Posts from September 2010

This morning, a gentleman was reading a copy of The Times on my South West Trains service bound for London Waterloo. Nothing too surprising about that.

However, this man continued to intently consume the day's important news stories as he left the train and made his way down to the Underground network.

This chap wasn't reading a newspaper though. He was an early adopter so he was reading the electronic version of The Times on an Apple iPad. Clearly, the content is so captivating, the display is so sharp and the font is so crystal clear that he simply has to continue reading the news as he descends the staircase at platform 4, tightly packed in a mass of humanity, down to the Waterloo and City line.

I'm not a rabid Apple hater. I think Apple are an innovative design company who have helped spark some much needed competition; particularly into the mobile ‘device' market.

What irritates me though is the fact that this chap wasn't using the iPad like people use a newspaper. People don't generally read a newspaper as they descend a set of stairs. People generally don't hold a device costing over £400 (although I suspect this chap splashed out on the 3G/WiFi/64GB version which costs a staggering £750) out in front of them and nonchalantly pretend to to fascinated at the content while navigating a set of steps and simultaneously being jostled by rushing commuters from all directions.

This gentleman was doing this for one reason and one reason only - fervently hoping and praying that someone, just anyone, would look at him and his fancy tablet, maybe even ask him about it, exclaim ‘Wow ! Alan - look, that guy's got an iPad !' or just surreptitiously try to look over his shoulder to catch a glance of last night's football results.

Part of me was urging him to lose his footing, tumble forward down six steps, falling flat on on his face, dropping his fancy, overpriced, electronic gadget, shattering the screen in three places.

But unfortunately he didn't. Despite me barging into him. Twice.

What a complete iPoser.

I believe it was Tommy Docherty who christened the phrase ‘the innocence of youth when he described the joyful, attacking football of the newly promoted Manchester United team during the 1975–1976 season.

One of my favourite bloggers, Jonathan Beckett, also reminded me of ‘the innocence of youth' recently when he recounted how he dare not tell one of his three daughters that the family was getting three new kittens imminently lest she responded by ‘jumping up and down uncontrollably'.

When he was younger, my nephew was so overcome by nervous energy and excitement at birthdays and Christmas, his body literally overheated. Occasionally, his mother had to send him to his bedroom to lie down quietly with a damp flannel covering his face. This made present selection relatively easy though; we just bought him a flannelette selection and a ice-pack.

This morning, I witnessed the glorious innocence of youth at first hand when I saw two pretty young schoolgirls get on the train [where's this going ? - Ed] and then each girl shared one cord of a pair of earphones to listen to music on, what I believe young people call, a portable MP3 player. The two girls immediately started smiling and one started dancing on the spot.

I couldn't help smiling myself as I looked across at the happy, carefree faces of these two giggling girls.

Then we got to Wimbledon station where a group of silent, miserable, soulless commuters boarded the train, pushing and shoving to claim their rightful place, desperate to get on the 08:34, desperate to get to the office for another day of mind numbing monotony.

The train was really quite full now but still more determined men and women continued to force their way on, almost crushing the air and joy out of these two slightly built girls who were gradually swamped and seemed to disappear from view as the vast array of grown adults surrounded them in a pincer movement.

The girls reacted by moving closer to each other and then one happened to look up at a gentleman's arm which extended over their heads to clasp onto the pole. They looked at each other and promptly burst into another fit of helpless giggles.

‘When you land at Heathrow you think at times you have landed in a Third World country - Cardinal Walter Kasper.

I guess the Papal entourage must have landed at Terminal 3 and endured the inevitable 20 minute wait for a bus to be brought up to the aircraft. If only the Italian check-in staff had put those red ‘Priority' tags on their suitcases.

Still, it's a bit rich coming from a man who wears a pointy hat and attaches the same importance to the ordination of women as to the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests.

The Brightside family holiday in Spain was a very relaxing affair. For a period of 10 days, I didnt watch a television, read a newspaper, stare at a computer screen or even turn my mobile phone on.

In fact, I sat by the pool, listened to music, swam, ate fantastic seafood, thought a lot and ploughed my way through the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson.

One hot, sunny afternoon, my relaxation was disturbed by the most awful, horrible, blood curdling screams. I consulted my iTouch; 'D-7' by that popular 90's beat combo - Nirvana. Ah that explains it. I returned to 'The Girl Who Played With Fire' and the exciting adventures of Lisbeth Salander.

Almost immediately, my train of thought was interrupted by yet more loud, agonising, terrifying animalistic screams. I looked across at Norma who was embracing the Spanish culture with a short mid-afternoon siesta so it definitely wasn't her.

I consulted the iTouch again as the blood curdling screaming continued unabated. Ah - 'Welcome to the Atrocity Exhibition' by the popular 80's beat combo - Joy Division from the 'Live at the Paradiso' bootleg (available from all good Torrent sites).

I reduced the volume by a notch and was about to summon up the energy to adjust the parasol to get some shade.

