Be It Ever So Humble...

CAUTION: This post is non-technical.

We closed on our house today. I'll admit a bigger deal to me that those reading this, but it's great to reunite the family. For the last six months, I've been working in Houston while the family has remained in San Antonio some 3 hours away. I've been traveling home on weekend to ready the house for sale and to get my family "fix", but it does become a bit of a grind.


We are actually some 35 miles west of Houston in a little town called Fulshear, TX. (pop. 700). The commute will be 70 - 75 miles per day but I'll get used to it. Heck, it's certainly shorter than my commute for the last six months. My schedule allows me to arrive ahead of the traffic and to leave for home ahead of the traffic, so it shouldn't be anything unbearable.

If you find yourself in close proximity, look me up. I keep the Lone Star ice-cold.

Our journey continues...

This Segment Brought To You By..Oracle Reports

This doesn't involve ODTUG Kaleidoscope, or even ODTUG at all. It involves the day job, ye ole 9 to 5.

Since joining Sumitomo I've been tasked with more report work than at my previous stop. Not only do I not mind, I actually enjoy it in a masochistic kind of way.


Oracle Reports deserves it's reputation, both good and bad. A skilled developer can use it to do everything short of splitting the atom. At the same time it can be downright frustrating. Here's a tip I've found helpful in copying and pasting large sections of reports.

Say you've got a lengthy layout and you need to duplicate the footer section (coming soon to a blog post near you) Left to its own devices the newly pasted items will display at the top of the layout model. The solution is to first create a target frame to house the new pasted items. Once the new items are pasted in, simply delete the target frame. Season to taste. I'll go into more detail in an upcoming post on how to secure a variable height footer to the bottom of the last page.

Our journey continues...

Kaleidoscope 2010...Finally

Finally. After months of planning and preparation, Kaleidoscope 2010 is upon us. It's great to be back in D.C. because this is the same city and this same hotel that I in which I attended my first Kaleidoscope in 2006. I was surprised the decision to return so quickly, but based on the numbers the decision was a correct one.

Here's a brief rundown of the week.

Highlights: Too many to list, but I will make mention of a few.

• APEX 4.0 Announced
• Battle of the Bands
• Java Bus
• Mike Riley receives Oracle Ace
• My first Werewolf experience
• Watching Netherlands advance in World Cup
• First MySQL track
• Hearing Jonathan Lewis speak

Lowlights: One

• Broken tooth. Damn you trail mix. A pox on your house.

As usual, I couldn't attend many sessions in their entirety while making my appointed rounds, but I'm sure I stuck my head in each and every room at some point or another. It was great to catch up with old friends like Francis, Dan, Andres, Joel, Dimitri, JES, Cary, etc. That's the greatest thing about Kaleidoscope is that you can get around to meeting every single person.

Friday, was a fun day. Dianne, Maddie and I met on old ODTUG friend, Andres Lomp from Estonia and went down to the waterfront for shrimp and crabs. It was an unforgettable time.From there we met up with ODTUG President, Mike Riley and his family to tour a few of the Smithsonian Museums with Dianne and Maddie. The American History Museum was probably my favorite. Saturday we made our way to Dulles and back to Houston.

Our journey continues...