My friend Jake at OracleAppsLab tagged me today and it’s high time I get back on the blog saddle anyway, so thanks for giving me a reason to get (re)started. Of the universe of people he could have chosen, I’m honored to be among the 8 “chosen ones” for this first round.
I thought Jake’s 8 [...]

You’ll want to take some advice from Joel Spolsky of Joel on Software who recently completed his world tour. He had some great advice and lessons learned from his trip. I especially like Joel’s details about how to choose a room, music to play before starting the presentation, and how to conduct a good software [...]

59% Geek
And, importantly, much less geeky than Billy Cripe too.

As even long-term parking at O’Hare is expensive, I elected to arrange a car from/to home for OpenWorld last week. I’ve used the same service several times and they’ve always been professional and on time–except this time.
The ride from home to the airport was boring enough–they were only 5 minutes late to my door, but [...]

One of my peers introduced me to the website www.portableapps.com a week or two ago. This site takes popular applications, modifies them to avoid requiring a typical installation so that you don’t need to have administrative privileges on the system to run them. This allows those of us (especially consultants) that work on others’ systems [...]

Here’s a useful little utility to add to your browser. It’s purpose is singular and simple, but still quite useful. Check it out at http://ora-safe-search.sourceforge.net/.

I recently changed jobs and found myself in need of a new computer bag. I originally went for the same bag that I had a few years ago from Dell. Unfortunately, they didn’t change the name, but they changed the bag completely–and for the worse. So, I went on a hunt for a solid, nice [...]

In a departure from the usual technical grind, I spent this past weekend scuba diving in a local quarry (Haigh Quarry, to be precise) and obtained my PADI Open Water certification! It was a great weekend to be in the water (though the water was murky…about 5-10 ft vis in most places). My classmates were [...]

As my friend Matt Topper posted (only because he begged me to let him post first–I can’t stand seeing grown men cry), we’ve both experienced a number of cases lately where we’ve been disappointed by security practices we’ve observed. My personal pet peeve is when I call my cell phone provider and they attempt to [...]