After a few days at home in Munich, I was fortunate enough to fly to the Southern Hemisphere again. This time, I’m in Argentina, planning to visit also Uruguay and Chile.

I plan to meet with many Sun customers and MySQL users, and talk about Open Source. All Libre, some of it even Gratuita. The sign on the right is from Jardin Botánico in Buenos Aires, where I had some time off today. I’m posting some of the more private observations on blogs.arno.fi/isit so as not to spam this list with observations of Jacaranda trees. (Note: At the time of writing, not many of my South American observations are yet live.)

My prayers have been answered.

We have found a worthy replacement for Jay Pipes: Dups.

• Dups joined MySQL in July 2007.
• Dups until recently was in the MySQL Web Team, and has joined us now.
• Dups comes from Canada (Newfoundland).
• Dups even lives in Canada (Montreal).
• Dups will roam the North American continent to serve the MySQL community, to learn from it, to explain Sun to the community, and to explain the community to Sun.
• Dups is sometimes mistaken for Colin Charles, because of similarities in physical appearance.
• Dups has a somewhat challenging name, Duleepa Wijayawardhana.

I’m very happy we got Dups as our Jay clone, because

• Dups is a MySQL user since last century.
• Dups knows MySQL very well.
• Dups is an excellent communicator: he structures his thoughts clearly and writes an enjoyable language.
• Dups is a superb web developer, very competent to take over MySQL Forge.
• Dups’s heart beat strongly for the community already when I interviewed him for his Web position (our recruiting processes required an out-of-department interviewer, and I’m happy I volunteered).
• Dups enjoys photography, quite like I do.
• I have already managed to learn to write and pronounce Dups’s real name by rote (see: Duleepa Wijayawardhana! I didn’t even look it up.).
• Dups is a geek even by name, as his (sequentially) first name is Geekiyanage.

I’m looking forward to working with Dups, on all things community. And I’m hoping to learn some mountaineering from him, too — he’s climbed over 28% of the world’s Seven Summits (Kilimanjaro for the highest peak in Africa, Elbrus for the highest peak in Europe).

Welcome, Dups!

Links:

• Dups’s blog on joining: http://blogs.sun.com/dups/entry/don_t_panic
• Giuseppe’s blog on Dups joining: http://blogs.sun.com/datacharmer/entry/good_luck_jay_welcome_dups