Saturday, June 29, 2013

OTN Virtual Sysadmin Hands on lab

It's really too bad that I'll be out of town on July 15th, because if I wouldn't be out then I'd be able to participate in the OTN Virtual Sysadmin live lab.  Have you installed Oracle VirtualBox before?  If not, I'd highly suggest going through the exercise for yourself since it's all free!

Thursday, June 27, 2013

OOW13 Rejection!

While I've been selected to speak at OAUG's Connection Point - AppsTech conference in July, I won't get the chance to speak at Oracle Open World this year.  With thousands of submissions, I'm not horribly surprised about the rejection but it's also some motivation to either get better material or work on presenting it better in an abstract form for next year's submission.  Honestly, if they selected the other presentation that I'm not currently spending time working on for OAUG I think I would've started pulling my hair out!  Anyways, if you were rejected (or just want to plan for next year) you can be notified when registration opens for OOW14.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Latency heat mapping

Reading a post from my blog roll, I was looking forward to reading the originating post about how to create a latency heat map/chart but thought it would be clunky and would involve some long and drawn out installation.  Surprisingly, it is neither clunky or involved and I can't wait to run this at work tomorrow!

Of course since the original post, there is a new version of code online after feedback and the rubber meeting the road.

Friday, June 21, 2013

Happy Birthday to Me!

Well, not really me but it was a year ago that I made my first post!  If you had told me that I would have posted almost a hundred times, at a clip of just over one post every five days, and had more than a thousand page views, I would've told you that you were crazy.

What's in store next year?  I haven't really thought about it too much, but off the cuff I'd say:

Expanding to other social media outlets.
Reaching a few more "thousand visit" milestones.
More consistent posting.
Return to "Main Tenant" posts.

How do you think this past year has gone?

-The Oracle EMT

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Deep thoughts about the meaning of blogging

A recent article made me think a bit about why I'm blogging, what I expect out of it, what YOU are expecting to get out of this and maybe more importantly the future of the blog.  Right now this is my only outlet for social media and interaction with this audience and a year ago I would have told you it would have been enough for me, yet the last few months have had me thinking about ways to change and become more interactive with you and with what's becoming a growing web of social interaction here.

Will this blog become an "influencer" one day?

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Enkitec Extreme Exadata Expo: E4!

I had the chance to hear from several Enkitec members last year at the Hotsos conference and came away really impressed with their technical know-how and specific knowledge of Exadata enough that some of them have made it into my blog roll.  While I haven't had the chance to go to E4 as of yet, I was looking forward to seeing who was going to be part of the conference and Kerry Osborne recently announced it on his blog and it's a real who's who list!  Maybe I'll do the virtual option.....

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

I'll see you in Pittsburgh!

You may have noticed a lack of activity for a few days on the site, and that's because I've been accepted to present at the OAUG Connection Point conference at the end of July!!  I'm really excited to get my feet wet by going outside my comfort zone and do a professional presentation, and now that I have something like 80-85% of the presentation and whitepaper done I'll have some time to return to updating the blog on a more regular basis.

Saturday, June 1, 2013

Do you love being in Support?

In more of an editorial vein, I read this great article from Pythian about how much the author loved being a DBA and how it should be something aspired to since the industry is not shrinking with demand being so high.  I think the sentiment is exactly on point, and if we look at the list they link to in the top 25 are: Software Architect, DBA, Software Developer, IT Consultant, Systems Administrator, Systems Developer, and Programmer Analyst.  This isn't to say that you need to be in one of these categories over the other because it's higher in the list, but you need to build a career path along the lines of what you are interested in and what suits your skills.

I love being where I am job-wise and company-wise since I get the chance to take parts of several of these "top 25" jobs and put them into my own blender, stay on the cutting edge of technology, and craft my own career path.