I have been working on a customer project involving new installations of Oracle Database (a two-node failover cluster using Oracle Clusterware–good stuff) and two load-balanced BEA Oracle Weblogic servers for the middle tier. The middle tier environment runs on Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition and is managed by an outsourced hosting facility.
I had worked [...]

I don’t drink coffee. Never have. However, I do love and need caffeine–in large and frequent doses, but carbonated and refrigerated (refrigeration optional when desperate). That’s why I’m always a tiny bit upset when I arrive at a new customer site and as part of the usual tour I find office supplies, bathrooms, printer, and [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]