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My name is Pao Kue, I'm a first year MA-HRIR student at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. There are approximately 70 of us first year and 70 second year students in the full time program. There are also about 100 part time students in the program. The cohorts are very friendly, everyone tries to leverage each other; from giving interview tips, sharing information in class projects, or even providing emotional support. Everyone tries to enjoy their two years together knowing that we will all be colleagues for years to come. The diversity of the program is amazing, many of us are from out of state or born in another country (me included)!
Coming straight from my undergraduate with no corporate experience, I was a bit worried about finding an internship. An internship during the summer gives us valuable work experience and can lead to a full time offer at end of the program. This year, about half the student population will have an internship offer before the Thanksgiving break, just 4 months into the 2 year program.
Companies that have recruited fellow cohort members include Chevron, Yum Brands, Microsoft, and Exxon Mobil to name a few. Knowing the high skill set that many of my cohort members have because of their work experience, I decided to enhance my internship possibilities by recruiting by searching online and outside the Graduate Business Career Center (GBCC) as well as taking advantage of the GBCC programs and assistance. I had a number of 1st round interviews and some 2nd round interviews, 2nd round interviews included flying out-of-state to company headquarters. Luckily, everything was paid for by the recruiting companies when I traveled. My offers were disclosed 2 weeks ago. Many fellow cohort members received their offers and the news was celebrated.
Along with the grueling interview process, most full time first year students are managing 12 graduate credits in Staffing, Training and Development, Business Principles for the HR Professional, and Using Data Metrics and HR. The average is 12 credits, but students can take as many as 17 credits per semester. Because of opportunities to study abroad in the spring of 2014, number of students, myself included, are taking 16 credits this semester. The extra two courses include International HR Management and Personnel Economics.
My courses in Staffing, Business Principles, Data Metrics (statistics), International HR, and Personnel Economics have all helped me in during my interviews when I was asked to review case studies. It's amazing how one can learn so much in a short amount of time and apply it to real HR scenarios during interview case studies!
All in all, my experience at the Carlson School has been most interesting. Working 10 hours a week (others work as many as 30), balancing 16 credits, maintaining a social life, I'm also proud to say that my extracurricular activities with bible study, University of Minnesota student fee committee, and acting has not dwindled!
Being a part of this program has given me the internal and external support to learn how to manage my time, build skills and prioritize. It's been truly a challenge thus far but a challenge that has already and will continue to develop me in the long run. Without the University of Minnesota MA-HRIR program, faculty, and current cohort members, I wouldn't have grown as much as I already have in the past 4 months.
This is my personal experience at the U so far as a 1st year MA-HRIR graduate student. I look forward to more opportunities and courses MA-HRIR will provide!


text: |Petco Memory Foam Couch Bed in Tan & CreamThe perfect get-a-way for a sleepy canine. Let your pup or small dog nap in comfort and luxury in this dog bed. Our Petco Memory Foam Couch Bed will surround your dog with a soft cloud of fleece, ensuring his or her dreams are long so your furry friend gets the rest he or she needs and deserves. The lofty bolster sides provide a sense of security while the chipped memory foam center offers comfort, relief and support. This dog bed features a handsome design and boasts a soft brushed polyester outer shell in a cool tan with complementing cream center (almost sounds like candythat is how sweet this dog bed is!). This comfy dog bed has a low front profile, which makes it easy for senior dogs to climb into. Also perfectly sized for both home or on the go!

subset: commoncrawl


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Prim save-the-date cards? Not for this San Francisco couple. Instead the pair went to Major Diamond Productions, determined to make something wildly different that could also incorporate their mutual love for Jay Z, The Great Gatsby, lavish parties and big surprises.
The final product oozes with the flair of a summer blockbuster trailer, and it has inspired us to clear our schedules for July 12 ... just in case.
Courtesy Sascha Reinking
Like us on Facebook for more stories like this!


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|mo 16 fe 15
Sometimes it seems Suffolk Coastal are trying to isolate bits of near the coast like Wickham Market and Kettleburgh from the rest of the UK.
|sa 7 fe 15
These gentlemen shopping for booze and other items in the Wickham Market Co-op last month forgot to pay when they left, indeed they forgot to leave the supermarket baskets behind as well.
|fr 16 ja 15
Earlier this week a Land Rover Defender in Wickham Market had a window smashed and items stolen ... bit concerning this crime is being dealt with by PC Gemma Spink at the Felixstowe station, not Woodbridge?
|we 30 jl 14
Interesting times in Stradbroke, the post office will re-open in October but in the library and the Spar re-opening has gained a question mark prompted by the East of England Co-op expressing an interest in the now long defunct garage (so a bit like Wickham Market then).
|su 6 jl 14
As we know East Anglia tends to be more laid back than say a large town near Chelmsford though these days even the Wickham Market co-op car park can get a bit frantic. At April's Eastern Sur5val roller derby in Norwich the teams found time to play Twister.
|mo 19 my 14
It must have been a loss to Wickham Market when Seagers hardware and garden shop shut, 2012 we think. Noticed this morning there's now R&S hardware and garden on the opposite side of the square, allegedly a monthly market on the third Wednesday and the outstandingly excellent Summer Extravaganza is back next month and it's still free.
|we 28 my 14
The Wickham Market flower club quiz this Saturday is bring your own drink but OTOH the price of admission does include a fish and chip supper!
|th 17 ap 14
Last week in Wickham Market (not Wimslow Arizona) a flatbed Ford was stolen with a metal seed drum on the back ... what's a seed drum?
|su 9 mr 14
There's an area bounded by Wickham Market, Debenham and Halesworth known near the coast as the Wickden Triangle within which either something in the water or incipient dementia prompts bizarre council behaviour such as this sign in the Stackton Tressel Crack Street car park.
