This made me laugh: Do you know why?
Cheers
Tim…
Oracle related rants (and lots of off-topic stuff)…
I’ve just finished the second book (The Vampire Lestat) in the Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice. In the first book (Interview with the Vampire) the Lestat character seems cold and heartless, while in this book you discover his history and see the reasons behind this facade. It really turns the whole character around in a quite unexpected way. There were a couple of sections of the book that seemed to drag a little, but I guess that was because I was impatient to know the outcome of some events.
I’ve now started the third book (Queen of the Damned), which should prove rather interesting.
Regarding the films, I think Interview with the Vampire was quite true to the story in the book, but the Queen of the Damned film seems to take most of its story from the second book, The Vampire Lestat, rather than from the book of the same name. This is a little confusing, but I guess films often do that sort of thing. 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
I was feeling a little nostalgic yesterday when I came across old-computers.com. This prompted me to rediscover some computers from my past:
Also worth a mention are some of the computers I longed to own, but never did:
Of course, there were many other brief infatuations, but those are to numerous to mention. Those were the days… 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
I watched Hostel on DVD over the weekend. It’s your basic gore-fest like Saw. It has some vague link to Quentin Tarantino, so I expected something extra, but I didn’t get it…
I got punched in the throat on Friday (at Karate), so my voice has been kinda wierd this weekend. One minute I’m Mariah Carey, the next I’m Barry White. I’m hoping the Barry White voice hangs around for a while 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
Well, it was released and I have VMware, so I thought I would give it a go. I’ve not used Solaris for a while so I hit a few stumbling blocks, but I got the installation to work in the end:
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.2) Installation On Solaris 10 (x86)
Given the choice I would use Linux… 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
Oracle has been around for over 25 years and I’ve been working with it for over 10 of them, but I still haven’t found the “Go Faster” switch. Now either I’m not too clever, or this switch doesn’t actually exist. If the latter is true, why is it people ask me questions about tuning and don’t like the answer when I suggest they need to do some work to solve the problem?
People generally don’t want to hear they have to trace the slow process so they can see what statements are executed and check out the execution plans and waits associated with the statements. The don’t want to run the profiler to see which bits of procedural logic are taking the most time. They just want a switch to flick to make everything better. For this reason I’m going to raise an enhancement request for the following statement to be supported:
ALTER SYSTEM SET go_faster=TRUE;
I don’t care that it does nothing. I just want it to give the “System altered.” message. Then the next time I have someone looking for a shortcut I can say, just flick the GO_FASTER switch and tell you boss everything will be OK.
Cheers
Tim…
PS. I would prefer this parameter to remain undocumented and unsupported, since that seems to add to the mystique 🙂
My nephews are now the proud owners of two guinea pigs (Ben and Jerry). I was holding a particularly nervous Jerry when I felt a warm wet sensation in my lap. Guinea pig urine, the perfect present… Not!
Cheers
Tim…
I was planning to see Children of Men at the weekend, but instead I went to see The Black Dahlia. Big mistake!
It started off pretty cool. It was a 1940’s detective story and I was really starting to get into it, but then it kinda lost its way and started to get a bit random. I can’t say I really know what was going on, but I didn’t really care.
When we came out of the cinema we looked at each other, burst out laughing and said, “What was that all about?”
Needless to say, I don’t recommend it 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
I finally got round to watching V for Vendetta last night. I didn’t think it would appeal to me, hence the delay in watching it, but I really liked it. There were a few annoying moments where Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving had less than adequate English accents, but on the whole they did a great job. Natalie Portman is very easy on the eye, regardless of her hair style. Infact, I think she looks better with it shaved off!
I might be going to see Children of Men tonight, but I’m not sure yet.
Cheers
Tim…
I’ve never really enjoyed reading, so I rarely do it, except for technical stuff for work. Instead I spend hours in front of the TV, half watching things while I do other stuff. Recently I decided to try and reduce the number of hours I spend in front of the TV. I already do lots of physical stuff, so adding more of that seemed pointless, so I decided I would have a go at reading again…
I’ve always liked vampire movies, so vampire books seemed like the obvious first choice. I promptly sent off for the Complete Vampire Cronicles, which is actually just the first four of many vampire books by Anne Rice. I’ve just finished reading the first book, Interview with the Vampire. I’ve watched the film many times and I love it, so I was a little bit nervous about reading the book. I spent the first quarter of the book thinking, “that’s not how it was in the film”, or, “I wonder when such and such an event will happen”. By about half-way through I had forgotten about the film and was quite into it. Last night I finished it, and I must say it was one of the few times in my life I enjoyed reading a book.
In an attempt to keep my momentum I read the first paragraph of the second book, The Vampire Lestat. Hopefully, I won’t find it too hard to pick that up now…
I guess from my blog posts you will be able to judge how well I get on with the second book 🙂
Cheers
Tim…