I’m a principal consultant, and have been for many years. I do a lot of public speaking: at seminars, RUGs, PUGs, OUGs, client offices, you name it. I’ve learned a lesson or two about public speaking: some easy, some hard. Year after year, the fear of speaking in public or in front of a group
Read More...Here in the U.S., we’re coming off the 4th of July holiday weekend, and it’s really the perfect holiday: grilling, warm weather, beer, no gift-giving, no pressurized obligation to see your extended family unless you want to. Along the grilling lines, if you’re like me and you think there’s really nothing better than a perfectly
Read More...Oracle has begun to offer ‘Feature Packs’ between planned major releases to deliver new capabilities and value to customers. If you’re not aware of this (and you should be), here’s the information about the Oracle Feature Pack program. With the release of the PeopleSoft 9.1 Feature Pack in Spring 2011, Oracle now offers “significant new
Read More...“My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.” — Indira Gandhi So simple, yet so difficult. In fact, management and workplace guru Bob Sutton
Read More...Recently, Conan O’Brien gave the commencement address to Dartmouth’s 2011 graduating class. Way up in Internet fame already sit Steve Job’s classic address to Stanford, and David Foster Wallace’s speech to Kenyon College. Both of those are smart speeches, steeped in wisdom, bearing heartfelt reflections of difficult roads, personal letdowns and victories. This one…this one
Read More...“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would
Read More...Alex Handy, writing for the SD Times, has a nice list of the top ways Oracle is being an excellent citizen within the enterprise technology and software development communities. Here’s the high-level list, but you owe it to yourself to see Handy’s rationale behind each. Handing Hudson over to the Eclipse Foundation Pushing OpenJDK as
Read More...My brain is, to some indeterminate percentage, defective. Not just, “Oh, that’s understandable, we all have strange mental echoes and stuff” defective, but really, seriously prone to screwy malfunctions. To the point others will look at me with a raised eyebrow and that faux-overintense stare and try to end their conversation with me as quickly
Read More...“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency.
Read More...The following issue caught my attention and I thought I’d research it in a little more depth as I think it’s important to anyone who does their personal banking online. With the adoption of online banking and its associated convenience comes the risk of identity theft and potential loss of personal funds. Recently a major
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