|we 5 mr 14
Surprising assault in Wickham Market Saturday afternoon and an internet safety evening at Alde Vally High School Leiston tomorrow evening.
|mo 10 fe 14
The next Wickham Market flower club meeting is Thursday fortnight the 27th and here's what happened at January's. Somewhat sooner the Woodbridge safer neighbourhood team is meeting Thursday in the Wickham village hall.
|th 9 ja 14
Woodbridge police station are holding a watch found in Wickham Market.
|th 5 de 13
After the dem by Avril Hill at last month's Wickham Market flower club meeting there was Christmas punch and mince pies, they know how to live in Wickham. Next meeting Thursday 23 January.
|th 21 no 13
♫ There's a daily live band at each of the three day beer and cider festival in the Wickham Market village this weekend, not clear whether it's free entry.
|mo 21 oc 13
A copious report by Mandy Pryke on the bulletin board of Wickham Market flower club's activities, Framlingham camera club's workshops continue next month and today it's Trafalgar Day all over near the coast.
|tu 15 oc 13
If this year's Wickham Market Summer Extravaganza is a marker then this coming Saturday's Oktoberfest with sausages specially made by Revetts should be a steamer.
|we 2 oc 13
Brundish cinema starts it's new season tomorrow week with Arbitrage starring Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon and yet another Brit playing an American Tim Roth, and the police are taking no further action over the fire at the Wickham Market George earlier this year.
|tu 1 oc 13
The part time gardener has been acquired in a village between Wickham Market and Woodbridge, kind words about the Framlingham White Horse and interesting times at the Stonham Barns heavy horse day.
|fr 20 se 13
We've now got a Twitter tab on our Facebook page and what was Sweet Dreams on the corner of Broad Road in Wickham Market is going to be a hospice shop.
|we 31 jl 13
Police Community Support Officer Sallyanna Chatten-Berry (what a great name) will be meeting and greeting at the far end of the Wickham Market co-op by the free coffee machine 10:30am-12pm Saturday.
|tu 16 jl 13
Doesn't surprise us that the Wickham Market Summer Extravaganza was a triumph (£2,600 raised and around 1,500 visitors) because we were there .. but it's not all judo and dress up in Wickham, some persons fail to have a warm and caring relationship with their district council ... Suffolk Coastal have muttered about doing the same thing in Framlingham.
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ELIZABETHTON — After soundly defeating the recommendations of its Budget Committee, the Carter County Commission voted 13-6 Friday night to set the property tax rate at $2.1528 per $100 of assessed value.
The approved tax rate is 4 cents lower than the $2.1928 that the Budget Committee had recommended. The lower tax rate funds all the recommended budgets for all the county offices and departments for the year.
The new budget includes a $1 million increase for schools divided approximately 70 percent to 30 percent between the Carter County School System and the Elizabethton School System. It also includes an additional $1.3 million to fund 37 new positions for the new Carter County Jail, an additional $344,720 for the Carter County Highway Department and $378,783 more for the General Fund to cover increases in costs of fuel, utilities, insurance and maintenance agreements.
Commissioners Lawrence Hodge, Joel Street, Richard Winters, Harry Sisk, Charles VonCannon, Charlie Bayless, Dickie Renfro, Ken Arney, Steve Chambers, Sonya Culler, Russell Kite, Bill Armstrong and Pat Hicks voted for the tax rate. Nancy Brown, Ronnie Trivett, Tom Bowers, John Lewis, Scott Sams and Robert Gobble voted against the increase. Commissioners Ernest "Gebe" Ritchie, Steve Lowrance, L.C. Tester and Jo Ann Blankenship were absent. There is one vacancy.
The meeting began when Budget Committee Chairman Bowers presented the recommended tax rate agreed upon by a 5-2 vote of the committee on July 18. That recommendation was for a rate of $2.1928. That was an 18-cent increase over the state certified tax rate of $2.01.
One of the key factors of the proposed tax rate is that it kept taxes lower by making a one-time withdrawal out of the county's $8 million fund balance for debt service. The proposal would place the property tax rate for debt service at 12.6 cents. That would bring in $991,000, but the payments from debt service would be around $3.2 million.
"Personally, I cannot recommend it," Bowers said as the introduced the committee's proposal. "As always, I encourage you to vote your conscience."
There was no immediate motion or second on the committee's recommendation. Instead, several commissioners asked questions. Lewis asked if the committee had looked at ways to save money, such as limiting the number of county employees with vehicles and gas cards.
Mayor Leon Humphrey said the $2.19 tax rate represents an increase of $45 per year for an owner of a $100,000 house. He said that works out to an additional $3.75 per month.
The committee's recommendation was eventually defeated by a vote of 8-11.
After the defeat, several commissioners offered suggestions to lower costs. Trivett suggested cutting all departments by 5 percent. Mayor Humphrey said the committee had considered the same cut but had found state mandates on maintenance of effort by local funding bodies prohibits the county from lowering the amount it provides the school, sheriff and highway departments. That meant that only the courthouse offices would be eligible for the cuts, which would not have a large impact on the overall budget.
Lewis suggested that since the new jail is behind schedule for opening that the county just leave it closed for another fiscal year. Humphrey said the punch lists for all outstanding corrections on the new jail should be completed in a week or so. The only outstanding problem is the gouging and discoloration of the new floors. The biggest remaining problem in opening the new jail is now staffing and training the new personnel. Chief Deputy Ron Street said that should be accomplished by December or January.
Following these discussions, Bayless offered his compromise proposal of setting the tax rate at $2.15. The 4-cent reduction in the proposed tax rate increase was made possible by taking even more from debt service, reducing the amount to be paid in this year to only $600,000. Finance Director Ingrid Deloach said that even factoring in the interest earnings and other income, the fund balance should decline by about $2 million this year.
