One of the candidates on BBC2’s ‘The Apprentice’ is a ‘management consultant’. He was very keen and virtually begged to be allowed to do the sales pitch on this week’s show. ‘Please, let me do the pitch. This is what I do. I am world class. There is no-one better.’ And then, in his sharp suit and with his short haircut, he opened his stilted, stuttering, unrehearsed, nerve-ridden pitch to various hard nosed businessmen (about a charity calendar for Great Ormond Street Hospital) with the immortal words. ...

I’d just like to say that my Palm Vx repaid me today for a small element of all the valuable time it has wasted in the past. A recent change in circumstance meant some changes to my email environment. Easy enough to resolve. Synchronise old environment with Palm. Switch into new environment. Reconfigure Outlook profile. Synchronise. Contacts, Tasks, Calendar and Notes all migrated seamlessly. Finished. Well, I’d like to but I can’t. ...

Lorelle is getting a little vexed about the the precise semantics and usage of tags and categories. I must confess this isn’t a subject that keeps me awake at night although I do agree that the WordPress category list tends to get a little verbose with all those pesky tags. However, due to circumstances outside my control, I have just had to endure some pain and wasted time converting Outlook Tasks and Contacts to use a flat structure with ‘Categories’ (rather than my previous folder structure Contacts-Personal, Contacts-Work etc etc). Forgive me, Father. I do not know what I was thinking of. ...

The purchase of the black beret has certainly had the desired effect. Thanks to an appearance on James Healey’s Oracle POC blogroll and Rahul Agarwal’s newly created blog (also on WordPress.com), I am the proud owner of two fresh inbound links. However, the Technorati ranking remains unchanged. Maybe the links were already accounted for. Sigh. Day 195. Technorati Rank: 235,668 (23 links from 12 sites)

I now work for Oracle based in Thames Valley Park, Reading in the UK. I am usually the last to hear any news about corporate takeovers. Does this mean I will have an Oracle sanctioned blog named ‘Siebel Evangelist’ ? Probably not.

My name is Norman Brightside. I work for Siebel Systems based in Egham in the UK. I am a Senior Architecture Specialist in Expert Services. Expert Services provide a range of consulting services from architecture workshops to performance troubleshooting. My work is technical (usually includes Oracle), varied, includes travel to Siebel customers located within the UK and Europe and perhaps, most importantly, involves meeting interesting people and learning.

Remember the tiresome, well-intentioned emails at work that spread fear, uncertainty and doubt, waste a lot of time and hence, cost a lot of money but actually transpire to be a well documented hoax. Well the blogosphere has its own endless loop equivalents for the unwary. The recursive best blonde joke The Tammy NYP treasure hunt The Origami paper chase

I will stop wasting time evaluating every RSS reader in the universe and simply revert to NewsGator Online. This will help me to read and enjoy content when I actually have the time and inclination. This will also stop me being distracted by that insidious ‘There is 1 new article’ irritant which just leads to skim reading lots of irrelevant material in a mindless urge to get ‘up to date’. I will endeavour to constrain my list of feeds to those that I actually read and are of interest. The recent introduction of Technorati favo(u)rites proved to me that this number was indeed less than 50. ...

That’s it. Enough procrastination. Finished. I will use Microsoft Outlook to manage my email, contacts, tasks and calendar at work. I will store work related and personal data in the same repository. I will not store any data on a Web based service. I will use Beyond Contacts (from DataViz) to synchronise my contacts, tasks and calendar to my aging but perfectly adequate monochrome Palm Vx. I will either use old fashioned paper and cheap biros from leading hotel chains (I would only lose an expensive moleskin and fountain pen) or the Palm to capture stuff when I am at home, in transit, in a hostelry or away from my work computer. ...

I am following, with interest, the progress of Stowe Boyd’s /Message blog as it gradually, inexorably climbs up the Technorati rankings. Excellent subject for a blog. Plenty of interesting, free material on a daily basis without any need for thought. So I have decided to follow suit albeit a little late in the day. Day 194. Technorati Rank: 235,668 (23 links from 12 sites) Tune in this time tomorrow to see the impact of my new black beret. ...