Posts from 2007

My name is Norman and I am a blogoholic.

Two years ago, I started this blog purely as an experiment to see what all the fuss was about.

Two years ago, I didn't even know what blogging was. I certainly didn't expect that I would still be doing it two years later.

I didn't anticipate that I would subsequently play with themes, plug-ins, spend money on a domain, migrate to my own WordPress blog and eventually add Adsense.

During the first year (honeymoon period), I enjoyed monitoring the traffic statistics for my hosted WordPress blog.

Much to my surprise, I discovered that I actually enjoyed writing. Initially, I thought I might be capable of creating a technical blog about Siebel and/or Oracle but I soon discovered that I preferred to post anecdotes from my tedious life as a IT consultant.

As a consequence of creating the blog, I learned about various blogging platforms (Blogger, WordPress, Movable Type, Drupal, Typepad, Habari and Google Pages)

I also learned about RSS, various Web 2.0 tools (Bloglines, Reader, Netvibes, Blinklist, Feedburner) and signed up for various social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn).

Most importantly, I made a handful of new friends that I am still in regular contact with.

Then one night, I sat in a Dublin hotel room, staring at a pint of Guiness and mindlessly pressed 'Publish'. Seconds later, I then immediately stared at this particular vacuous post and thought 'What am I doing ? Why am I doing this ? What is the point ?'

After two years, I was blogging purely because of the self-imposed pressure to create content. Content that was valueless, worthless and pointless.

So, suddenly and spontaneously, I decided to take a break because I simply couldn't be bothered any more. Blogging just wasn't fun any more.

After one day, I still checked for comments, scanned the Web server logs and reviewed my precious Adsense revenue.

After two days, I read my RSS feeds for blog comments and examined my pretty Google Analytics charts.

After three days, I strongly resisted the urge to check anything.

After five days, I didn't do anything. I didn't feel obliged to write a blog article. I didn't feel obliged to comment. I didn't feel obliged to scan any of my 167 feeds.

After seven days, I forgot I had a blog. I actually talked to friends and family. The feeling of liberation was surprising.

After nineteen days, I realised blogging was an addiction. An addiction that didn't fit well with my obsessive personality.

After twenty eight days, I realised my blog was now two years old (I started my blog the day after WordPress launched). An interesting experiment which had now naturally drawn to a close.

So I was sorely tempted to close the blog down.

But then Doug said he liked 'Prince' so I had to start all over again.

After recent horrific events, I was forced to flee the country so I took my family (and a couple of young hangers-on) for a relaxing break at CenterParcs near Eindhoven.

For those readers with (young) families, CenterParcs in Holland is very similar to the setup in the UK except that the prices are lower and staff are actually friendly and helpful.

For those readers without families, CenterParcs is probably not for you.

Anyway, I have returned refreshed, invigorated and raring to go. I am currently wading through my backlog of email. Then I will quickly review the week's football news and my Fantasy League team selections, watch 'Saxondale' and then normal blogging service will be resumed as I ease myself gently back into work and scale my ivory tower.

Oh, hang on a minute, the scheduling goddess has helpfully seen fit to send me straight back to Holland (Rotterdam, to be precise) to spend the remainder of my Euros so I need to quickly iron a shirt, pack my last two pairs of clean undergarments, order a taxi and get to Heathrow Terminal 4 immediately.

Oracle 11g has recently been released so its time for everyone to submit their colourful screenshots into the 'Oracle 11g banner version' competition. Well, nearly everyone.

Apologies for the delay but, finally, I am proud to present my paltry, monochrome effort.

I just installed Oracle 11g onto a VMware server running Redhat Enterprise Linux 4.0. It actually took me more time to configure VMware tools and successfully share the folder staging the distribution than to install and configure Oracle.

The virtual server had a mere 512MB of memory and was hosted on a Thinkpad T43 laptop with 2GB memory.

Thanks for bringing us Joy Division, New Order, The Hacienda and your faith and passion for Manchester.

From The Times:

'His name change to Anthony H. Wilson was, he once said, to' "wind up all the people in Manchester who think I'm a flash t***."

57 years young. Much too soon. RIP.

Create tables, resize, add rows and columns, preview the output and add the finishing touches in Google Docs.

Then simply paste the HTML into the WordPress WYSIYG editor.

Less than two minutes to index a new article. Impressive.

Please dont tell Norma but, earlier this week, I spent £25 in Shagorika. Such is the life of a sad, lonely IT consultant on a slow Tuesday night in Sunderland.

Unfortunately, contrary to my expectations, Shagorika turned out to be a rather mediocre, overpriced Indian restaurant rather than the sordid den of sexual iniquity I was hoping for.

It took me a while to summon up the courage to cross the threshold. My nerves were soothed when I was warmly welcomed by a beautiful, flirtatious lady who led me by the hand to a cosy waiting area. She gave me a complimentary drink and asked me to wait a minute while she prepared a table. A table, not a bed ! How very exotic.

I looked nervously at my surroundings; comfy seats, a well stocked bar, motoring magazines and stunning ladies peeking out from behind net curtains. Then my host returned with a warm smile: 'Sir, I are ready for you now'. And by now, I was also ready for her. In fact, I could barely contain my excitement.

My glamorous hostess led me to a table with an immaculate white table cloth, set for 3 courses with wine glasses. Perplexed, I reluctantly sat down. I wasn't really that hungry so I asked if this foreplay was absolutely necessary and whether it cost any extra.