That money should eventually have to be replaced, but the repayments can be spread over several years. In addition, some large payments coming out of debt service will be going away, especially payments of near $1 million a year for Cloudland Elementary School that will end in 2014.
But Bowers warned that taking money out of fund balances can be dangerous. "It is like a cancer. It feeds upon itself until it is all gone," Bowers said.


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This seminar is awesome. Even though there are only 300 attendees, what really impress me was the line up of Internet Marketing Gurus! OMG!!! Never before have I seen so many of them all in one place. Usually I would see them separately on their sites and not in real person. It was like meeting your […]Read More
Millionaire Mind Lesson 1 – The Jar System
Posted on by Fadzuli in Wealth Methods No Comments
The first lesson to be rich is to learn to manage money well. If you have been reading Robert Kiyosaki's book Rich Dad Poor Dad, the rich will be richer because of this. Money management and money set aside for their FInancial Freedom, Long Term Spending, Debts, Education, Necessities, Play & Give. How many of […]Read More Jar Methods
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ALOS Satellite Sensor (2.5m)
ALOS (Advanced Land Observation Satellite) has been decommissioned. ALOS was successfully launched on January 24, 2006 from the Tanegashima Space Center.
ALOS Satellite Sensor (2.5m)
(Image Copyright © JAXA)
The ALOS (renamed "Daichi") satellite sensor had three remote-sensing instruments: the Panchromatic Remote-sensing Instrument for Stereo Mapping (PRISM) and for digital elevation models (DEMs). The Advanced Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer type 2 (AVNIR-2) for precise land coverage observation, and the Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) for day-and-night and all-weather land observation and enabled precise land coverage observation and can collect enough data by itself for mapping on a scale of 25,000:1, without relying on points of reference on the ground. Some of its objectives where cartography, disaster monitoring, natural resource surveys and technology development.
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ALOS Archived Satellite Image Gallery
In April 2011, the satellite was found to have switched itself into power-saving mode due to deterioration of its solar arrays. Technicians could no longer confirm that any power was being generated. It was suggested that metiorides may have struck ALOS, creating the anomaly which eventually led to its shutdown.
On 12 May 2011, JAXA sent a command to the satellite to power down its batteries and declared it dead in orbit.
The ALOS AVNIR-2 and PRISM Imagery and PALSAR data is available from the exiting archives.
ALOS New Launches
On Saturday 24 May 2014 an H-IIA rocket orbiting the second Advanced Land Observation Satellite, Daichi-2 – better known as ALOS-2. Liftoff from the iconic Tanegashima Space Centre was on schedule at 12:05 local time (03:05 UTC). ALOS-2 will continue the L-band SAR observations of the ALOS PALSAR (Phased Array L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar) and will expand data utilization by enhancing its performance.
The ALOS-3 Satellite sensor is scheduled to be launched during 2015 and will carry the optical sensor called PRISM-2 which succeeds to the ALOS/PRISM mission with enhanced performance in high resolution (0.8 m), wide swath (50 km) and high geo-location accuracy. PRISM-2 will acquire stereo pair images with two telescopes for stereo mapping and produce precise Digital Surface Models (DSM) and Digital Elevation Models (DEM). It is also considered to carry Hyper-spectral Imager Suite (HISUI), which is developed by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) of Japan. JAXA has conducted the phase-A study on ALOS-3 spacecraft and mission instruments, with prototype testing of key components.
ALOS Satellite Sensor Specifications
ALOS Specifications - PDF Download
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Rush tasking orders for satellite image data around the world are accepted in support of live events, natural disasters, global security, and various other applications in which FAST delivery of image data is critical. In most instances, we can provide image data within 24 hours after the initial data has been acquired and delivered via FTP and DVD media. A Spanish version is also available at http://www.satimagingcorp.es.
For more information on our products or services, please contact us.
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text:
Happy December! Let's welcome it by spending all our money, planning out all the end-of-year stuff and think about how fast the past 365 days went. Or, we could talk about food and the happy things in life. Enter the "budget meal."
Even outside of the fact that December means Christmas, the cost of living at this time of year rises. All the good, organic food is harder to find and more expensive. I swear it costs more to heat the house in the winter than it does to cool it in the summer.
John and I decided to trim our food costs by planning dinners that didn't require too many ingredients we didn't have and wouldn't be too expensive. We didn't set a price limit this time because we wanted to see how well we did picking out budget meals without a budget, ideally telling us whether what we think of as budget really is "budget."
First up? Sirloin steaks in a mushroom and onion sauce with a baked potato.
It sounds really easy, but steak is one of those meats that makes the plate feel a little upscale, even if it's not a fancy cut. Since I was planning on eating the potato plain, I decided to utilize the juices of the steak from cooking it in the cast iron skillet and saute some mushrooms and onions with it. The sauce would accompany the potato well and keep it from tasting too dry.
I say I, in that I came up with idea. John gets full credit for cooking this one.
One other thing to consider is that we cooked this dinner on Sunday, when we knew we'd be home long enough to cook a baked potato and not feel like we're starving while we wait one hour for it to be done. Because that happens.
Sirloin steaks with mushroom and onion sauce and baked potatoes
Serves 2
- Sirloin steak, divided into three pieces – $6.13
- Salt and pepper
- Button mushrooms, sliced – $1.68/container but only used half, so $0.84
- Quarter of a yellow onion, sliced – $0.88 divided by 4, $0.22
- 2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce (already had, would consider a pantry item)
- 2 Russet potatoes, $1.34
- Butter (pantry)


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Kibaki and his inner circle and associates are leaving office considerably wealthier than when they came in, a short 10 years ago. And they swear by ambition, opportunity and expertise, rather than land-grabbing, dodgy procurement and cronyism. The post-Jomo Kenyatta presidency was the greatest political prize for Independence era politicians.
