The Oracle ACE program is one way that Oracle recognizes community members that make significant contributions to the Oracle community through blogging, forum participation, user group presentations, and other similar volunteering activities. As one of the Oracle ACE Directors, I have tried to promote the program by raising awareness of its existence and the importance [...]

I’m thinking of organizing a 2-tank (or more) scuba dive down in Monterrey, California, a little ways south of SF for the weekend prior to OOW 08. You can’t really scuba in San Francisco Bay–not much there, murky, ships, etc. In Monterrey, it’s a whole different story and there are many dive operators and charters [...]

This is a quick note about upcoming major events on my Oracle event calendar.

June 15-19, ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2008, New Orleans, LA
September 21-25, Oracle OpenWorld, San Francisco, CA
December 1-5, UKOUG Conference, Birmingham, UK
February, 2009 (TBD), RMOUG Training Days, Denver, CO
March 8-12, 2009, Hotsos Symposium, Dallas, TX
April 20-24, 2009, RSA Conference, San Francisco, CA
May 3-7, 2009, Collaborate [...]

As I think back to last week, there are a few (okay, maybe more than a few) specific things that come to mind, but not in any particular order.

Larry’s laugh during his hour-long monologue on Sunday night
Meeting Jake from oracleappslab.com
Meeting Eddie Awad
Seeing Mark Rittman again
Meeting Michael Armstrong-Smith
Chance meeting of Morgens Norgaard and Anjo Kolk
Seeing Michael [...]

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 [...]

After a late night, I was slow to join the world on Thursday morning. When I finally rose, it was mid-morning and I was lucky enough to meet up with Debbie Migliore from Oracle for breakfast (well, it was breakfast at least for me). Debbie is part of the beta programs office and we met [...]

I tried to sleep a little later this morning after being up a little bit later than usual last night. Didn’t really work–still up too early, but I guess I’ll sleep next week instead.
I met up with Jake from oracleappslab.com fame for a late breakfast. After that, I parked myself in the Piocon booth for [...]

I started today in the exhibit hall to check in on our booth and clean our Oracle Partner Network Titan Award. Sounds easy, but if you’ve ever tried to find glass cleaner and paper towels in an exhibition hall, you’d know it isn’t as easy at it seems at first. Anyway, it’s a beautiful glass [...]

I was actually there! Eddie Awad took this photo and posted it here. I’m on the far right next to Laurent Schneider (who’s tall enough to hit his head on the wall sconce). Next to Laurent is Andrew Clarke. I’m sorry, but I don’t recall the name of the gentleman on the far left :(.

Turns out, I apparently had more fun than I should have last night at the ACE Dinner. So, I woke up this morning not feeling very well. That combined with the time zone adjustment left me waking up a little groggy this morning.
Starting the day today was the announcement regarding Oracle VM as described in [...]