Dan Norris – Page 8 – dannorris.com blog

Interesting Metalink findings

I generally don’t spend a lot of time surfing around Metalink. Normally, I get in, find the bug or patch or whatever thing I need, and get out. However, my current project involves a database upgrade for a very performance-sensitive application (they have an SLA that they actually have to honor–or honour for my UK friends :), so I’ve been doing a bit of research. Coincidentally, a posting to Oracle-L recently allowed me to mention one of my research findings and several subscribers (one publicly) there responded that they had never seen the document and that it was great. Well, it really is great and Oracle Support or whomever it is that supplied the content deserves a great round of applause for putting it together.

The document of which I speak is the Oracle 10g Upgrade Companion. This document contains more than just the upgrade steps, but starts with a list of recommended patches, then goes on to include sections on Behavior Changes (this is especially valuable and absent from most other upgrade plans), Best Practices for the upgrade process, and Documentation references. While I am reporting that this is a great resource, I have two general suggestions for improvement Continue reading “Interesting Metalink findings”

8 things and tag round 2

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 … Continue reading “8 things and tag round 2”

I thought Jake’s 8 things about himself were pretty interesting. You know how when you talk to someone on the phone and immediately start creating a mental image of them? Later, you finally get to have a meeting in person and find out you were waaaayyyy off? As anyone that has met me or seen me knows, I’m not a particularly vain person. If it weren’t for the fact that I try to make a living and others generally judge me based on my appearance, I’d wear cutoffs swimming trunks (I am a diver as you’ll learn in a moment) and t-shirts with funny, almost inappropriate sayings on them all the time. I once asked my grandfather how old I had to be in order to stop caring whether my fly is open (note that most people won’t tell an “old person” when their fly is open). He said 62, not sure why, but he’s the authority on such things. If you ever saw him, you’d know.

Anyway, to delight your imaginations and give you many more reasons to change your mental image of my persona, here are 8 things about me.

My entire family attended all of my high school functions. My dad was the high school principal and I had to leave my date at prom, homecoming…pretty much all functions for about 15 minutes to get a family photo taken. In between functions, just trying to get everyone to forget that you’re the principal’s kid was a full time job.
I can operate pretty much every piece of machinery found on a grain farm from planter to cultivator to combine. From the time I was 12 until college, I worked all summer and weekends in the fall and spring as the sole farmhand for 2500 acres of corn and soybeans. Great tan, kept in shape, made some cash, and learned a lot about mechanical things too. Sometimes, I still yearn to work a weekend or two in the fall when harvest starts. There’s a funny story about getting followed by an unmarked sheriff’s deputy car while driving the pickup back to the farm (I was 13 at the time and not driving legally). Turns out, my boss’ brother was the sheriff who was just stopping by for a visit…I almost soiled myself.
I was a crew trainer at McDonald’s when I was 16. Only those that have experienced it can attest to the permanent smell of recon onions and pickles that sticks around for 2-3 days after you work a shift on the grill. I made the biscuits (at 4:30am) back when McDonald’s used to make fresh biscuits in every location. They’re shipped in frozen now–fresh was better. Also note that if you ever saw a McRib before they covered it in that sauce, you’d never eat one again.
I’m a scuba diver. After 6 years of wanting to learn, I finally got around to it (delay due to children) this year. I am currently a PADI Advanced Open Water Diver and am working on my Rescue Diver certification as soon as it thaws out in Illinois. I keep my scuba diving page here up-to-date…mostly.
One of my favorite times in life was working as an Assistant Stage Manager at Illinois State University. As part of the student stage hands crew, I got to work on setting up and tearing down roadshows that came through Bloomington-Normal, Illinois on their tours. I worked on shows for Travis Tritt, Marty Stuart, Megadeth, Extreme, Stone Temple Pilots, Toad the Wet Sprocket, the launch of the Smashing Pumpkins world tour, Buddy Guy (awesome), Harry Belafonte, Bill Cosby, Gallagher, and a bunch of others I can’t remember. I used to mix sound for some local bands too. Unforuntely, I was only there two years, but getting paid to hang out back stage is pretty cool, even if only for a little while. (I was at Illinois State for 2 years before transferring to UIUC where I graduated 2.5 years later.)
My brother is an orthopedic surgeon. Those are the guys that bring drills, screws, pins, plates, and fake joints into an operating room. Weird stuff. I’ve learned that when he wants to show me pictures of the place he went last weekend, I have to be prepared for the accidental picture of some dude’s broken femur to be “accidentally” stuck in the middle of the stack. I think he just does it to test my constitution–he secretly remembers all those times I beat him up when we were younger. Mom always told me that someday he’d be bigger than me…(and he is that too, but has kindly chosen photographic torture instead). Regardless of our past, I’m very proud of him.
My wife is a (great, goes without saying really) writer. I suspect like all great writers, she writes many things that she immediately throws away claiming that it isn’t worthy of reading. If there is an opposite to my work, creative fiction writing is probably about as close as it can get. She doesn’t get much time to work on writing due to taking care of Kids 2.0 (including updating their website) and House 3.0 (this is our 3rd ownership experience). She’s wonderful and her strengths complement all my weaknesses perfectly. Plus, she’s one helluva cook! 🙂
I like to travel. Well, not constantly, but I’d rather buy a trip to some interesting place than to buy a “thing” for myself. I enjoy the occasional travel for work. Unfortunately, it usually comes in batches (gone for a month, home for a month) which is tiring and stressful for my family, but I generally enjoy going to new places. With the New Web, I am especially enjoying my ability to find people in the places I go and (at least try to) connect with them. Since I’ve recently added diving to my hobby list (there’s one on the list, diving), and I live in Chicagoland, travel will become more important as the diving in and around where I live is only truly fun for a few months in the summer. After that, it’s tolerable, but I digress…

