Rich Manalang is taking a back seat and suspending some but not all of his online activities which is an interesting exercise I will follow as it unfolds. Or, rather I won’t, because he won’t be blogging about it. I suppose I could always email him at work. I suspect Google Buzz was the final nail in his Web coffin. It certainly was for me. The privacy issues, the multiple, loud and prolonged orgasms from the Technorati, the same old avatars gradually showing up in my ‘Friends’ list quickly followed by the immediate same sense of ‘Emperors New Clothes’ and the inevitable post coital cigarette: ‘How was it for you, darling ?’ ...

Many years ago, in a parallel universe not far from here, I worked for a small dot com Internet company. One day, the boss walked in and proudly announced: ‘Right - I’ve bought everyone three sessions at the London Float Centre’. I thanked him but told him I wasn’t interested and he could give my three sessions away to a more needy case but he was insistent and he was the boss. ...

AND TO_NUMBER(TO_CHAR(appt_start_dt + 9/24, 'YYYYMMDDHH24MISS')) <= TO_NUMBER(TO_CHAR((TO_DATE(:b1, 'DD/MM/YYYY HH24:MI:SS')), 'YYYYMMDDHH24MISS'))` Please can a clever Oracle person explain, in English, the precise semantics of this WHERE clause snippet in the comments below. I realise this construct and variants thereof have probably been discussed ad infinitum on Oracle WTF but I just don’t get it. I don’t know whether this SQL was written by a human being or a third party ETL tool but it doesn’t matter. Currently, all ETL tools are written by humans in any case. ...

This year’s Carling Cup Final between Aston Villa and Manchester United will take place at Wembley on Sunday 28th February 2010.Curiously, this date marks the exact 34th anniversary, to the very day, of Manchester City’s last trophy. After United defeated Millwall 3-0 in the 2004 FA Cup Final, all the United players changed into shirts numbered ‘36’ in a tribute to the young player, Jimmy Davis, who had recently died in a car accident. ...

‘When we go to Old Trafford, we will take that banner down. This is the last year it will be displayed because we will win.’ Roberto Mancini - 6 January 2010