Summery Activity

I can sort of remember a time when I spent lots of time outside in the summer, really noticed the season (and it is a fine one in Chicago...I don't mind it when Chicago occasionally gets very hot). Lately, though, I seem to be so busy on books or products or trainings - and traveling - that the last couple of years, I will suddenly notice the color of the leaves turning and say to myself: "Wait a minute! How did it get to be Fall?"

And the upcoming summer is looking like another one of those, since I am preparing for or working on all of the following:

* My presentations and test-a-thon materials for ODTUG Kaleidoscope on June 18 - 21 in Daytona Beach, Florida. This most-excellent developer's conference has lots of PL/SQL content, plus we (ODTUG, Quest Software and O'Reilly Media) are organizing the second-ever PL/SQL Test-a-Thon! I hope you are coming. You can find more information about, and register for, Kaleidoscope here.

* The second Oracle PL/SQL Programming 2007 conference will be held in mid-September in New Jersey. Two days of intensive training, discussions and test-a-thons for PL/SQL developers. Which means I need to start organizing those materials as well! Almost 300 developers came for OPP2007-I in February. If you missed that one, join us for OPP2007-II!

* The new Quest Code Tester Trial Challenge: we just set up a new and hopefully fun way to learn about Code Tester and possibly win a signed set of my books. Simply download the trial version of Code Tester, install it and explore. Then answer the ten questions in the Challenge and submit your answer. If they are all correct, your name will be added to the pile from which a winner of my books will be chosen (courtesy of O'Reilly Media!).

* I head back to Europe at the end of August to visit Prague, Zagreb, Ljubljana and Bratislava, doing two-day Oracle trainings and Quest seminars. I very much look forward to returning to Prague and seeing Croatia, Slovenia and Slovakia for the first time. But before then I need to write a bunch of new training materials. Sigh....

* Finishing up the second edition of Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices. I originally planned to do a fairly minor rewrite, add some new best practices and update old references, but otherwise leave it unchanged. Ha! That plan has certainly changed. I have, instead, decided that this book needed to stop taking itself so seriously, and have a bit more fun with best practices. I think you will be both entertained and enlightened as you read the exploits of a four person development team (Sunita, Delaware, Lizbeth and Jasper), part of the (fictitious) My Flimsy Excuse dotcom venture. More on this book soon....

* Quest Code Test development: we are QAing release 1.6 (automated XML testing, many bug fixes, much faster performance with a remote database, and much more) and then moving right into development of release 1.7 (major improvements in usability and much smarter test case generation, to name just two key enhancements). I would love to do nothing but help develop Code Tester. It isn't possible, but I cherish every moment I get to work on the backend code! By the way, you can download the 1.6 beta here.

Well, that's what my summer is looking like. I hope you are finding more time for leisure in yours.

Hey, but I am not complaining! I work from my home, take lots of breaks, go outside - life is good, very good, just busy.....