot of things about Yasmin Ahmad because he invited Yasmin Ahmad a few times to his programme as guest. I think after a few times Yasmin Ahmad was invited they became some sort of close friends. Well at first his tone was still calm but suddenly he burst into tears. I guess that was really a sad moment for him when Kak Yasmin passed away. So from 10.05pm to 12pm DJ Ji An was replaying all the programs that he had invited Yasmin Ahmad as his guest.

The 2 hours was a nice one. Yasmin Ahmad was really anak Malaysia yang betul-betul membuat movie untuk semua Malaysian. It's a great loss for us Malaysian that Yasmin Ahmad could not produce more touching TV advertisements & movies anymore.

NullPointerException in SecureRandom.nextBytes

I was facing this issue where a web service client which had always been running fine suddenly stopped functioning properly due to an error NullPointerException in SecureRandom.nextBytes

AxisFault
faultCode: {http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/}Server.userException
faultSubcode:
faultString: java.lang.NullPointerException
faultActor:
faultNode:
faultDetail:
{http://xml.apache.org/axis/}stackTrace:java.lang.NullPointerException
at java.security.SecureRandom.nextBytes(SecureRandom.java:406)
at org.apache.axis.utils.SessionUtils.generateSessionId(SessionUtils.java:62)

As you can see the exception was thrown when some class in Axis is calling the nextBytes function from SecureRandom Class. I spent quite some time in this and i think that is a bug for IBM version of JRE 1.4.2. If you want to know more, read here.

Therefore i changed the script which starts my web service client by using the java command from Java 5 instead of java 1.4.2 and finally it worked!

Now i do not hate PLUS so much...

I was quite surprised that PLUS did actually respond to my complaint! See below:

From: Customer Relationship Mgmt Department
Cc: Husni Bin Md Yusuf ; Rosli Bin Abdul Manan
Sent: Thursday, July 9, 2009 5:51:46 PM
Subject: PLEASE HELP ME AS A PLUS USER!

Our ref. : CRM/00926/AD-COR



Dear Sir,

First of all, we welcome and thank you for your feedback via e-mail with regard to the above.

We are sorry to learn of the unfortunate experience that you are facing while travelling along PLUS Highway due to traffic congestion along the strecth from Pedas Linggi to Nilai on 7/6/09.

Based on our investigation and record, there are a few reasons were contributed to the heavy congestion along the strecth as follows:

1. Heavy traffic entering the highway during Public Holiday and weekend i.e 6/6/09 falls on Saturday cum Agong Birthday (Public Holiday) and 7/6/09 falls on Sunday.

2. There is a climbing area at Km 265.6 NB and a slip road (ingress and egress) to Seremban Rest and Service Area (RSA).

3. Slow moving vehicles had caused back flow all the way to Nilai especially at the climbing area and slip road to Seremban RSA NB.



In view of the above, for an immediate solution we have mobilised an additional Plusronda team to monitor the traffic flow and ensure that no obstruction along the strecth especially during Public Holiday and weekend (Friday to Sunday). On top of that we are now in the midst of discussion with Malaysian Highway Authority (MHA) and Government of Malaysia to look for a permanent solution to the above problems in due course.

We hope that you would satisfy with the above explanation and we are really appreciate for your invaluable feedback.

"Thank you for traveling with PLUS!"

Best regards,



Customer Relationship and Marketing Dept.

PLUS Expressways Berhad





HCR2746

Hi guys, As a user of PLUS expressway, i am really disappointed with the poor management of PLUS on the traffic congestion. I am expecting to enjoy the value of the amount that i have paid for PLUS to use the north-south expressway! I frequently take PLUS north south expressway to go to KL from Simpang Empat toll. I always face problem such that the traffic is congested over the long stretch from Pedas Linggi to Nilai/Pajam/Sepang toll and I notice that the traffic will always go smooth after the Nilai/Pajam/Sepang toll. This shows that actually the north south expressway is able to handle the heavy volume of vehicles! I am urging you to find out what causes the jam or slowdown on Nilai/Pajam/Sepang toll and also please improve this! Your help is very much appreaciated by every PLUS users! Cheers, Disappointed PLUS user

Please be advised that we have changed our email domain from @plus.com.my to @plus.uemnet.com beginning 1 July 2008.
For enquiries, please contact our Corporate Communication Department or MIS Department at 03-76664666.

Thank you!


Well, even tough the response is quite slow(2 weeks), i actually do appreciate them to react upon my complaint!