Month: September 2014

I leave for Oracle OpenWorld 2014 tomorrow, which is normally a time when I’m super amped up, but I feel rather flat and in need of change at the moment. I just feel like I’m investing a massive amount of my time on things I don’t enjoy and are not really benefiting me or the community at large, so what’s the point?

What do I enjoy?

• Playing with technology.
• Writing articles and blog posts about it.
• Meeting and talking to people about this stuff.

What don’t I enjoy?

• I don’t really enjoy answering questions on forums any more. For every one good interaction I have, there seems to be about 10 where people refuse to think for themselves and treat me as their own personal slave.
• I’m getting an increasing number of people asking me questions on Facebook and Google+ chat. Not only does this have a similar ratio of good:bad interactions, but there is nothing left behind that helps other people. There is no content produced that allows others to answer their own questions from a Google search. This feeds into the dependency cycle.
• Cleaning up the massive amounts of spam I get.
• Dealing with the endless stream of people wanting me to help advertise their product or website.

This is not a business for me. It’s fun. When it ceases to be fun, what’s the point?

At the moment, I feel like:

• Locking the forum.
• Locking the article comments.
• Blocking the comments on my blog.
• Deleting all emails that include technical questions, without even reading them.
• Ignoring requests for help on all social media.

This would allow me to spend a lot more time playing with Oracle and writing articles, which I feel benefits myself and others to a greater extent than what I’m doing now.

If I look at my web stats, they seem to back up my opinion. The vast majority of hits on my website are for content. Only a very small proportion relate to “interaction”, yet it is this interaction which takes up the vast majority of my time.

I guess some people would see this as going against the whole ethos of the ACE Program, but I don’t think so myself. I think I’m more use to the community by putting out content, rather than doing what I’m doing now.

Maybe I’ll come back from OOW and have a change of heart. Maybe not. Time will tell.

Cheers

Tim…

Update: Some people have taken this post as a message that I’m going to stop writing articles. I think the post is pretty clear on that front. This is about giving me more time to write articles. 🙂

Update 2: The forums are locked while I’m at OOW. I’ll decide if they will stay locked once I get back to the UK.

This subject comes up again and again. See:

• Learning to learn…
• Learn to search the Oracle Docs…
• What happens if you try it?

In a freaky coincidence, two people asked virtually the same thing of me yesterday and I answered each of them individually, but it paved the way for this post.

In the first case, the person asked me several questions about getting better at Oracle. This is part of my reply.

Q: What is the secret behind your knowledge in oracle?
A: No secret. I’ve been doing this for nearly 20 years and I’m constantly reading and trying to learn.

Q: How have you gained knowledge in oracle and able to answer our questions of your own?
A: I am not on my own. I have the manuals, MOS, and Google.

Q: There should be some tactics with you that how you could able to answer our questions .Please share with us to become like you in future.
A: Every time you have a question, try and answer it for yourself by searching the manuals, MOS and the internet. When you think you have the answer, test it to make sure you are correct. The process of getting the answer for yourself will teach you a lot. You will often stumble across other totally unrelated information, which adds to your total knowledge.

In the second case, I suggested the person start trying to answer questions for themselves, to which they asked what was the benefit of searching for themselves over just asking me. This is part of my response.

1) You are learning how to find answers and research for yourself. This is a very important skill. Do you think all the people answering questions know all of this by heart? We don’t, but we know how to quickly get information. Over time you start to remember stuff, but I rarely rely on my own memory. I nearly always look for a link in the docs to prove I am not mistaken, or remembering how things were in a previous version. It’s important you learn this skill if you want to get good at anything.

2) You might ask me a question when I am away from the keyboard, like when I’m sleeping, and you will wait hours for the answer. If you know how to find the answers for yourself you can work at your own pace.

3) Often, finding the answer for yourself is quicker than asking the question. For example, for that last question, if you had gone to Google and searched for “oracle uninstall” the first four links are:
– 2 document references.
– The OTN forum, where people link to my article as the answer.
– My article.

Chances are, you would have got the answer quicker than the time it takes to write the question to me. It would certainly be quicker than the time it took to receive the answer. 🙂

4) People on the internet might be wrong. You need to check everything I say anyway, so why not find the information for yourself. Even the manuals are wrong sometimes, so you always need to check. You might be reading an old article etc.

I know people think there is some secret to this, but there really isn’t. When I look at all the people I admire in the Oracle community, they have all put the hours in.

Cheers

Tim…

Anyone watching the UK news will know we are living in turbulent times. In a few days the people of Scotland will decide if they are going to become independent. I believe the people have the right to decide what happens to them, so if the “Yes” vote comes out on top I wish them well. What does seem interesting is people on either side of the debate making very definitive statements about the success or failure of independence when a couple of very important points are yet to be decided.

1. Will an independent Scotland be part of the EU? *
2. What currency will an independent Scotland be using? *

Of course, there are lots of other important questions, but just focussing on these two for a minute, how can anyone make any firm predictions about the success or failure of independence without at least knowing the answer to these questions up front? How can you predict the economic impact of a split without knowing this? This not only affects the internal economy of Scotland, but it seems like it will have a massive impact on import/export side of the economy.

I’m not a politician and I’m not an economist, so I freely admit that I have no clue about this stuff, but it strikes me that everything I’m hearing from both sides sounds like complete bullshit. If I were a Scottish person I would be really confused about which way to go, because there seems to be very little in the way of solid facts.

I really hope the Scottish don’t choose to leave us, but time will tell. It will certainly be a major talking point for quite some time!

Cheers

Tim…

* As Jason Arneil pointed out in the comments, both questions have been answered by the pro-independence folks. They say yes to the EU and yes to keeping the pound. My issue is, there does not seem to be a definitive answer based on fact. It’s just propaganda coming from both sides. My understanding is:

1. There will be no definitive answer to the EU issue until after a successful Yes vote, because negotiations with the EU will not start until after the result is known.
2. The big 3 parties in the UK currently say they will not accept an independent Scotland using the pound. The Yes camp suggest this is a bluff.

As I’ve said, I’m not an expert in this and both sides are doing a propaganda assault at the moment, so it is hard to know the real truth, but it seems to me there is no consensus on the “real” answers to these questions. If I was a voter in this, I would have no clue what the reality of this situation is.