Monday, May 22, 2006
Metalink Update - I'm In
OK, here's the key. Don't do what the emails say, but login with your OLD username and password and you will be prompted to change your userid to your email. You will then get an email with your new username/password at which point you can logout/login and you will be prompted to change the password.
Metalink Update
Oracle support sends me a message saying my TAR has been updated and to go to http://metalink.oracle.com to see the update. Sigh.
Learned from the analyst that their analysts and engineers don't use Metalink, but have a Client/Server GUI that they use...
Learned from the analyst that their analysts and engineers don't use Metalink, but have a Client/Server GUI that they use...
Metalink Login
Oracle must have done a lot of testing of their Metalink conversion scheduled this past weekend, right? After all, I received no less than three emails outlining what was happening the weekend of May 19th. On Saturday, May 20th I decided to see if any work had been done on my TARs, so I decided to try and login. I tried several times and received a "page not found" every time so I decided they weren't done yet.
I went to metalink yesterday and the login page had changed, so I figured they were done, right? Tried logging in with my email and current password and received this lovely message:
Tried again, same thing. So I figured maybe I should change my password. I clicked on the "forgot password" link and in a couple minutes I had a new password. Tried that password and still no luck.
Now it's Monday morning and I've tried the old password, new password, and I even got another new password. Now I'm trying to login and my browser is just waiting for metalink.oracle.com.
Maybe they forgot to apply pre-requisite patch 1456677 to patch 18277266 which is specified as a prerequisite for 88277266. I supposed they've already tried logging a TAR, but I guess metalink was down.
Welcome to the customer's view of Oracle.
Update
Called Oracle Support, had to wait 33 minutes until I got to talk to a human. "Yes, we know metalink is down. There is no ETA at this point."
I went to metalink yesterday and the login page had changed, so I figured they were done, right? Tried logging in with my email and current password and received this lovely message:
Tried again, same thing. So I figured maybe I should change my password. I clicked on the "forgot password" link and in a couple minutes I had a new password. Tried that password and still no luck.
Now it's Monday morning and I've tried the old password, new password, and I even got another new password. Now I'm trying to login and my browser is just waiting for metalink.oracle.com.
Maybe they forgot to apply pre-requisite patch 1456677 to patch 18277266 which is specified as a prerequisite for 88277266. I supposed they've already tried logging a TAR, but I guess metalink was down.
Welcome to the customer's view of Oracle.
Update
Called Oracle Support, had to wait 33 minutes until I got to talk to a human. "Yes, we know metalink is down. There is no ETA at this point."
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Thunderbird Address Book #2
This address book thing is killing me. I tried Beth's suggestion and it deleted the entry for that session, but when I started Thunderbird again, there it was. I also took Ian's suggestion and deleted all the duplicate contacts to no avail. Arrrrgh. Investigating alternative email/RSS readers now...
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Typical Greenwich
It was raining on my way to work this morning. Not a driving rain, but heavy enough that the wipers were on. I was stopped at a red light and directly across the intersection from me was a new black Bently.
To my right was an old couple waiting to cross the street. It would be a coin flip whether they were around for the first world war or not. He was in his London Fog jacket and a hat complete with old time galoshes. She looked like she just got off a fishing boat with a yellow slicker and buckle up rubber boots. Both used canes to shuffle along, and he held out his arm for her to hold as they stood waiting. The crossing signal turned to "WALK" and they started their journey across the street.
On this particular corner, the crossing signal counts down to indicate how many seconds you have left. When the signal read 10, they were just in front of my car.
"They're never going to make it", I thought to myself.
Time expired and they just cleared my lane.
My light turned green and I since I was turning left, I had to wait for the Bently to come through anyway. The Bently starts coming through the intersection and stops short when he sees the old couple crossing the street. Then he throws his hands up in disgust and BLOWS THE HORN at them.
The couple stops for a short second, the old man shoots the Bently driver a cold look, and they continue on their way. The Bently driver's mother must be proud.
To my right was an old couple waiting to cross the street. It would be a coin flip whether they were around for the first world war or not. He was in his London Fog jacket and a hat complete with old time galoshes. She looked like she just got off a fishing boat with a yellow slicker and buckle up rubber boots. Both used canes to shuffle along, and he held out his arm for her to hold as they stood waiting. The crossing signal turned to "WALK" and they started their journey across the street.
On this particular corner, the crossing signal counts down to indicate how many seconds you have left. When the signal read 10, they were just in front of my car.
"They're never going to make it", I thought to myself.
Time expired and they just cleared my lane.
My light turned green and I since I was turning left, I had to wait for the Bently to come through anyway. The Bently starts coming through the intersection and stops short when he sees the old couple crossing the street. Then he throws his hands up in disgust and BLOWS THE HORN at them.
The couple stops for a short second, the old man shoots the Bently driver a cold look, and they continue on their way. The Bently driver's mother must be proud.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Thunderbird Address Book
I'm getting a little ticked off at Thunderbird 1.5.0.2 lately. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great email client and RSS reader. However, I've been running into a particularly annoying issue that has me on the brink of scrapping it.
