Many years ago, a customer thanked me which was a pleasant surprise and quite unusual. Most simply ask ‘When will your report be ready ?’ This particular customer remarked on my ’logical and methodical approach’ to understanding this long standing complex problem, proposing a plan of action and, on this rare occasion, resolving it. I was interested by his choice of the words ’logical and methodical’. As an aside, I was convinced I heard a surly DBA murmur ‘slow, laboured and hopeless more like’ which hurt terribly. ...

Over the past couple of days, much to my surprise, I have actually managed to answer some questions. The parameter ‘ExtractStartDate’ was set to ‘11/01/2007’. This means that Siebel will ignore all appointments and tasks prior to this date. The default value of ‘ExtractStartDateFormat’ is ‘MM/DD/YYYY’ which equates to ‘01 November 2007’. Install Cygwin, sed -n -e ‘x,yp’ < bigfile.log If the Exchange Connector and SSSE Engine component are run by accounts in different domains, trust must be established in order for RPC calls to work correctly. Alternatively, use two separate accounts (least privilege) in the same domain. In the heart of London, surprisingly. Install OHS from the OAS Companion CD F11 And now for the questions… ...

[Well, my SEO professor said it was much better than ‘Sports Bars of Europe #7’] Feverishly scoured the Interweb looking for alternative sports bars in Copenhagen. Once I saw the address of my previous haunt, the marvellous ‘Irish Rover’, my mind was instantly made up. Tomorrow morning, when the customer politely asks me what I got up to last night, instead of ‘Caught up with my email and ordered room service’, I can now proffer ‘I spent a glorious, unforgettable night up ‘Jorcks Passage’. ...

Travel Administrator for overpaid and unbelievably stupid IT consultant must be capable of using a corporate travel service to book a flight to Copenhagen from London Heathrow must be capable of reading confirmation email to check flight is actually from LHR and not London City airport must be able to secure approvals for travel booked less than 7 days from departure must be able to verify a flexible ticket has indeed been issued as requested must be able to convince the lady at SAS ticket sales to change a fixed, non-refundable, non-changeable ticket to a different flight at no additional cost Salary - none. Bonus - none although you will receive my eternal thanks and defer my next nervous breakdown. ...

A couple of interesting papers discussing the portability issues and challenges involved when trying to port Drupal to the freely available versions of Oracle and DB2.