And the power struggle and jostling for pole position began almost as soon as Prime Minister Kenyatta received the instruments of Independence from Prince Philip, the British Queen's consort, on December 12, 1963.
Kenyatta was in office for 15 years and three months as both Prime Minister (18 months) and President (14 years and 8 months).
The path to the Kenyatta succession was marked by a deadly decade, 1965-1975, of high-profile political assassinations that removed a number of potential presidential contenders, foremost among them being Thomas Joseph Mboya (1969) and Josiah Mwangi Kariuki (1975).
The man who finally succeeded Kenyatta, Daniel Toroitich arap Moi, did not look like the sharpest tool in the box, but he outwitted and outlasted operatives with much more glittering credentials and potential.
He remained at State House for 24 years and, like his predecessor, became one of the richest Kenyan Africans of all time.
The path to the Moi succession saw many would-be contenders fall by the wayside, and some, for instance veteran vice-presidents Mwai Kibaki and George Saitoti, rudely and ruthlessly shunted aside, in Saitoti's case not once but twice.
Kibaki picked himself up and repaid Moi in his own coin, diving headlong from the Cabinet and into the Opposition on December 24, 1991.
Moi's inner circle, like Kenyatta's, also made money by the ton while the sun of incumbency still shone and have never stopped minting it.
Kibaki and his inner circle and associates are also leaving office considerably wealthier than when they came in, a short 10 years ago.
And although they swear by ambition, opportunity and expertise, rather than land-grabbing, dodgy procurement and cronyism, the older ones among them have profited from all three presidential eras.
The next power elite:
The next Kenyan power elite will preside over the beginnings of a petrodollar economy driven by oil revenues that will make even the most extravagant projections in the Vision 2030 national economic blueprint and roadmap to prosperity look effortlessly achievable.
If you are impressed by what the Kibaki Administration has done for the economy in one short decade, purely on the basis of the most disciplined tax collection since the Union Jack flew over the Treasury and Central Bank, and strategic partnering with entities like the Chinese Government, wait for what oil revenues, prudently deployed, can bring to Kenya.
The Fourth President of Kenya and his Cabinet of technocrats will go down in history as the greatest nation builders of the Independence era thus far.
And, as always, some of their relatives, friends and associates will become seriously rich, only this time it will be Super Rich.
We are talking dollar and euro billionaires, not merely shilling billionaires, although the shilling is destined to become stronger than it has been since the 1970s.
The Kenyan elite in all sectors is acutely aware of the coming booming times and is positioning itself to be the right people in the right place at the right time.
If that President is Raila Odinga, and most indicators are that it indeed is, and he can preside over a largely corruption-free and enlightened economic programme, millions of ordinary Kenyans will wonder why they did not install a president from the lakeside much earlier.
If that President is Uhuru Kenyatta, and this is a prospect that it would take real clairvoyance to write off, and he can preside over a largely corruption-free and enlightened economic programme, then the impression that presidents drawn from Kikuyuland are good for the economy will be formidably reinforced.
In either case, the truth of the matter will, of course, be much more complicated than these surface impressions and narratives.
Making an oil economy boom and lift millions from poverty by developing a country takes much more than good leadership and the political will at the top - it also takes a miracle of technocracy and economic planning.
As in the case of the Kenyatta and Moi successions, the Kibaki succession has many politicos with their eyes aglitter, focused like laser rays on the presidency and all its satellites, including the brand-new chief executive officers of devolution, the county governors.
Although high-profile political assassination has not been a method of jockeying for the presidential succession for decades in Kenya, all other holds are not barred and the competition for the next power elite is as savage as ever.
Two players would doubtless dearly have loved to have been alive and in contention at the end of Kibaki's tenure, but they passed on - Michael Kijana Wamalwa and George Muthengi Saitoti, both of them one-time VPs and the latter one of the greatest material beneficiaries of the politics of presidentialism and patronage in Kenya.


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Look Inside | Enlarge Cover
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Bantam | Oct 21, 2009
| 432 Pages
| May 02, 2000
| 432 Pages
| 5-3/16 x 8-1/4
| Oct 21, 2009
| 432 Pages
If you crossed Mitford, North Carolina, with Peyton Place, you might come up with Runnymede, Maryland, the most beguiling of Southern towns. In Loose Lips, Rita Mae Brown revisits Runnymede and the beloved characters introduced in Six of One and Bingo, serving up an exuberant portrayal of small-town sins and Southern mores, set against a backdrop of homefront life during World War II."I'm afraid life is passing me by," Louise told her sister."No, it's not," Juts said. "Life can't pass us by. We are life."In the picturesque town of Runnymede, everyone knows everyone else's business, and the madcap antics of the battling Hunsenmeir sisters, Julia (Juts) and Louise, have kept the whole town agog ever since they were children. Now, in the fateful year of 1941, with America headed for war, the sisters are inching toward forty…and Juts is unwise enough to mention that unspeakable reality to her sister.The result is a huge brawl that litters Cadwalder's soda fountain with four hundred dollars' worth of broken glass. To pay the debt, the sisters choose a surprisingly new direction. Suddenly they are joint owners of The Curl 'n' Twirl beauty salon, where discriminating ladies meet to be primped, permed, and pampered while dishing the town's latest dirt.As Juts and Louise become Runnymede's most unlikely new career women, each faces her share of obstacles. Restless Juts can't shake her longing for a baby, while holier-than-thou Louise is fit to be tied over her teenage daughter's headlong rush toward scandal. As usual, the sisters rarely see eye to eye, and there are plenty of opinions to go around. Even the common bond of patriotic duty brings wildly unexpected results when the twosome joins the Civil Air Patrol, watching the night sky for German Stukas. But loose lips can sink even the closest relationships, and Juts and Louise are about to discover that some things are best left unsaid.Spanning a decade in the lives of Louise, Juts, and their nearest and dearest, including the incomparable Celeste Chalfonte, Loose Lips is an unforgettable tale of love and loss and the way life can always throw you a curveball. By turns poignant and hilarious, it is deepened by Rita Mae Brown's unerring insight into the human heart.From the Hardcover edition.
