nemolit

After spending weeks working through the information from the course Oracle RAC/Grid/ASM and spending lots of hours, both in the office and from home working to achieve our logical swap goals, we get sucker punched by our outsourcing partner. They had just dropped the bomb of their new rates for providing the computer center and some services. A wopping five hundred percent increase in fees. All neatly rationalized but there is very little hope that we can achieve any growth with this overhead. So eight months of work came to a grinding halt. We still need to spend time in splitting the application layers from the database layer, but after that we are all full steam ahead looking for a new data center and service providers. It took the team a while to get over the let down of not being able to perform the logical swap and run produciton in the other data center. Amazing how such a thing can hit you. You'd think we'd be relieved at not having to do this particular project a

I've been fascinated with the topic of 'Genius'. Ever since I can remember I've read everything I could lay my hands on regarding the development of people with special abilities. Especially mental abilities. One that has stood out to me was a memoir of the parents of a genius level child. I've read this many years ago but I can remember the general outline of this story. In the Lifehacker article , the contention is made that it's the environment in which such people are raised that creates their 'genius'. If my memory serves me, and it usually does, the child in this particular memoir came from an average house. The father worked in a technical vocation and the mother devoted the same time to this child as she did to her others. Yet, the 'genius' child, expressed himself faster and far more eloquently than his siblings. He had the same upbringing and environment as his brothers and sisters, yet excelled. He read copiously at an earlier age than

Well it's day four of the advanced accelerated training and I'm beat! Who knew this learning thing had gotten so hard! No wonder teenagers only sleep, eat and... well that's about all they do. Will get back to this blog entry a little later - these breaks are getting shorter each day!

It has been a very long time since I''ve been on instructor led training. Today is day three of a advanced course combining Oracle GRID, RAC and ASM - and I'm exhausted. It's a rapid pace fitting seven days into five days . Our instructor thought that we wouldn't make it all the way, but we are done with the four day course in two and a half. My neurons are on strike. They want to march out of my ear and never come back. Got to pay attention again. Might drop a quick note at lunch.

Anyone using Word 2007 to blog with? I've been using it for a few posts, but have yet to find where I add tags or keywords in to my post. Or does this software pick them out automatically? If automatically, where and how does it find them? If you  know how, please comment on this post and let the rest of us in on the secret. Also, anyone ever get Microsoft and Google Blogger to co-exist. Neither from the Word 2007 on this XP machine, nor on my Windows 7 machine do I get to blog to blogger/blogspot. Seems that BlogJet or BlogDesk will have to suffice there. Please respond here or on my Wordpress blog eclecticatticblog.com

Until quite recently there has been not too many serious side effects to the snow that started falling more regularly during winter in Johannesburg. As Africans we don’t really know much about if but the side effects are currently piling up… Now your work habits are becoming known…

It’s snowing. Yeah I know. For most people it’s no big deal. But I live in Africa. Snow is for the mountains and the high altitudes. Not Johannesburg! It’s becoming a regular occurrence that we might soon have to start buying snow boots, and ski’s. No longer will these be for the affluent few who can go to the mountains to see snow and ski, but for the everyday Jo’burger to get to and from work. 20120807_120931.mp4

There are as many explanations for Monday as their are stars in the sky. Stars in the sky, care about as much about as Monday, as Monday cares about them. That is probably why Nature herself doesn’t put special meaning on a Monday. It comes on it’s own. It leaves on it’s own. Just another day in the millions that have come and the millions that are yet to come. Man in it’s infinite wisdom has put meaning to the day, but this meaning is also not the same around the blue rock on which we crawl. In the western hemisphere the day follows two days of freedom. Where man and woman could do as they please. Rocks, plants, trees and animals live their lives, never bothering with the significance of one day over another. Seasons they know. Knowing when to bound with joy as the bright lights, smells and sounds grows numerous; the new plants for the coming season. Lazing in the sun drenched summer months and stuffing their gullets with the bounty of a season of plenty. Never thinking on the day of

What a novel idea, and that is exactly the result I’m hoping for. Spewing forth more words, constructing sentences, until I’ve cowed these words into submitting themselves to my will and actually conveying what has been rattling around my skull to the reading public out there. It has been all of ten minutes since I wrote my last blog post and in that time a read a little more about writing. Writing, as in writing for a living and got an eye on Gore Vidal and Truman Capotes court battle trading barbs. That must have been something truly awesome to behold. All I can say is that I can only relate to either gentlemen through what has been put in print or on film since I’ve apparently developed a sense of, hmmm,… what shall I call it, taste, style no that implies active action, pretension. Yes, that’s it. Pretension! I’ll be pretentious and just gab on about it. As far as my knowledge of Truman Capote goes it’s all based on Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s portrayal of the character in the movie

As writers we forget that we are human first, writers second, and if your married, being a writer moves lower down on that list. Add children to this mix and you slide even lower on the priority list. Unless of course you are of the lucky few who actually earn a living by writing then you need to schedule writing in between all the other tasks that you have to attend to. In my attempts at becoming a better writer I’ve read a large volume of material, some of the pieces from great writers, others from writers in the making. Today I’ve read that Gore Vidal had died. Did I know who Gore Vidal was before today… nope. Does that make me a bad person, or worse, a bad writer? Should we not try and learn from the best to improve ourselves. I’d say yes, but since I’ve never read a line, correction, thanks to Writer’s Digest , several quotes from Mr Vidal, but also none of his actual books. I am saved from having to find some of his works since it seems Mr Vidal would have chosen a vocation ins

This is just to test the writing of blog entries from my Android based phone. I'm not a big fan of cellphone blogging due to the keyboards.

