After dinner we sat on the sofa and watched The Hunter. Of course, she really wasn’t interested and was drawing mostly. After the movie, we went through her bedtime routine: drank vitamins, brushed teeth, wiped down, and prepared for bed. I promised to read her a book and I read her Red Riding Hood. And then it was sleepy time. She tossed and turned for a while and asked for water but she generally wasn’t very fussy. Pretty quickly, she quieted down and was soon asleep. That was new!

I’ve tried so many things: Turning off location-based services (negligible), turning off 3G (extra 2 hours), reset network settings (no effect), reset all settings (no effect), etc all to no avail. But I finally, I stumbled upon a solution that made a huge difference.

I read in a MacWorld article that it could be a sync issue. So I downloaded the recommended System Activity Monitor and tried troubleshooting as described in the article. Indeed even at standby, the processors were registering 10% or so usage. It led me to think that maybe my Google Exchange calendar, mail, and contacts are the culprit.  Is Google that evil? :P

So I deleted my Google Exchange account. I immediately noticed the processors registering less than 5%. I recreated the Google Exchange account and observed. Processor usage remained at less than 5% on standby. I continued observing the whole day today and, with defaults (3G and location services) on, it hit 10% battery at 14 hours standby and 6 hours usage. And it no longer heats up unless used heavily. Huge improvement!

UPDATE: Problem returned. I’ll try removing the Google Exchange account again.

However, due to the configuration of the production environment, it is hard to confirm. There is a staging environment but the configuration is different (bad) so it’s pretty much useless. Eventually, the deployment team did manage to isolate one production server and we tested on it.

Same conclusion: there is a communication problem between CWS and PIS. I asked if PIS is available on the port the CWS is trying to connect to. That probably switched the light bulbs in the deployment team’s collective heads because they instead of responding, they configured something, and voila, it worked!

UPDATE: I found out that the port our system has been configured to use is not compatible in production because they had decided to keep the old application server up (good) on that port and have the new application server on a different port (but they hadn’t informed us, bad).

For those unfamiliar with history, the Knights Templar is a Christian military order that gained fame (and notoriety) during the Crusades. All members of the order take take vows of poverty, chastity, piety, and obedience. The knights of the order are practically warriors priests. In fact, they’re the elite troops among the crusaders.

The intrinsic conflict of this war-peace dichotomy in René is the primary focus of Soldier of God. Those who are looking for hack-and-slash action will have to look elsewhere. Like in Kingdom of Heaven. This movie is  to Kingdom of Heaven what The Thin Red Line is to Saving Private Ryan: it focuses more on people rather than on events.

René, eventually escaped his captors and wandered about in the desert. He stumbled upon Hassan, a member of the Ismaili sect, a Hashashin (another interesting historical subject) who helped him and gave him water. René in turn later helped Hassan, first by chasing off an attacker and then by helping the wounded Hasan walk.

Together they travelled until eventually they stumbled upon the tent of Soheila, a widow who lived in the desert. As René and Hassan rested and recovered from their wounds under Soheila’s care, René’s inner conflict boils over into their relationship, religion, and culminates in tragedy and self-discovery.

Soldier of God not something that will appeal to a mainstream audience. Instead, it is more for film buffs and, to an extent, history buffs. Though it’s not one of the best films around, if you’re in those two categories, watching it can be a rewarding experience.