Rita Mae Brown is the bestselling author of the Sneaky Pie Brown series; the Sister Jane series; A Nose for Justice and Murder Unleashed; Rubyfruit Jungle; In Her Day; and Six of One, as well as several other novels. An Emmy-nominated… More about Rita Mae Brown
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International Clinical Dental Research Organization is an organization that is dedicated to bringing dental research in India to the forefront. It looks to promote research through multicentric clinical trials as well as research in the basic sciences. The JICDRO is the official mouthpiece of the organization.
about the journal >>
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The journal is indexed with CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure), EBSCO Publishing's Electronic Databases, Google Scholar, Health & Wellness Research Center, Health Reference Center Academic, Hinari, Index Copernicus, Indian Science Abstracts, National Science Library, OpenJGate, SCOLOAR, SIIC databases and Ulrich's International Periodical Directory
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Shingles (Herpes Zoster)
Principal Proposed Natural Treatments
Other Proposed Natural Treatments
Principal Proposed Natural Treatments
Proteolytic Enzymes
Capsaicin: Useful for Post-herpetic Neuralgia
Other Proposed Natural Treatments
1 Billigmann P. Enzyme therapy—an alternative in treatment of herpes zoster. A controlled study of 192 patients [translated from German]. Fortschr Med . 1995;113:43–48.
2 Kleine MW, Stauder GM, Beese EW. The intestinal absorption of orally administered hydrolytic enzymes and their effects in the treatment of acute herpes zoster as compared with those of oral acyclovir therapy. Phytomedicine. 1995;2:7–15.
4 Sklar SH, Blue WT, Alexander EJ, et al. Herpes zoster—the treatment and prevention of neuralgia with adenosine monophosphate. JAMA . 1985;253:1427–1430.
5 Ayres S Jr, Mihan R. Post-herpes zoster neuralgia: response to vitamin E therapy [letter]. Arch Dermatol . 1973;108:855–856.
6 Cochrane T. Post-herpes zoster neuralgia: response to vitamin E therapy [letter]. ArchDermatol. 1975;111:396.
7 Heyblon R. Vitamin B12 in herpes zoster. JAMA . 1951;146:1338.
8 Lewith GT, Field J, Machin D. Acupuncture compared with placebo in post-herpetic pain. Pain . 1983;17:361–368.
9 Watson CP, Evans RJ, Watt VR. Post-herpetic neuralgia and topical capsaicin. Pain .1988;33:333-340.
10 Watson CP, Tyler KL, Bickers DR, et al. A randomized vehicle-controlled trial of topical capsaicin in the treatment of postherpetic neuralgia. Clin Ther . 1993;15:510-526.
11 Alper BS, Lewis PR. Treatment of postherpetic neuralgia: a systematic review of the literature. J Fam Pract . 2002;51:121-128.
12 Backonja M, Wallace MS, Blonsky ER, et al. NGX-4010, a high-concentration capsaicin patch, for the treatment of postherpetic neuralgia: a randomised, double-blind study. Lancet Neurol. 2008;7:1106-1112.
13 Irving G, Backonja M, et al. NGX-4010, a capsaicin 8% dermal patch, administered alone or in combination with systemic neuropathic pain medications, reduces pain in patients with postherpetic neuralgia. Clin J Pain . 2012;28(2):101-107.
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Photographic Novel
Please visit PHOTOGRAPHIC NOVEL to see more photographs of…
UNI campus, trees, trips, zoos, drawings, concerts, local buildings, plants, cats, the downtown Waterloo area, friends, flowers, nature, shadows, tattoos, libraries, feet, Colorado mountains, cemeteries, goats and anything else your ♥ could possibly desire!
You can read this novel from start to finish, start from the end and read it backwards, browse the chapters that interest you, skip to the index of keywords for what you want or skim a few pages here and there at your leisure. Please be sure to let me know what you think of the photos and if you have any ideas for other things I can take pictures of. Oh, and if you would like to use any of the pictures on any of my blogs just leave a comment and tell me how it was used and where it can be found if you used it for online purposes, if you would like a link back, that is!
Filed under: ♥ Creativity, Photographic Novel, Photography, University of Northern Iowa | 1 Comment
Tags: comment, images, photographic novel, Photography, postaday2011, trees, uni, University of Northern Iowa


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‹ Exit photo gallery
Dogs work the catwalk for 'Fashion for Paws'
Dozens of dogs participated in this year's Fashion for Paws, the Washington Humane Society's annual runway benefit show. The nearly $700,000 raised will benefit homeless and abused animals in the District.
Guests at the National Building Museum posed for pictures before Fashion for Paws began.
(Photo: Joshua Yospyn) fullscreen mode


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I do not trust Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi. He is part of the Khomeinist establishment, although a crudely sidelined one at the moment. His record as former prime minister isn't much more attractive than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's record as president.
The democracy movement is rallying around him, but the activists should be careful. Ruhollah Khomeini managed to convince Iranian liberals and leftists to forge an alliance with him to topple the Shah Reza Pahlavi in 1979, but he brutally smashed them once the revolution swept the old regime out of power. Alliances between liberals and Islamists is extraordinarily dangerous – for liberals.
