I read today an obituary for Brigadier General Robin Olds (1922 - 2007). He flew 107 combat missions in 1944 and downed 12 enemy aircraft. B...

I spent one afternoon in Paris. Took the Metro from the Grand Arch (La Defense) to Hotel du Ville, walked to the Pompidou, had a great time ...

A reader asked me to post details about my end of summer trip to Europe to do a triplet of two day trainings for Oracle. Here's the info...

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......

Why would I say that? Because a COMMIT; in your code is an example of hard-coding, and as we all know, hard-coding is bad. "Hard-coding...

I have a been a very busy boy. Just spent the last week living in (well, visiting anyway) a different hotel every evening, moving between si...

As I traversed Germany this past week (more on that in my next blog entry), I came across an article in the Financial Times (May 23) with th...

I finally got around to loading up photos on Flickr from my recent international trips, so if you would like to see what catches my eye as I...

I have decided to keep track of the places I've visited around the world, focusing primarily on those locations outside the United State...

Oscillococcinum - a strange name for a very wonderful medicine! I just spent a week in Latin America, performing (it does seem these days th...

AP = Associated Press AP is one of the major news content providers to newspapers, websites, etc. In April 2007, Tom Curley, AP president an...

I can still remember many years ago when, after I sat through a "blockbuster" (and quite dull) Schwarznegger movie with an enormou...

I was in Las Vegas (Mandalay Bay Hotel and Convention Center) for the Collaborate07 Oracle User Group (s) conference. As usual, a very surre...

What's the point? Sometimes you need to be able keep track of strings (names of some sort, usually) that you have used, so you do not us...

This is a great country. I am very lucky to have been born where I was, when I was. This fact was driven home to me very forcefully tonite b...

About Qusefuls A Quseful is a Quick and Useful (as opposed to Quick and Dirty) tip on now to write programs in the Oracle PL/SQL language m...

As I write this post, I am flying at 33000 feet in a Boeing 777, heading back home after two weeks in Europe (Copenhagen, Zurich, Vilnius, A...

I don't know what you call it. Steven's Fortune Cookie text? Pompously presumptuous meanderings? Well, nobody's going to force y...

Subject: A fine visit to Zurich I am now en route from Zurich to Vilnius, Lithuania -- the third stop on my two week "Best of PL/S...

I finally got around to watching Borat . I'd been putting it off, because the little bit I'd read and seen about it disturbed me. Ma...