Suicide Shocking! Misunderstood. Illness. Deviation. Problem. Many words describe what first flows through your mind when you hear the word. In this week I had been confronted with the reality of it, or rather and attempt at it. A family member of a colleague had been under treatment for bi-polar disorder and had taken an overdose of her medication. Luckily the attempt was just that and the quick actions of people in this persons life saved it. I remember going ice cold. Like a part of the arctic was pushed into my core. Several years ago, I had suffered from severe depression. To the point where taking my own life was not something to be feared, but sought. Anything to just feel again. It is hard to describe to anyone the feeling of not feeling. It’s much the same as explaining the concept of a world where God is not present to someone that devoutly believes. You just cannot fathom the depth of despair when you cannot feel joy again. Everyone is used to these emotions in their live

On my other blog, The Eclectic Attick , I’ve started tracking my writing exercises. I’ve challenged myself, to writing 200 words per day on a range of topics. These I’ll pick from writing prompt books, since I’m just not that creative on demand. I hope this will improve as the exercises improve. I am hoping to fulfill a promise made to my language teachers in high school. You see whenever they set a writing assignment with a set limit of words, I would always exceed that limit with a wide merging and then argue the point that I could not possibly shorten the piece. That every word was where it needed to be to support the sentence and every sentence did it’s job to support the story. Yeah, right. I just loved spinning a yarn. Stories. Imagination. Oh, how much fun this can be. When you can take a number of letters, pluck a word or ten from the ether, and string them along into a sentence. Then take this sentences and shuffle them on the page until you start pulling from the blankness an

BlogJet -- Offline Blogging software I've been trying to get BlogJet running from within the company to update my blogs. Unfortunately, technology has conspired to bring me to my knees. Begging and pleading my machine to restart, and forget about this new live affair it had developed with updates. Eleven! Eleven I tell you. One shutdown and it needs to install eleven updates. Sheez, now I have to blog from the iPhone - at least I can, thanks to the enterprising developers that developed the Blogger and Wordpress blogging software for the phone. Software that I gladly pay for since it gives me the freedom to blog on the run. Or, in the wait, as the case may be. After all of this I hope the BlogJet software will work as smoothly as MacJournal does on MAC. Finally, the count is at eleven... Here's hoping it's the end of the crying game for blogging offline. Unfortunately the reboot and patch install did not help. Every time I type in BlogJet I get the enigmatic &#

Offline Blogging Software          I’m at it again… blogging. What you didn’t think I’d write about something else now… Well this time it’s a bit of a gripe about proxies, and firewalls and getting BlogJet to work from my desktop. Would have liked to get the BlogJet software to work seeing as I forked out for the family pack license… I’ll check at home and see if the software works there where I’m far removed from the corporate drones and their drone mentality.         I’ve even tried to download Microsoft Live Writer but the download doesn’t even open on the desktop -- guess Windows XP Professional is just too old for such current software, so I’m writing this on the trusty MACBook Pro with MacJournal… at least here I can write offline and upload the final to the site… spell checked and only grammatical and usage errors due to yours truly.

Testing the blogger iPhone app. Now when I'm furiously typing away on my phone everyone will wonder what my SMS bill is. But, unfortunately, I will also be subjecting the world to all the crazy, sometimes silly, mostly musings in these posts. I will be writing about everything and anything. Luckily, living in South Africa gives me regularly heaps of things to digest, especially with ANC rule. They are probably the one party which proves, that when a mike is shoved in your face, silence us the better answer. Unfortunately, they tend to take some time off and then come back with a well researched and considered,... well we would still prefer them to shut up because they are embarrassing everyone. I wanted to call their response an 'opinion', but some how that implies thinking about the problem and not just rewording the problem and blaming someone else. Eish.

Amazing. It's almost ten days since my last blog entry. What happened to the time? It has been an interesting almost ten days. Dislocated a disk in my back - oh the pain. Almost got over that when I loaded up on a an airway infection... drugged to the gills and losing four days off work in total. So now it's catch up time. Get those to-do's down to a small avalanche and not the absolute tsunami that it currently is. I'm also building a new PC in my spare time. Connected up the mother board, ASUS Crosswire III, with an AMD Phenom II x4 64-bit CPU, a NVIDIA GTS 450 1GB video card, 8GB main memory, SATA hard drives... just wish whoever packed the mother board box packed an English manual. Had to hunt down the motherboard on the ASUS website and get a PDF for it. Now, I need to spend some time finding out where what plugs go. It's been a while since I've built a PC from components... so there's a bit of re-learning involved. This setup is so configur

This is my blog,... where I will, yeah, write about all the stuff that floats between my left ear and the right. Sometimes gets tagled up in the optic nerves and swings round the baser brain functions. In short, all the crap I think about, wonder about, like, dislike, read, write, and generally just let verment between the neurons... I'll write about my favourite books, favourite films (the infrequent ones I see) - shocking actually how few and far between they are. There won't be much reference to TV since, in South Africa, the so called underpriveleged now run the national broadcaster, promoting the dictatorship that is the government and trying very heard to plaster a veneer of civility on it all. Yeah, there is not much to watch on our public broadcaster. Discrimination is still the pinnacle of the broadcast... african languages are used without sub-titles, whilst the least bit of Afrikaans is used them there are sub-titles. Getting the idea that they are just.... Well