Posts from 2006

I made an unexpected debut at my wifes book club last night because because I just happened to have read the book in question and my wife (still) has a flat tyre.

We all met up at Rosemary Barnstormworth's house and she had thoughtfully laid on prawn volavons, curry flavoured twiglets and copious amounts of wine.

Obviously, this was my first team debut so I was understandably nervous. However, I needn't have worried as I already knew some of the ladies present and I was warmly welcomed with a large glass of wine.

After 45 minutes and some pleasantries, I tentatively asked whether we could actually discuss our thoughts on ' The Kite Runner'. Hiliary Montague replied 'Oh hang on Norman. There's plenty of time for that. Oh I see you're empty. Let me see to that.' and promptly refilled my glass.

An hour later, I startled everyone by suddenly interrupting the conversation with 'Well I thought the book was superbly written, recounting a story of broken friendship, deeply moving as well as providing a fascinating insight into life in Afghanistan in the 1970's. Margaret - what did you think ?'

'Well very similar to you really. Very moving. Especially the bit about the kite.'

'Zandra - anything to add ?'

Zandra delved into her handbag for a tissue and pronounced:

'I found The Kite Runner a deeply moving tale from start to finish daring to explore the intricacies and prejudices between Sunni and Shi-ite Muslims, the special bond between two friends divided by cast, wealth, status and ignorance.The book is worth reading to the very last page if just for the the final scene which tugs at the heart strings evoking an overwhelming surge of emotion difficult to explain or even understand yet powerful in it's impact.'

'Thanks Zandra. Are you a reviewer on Amazon ?'

'No. Why ?'

'Well what you just said is identical, word for word, to a review on Amazon.'

'Well, err, no. Not exactly.'

'Listen ladies. I realise it's my first time and I don't mean to be rude but not one of you has actually read the book, have you ?'

'Well Norman, no we haven't but please have a refill while I explain. We are all very busy mothers, housewives and wives. Some of us are very active in the PTA and others work full-time so please forgive us if we haven't always got time to actually read the book. Now maybe we can charge our glasses and discuss the book for the next meeting. Norman, as way of apology, what was the last book you read ?'

'Oh come on. What's the point ? You're not going to read it anyway.'

'Now, now Norman. You misunderstand the whole point behind book club. The most important thing is that we have the name of a book, we are currently reading, to tell all our friends who are members of rival book clubs.'

'Rival book clubs ?'

'Oh yes, Norman. You wouldn't believe the rivalry. I happen to know that Sheila Henshall has had her eyes on you and your reading list for a while now. Anyway, after Christmas, we may well have more free time in January so, come on, what was the last book you read ?'

'Err, well - I can't remember.'

'Oh come on Norman. Don't be so shy now. We are all friends here tonight'

'Well it is called ' Cost Based Oracle:Fundamentals (Volume 1)' by Jonathan Lewis but it is a very technical book about the Oracle database. To be honest, the book contains lots of mathematics and statistical theory and it was pretty heavy going even for me and I still haven't actually finished it.'

'Hmm. Although I bet no-one else will choose it, that doesn't sound entirely suitable. What about the book you are currently reading ?'

'Err, well. I'm half way through ' Heavier than Heaven' by Charles Cross.'

Margaret Smithers-Jones pipes up: 'Oh I think I read about that one in the Daily Mail. Is it about the life of a man from Orkney who was an orphan and his constant struggle trying to discover his inner self and his experiences with various religions before converting to the Church of Scientology ?'

'Err, no. This book's about a grunge rocker from Seattle who rose from poverty to lead the most influential punk group of the 90's to worldwide acclaim.'

Linda Postlethwaite replied: 'Err, well it sounds a little far-fetched.'

'It's a biography and it's all true. He later married and had a child but in 1994, he finally succumbed to his various drug addictions and depression. He overdosed on heroin and blew his brains out with a shotgun.'

'Oh Norman. I really don't think that's suitable. Here, for Pete's sake, cheer yourself up with some more wine.'

'And some people think his wife was behind his death because he was about to leave the music business and divorce her.'

'Oh Norman - do shut up. Now everyone; what do we all think about Jan Leeming ?'

[There are absolutely no affiliate links in this article. My conscience wouldn't let me.]

Hilarious [Via Pete Ashton]

Stumbled across this blog. Another young life ended prematurely. Sad. Very sad.

I had the misfortune to visit a very angry customer today. He was having problems loading customer data into Siebel. I sat him down with a nice cup of tea and invited him to tell me all about his woes.

'Well Norman - it's like this you see. We used to be able to load 400,000 contacts per hour. Now performance is absolutely abysmal and it takes 12 minutes to load just 1,000.'

'Hold on. What exactly have you changed since you last loaded 400,000 per hour.'

'Nothing. Nothing at all.'

'Hang on. When were you last able to load 400,000 per hour - exactly ?'

'Err well. It was back in February, you see.'

'And you expect me to believe that you have changed nothing since then ?'

'Yes.'

'OK. I want hard copies of all change controls raised against this system since February and access to Visual Source Safe. I also want the DBA and Siebel administrator here. Now.'