My hostess looked a little confused, proffered me a food menu and ran back to the bar. Then the awful realisation slowly dawned. This was not a brothel but an Indian restaurant. Words can not describe my utter embarrassment and how stupid I felt. Particularly, as I had already stripped down to my vest and boxers.

I immediately and rapidly got dressed again and ordered 'The Chef's Choice'. Fortunately, I was able to bury my head in the July-August 2007 copy of Oracle Magazine to avoid the stares of my fellow diners.

Originally, I was going to savour this fine publication with my partner, in the glowing aftermath of our steamy, breathless sexual encounter. Normally, I would smoke a cigarette but a recent change in the law prohibits that nowadays.

One of my favourite sections in Oracle Magazine is the interviews with real-life DBA's. However I nearly choked on my Prawn Patia as I read this inappropriate and leading question to M. K Rizwan:

'What's your favourite tool or technique on the job ?'

I am now frantically leafing through my 157 back issues to see precisely how Tim and Doug replied to this question.

Two weeks ago, I sat in the business lounge at Newcastle airport. I chose a desk right in the corner away from everyone else because I am like that.

Inevitably, the lounge filled up with business types trying to impress everyone else by speaking loudly on their slimline toy phones.

A gentleman came and sat down next to me. He fetched an orange juice and two packets of delicious Kettle Chips (Sea Salt with crushed black peppercorns and Mature Cheddar and Chives) to occupy himself for the next 25 minutes.

Now Kettle Chips are very tasty and I am quite partial to a packet myself but when you are trying to concentrate and not partaking, the act of ripping open the packet(s) and noisily crunching crisp after crisp is incredibly irritating.

Finally, the second packet was exhausted. All the crumbs at the bottom had been shovelled down his greedy throat. Peace at last.

Peace until he got up from his chair and fetched another two packets. Not one but another two.

Now I know that food and drink are complimentary in the business lounge, but, for God's sake, Kettle Chips simply aren't exactly a delicacy that you never get at home.

This afternoon, I find myself in the same business lounge, with a new immediate neighbour for company. Incredibly, he has also just noisily munched his way through two packets of Kettle Chips.

Jesus Christ - he has just got up and and returned with another two packets (Salsa Mesquite and Sea Salt & Balsamic Vinegar).

I've had enough. I can't take any more without saying anything I regret.

I am now going to show some solidarity with the man in the street and sit in an empty departure lounge with no flight until next Monday.

As far away from everyone else, and Kettle Chips, as I can possibly get.

Today, a gentleman approached me and politely asked if he could ask me a question.

Normally, this dialog is a little more protracted and goes as follows:

'Excuse me. Is your name Norman Brightside ?'

'Yes.'

'Do you work for Siebel ?'

'Yes.' (although strictly I work for Oracle on the Siebel CRM product)

'Are you from Expert Services ?'

'Yes.'

'Do you mind if I ask you a quick question ?'

'Not at all. Fire away.'

Anyway, what was unusual and striking about this approach was the fact the gentleman was carrying a Reporters Notebook and a pen.

When we sat down to discuss the various strategies for gathering, refreshing and (in obtuse cases), dropping statistics on objects in the Siebel schema, he actually asked me if I minded pausing briefly while he wrote things down.

I am not very clever. I am always writing things down mainly to avoid forgetting them. I tend to gather a lot of data when I visit a customer. Some of it is important, some of it is not. At first, it is not always obvious which is which.

As I usually have to produce a formal report, I find it necessary and useful to jot things down. My jottings are normally in a text file which I take away with me as input into the report. This is another reason I almost always exclusively use SQL*Plus to script test cases and take away a wad of spool files on a memory stick.

I am not overly organised. Sometimes, I may have a pristine pad of A4 paper but more often I am scribbling on the reverse of my flight/hotel itinerary or a Google map.

If I am talking to a Siebel administrator, project manager, Oracle DBA, in a meeting or a conference call or just chatting with an end user, I will ensure I have a piece of paper available. Just to write things down.

However, the fact I actually noticed this gentleman was equipped with a pen and paper for our brief chat and also made notes and jottings, merely served to reinforce how rare this seemingly obvious and eminently sensible practice is.

Or am I just mixing in the wrong circles ?

I was interested to read that Microsoft have over 17,597 employees registered on Facebook out of a total of 70,000 employees.

I thought I would try to discover how other leading IT companies compared, including my own. The staff numbers come from Google Finance and the rounding errors come from me.

The following Facebook networks are only open to company employees with a valid email address although, obviously, a better metric would have been some measure of recent activity.

Inevitably, I guess - Google lead the way (again) but I was surprised to see that Sun Microsystems have a significant proportion of Facebook members.

IBM were slightly lower than I expected until I remembered that half their 350,000 employees are busy building fantasy worlds in Second Life. No wonder I can't get spare parts for my Thinkpad.

Nice to see Oracle positioned just ahead of SAP after recent discussions about the companies' respective contributions and reputation in the Web 2.0 community.

I still have wildly oscillating feelings about Facebook; on one hand, a walled garden, puerile, teenage and gimmicky but undoubtedly an insidious, strangely compulsive and probably important platform.

PS. For example, I have just seen the immortal words 'Andy and Mark Burgess (The Chameleons) are now friends'. Superb.