At the same time, though, it's possible that Mousavi has changed. Michael Ledeen seems to think so. "He is not a revolutionary leader," he wrote, "he is a leader who has been made into a revolutionary by a movement that grew up around him…Whatever plans Mousavi had for a gradual transformation of the Islamic Republic, they have been overtaken by events."
Robert F. Worth published an interesting profile of him in the New York Times. "[Mousavi] is far from being a liberal in the Western sense," he cautiously wrote, "and it is not yet clear how far he will be willing to go in defending the broad democratic hopes he has come to embody."
There are some interesting anecdotes in Worth's piece, though we should be careful before assuming all this is true:
Yet like many founding figures of the revolution, he has come to believe that the incendiary radicalism of the revolution's early days must be tempered in an era of peace and state-building, those who know him say. Some have seen a symbolic meaning in his decision to make Monday's vast demonstration in Tehran a march from Enghelab (revolution) Square to Azadi (freedom) Square.
"He is a hybrid child of the revolution," said Shahram Kholdi, a lecturer at the University of Manchester who has written about Mr. Moussavi's political evolution. "He is committed to Islamic principles but has liberal aspirations."
Although he is deeply religious, Mr. Moussavi (the name is also often rendered in English as Mir Hossein Mousavi) appears to hold relatively liberal social views. His wife is a well-known professor of political science who has campaigned alongside him, often giving speeches and news conferences independently. When they were younger, he was sometimes introduced as "the husband of Zahra Rahnavard." His wife promised that if he was elected, he would advance women's rights and appoint "at least two or three women" to the cabinet.
His oldest daughter is a nuclear physicist. The youngest prefers not to wear the Islamic chador, and her parents do not mind, the relative said. "There has never been any compulsion in the family," the relative added.
In recent years, Mr. Moussavi was deeply dismayed by the excesses of the morality police and by the government's decisions to shut down newspapers, his relative said.
He decided to run for president earlier this year to save Iran from what he said were Mr. Ahmadinejad's "destructive" policies.
Mousavi himself probably doesn't know what his agenda will be a week or a month from today if he's still alive and out of prison. If he wins the internal power struggle, topples "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei, and becomes president, he might end up more Khrushchev than Gorbachev. History, though, is moving at light speed in Iran. And human personalities can be powerfully transformed during volcanic upheavals where the stakes are victory or destruction.


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Results 1 to 2 of 2
Thread: My humble Painter Tutorial (
February 11th, 2005 #1
My humble Painter Tutorial (
Hey everyone. I just completed this tutorial for my website. It's sort of a documentation of how I completed this specific piece. I doubt that's very usefull to anyone but myself. Really, after completing this, I'd recomend that everyone should make a tutorial. Not necessarily to help others but more to just gain insight into your own process and look at it as a whole.
1. I start pretty simple with what I like to call a base coat. It's just something to establish a bit of texture. I'm getting ready to start one of my quick (by quick I mean 30-45 minute) self-portraits.
2. Originally this piece started as a normal self portrait. I used a variation of the loaded pallet knife to just define some quick forms and some lights and darks.
3. Because it had started to look like one I had already done, I decided to have some fun with it rather than start over. I changed some of the features so they'd look more skeletal.
4. Now, I'm just sketching with a camel hair brush. I'm keeping everything one one layer and I'm really just doing this all on the fly.
5. I'm now starting to smooth out some of my strokes in order to make my forms more coherent. I'm using some larger camel hair brushes and the pallet knife.
6. There were a few things I didn't like and they needed to be fixed. I got rid of the little insect limbs as they were more of an ugly distraction than a supporting element. I'm also rendering the facial features more to tighten up what I do like.
7. Now it's time to lower the contrast a bit and darken it up in preparation for the addition of more dynamic lighting and eventually color. Like I said, this is a quickie for me. Normally I'd just plan this stuff out a little better. I've also decided to reintroduce the insect legs back into the piece only this time I'm actually giving some thought as to where I place them. The canvas just seemed weird with just a floating head coming from the upper corner.
8. Now I'm adding some more directional lighting in on a second, somewhat transparent layer. Just general airbrushed white over the flatter areas and some finer highlights with the camel hair.
9. Now it's time to introduce some color. Keep in mind, normally I'd just paint in color if I intend for something to be in color but that's when I at least have some sort of color scheme in mind when I first start. This is all spontaneous and so is the color choice. I'm just experimenting with flat colors (I settled on a crimsonish maroon) to put on a new "colorize" layer and then airbrushing in some orange highlights on to that same layer... Hopefully by now, you've realized how chaotic and inefficient my process is and you no longer have any desire to try and emulate it.
10. I collapse everything back on to one layer and put in the finishing touches. I add some proper gold-orange highlights where they need to go and clean up what needs to be cleaned up.
Here's the final image.
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Truly it's a great tutorial. I've seen all of your attachment. It was really great work by you. I can imagine that you had hard work fro success your task.


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NICEVILLE — A few summers ago, Cate Rasinski went to an ice cream shop while visiting her dad, John Rasinski, in Ohio. She noticed a huge hill, the site of the All-American Soap Box Derby, and asked her dad about it. After hearing about the annual competition, she knew she wanted to race.
John and his friend, Joe Kelly, got together and began building her a car. The result was perfect for Cate: A blank canvas for her Salt Life stickers and even one advertising the Air Force Research Lab, where her mom, Stephanie Johnson, works.
"Cate the great," as her friends call her, competed for the first time this year. She took part in three races, including the Akron Soap Box Derby. In that qualifying race, Cate managed to knock out two top contenders but failed to make it all the way to the All-American Soap Box Derby.
"She definitely caught everyone's attention," Johnson said.
The absence of hills in northwest Florida has put a stop to Cate's training for the time being, but her next race could happen in the spring. Her family chips in with the flying points to help get her to the races.