'We haven't got any change controls. We don't use configuration management and I am the DBA, Siebel Admin, systems admin, Web server guru and I also make the tea. We are a small company, you see.'

'I see. That's fine.' (sigh and roll eyes upwards). This could be a long day.

And so the detailed analysis commenced. The control file (IFB) used to load the data. The key Oracle parameters. The hardware of the various servers. All identical to the configuration used back in February.

And he did load 400,000 records per hour. He had the logs to prove it. And now he could type the data in quicker. I know because I saw it with my own eyes. A real mystery.

Siebel's data loading utility is called EIM and uses CBO so time to check the statistics. This client uses Oracle 10g so statistics are automatically gathered by default (essentially gather stale) so all tables have current statistics.

Hold on a minute. All tables apart from EIM_CONTACT and a load of others.

'Why have you dropped statistics on EIM_CONTACT ?'

'We haven't.'

'Oh yes you have.'

'Oh yeah. I remember now. I was playing with a custom script to drop stats on all empty tables. Siebel told me to do this because it affects performance (Alert 1162).'

'Oh I see. How very interesting.'

It transpires that because the interface table is (correctly) truncated post-load, the statistics subsequently got deleted by this script. Kudos to this customer though for humourously naming the script 'dropem.sql'.

Quickly compute statistics on EIM_CONTACT and indexes and performance is miraculously restored.

Well almost. The client forgot to tell me that he had dropped unused indexes on the base tables to accelerate the data load still further. The 'ddlsync' utility that synchronises the Siebel Repository with the physical Oracle schema had subsequently been run which reinstated all the indexes slowing performance down slightly. The indexes are dropped and the original throughput is restored.

Well almost. The client forgot to tell me he had enabled mobile web clients as an experiment for Olof Ericcsson (VP Sales - Scandinavia). So we disable remote transaction logging to eliminate that minor overhead. Throughput is now restored.

So I said my goodbyes and left for the long drive home.

Only, on this occasion, the journey home was very short.

On this occasion, the client happened to be sitting at my kitchen table.

On this occasion, the rack of expensive application/Web/database servers were actually all co-hosted on my very own laptop.

On this occasion, the client who made all the mistakes was me.

Three, err, lucky people won the following, err, prize at the recent Oracle Partner Network day at UKOUG in Birmingham.

3 lucky winners have won a Virgin Experience Voucher to the value of £140.

Norman. Come here. I have a crisis. Quickly.

Whats up ?

'I have a flat tyre.'

It is dark. Mainly because it is 7.30 at night. I sigh inwardly and get a torch.

'Hmm. You're right. That tyre really is flat. Didn't you notice the car pulling to the right ?'

'No. The car was driving fine. Norman Junior did say that the car was leaning and he kept falling over though.'

'Hmm.'

'Look. I really need the car for work tomorrow. Shall we just re-inflate it ?'

'No. It will just be completely flat again by morning. Just drive round to the tyre place first thing and get it replaced.

'I'm not driving on that tyre. It's on the rims and might make things worse'

'Don't worry. The tyre place is only 800 yards away. I've driven with a flat tyre on the rims before. Just drive slowly.'

'No. Let's put the spare on.'

So we get a Swiss army penknife out of the boot. The multi-purpose device includes a red warning triangle, a first aid kit, a car jack, several spanners and a foldaway picnic table. After several hours, after inadvertently firing two distress flares, we work out how to assemble the jack and extract the spare tyre.

'What does that yellow sticker say ?'

'It's a temporary tyre. You're not supposed to drive long distances using it.'

'What does that massive '80' mean ?' 'You're not supposed to drive over 80 miles per hour but that won't be a problem for you tomorrow morning.'

We locate the jacking point and replace the tyre.

'Why is this tyre so small ? Look at it compared with that one !'

'It's an emergency tyre designed just to get you to a garage. It will be fine for work in the morning and then you can get it changed later.'

'Oh. I don't know. I'm not happy driving on this. I think I will just drive round to the tyre place first thing and get it changed.'

'OK. So we just changed this tyre in the dark and rain for no reason.'

Engtech has some great references stressing the importance of the blog title when trying to attract readers.

However, this merely confirms what I already knew. A couple of weeks ago, I posted this entry which brought a trickle of traffic from TailRank. This, in turn, brought another article about the same news story to my attention.

My post was titled: '361 days to go'

The other article was titled: 'Black Cat Thunderbolt Rocket Up The Arse'

Some of us have it. Some of us don't.

Phil McIntyre is busy blogging right now.

Some principled bloggers leave all comments untouched afraid that any subsequent edit (no matter how seemingly trivial) would represent the slippery slope to censorship, a police state, the inevitable involvement of Amnesty International and charity gigs by U2.

Apart from a single comment by a member of the BNP, I have never had this problem until now.

A new comment on the post #45 "music for a (very) long car journey" Mate, you're a dick A new comment on the post #485 "flowery twats" Mate, it was obviously you're fault you twat.

However, I chose to delete these comments because:

1. I dislike such profanity.
2. The twat didn't even get the joke in 'flowery twats'.
3. Misuse of "you're" in #2.

Yet another trackback test.

One year and four days after I thought I understood the difference between pings and trackbacks, this short podcast shows me that I didn't.