So, there you have them, 8 things about me. I know, some are really about other people, but they are people that define me, so that’s why they’re on the list. Now for the fun part–8 people to tag for the next round.

I hereby officially tag the following individuals: Jeremy Schneider, Lewis Cunningham, Billy Cripe, Chris Muir, Charles Schultz, Mogens Nørgaard (a.k.a. Moans Nogood), Mark Rittman, and Alex Gorbachev. I’ll be emailing or tweeting you shortly to let you know you’ve been tagged!

If you plan to do a roadshow…

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 … Continue reading “If you plan to do a roadshow…”

I know this is not Joel’s most recent posting, but I forgot to blog it when I read it, so apologies for the delay.

Turns out, I’m less geeky than expected

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

59% Geek

And, importantly, much less geeky than Billy Cripe too.

Reflections on OOW 2007

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 … Continue reading “Reflections on OOW 2007”

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 Mesaros from Oracle’s IdM Product Management team again
Seeing Mike Schrock from F5 again
Spending lots of time with Matt Topper
Doing a co-presentation with Matt Topper
Playing the “Oracle Conclave” sketch from Saturday Night Live on the big screen in one of the session rooms before a presentation
Talking with the product manager for Oracle Adaptive Access Manager (OAAM) in the Demogrounds
Meeting Rey Ong…twice!
Meeting David Kemp in person
Seeing friends from IT Convergence, some that are still working there, some that have moved on
Chatting with Dan Morgan about his upcoming training offerings
Having a lot of people show up at my HA Options For Oracle DB session on Sunday
Seeing quite a few people at my RAC For Beginners session on Monday afternoon despite attempts by Oracle to hide me in the last room at the end of the last hallway at the Hilton
Having great attendance at the RAC SIG events on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday
Seeing the RAC SIG board again
Meeting with the IOUG team for dinner and for business
Seeing En Vogue (they still look good!), Billy Joel (for a little while), and Lenny Kravitz on Wednesday night
Learning how Twitter works and why I should care
Meeting with Debbie M again to talk about future opportunities
Chatting with my buddies at good ol’ TUSC
Meeting Andrew Clarke, Tim Hall, skirt 2.0 wearing Billy Cripe, Rich from oracleappslab.com, Justin Kestelyn, Emily Yip, Vikki Lira, Laurent Schneider, Kutsal Berberoglu, and Chris Muir, to name a few
Chatting with Arup Nanda, Jeremy Simmons, Eric Broughton, Matt Vranicar, Eric Camplin, Eric Noelke, Bill Callahan, Jake Van der Vort, Lisa Cowles, Stephanie Trailer, Frank Ryan, Christine Scano
Seeing Shaun O’Brien in his new job and uniform
Cheering on Piocon as they win their first Titan award (look for another next year :).

