Prizegiving ceremonies at school are a similar experience when you are a parent as when you were a child. The event seems to last a long time. The tedium is punctuated by the odd, brief moment of excitement when little Norma (or someone loosely known to you) walks up to receive her book token. Your mind starts to wander asking such important questions as: ‘What exactly did Christine Baverstock-Davis do to merit the award of “Outstanding effort in ‘resistant materials” ?’. Did she spend countless hours after school bashing iron, steel and rocks with hammers, mallets and pickaxes ?’ You start to wonder why your wife neglected to attend this years 3 hour marathon in stifling heat. Must remind her that it’s her turn next year. ...

Occasionally, I have had the odd dig at the parochial, inward looking nature of the US TV and printed media. However, last week, the UK media commemorated the first anniversary of the July bombings in London with endless pages of words and pictures together with and hours of footage, analysis, interviews, documentaries and coverage of yet another two minute silence. Since August 1997, a nation that was once renown for a ‘stiff upper lip’ and dignity has somehow been transformed into 60 million professional grievers and bereavement counsellors. ...

On message boards and blogs around the interweb, fans of the TV series ‘Lost’ are discussing the many, different storylines speculating about what is actually going on and proposing far fetched theories. One such undercurrent is the periodic entry of a secret code ‘4 8 15 16 23 42’ into a computer located in an underground bunker. People want to know what will happen if the code is not entered. Warning: Spoiler ahead. I know this because yesterday I failed to get there in time… ...

HDTV. Robert Scoble is an intelligent chap but has some truly bizarre thoughts. This theory is perhaps the most bizarre of all. Playing is better than watching. Watching in the ground is better than HDTV. HDTV is better than TV. Watching on TV is (sometimes) better than listening on the radio. To achieve success at ‘soccer’, you actually need to run around on a field not slump in front of TV with four gallons of soda and a mountain of cheesy nachos. If the latter was the criteria, England would surely have lifted the last two World Cups and European Championships.

When I visit customers, I am usually granted read-access to production servers. Mostly I am working closely with IT staff to explain what I am doing and why. I am not normally granted the passwords to administer the production system which is just the way I like it. Otherwise, Siebel server CRMPROD1 which has been working fine for 2 years, unexpectedly core dumps, the call center is down, the business is losing 2 million dollars every minute and everyone is staring inquiringly in your direction. ...