You see, I just can't delete an entry from my "Personal Address Book". I know, I know, that's a pretty minor detail to be tossing a great email client. I'm a big fan of letting Thunderbird search your local address books for the person you want to address the message to. That's well and good when each person only sends you email from one address, but in the real world people have multiple email addresses.
My problem is my boss sent me an email from his home account a couple weeks ago. I replied no problem and everything was cool. The next time I sent him a message, Thunderbird automatically picked up his home email address and sent it there.
"OK", I thought to myself, "I'll just delete his home email and Tbird won't pick it up anymore."
So I deleted all occurrances from my address books, re-checked that it wasn't in there anymore, sent a test email, and he got it no problem. Shutdown Thunderbird and went home.
The next day I sent him an email again. Thunderbird picked his home email again. WTF? I know I deleted it, but sure enough, his home email was back. I tried deleting again, exiting Tbird and it showed up again. This was driving me crazy. After twiddling with it on and off for about 2 hours, I gave up and unchecked Tools>Options>Addressing>Address Autocompletion>Local Address Books.
Now when I address a message, I either have to know the person's email address or choose it from the address book. Maybe I'm just being impatient and this is one of those "doh" moments...
You see, I just can't delete an entry from my "Personal Address Book". I know, I know, that's a pretty minor detail to be tossing a great email client. I'm a big fan of letting Thunderbird search your local address books for the person you want to address the message to. That's well and good when each person only sends you email from one address, but in the real world people have multiple email addresses.
My problem is my boss sent me an email from his home account a couple weeks ago. I replied no problem and everything was cool. The next time I sent him a message, Thunderbird automatically picked up his home email address and sent it there.
"OK", I thought to myself, "I'll just delete his home email and Tbird won't pick it up anymore."
So I deleted all occurrances from my address books, re-checked that it wasn't in there anymore, sent a test email, and he got it no problem. Shutdown Thunderbird and went home.
The next day I sent him an email again. Thunderbird picked his home email again. WTF? I know I deleted it, but sure enough, his home email was back. I tried deleting again, exiting Tbird and it showed up again. This was driving me crazy. After twiddling with it on and off for about 2 hours, I gave up and unchecked Tools>Options>Addressing>Address Autocompletion>Local Address Books.
Now when I address a message, I either have to know the person's email address or choose it from the address book. Maybe I'm just being impatient and this is one of those "doh" moments...
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Cost-Based Oracle Fundamentals
Been busy the last couple of weeks on the new house.
Even so, managed to get through my first pass of Cost-Based Oracle Fundamentals by Jonathan Lewis. I concentrated more on the concepts the author was trying to get across and less on the math of each operation. On the second go-round, I plan on doing the examples one by one and experimenting with some real-world data.
I didn't count, but I found myself saying "Ah-ha" several hundred times. Histograms, Ah-ha. Cardinality, Ah-ha.
There's a lot of hot air on the internet about Clustering Factor, but there is a whole chapter that sets you straight on the concept; both positives and negatives. The section on how reverse key indexes negatively can affect the Clustering Factor is really eye opening.
I personally got a lot out of Chapter 11, Nested Loops. Nested Loop joins are one of the more common access paths chosen and I thought I had a decent understanding of them. This chapter really filled in the gaps that were missing.
And a whole chapter on the 10053 event? Whoa. I'm sure there's a lot more to it, but now at least I have an idea of what's going on with the optimizer when I look at the trace file.
Lets just say the differences Jonathan points out between 9i and 10g scare me. Big time. A lot of differences are pointed out throughout the book, but there's going to be a ton of testing when 10g comes to town.
Cost-Based Oracle Fundamentals is definitely a recommended read.
Even so, managed to get through my first pass of Cost-Based Oracle Fundamentals by Jonathan Lewis. I concentrated more on the concepts the author was trying to get across and less on the math of each operation. On the second go-round, I plan on doing the examples one by one and experimenting with some real-world data.
I didn't count, but I found myself saying "Ah-ha" several hundred times. Histograms, Ah-ha. Cardinality, Ah-ha.
There's a lot of hot air on the internet about Clustering Factor, but there is a whole chapter that sets you straight on the concept; both positives and negatives. The section on how reverse key indexes negatively can affect the Clustering Factor is really eye opening.
I personally got a lot out of Chapter 11, Nested Loops. Nested Loop joins are one of the more common access paths chosen and I thought I had a decent understanding of them. This chapter really filled in the gaps that were missing.
And a whole chapter on the 10053 event? Whoa. I'm sure there's a lot more to it, but now at least I have an idea of what's going on with the optimizer when I look at the trace file.
Lets just say the differences Jonathan points out between 9i and 10g scare me. Big time. A lot of differences are pointed out throughout the book, but there's going to be a ton of testing when 10g comes to town.
Cost-Based Oracle Fundamentals is definitely a recommended read.
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