Suddenly, away to my right, I saw a flash of green as my radiant wife, Norma, suddenly and spontaneously leapt from her sun-lounger. That's strange I thought - Cocktail Happy Hour doesn't start for another 40 minutes. I watched Norma as she ran at breakneck speed towards the swimming pool.

I thought I'd be sociable so I turned my music off and went to join her for some watery frolics followed by discussion of the very important issue of the choice of venue for tonight's meal.

I stood next to her at the edge of the swimming pool and suddenly my brain went into overdrive. My iTouch was off and yet the loud, agonising screams continued.

Wait - there was a middle aged man splashing about in the water. Wait - is he in difficulty ? Wait - he can't be - this pool is 1.80m at its deepest. I can stand up in the pool everywhere apart from 2 square metres where I have to stand on tip-toes. Wait - he's shorter than me. Wait - what the heck is going on here ?

As my brain struggled to parse the situation in front of me, Norma spontaneously and spectacularly leapt into the swimming pool.

It's a horrible, hackneyed cliche but it was like watching life in slow motion. The middle aged man was still thrashing about rather frantically and he was making the most horrible noises. Loud, prolonged, deep blood curdling noises. At first, I wondered if he was a Joy Division or Nirvana fan and just singing 'D-7' followed by 'Welcome to the Atrocity Exhibition' in his very own unique version of underwater, punk karaoke.

Norma and another gentleman in the pool gradually moved towards drowning man like two sharks closing in on their prey. But without the triangular fins.

Finally, my brain woke up. This guy didn't appear to be larking about. There were no children with him. He genuinely looked like he was flailing his arms around and panicking like, well, a drowning man. His eyes were open and he was conscious and vertical but I wondered if he was having a fit or an asthma or panic attack.

As I considered entering the water, Norma got closer to the drowning man. I heard a voice behind me: 'Can we go and get an ice-cream yet Dad ? It's nearly 4 o'clock.'

My daughter Norma Jeane was at my side carefully reviewing progress on her sun tan and, incredibly was thinking about her stomach rather than the drama unfolding in front of us. Even more incredibly, Norma Jeane is a qualified life guard.

'Hang on Norma Jeane - your Mum's a little busy at the moment saving a drowning man.'

'Oh - shall I just get her a Magnum Classic then ? Have you got any Euros ?'

Norma reached the flailing man and went to lift him. The man seized his opportunity and pushed down hard on Norma's shoulder to lift himself out of the water and get some air into his lungs The laws of physics meant that he immediately pushed Norma fully under the water. Norman Jeane offered 'Oh yeah - that's a classic life saving mistake. We did it on the course. You should always support the drowning man low down before he has a chance to grab you and risk drowning you.'

Thankfully, the man's screams finally subsided and Norma and the other man lifted the man, rather ungracefully, up onto the poolside - laid out like a beached seal. The hotel pool man immaculately clad in white shirt and white long trousers (like an extra from 'An Officer and a Gentleman') ambled over. 'Everything ees OK, si ?'

‘Burns - I guess this means I can book the hotel for four nights and cancel the flights to OpenWorld then ?

It was 10:30 am on a dull, grey overcast Monday morning in Manchester. Sherlock Burns and Doctor Timothy Hall had just emerged from a fractious, tense kick-off meeting at Tiger Telecom. Sherlock Burns and Dr. Timothy Hall had been called by the IT director at short notice to investigate a sudden and marked degradation in the performance of the production database

‘No. On the contrary, Doctor Hall. Please ensure the Hackney carriage is booked for 4pm together with two first class tickets for the return train journey to Euston. I have every confidence this case will be solved by lunchtime. This time tomorrow we will be on a plane to California.'

‘But Burns - we just sat through a 90 minute meeting with no obvious solution. Why, I do declare, the customer can't even articulate the problem clearly and all the project team are arguing with each other. How on earth -'

‘Dr. Hall - do you recall the pretty chart showing the 'Key Business Transaction Response Times' ? What did you observe ?'

‘Err - I believe it was Excel 2007 and used a fancy pivot table…'

‘No, no - not that. Didn't you look closely at the X-axis ? The timeline of the monitoring process was every 10 minutes. After August 15th, the granularity of the dots changed to every 10 seconds. This coincided with the performance problems and undoubtedly means the frequency of the monitoring probe was modified resulting in the increased load on the system.'

‘Oh Burns - that truly is absolutely magnificent. How did you spot that ?'

‘Obvious Dr. Hall, blindingly obvious. I suspect you will find someone, somewhere has got his asterisks mixed up when he editted the crontab. A common failing when you try to convert Windows support staff to the superior Unix platform. Now as we were brought through the office by our host and walked through the call centre area, what did you notice ?'

‘Well Burns - I noticed a lot of pretty girls wearing headsets. That blonde, in particular, was stunning -'

‘No, no - I'm talking about the plethora of 'New Hire Induction Guide' on their desks. Tiger Telecom has obviously hired all these people recently which is also contributing more load to the system.'

‘No - Burns - that can't be right. You specifically asked them in the meeting what had changed recently and they all insisted: 'Nothing. Absolutely nothing.'

