UKOUG Day 2

Perhaps I was a bit hasty in clicking Save yesterday I had planned to blog about both the Blogger's Meet-up and Day Two, but ran out of time. The problem was that I forgot to fix the title of the post. Here was how day two was for me.

The first presentation of the morning was "Installing and Managing Hundreds of RAC Servers" by Phillipe Defert of CERN. In the small amount of online contact I've had with the CERN guys, it's clear that there are some talented people working at that organisation and that was probably the main reason I attended. I think the best way to describe this was as a true Grid Computing presentation. They are implementing a system for rolling out software and configuration changes automatically, linked into several European Grid Computing projects. I'm not sure how well it will apply to the types of organisations I work with, it was Linux-focussed and miles ahead of anything I'm lucky enough to come across, but it was very interesting stuff.

Oh, and I must praise Eric Grancher's presentation chair skills. Time for a few well managed questions with a microphone and everything. He also helped me to extricate Marco's SD card from my SD card reader in the Speaker Lounge later, with a very useful paper-clip. Up until that point we had been using a teaspoon, to the general hilarity of the onlooking speakers.

Next up was "Performance Metrics using Statspack and Analytical SQL'. For one reason or another, I keep missing Daniel Fink's presentations so I was keen to hear him speak at last. It was a pretty polished presentation and he's a very listenable speaker. There wasn't really anything new for me personally, but I think his illustrations of analytics worked well.

Then it was a planned trip to The Bullring shopping centre to pick up a new suit for Thursday. I'd heard quite a bit about The Bullring and it's certainly impressive as shopping centres go. Once back at the conference centre for lunch, I bumped into Graham Wood from Oracle so we had a short chat while waiting for Alex G's presentation. We tried to track down Mogens Norgaard by going to this week's Mobile Miracle Office (All Bar One), but we were too early

Alex's presentation on "RAC Connection Management" was interesting stuff, some of which was new to me, but it's a shame that he didn't really have time to cover the material properly. I can look through the slides later, but it could definitely have done with a one hour slot. I must admit, too, that absorbing RAC connection management in the early afternoon is tough going I wish I could say it was post-lunch slumber but I realised yesterday that I've been guilty of skipping food again at a conference. With all the running around, I often reach late afternoon and realise I still haven't had breakfast!

Then it was more presentation preparation, a few beers with the Belgian crowd and the Focus Pubs. By now I was quite tired and emotional (I think the phrase is) and could only think of one thing - Celtic's crucial Champions League qualifier against AC Milan. Fortunately the Oak Table dinner was organised for an Indian restaurant otherwise I would have felt bad about not attending. Actually, do you think they're trying to tell me something? It's always at an Indian!

The football wasn't quite as tense as I imagined after Benfica went two goals up against Shaktar Donestk (don't even try to understand what that's all about unless you do already) but it was still a relief for us to go through to the last 16 and the barbecued ribs were quite nice too Another early night then, despite a number of text messages arriving, trying to tempt me out for a late one!