Cate said she just focuses on the basic mechanics of steering and stopping during a race. Kelly advised her to ignore the other racers.
"I race only myself," Cate explained.
She always races in a pair of black converses with racing checkered shoelaces and rainbow accents.
Cate has always been active. She surfs, skateboards, and is involved in sports. Still, she took to racing more than most of her activities, Johnson said.
"You get to drive a car and you're my age," Cate said of why she wanted to race. "It's not something many kids get to do."
Before she began racing, Cate dealt with anxiety, depression and was generally upset most of the time, Johnson said.
"Racing gave her an identity," Johnson said.
When she first started racing, Cate thought she'd lose every competition. Now, she believes she'll make it to the All-American Soap Box Derby.
"Always believe in yourself," she said.
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Lauren Delgado at 850-315-4445 or email@example.com. Follow her on Twitter @LaurenDnwfdn.


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Hey Mum, I'm Famous!!! April 28, 2013Posted by mwidlake in Private Life, Uncategorized.
Tags: private
6 comments
I got a mail this week from Richard Harrison:
"Hi Martin
See you made it in to oracle magazine this month.That's the pinnacle of any oracle professionals career – all downhill from here on in :-)"
I was not aware of my sudden raise to fame, but Richard is right – I'm in this month's "peer to peer" section, which just gives some details about recent Oracle Ace's I think. I'd forgotten that I had done a form they sent me before Christmas, answering a set of questions. It is interesting to see what they picked out of all my answers to include.
I think most of us would feel it is nice to see something about ourselves in print (so long as it is not derogatory or critical, of course!), though when I come to think of it, I don't really know why it is nice – other than the rather self-serving feeling of having our egos polished. And as my friends I drink with would (and probably will) comment, my ego certainly does not need much polishing :-). I've of course made it worse by blogging about how famous I now am. Polish, polish, polish.
Don't worry, my wife stepped in to put me back in my place. "You could tell your mum when you next ring her – not that she'll be impressed at all!". Thanks wife. She's right. My mum will just say "that's nice" in a tone that in no way convinces me she means it, and will then proceed to talk at me about her new cats, what's on TV and all the terrible things going on in the world, according to the "Daily Mail" (An utterly horrible and vacuous daily tabloid paper her in the UK).
So thank you for the heads-up Richard. I'm looking forward to the rapid decline of my career as you predict… :-)
The Three Tenners- OUGN 2013 April 26, 2013Posted by mwidlake in Meeting notes, off-topic, Presenting, Private Life.
Tags: Meeting, private
1 comment so far
Seeing as I did a blog post about looking forward to my second Norwegian Oracle User Group spring meeting, I suppose I should say how it went.
Given the circumstances, it went well and I enjoyed the conference far more than I would have enjoyed being home for those days. Part of the enjoyment was the reformation of the Martin Cluster as mentioned in my last blog. A small part of that was the slightly childish humour I found in those situations when people introduce themselves when they meet at such meetings. I'd be chatting to Mr Nash, Mr Bach and usually one or two others and when a new person came along and asked names, the three of us would take it in turns to say "hi, I'm Martin" – "I'm Martin" – "I'm Martin too". It was like a poor take on the "I'm Brian" pastiche of the Spartacus movie. Most people smiled.
At the Speakers Meal on the first night Bryn Llewelyn suddenly said something like "Well, let's take a picture of the Three Martins – it's almost like the Three Tennors!" It had to be done, I dug out three ten pound notes so we could have a picture of the Three Tenners. If only the idiot on the right had held his the same way around as the other two…
Thanks to Bryn for the picture.
So, why did I say the event went well despite the circumstances? Because I was ill thoughout the event :-(.
I met up with some friends in London on Tuesday night before the conference, as I could not get into London and across to Heathrow in time for my flight in the morning. So I had to stay over. I know, you are all thinking I drank waaaay too many beers and was hung over the next day! I could not argue that I did not have several beers that night but it was more the 4 hours sleep and long walk that I blamed for how I felt. At the end of the evening I went out to Heathrow and I got directed to the wrong Premier Inn there {I was very specific about it being T5, I knew there were two hotels} and it took a while to get to this wrong hotel. Or rather half a mile past it. I new what side of the road the hotel was on (online maps with street view are so helpful) but it did not appear {as I am in the wrong place} and the bus driver who was going to give me the nod did so a stop or two too late. So I walked waaay back – and get told "Other Premier Inn sir". OK, can you get me there "No, get a bus". It's midnight, the last bus was not so helpful. Shuttle bus? "No sir" Taxi? "Get the bus sir". Sigh, not helpful. Well, that is what you should expect when you use budget hotels I guess. How far is it? "About 2 miles Sir". I walked. It turned out to be over 3.
So when I met Martin Bach at the airport next day, I blamed the beer, long walks and lack of sleep. But as the day progressed I felt worse and worse and worse. Tuesday night might not have helped but this was more. We got to the venue and after lunch I did my talk on Row Level Security and masking data (which was packed, to my amazement) then checked into the hotel and went to bed. Thus I missed all other sessions. I managed the Speakers Meal (and it was jolly good, thank you OUGN) and then had a good night's sleep. It did not help. The next day was a blur, half of it I was asleep but I did manage my second presentation, on Disasters oddly enough. Afterwards I went back to my cabin and only got up briefly to see about trying to eat some food, but the rough sea quickly made me decide not to bother. I managed two other sessions other than my own. One was a Martin talking (a very good one on making practical use of virtualisation) and the other was the Keynote by Cary Millsap, who did a talk that was more about life than Oracle. I had missed this talk at the UKOUG conference but had heard about it, so I was keen to see it. It was the highlight of the conference for me. I'll probably do a Friday Philosophy on it "soon" but the main message was that Cary feels life always changes and it seems best when you are doing something to progress from a bad place to a better one, rather than 'enjoying' the better place. It's a philosophy I have a lot of time for.