‘That's why we are here, Dr Hall. Unless you saw it with your own eyes it didn't happen. Another factor at play here is the Senior Oracle DBA. He is incompetent and must be replaced immediately.'

‘Oh Burns - how can you say that ? He seemed like a lovely bloke to me and don't forget he bought us our Latte's.'

‘Shut up Hall. What did you notice on his desk ?'

‘On his desk ? Well nothing apart from that rather amusing 'You don't have to be mad to work here but it helps' postcard and a photo of his wife sunbathing in Crete….'

‘No, no. I'm talking about the technical books on his desk. He had a pile of Oracle books - all the usual suspects; Kyte, Lewis, Milsap and Antognini. But on the very top of that pile was a curious tome - 'Oracle Tuning - The Definitive Reference Second Edition' by Donald Burleson. No self respecting Oracle DBA would have that combination of books. That alerted me that something was amiss.'

‘Oh come off it, Burns. I think you're putting 2 and 2 together and making 5 here. That's very unfair -'

‘Dr. Hall. I opened the Burleson book up and noted the following inscription on the inside cover: 'Barry - all the best in the future and may your redo logs always be multiplexed :-)' Therefore I conclude this gentleman was dismissed from his previous post as a contract DBA following an unfortunate, and ultimately fruitless, exercise in media recovery. On a production system for an investment bank.'

‘Ah OK, I see, Burns. While we're discussing the technical staff, I just wanted to mention that PL/SQL developer. I think he needs to be sacked too.'

‘Interesting, Dr. Hall. Why do you hold that opinion ?'

‘Well - when you asked him how much source code, how many lines of PL/SQL, how many packages he'd written, he couldn't produce anything. Nothing. And to think he calls himself a 'PL/SQL developer. He's obviously an imposter.'

Burns smiled inwardly.

'Not so fast, young, keen, impetuous Doctor Hall. While what you say is true, the young man did proffer a explanation for this. He showed me a source code repository populated with comprehensive, well written and tuned SQL scripts. Why - I do declare he even used Analytic functions. Young Mr. Barnstormworth justified his stance thus: “If it can't be done in a single SQL statement, use PL/SQL. If it can't be done in PL/SQL, use a Java Stored procedure. Otherwise consider ‘C'.”

Dr. Hall looked amazed as Burns had solved another mystery and he hadn't even had to chat with the Head of IT Operations.

‘Now my good man. That's more than enough work for one morning. I am ready to eat now and rather appropriately, I think I spotted a 'Pret A Manager' adjacent to the offices where we can discuss my forthcoming ‘State of the Nation' keynote presentation at Oracle OpenWorld.

The ‘Council Of War' was duly reassembled at 3pm and Sherlock Burns took a long drag on his pipe before addressing the group:

• ‘Fix the monitor probe interval.'
• ‘Sack the Oracle DBA.'
• ‘Promote Daniel Barnstomworth to 'Senior VP of Database Engineering'.
• ‘Deploy another RAC node by the end of the year to cater for the increased user base.'
• ‘Here's my invoice. Good Bye'.

I dont know if all the clever Spanish people who study English leave the country or whether translators arent very well paid in Spain but heres some amusing signs from my recent holiday in Marbella.

‘Deposit all remainders here' - Malaga airport.

I duly placed ‘2' in the receptacle. This was left over when I was testing Norman Jeane and asked her to quickly divide 12 by 5.

‘Millionaires - Private Gentleman's Club. Members only. Please always use rear entrance' - Puerto Banus.

Superb English. Nothing wrong with it at all. I suspect Finbarr Saunders of Viz was commissioned for this wonderful sign.

‘Please wait 3 minutes before pulsating' - water bottle dispenser in public car park in Ronda.

I am ashamed to say I could only last 2 minutes and 43 seconds before spontaneously and rapidly pulsating. The car park attendant looked at me a little strangely.

With no Premiership or Championship fixtures at the weekend, I went along to watch my local non league club, Kingstonian FC, play on Saturday afternoon.

Kingstonian play in the Isthmian League which is a regional league below the Conference (sponsored by Ryman so also known as the Ryman League) and were hosting Margate.

It was great to be able to saunter round to the half way line and watch the match from behind the dugouts. It was great to hear the coaches urging their players on and engaging in gentle banter with the match officials - ‘Here Lino - that [offside] had to be bloody close !' It was refreshing to be able to walk into the bar and get a drink at half-time.

Unfortunately, the football served up in the first half was rather nondescript with Margate having the bulk of possession but creating relatively few chances.

After the break, Kingstonian offered a little more threat, particularly down the left side through full back Tom Bird and midfielder Dean Lodge and Margate were thwarted by a couple of great saves from Rob Tolfrey in the Kingston goal.

Against the run of play but to the delight of the assembled 400 home spectators, Kingstonian nicked a goal and 3 points with a well taken goal from Lodge after 84 minutes. Kingstonian are now joint top of the Ryman League, trailing local rivals Sutton United on goal difference.