Install 10.2.0.1 - the base release - of Oracle and deselect the various Enterprise Edition Options - these cost money and we don’t like that, especially if we don’t use them. Patching to 10.2.0.5 (in my installation - it could be different with previous versions) silently adds OLAP, Data Mining etc back into the mix. Not good - especially if/when Oracle decide to audit your licenses. You pay for what you install whether used or not.

Software efficiency halves every 18 months thus compensating for Moore’s Law. Cheers.

Except, it’s not! WTF is it all about? You open a report, or a book and see a page with no text on it except this page intentionally left blank. Except, because of that bit of text, it’s no longer blank is it? So why do they bother? Does the author/publisher think we readers are too stupid to realise that a page is blank without being told? Is it because they think we might assume that somehow, the printing process has mysteriously failed for that one page in particular and we may be missing some highly important information?

Yesterday, 24th February 2011, was about the first reasonably warm day of the year. The pond and paths around our house are now filled with frogs. It must be spring!

The (Tory) government’s wonderful new system for the NHS starts tomorrow. GP’s will take over running things where the Primary Care Trusts used to and Primary Care Trusts are to vanish. If any hospital fails under the new system, there will be no tax-payer funded bale outs. Strange that, they baled out the banks and have been shafted in return as bankers returned to their old ways - the ways that all political parties said would never happen again - and stuck two fingers up at the tax-payer and the government.

It seems that this new government is off it’s bloody head. A new law has been introduced that means, in essence, that if someone tells a joke in the office, and someone else is offended by it, they can sue, even (get this) if the offended person didn’t actually hear the joke in question! WTF is the government doing for crying out loud? Have they not learned from the mistakes of the last Tory government (aka selfish b’stards) - led by the “lovely” Maggie T.

The pope arrives in the UK today. Personally, I think he should be arrested. As the head of an organisation that is riven with child molesting staff he should be arrested. As the man in charge of covering up the atrocities (while a Cardinal) he should be arrested. As God’s disciple on Earth - he’s a fraud! Why are the British Tax Payers, at a time when cut-backs are “required” paying for the head of the Vatican “state” to pay a “state” visit to the UK, forced to pay huge sums, running into multi-millions of pounds to provide security for this man?

My wife recently changed from her old insurance company to the AA as they gave her a much better quote for herself and me as named driver. However, it soon turned out to be not quite as attractive as it first seemed. Shortly after sending in the forms and money Alison received a call from the AA saying that there was a problem with her application and could she call a certain number to discuss.

Oh joy! Politics. How lovely. Ok, here’s what I think of the election: They don’t give a shit about keeping promises. Regardless of what your local MP (or wannabe MP) tells you he will do for you, once (if) s/he gets elected, s/he will have to follow the party whip - so why do they bother telling us lies all the time. They still have an expenses system that gives them the right to excess.

On Saturday the 10th of April, at 20:30 our journey home from Sharm El Sheikh began on a Monarch Airlines Airbus A300. We were sitting in row 15, seats A and B - if it makes a difference. 15A being the window seat and 15B being the middle of three. For someone over about 5'6" legroom is a problem and as Alison is 5'8" and I’m 6’ we both were in trouble before we left!

£6.5 million per year it would appear. A new Parliamentary Standards Authority has been set up to monitor our beloved politicians and to keep them honest. According to Radio 4 today, this has an annual budget of £6.5 million and will employ 80 people. Is it just me, or is it a tad strange that the people we elect to run (ruin?) the country should need so much watching to keep them honest?

Check out this link first. Speaking as a ginger myself, I have no idea what that woman is complaining about. So what if a card says something funny about gingers (ok, funny is relative, some things I find funny others don’t and vice versa) - it’s called humour and it doesn’t hurt! I wonder if this woman was simply ‘offended’ because she was after a payout form Tesco for “mental distress” or some other such nonsense.

All organisations need Change Control to make sure that changes are applied correctly and so on. However, have Change Control departments become the new “Health & Safety” and gone beyond being useful to being a disruptive and obstructive unit interested only in getting in the way rather than getting work done? I’m all in favour of change control - it serves a purpose and helps prevent invalid changes being applied to production (or test) systems without them having been checked, tested and applied correctly with full cooperation from the system’s users.