Mar 5: Hotsos - Day 0

Well, that's me registered. Despite all my best efforts to get some sleep this afternoon and hopefully get myself back in sync, it didn't happen. I went for a liquid lunch with David Aldridge who turns out to be the nice guy and cantankerous old British b*gger I expected and then spent the afternoon waiting in vain for sleep to come.

I gave in just before registration, headed downstairs and bumped into a few friendly faces. David assured me that registration wasn't open yet and things were quiet but when we eventually took a stroll through, the queues were long. I thought I'd registered for printed materials but it turned out I hadn't so I just got a schedule, notepad, pen and a copy of the current Oracle Magazine (I hope Mark Rittman's on royalties).

By this stage I was hopelessly jet-lagged, cranky, 'tired and emotional' but I had an interesting chat with David, Koert, Jonathan and guy-from-Pythain-whose-name-I-can't-remember about presentations, Science, Oracle and all that stuff. I misheard Jonathan at one point and thought I'd have an email containing 20 comments on the latest paper when I got back to my room. It turns out I don't have the email but that doesn't make the comments go away! Strangely, I'm not quite as wound up as I would normally be about the flaws in the paper because I've enjoyed the experience and all the scripts are there for anyone to run, get their own results and comment on them. At the very least it's a true tale of experimenting with an interesting Oracle feature. I'm quite pleased that it's got people talking and thinking about the subject in any case (I've heard that from quite a few people now) and getting the environment sorted out at home means I can take it as far as I want to from here. Every time someone says, 'but did you try ....' (because, believe me, there are lots of things to try) I can say 'No, but there's nothing to stop you from trying it'.

However, when Jonathan pointed out that the reason I could only ever get 385 slaves was that I had processes set to 400, it was one mistake too many for me. Warning - moment of jet-lagged emotional honesty coming up .... Mistakes might be interesting in some cases, but I'm getting a little tired of making them and I'm on a bad run at the moment. Makes me wonder whether it's worth bothering, really. I remember a time when I wouldn't have made them.

Oh. well, when in doubt, get a hat!
Posted by Doug Burns Comments: (4) Trackbacks: (0)

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#1 - Anonymous 2006-03-06 03:26 - (Reply)

To help you start your day on a positive note - two of the comments I've scribbled on the paper are:
"that's a useful bit of information" (abbreviated to "useful")
and one of them is
"that's a smart idea". (abbreviated to "smart").

And I did say that reading it had given me something interesting to do for four hours of my flight time. There aren't many papers that earn more than 15 minutes of my time.

Jonathan Lewis
(08:30 GMT, but just a little earlier here in Texas).

#2 - Doug Burns said:
2006-03-06 03:40 - (Reply)

Thanks Jonathan ;-)

The sound of you tapping out that comment from several floors and rooms away must have disturbed my sleep.

2:15. Marvellous!

Here's a smart idea for the Hotel business - 24 hour breakfast menu.

Another one for Oracle conferences - start the schedule at 4am each day and have drinks at 3pm.

Ah, well. I've always been a bit of a morning person ...

#3 - David Aldridge said:
2006-03-06 13:50 - (Reply)

>> cantankerous old British b*gger

#4 - shrek said:
2006-03-06 18:49 - (Reply)

and just why do we have to wait for 3PM to have drinks? i think we should have them with breakfast.;-)


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