These are just some of the things I remember. I have to say that I also attended more sessions this year than I have for the last 2 years combined and learned quite a few interesting things. However, I found the people much more interesting than anything I learned and made some connections that I expect to last far into the future. This was definitely the “people” year for me and the coming year should be very exciting!

There’s a first time for everything

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, … Continue reading “There’s a first time for everything”

The ride from home to the airport was boring enough–they were only 5 minutes late to my door, but that’s excusable. The ride home from O’Hare was the more interesting story. As usual at O’Hare, the cars have to wait about 20 minutes from the terminal in a lot. I got off the plane, called to let them know I’m ready and he told me 20 minutes–no surprise. I didn’t time them, but it was about 20 minutes, so that was okay. The negatives began when I sat behind the driver (who was shorter than I am) and got kneecapped as I sat down because his seat was so far back. Turns out, apparently his vehicle (which I presume is exclusively used for chauffeuring people around) has no trunk release, so in order to stow my bag, he had to turn the car off and remove the key from the ignition (how could he not have a spare key?) which in many luxury cars will cause the seat to move all the way back. Now, you’d think that a professional driver would be smart enough to disable this kneecapping feature so that the passenger behind the driver wouldn’t be inconvenienced–I know I would, but then again I guess I am a detail-oriented person.

We finally left the airport with me and one other passenger and headed into rush-hour traffic on Friday evening. It was evident that I was in for a rough ride as the driver had more of a “cab driver” style of flooring the car for every 5-foot advancement and then slamming on the brakes just before ramming into the car ahead. No collisions on this ride, though there were at least two times I had to brace myself on the back of the seat to keep from injuring myself.

The punchline of this joke is that about 3 miles after we left the airport, he pulls off at the O’Hare oasis and mumbled something about gasoline. He drives into the gas station and stops in front of a pump. Turns off the car (which kneecaps me again), hops out of the car and jogs inside the building. I commented to the passenger next to me that this is a first. Seems to me that a professional driver wouldn’t inconvenience his patrons with a stop for gas when he clearly could have done the stop before picking us up. Also, it was rush hour, so the ride was already longer than normal due to traffic. He finally emerges from the station with a cup of coffee in hand and *then* starts to pump the gas. I think the car (a Lincoln Continental) only took about 10 gallons which means it was still about 1/2 full and he just wanted coffee. The rest of the ride home was a jostling ride in traffic where we went 50 mph for 100 feet and then slammed on the brakes again.

I just looked at my receipt and see that I had a little trouble writing my first number, so I will have to confirm that they didn’t interpret that as an 8 instead of a 5 (I intended to give $0 tip). I’m not interested in publicly blackballing this company, but I surely won’t use them again as there are plenty of others ready to take my $$ and I’m not sure it is possible to provide worse service.

It’s all over: OOW, Day 5 (Thursday)

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 during 11g database beta testing. We had a nice time catching up: my job change, her latest reorganization internally at Oracle. As usual, Debbie overstayed and was off from breakfast to sprint to the airport to begin her way home.

I then headed to a session about Oracle Adaptive Access Manager by product manager Eric Leach. Eric and I had been in touch prior to OOW, so it was good to meet him in person and his session was enlightening as well.

Following that session, I headed to the exhibit hall to help with teardown. First, I had a little spare time and finally got a chance to tour the whole hall and meet up with Mike Schrock from F5. Mike and I had been in touch over the past year about forming some new type of partnership where we can work with F5 closely, but not join their traditional partnership program (as we have little interest in reselling the product line). We’re still working on that (hopefully, there will be some news in the coming months), so it was great to catch up and see him again.

After meeting with Mike, we tore down the Piocon booth in about 30 minutes and boxed it up for shipping back home. With that done, I headed to two more sessions to wrap up the day. The first was a session about how Oracle Enterprise Manager has been extended to manage the Oracle CoreID components and the Oracle Web Services Manager product. Those features are in the 11g Grid Control product–live demo looked very promising, so hopefully we’ll see the 11g Grid Control early next year, though they weren’t willing to even hint at a date except to say “soon”.

