Repairman Jack : Fatal Error

Fatal Error is the fourteenth book in the Repairman Jack series by F. Paul Wilson.

The Septimus Order, the Dormentalists and the Kickers all combine to try and bring down the internet, hoping the resulting chaos will further their cause of killing The Lady and letting The Otherness take over our reality.

As with the previous episode, we are just progressing the story line, getting us another step closer to the possible end of the world…

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle OpenWorld 2012 : Day Minus 1

After another night with little sleep, Saturday was a chance to recover. I had no formal plans for the morning. I registered for OOW, then went out for breakfast with Marcelle, who then had to shoot to MySQL Connect.

From there I went back to my room for a little rest, then it was out to take Connor McDonald‘s advice and get a $15 T-Mobile SIM to get 7 day data access from my hotel room. Much cheaper than the hotel internet!

During the day I managed to hassle Marcus Eisele, Simon Haslam and Jakko Landlust about WebLogic stuff. It’s the classic case of “The more you know, the more you realise you don’t know”. Perhaps I should stop asking questions, so I can convince myself I’m a WebLogic God!

In the evening it was out to the OakTable dinner, which as now been renamed to “The Anual Doug Burns OakTable Party”. It was a pretty good effort considering it was his first one. I was a little bit disappointed at the lack of balloons, party streamers, jelly & icecream etc. Next years I’m sure he’ll be able to rectify these oversights!

After the walk home it was off to bed to get 3 hours sleep before “Oracle OpenWorld 2012 : Day 1” starts.

So far I’ve managed to get to the gym every day, but I’ve also managed to stuff myself with food. As a result I’ve lowered my fitness expectations for the week somewhat. My goal is to make it to the end of the week without getting stretch-marks on my face…

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle OpenWorld 2012 : Day Minus 2

Day 2 of the ACE Director briefing went pretty much to plan. My recent adventures in WebLogic meant I had to pay special attention to a few areas I would normally let wash over me. 🙂 I also learned a few things about the WebLogic roadmap that made me kick myself for some of the recent decisions I had made. I guess that’s what happens when you get forced into a position of doing a role you have no background in. I confess I’m a WebLogic noob! 🙂

Thanks for Victoria and Lillian for organising the ACED briefing again. It’s good to get face time with the movers and shakers in the Oracle tech world…

At the end of the day we were taken from the Sofitel in Redwood Shores across to the Hilton in San Francisco. That’s my bas for the next few days. Sleep still alludes me…

Cheers

Tim…

Endorsements, recommendations etc…

Just because I’ve agreed to link to you on some other social platform, it does not mean I know you! It does not mean I can/will offer you a job! It does not mean I will automatically endorse or recommend you when I have no clue who you are!

This week alone I’ve had:

  • Complete strangers asking me to endorse them on LinkedIn.
  • Complete strangers asking me to recommend their Oracle-related work on several social platforms.
  • Complete strangers asking me for jobs. Just so you know, I’m just a guy that does a website for fun in the evenings. I don’t employ anyone, and often choose not to be employed myself… I’m literally the last person you should talk to about getting work!
  • Complete strangers asking me to take surveys to categorise their personal characteristics, with a view to allowing employers to evaluate them.

Just a couple of thoughts on this:

  • If you ask me to recommend you and I’ve not worked with you, I’m not going to do it! I’ve known some people in the Oracle community for years, but I would not recommend their work because I’ve not actually worked with them on a project! With that in mind, do you really think I’m going to recommend a complete stranger?
  • If you are a recruiter/employer and you use social platform endorsements, recommendations, numbers of friends/likes/followers to make a judgement you are retarded! One of my friends recently had a competition with his girlfriend over who could acquire the most followers on Twitter. He went from 0 to a few thousand in a couple of days!

I’m happy to keep linking to people on social platforms. I like meeting people and speaking about tech. Just don’t ask me to lie for you!

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle OpenWorld 2012 : Day Minus 3 (continued)

Continuing from my previous post, the Oracle ACE Director Meeting went well. There seems little point in giving you a list of things I can’t tell you about, so I think I will just say I like Eddie Awad‘s summary of the day in tweets here.

I think it is safe for me to say there will be some interesting things going on this week for a variety of reasons. When you are following the blog posts and tweets, keep in mind the following three things are legally *very* different:

  • Talking about future tech under a safe harbor disclaimer. This basically means Oracle promise nothing and all the stuff they say may not come to pass in future products. There is absolutely *no* legal requirement for them to deliver.
  • Making an official announcement of a new product. This has some legal ramifications. These types of announcements have to be followed by real products within a certain time frame.
  • Releasing the product. This is the bit I care about, because it means I can get my hands on it. 🙂

Some of the things we’ve been told seem very… odd. It’s difficult to say more without digging a hole for myself, but I suggest you listen carefully over the coming week and make sure you place what you hear in the correct one of those three categories…

Regardless of the *oddness* of some of the information, it was a cool day. Wim Coekaerts is always a highlight for me. I just like to listen to the guy talk about tech. He makes things sound so simple and obvious. Very cool.

