There are two words that are guaranteed to send Norman Junior and myself into fits of helpless laughter: ‘Giraffe’ - Rick’s wrong answer on ‘Trick or Treat’ to the question ‘What is the world’s tallest mammal ?’ ‘Horace’ - My spontaneous answer to my son’s question ‘What were you going to call me if it had not been Norman Junior ?’
A week savouring the joys of commuting to Waterloo on South West Trains. Oxford Street is packed, the Christmas lights are on, the temporary ice rinks are open and lots of people are enjoying Christmas parties. Inevitably romance, as well as alcohol, is in the air. I am fairly shy and reserved so I took the opportunity to place a couple of small ads in the wonderful London Paper and am eagerly awaiting a couple of calls and an early Christmas present next week. ...
I always was led to believe that Bobby Charlton and George Best didn’t get on. I read it in books and interviews and heard it from various different sources. Of course, this fact wasn’t a total surprise as the two gentlemen did appear to be completely different personalities with rather contrasting interests and, err, hobbies. A month ago, I saw Charlton interviewed by Michael Parkinson where he recounted his memories of the Munich air crash. Charlton also talked about the frustration of playing alongside Best: ...
Monday 3 December Get up very early and drive to Birmingham. 09:40-10:30 ‘30 years at Oracle’ - Tom Kyte. I own a couple of Kyte’s excellent books and various sources report he is an excellent speaker. 10:40-11:00 Visit a few stands. A quick game of ‘spot the colleague’ and ask 27 different companies ‘How can XYZ help me grow my business ?’ 11:15-12:00 ‘Siebel Keynote’ - David Mills. Possible sales and marketing fluff alert. Need to sit at the back adjacent to an aisle to allow a potential rapid escape to ‘Oracle RAC versus Oracle Data Guard - which should I use for Disaster Recovery and which should I use for High Availability ?’. ...
Occasionally, people take the time to comment on this blog which is always welcome. However, the vast majority of comments however are not so thinly veiled advertisements by spammers. Unfortunately, due to recent problems with Spam Karma, I have had to revert to Akismet to block this torrent of pharmaceutical, financial, pornographic and vacuum cleaner spam. This means I have a few more comments held in moderation for judgement. The family convene every night with a cup of Horlicks to sit in judgement on the assorted comments. Norma kindly takes the minutes and Norman Junior twitters the whole event (live). ...