The last session of the day and the conference for me was a great session that looked at securing an application end-to-end. This session first talked about the new capability in 11g Fusion Middleware to handle SSL setup for all components in the entire stack. Truly a good tool that serves a big need. After reviewing that new feature, the presenters proceeded to review how many other products fit together to provide application and database security end-to-end. They briefly mentioned EUS, VPD, OAM, OAAM, OIM, and just about all the IdM Suite products and what particular need they meet. Definitely a good way to end the conference. (I was downing a Red Bull for each of the last two sessions in order to survive!)

The evening wrapped up with visiting about the week’s activities with my coworker and friend Jeremy Simmons before turning in early in preparation for flying home Friday morning.

OOW, Day 4 (Wednesday)

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 … Continue reading “OOW, Day 4 (Wednesday)”

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 a while and caught up with my guys on what sessions they’ve been attending and how the booth has been working out.

I didn’t get to any sessions before lunch today. Grabbed lunch quickly before heading to the Dell/Ellison keynotes. The Dell keynote was a lot about products coming up. I’m not sure quite what I was expecting, but I guess I felt like it was a little too much of a pitch to really enjoy it. After Michael Dell finished, there was a pause while they did set changes.
Continue reading “OOW, Day 4 (Wednesday)”

OOW, Day 3 (Tuesday)

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 … Continue reading “OOW, Day 3 (Tuesday)”

After doing my booth chore for the day and seeing the booth fully staffed, I headed to a session titled “Combining Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database with Oracle RAC: Run Your Applications at Warp Speed”. I arrived late and apparently someone didn’t see the pre-enrollement numbers because it was in a room for 50 and was standing room only. I listened to about the middle half of the presentation and ducked out a bit early to attend the RAC SIG Expert Panel session back in Moscone South. The RAC SIG Expert Panel was good as always. Thanks to Rich doing a good job moderating and Saar, Barb, Nitin, Phil, and Roland for answering solidly as usual. I have to say that it takes some bravery to allow anyone to submit questions without any preparation–these panelists are obviously dedicated to serving the interests of RAC users and customers and they do a fine job.

Following the RAC SIG panel session, I headed to a meeting with the IOUG folks about starting up a RAC bootcamp of some kind. We’re thinking it may be a traveling roadshow that could also be shortened up for conference presentation at Collaborate and possibly OOW as well. If you have any thoughts on this, let me know.

With that meeting over, it was back to Moscone West for a quick stop at the IOUG booth to say hi and pick up my ribbon for my badge’s ribbon train (up to 5 now!). Then stopped in the OTN lounge…they were out of any food or drink, but I did manage to snag my very own OTN tshirt 2.0.

The mid-afternoon session slot took me to the “Architecting an Enterprise Identity & Access Management Solution” session. It was a panel session with Darren Calman, Oracle, Pankaj Jain, Sena Systems, Jonathan Cavner, eFunds Corporation, and Stephen Hendrie, The Hershey Company as panelists. They decided to spend 45 minutes discussing their environments/projects and only allow 15 minutes for questions, so I bailed out and headed to the exhibition hall.

In the exhibit hall, I chatted with Mark Karlstrad who is the Oracle PM for Oracle Adaptive Access Manager (OAAM). Hopefully, that meeting will result in getting access to a full copy of the OAAM software that works better than the current external copy available for download.

For the last session slot of the day, I attended “Enterprise Role Management and Identity Management in Practice” about the Bridgestream technology Oracle acquired a few months ago. Good session–lots of good tips. Note that the biggest “theme” I saw was that you have to handle project management and plan the implementation very well. Implementation is relatively easy compared to engineering the roles you implement.

After the session, I had a brief meeting with the IOUG DBA Track Managers to review some abstracts for Collaborate 08 before heading over to the Thirsty Bear for Mark Rittman’s blogger meetup. The meetup was a good time to catch up and meet “famous” people that I’ve read a lot about, but haven’t gotten a chance to meet. Thanks Mark for getting everyone together!

OTN Evidence

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 :(.

OTN night photo, OOW2007