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle OpenWorld 2012 : Day Minus 3…

It’s about 05:00 Pacific Daylight Time. I’ve been up since 03:30, so I’ve already sorted my work emails, personal emails, forum questions etc. I’m going to write this post then hit the gym before going to Day 1 of the ACE Directors meetings. I have a feeling I will be asleep under the desk by the end of the day. Sorry Victoria and Lillian. 🙁

The trip to San Francisco was long but uneventful. By the time I went to bed I think I was awake for a little over 24 hours. A few hours of fitful sleep and so begins the series of ,”My life’s so hard because I’m so tired!”, blog posts that normally accompanies a trip to OpenWorld… 🙂

In the ACE Directors meetings we normally (dance naked around fires chanting) get a sneak peak at the big announcements for OOW and the coming months post-OOW plans. The first rule about the ACED meeting is don’t talk about the ACED meeting! We are not allowed to talk about the contents of the meetings, under pain of death, but judging by the stuff that has leaked already, it should be an eventful week. I’m still not sure what the plans are for announcements vs. releases. Sometimes Oracle surprise us at OOW with a combined announcement and release, but many times it’s just the marketing garb, with the software release coming a little later.

Based on what Larry has already said in press interviews, Oracle Database 12cR1 is due end of this year or start of next, so I guess it will be a big announcement at OOW12, rather than the actual release… but you never know. 🙂

If there is anything blogable/tweetable during the ACED meetings I will pass it on. If you hate getting 6 billion OOW related tweets/blogs, I suggest you avoid Twitter and your RSS feeds for the next week or so. It’s going to get very busy out there. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I’m saying nothing about the Oracle Games Console (OGC). I’ll let the announcements speak for themselves…

Virtualized Oracle RAC and more…

Followers of my blog know I like doing virtual RAC installations.When I do these I’m focusing very much on the Oracle side of things, leaving the virtualization tool to handle the hardware virtualization, like networking and shared disk.

A few weeks ago Gilbert Standen contacted me to say he had done a virtual RAC installation using OpenvSwitch to virtualize the network components. He posted some basic tips. When I mentioned it on G+ and twitter, it generated some interest, so I suggested he write it up with a little more detail. That process has started now on his blog. You can see the first couple of articles here:

He tells me he’ll be adding more details to the posts when time permits.

If you are more focused on the network side of the infrastructure stack I think this is a really interesting proposition and well worth a read.

Cheers

Tim…

Repairman Jack : Ground Zero…

Ground Zero is the thirteenth book in the Repairman Jack series by F. Paul Wilson.

Jack meets up with an old school friend who has become fixated by the secret history of the world and more specifically, how it links to the 9/11 conspiracy theories…

This story adds a bit more flesh to Jack’s life before he became a fix-it man. It also gives a lot more information about how the Otherness is planning to take over our reality. The link to 9/11 is both a good and bad in my eyes. It’s good because it gives this work of fiction a lot more depth and gives it a very real feeling. It’s bad because it seems a little like exploitation of a real situation and the lives it affected. I’m really not sure what to make of this aspect of the plot.

As with the last few books, we are in the zone of counting down the days to the (possible) end of the world. Two more books to find out if we survive seems an awful long wait. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Loving VirtualBox 4.2…

I’m loving VirtualBox 4.2.

I’ve been throwing some RAC, WebLogic and Cloud Control installations on it at home and it’s been coping just fine. I’m especially loving the grouping stuff. I’ve got quite a lot of VMs and scrolling down the list can get a little tiresome. Grouping them and collapsing the group is great!

So far I’ve only see one issue with the groups and I’ve not been able to repeat it. When I dragged one Windows VM (with 2 virtual disks) into a group, both virtual disks were physically moved into the new group sub-directory, but the interface “lost” one of the disks. I went into the Virtual Media Manager, deleted the reference to the “missing” disk, then added it by re-selecting the file from the file system. Everything then worked fine.

I’ve tried to repeat this by grouping and un-grouping VMs with multiple virtual disks, but I’ve not been able to repeat it. Personally I blame Microsoft. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Cloud Control 12cR2 : Is it really release 2?

Oracle Cloud Control 12cR2 is installed and merrily monitoring one of the test 11gR2 databases running on HP-UX. I’ll probably leave it like that until I come back from Oracle OpenWorld. I don’t want to change the entire administration and monitoring infrastructure just as I leave for a couple of weeks.

As I’m re-familiarizing myself with the 12c way of doing things, I’ve been wondering if this really is a full “Release 2” product, or just 12cR1 with Bundle Patch 2. Not surprisingly, one of my readers asked the same question, pointing out the version 12.1.0.2 does not look consistent with a “Release 2” product, which would typically be 12.2.0.1.

I take Oracle version numbers with a pinch of salt. I’m currently using WebLogic version 10.3.5, which is 11g WebLogic. 🙂 At least WebLogic 12c has been versioned appropriately. 🙂

So why the 12cR2 branding, when 12cR1 of the database hasn’t been released yet? My guess is this is a marketing move for one very specific reason. One of the big marketing messages around Cloud Control was its ability manage clouds and allow you to charge customers based on their resource usage. While speaking recently to a representative of a large oracle customer/partner, I found out this functionality plain didn’t work, at least not with their selection of (latest version) Oracle products.

Assuming Cloud Control 12cR2 is now actually capable of delivering on this promise, that represents quite a big change that’s probably worthy of a re-brand, even if the version number doesn’t warrant it.

Of course, this is all speculation on my part. I’m not using it for managing clouds or charging customers. I’m just a regular DBA who likes to watch the performance page every few minutes while doing my administration in SQL*Plus. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Update: See Hans’ comment about the version number. He’s quite correct that this version falls in line with a new release in the GC/CC universe.