The last day was similar except that I seemed to perk up a bit in the afternoon and I finally got to see one or two more sessions. I did my final one, on "an introduction to tuning" and it was awful. I had a lot of material to cover and I knew I could pile though it on a good day, but this was a bad day and I simply could not keep my thread or progress through the material rapidly. *sigh*. At least there were not too many people there to witness the car crash. I'll be interested to see how poor the ratings on my talks are.
So all in all I should count the event as a bit of a disaster. But I managed to honour my presenting duties and, despite spending half the time laying down in the dark, I had some fantastic conversations with people in the two evenings I managed to be awake. Oh, and thank you to the people who organised for them to play Happy Birthday to me in the Piano Bar at midnight on Friday (45 now), I might have been a bit quiet about it but I did appreciate that. It sums up half of what I like about the OUGN spring conference. I missed the first half, the excellent talks you get from what both years has been a very good speaker line-up, but the other is that everyone is around in the lunchtimes and evenings and you get to chat, find out other stuff, make new friends and just spend time with lots of people who are interested in some of the things you are, ie Oracle.
After the conference I did stay on in Oslo for a few day, my wife had come out to join me for my birthday weekend. We enjoyed the weekend but she kept on saying "you look dreadful" or "are you sure you are up to going out?" and "stop coughing you annoying bloody bas…." :-) I'm still coughing now and feel pretty rough, a week on.
I'll be sure to try and be there next year. I hope I feel better by then!
Re-forming the Martin Cluster in Norway April 5, 2013Posted by mwidlake in Friday Philosophy, Meeting notes, Presenting, Uncategorized.
Tags: Meeting, perception, Presenting
7 comments
Later this month, on April 17-20th, I am presenting again at the Norwegian Oracle user group (OUGN) spring conference {modern browsers will allow you to translate any Norwegian if you need to} . I loved it last year, as you can see from my third-day post on it. I've been lucky to attend some very good conferences over the last few years but those three days at the OUGN conference last year were, I think, my favourite single event to date. If you are within striking distance of Oslo and can negotiate the time out of the office, I would strongly recommend the event. If you can't negotiate the time, heck, take a holiday and go anyway :-)
Part of what I really enjoyed about the event was the fact that two of the days are spent on a ferry/cruise ship from Oslo to Kiel and back. And oddly enough, that is what initially put me off going to the conference – I am very susceptible to Sea Sickness. I had no problems though, partly due to the large quantities of travel calm pills I swallowed, partly due to the good weather, but mostly because the talks were excellent and the atmosphere was fantastic. I don't mean "hey, it was a bit like a holiday" {though in some ways it was as it was such fun} but because the speakers and the attendees can't escape, at least not without a long swim, everyone is around all day and all evening. It just adds to the whole event. I spoke to more "new" people during that conference than I ever have before.
At most conferences the presentations at the end of the day tend to be less well attended and there can be a feeling of wind-down, especially on the last day. A fair number of people feel the need to make an early exit to get home before the worst of the traffic or are under pressure to get back to the office and just sort out some issue that is pressing. The people around in the evening tend to be the presenters and the conference die-hards and so are usually the same sad old bunch of geezers and gals :-) . However, on the OUGN Boat this is not the case. All sessions tend to be well attended and in the evening nearly everyone is out having something to eat, a few drinks (those North Europeans sure do like the odd drink, but in a relaxed and affable way) and just being sociable.
Over the last few years the conference has developed a reputation for being technically strong too. This is of course partly due to the excellent atmosphere attracting good presenters and the good presenters in turn help make the conference better. popular and well attended – and that in turn attracts presenters. A nice positive feedback loop. I certainly learnt a lot of stuff last year and I cannot think of a poor presentation that I attended. Hmm, maybe one of mine was a little weak :-| . The organisers do an excellent job of helping the presenters feel relaxed and appreciated too. For example, I was nervous about the boat part of the trip to they gave me one slot on the mainland the day before we sailed and suggested I could bail out at Kiel if I was suffering. As a presenter, that sort of consideration counts for a lot. I don't want or expect to be treated like some minor celebrity and I was not, but for the whole conference I just felt like the organisers appreciated my taking time out from work and flying out to come and present.
The final reason I am looking forward to the event (and thus the odd title) is the re-forming of the Martin Oracle Cluster :-) – this is myself, Martin Nash and Martin Bach. We all do several conferences a year, we all used to go along to the London Oracle Beers and we have become good friends. Other Oracle Martin's are welcome to join us – At the OUGN last year there was also Martin Büchi, who I had not met before, but this year I think we are the only Martins presenting. We just don't seem to have managed to re-from the cluster for many months now, partly as Mr Bach returned to Germany.
Martin Nash – Martin Büchi – Martin Bach – Martin Widlake
Thanks to Øyvind Isene for the picture.
I suppose I should mention what I am presenting on? Well, as I mentioned in my last Friday Philosophy, I am concentrating more on introductory presentations. You can see my official agenda here. I am doing:
- an introductory presentation on Row Level Security, VPD and hiding rows or columns of data {it will be interesting to see how large the audience is for that one!}
- an introduction to SQL tuning where I cover the absolute basics, but hopefully in a way that allows those new to it (or maybe even not so new) to treat tuning as a logical and sensible process, as opposed to Black Magic of favourite hints and arcane practices
- my disasters talk. I love giving my disasters talk. I've "been in the vicinity" of a lot of disasters and I only ever talk about things I have seen first hand, so no urban myths.
Friday Philosophy – Level of Presentations March 8, 2013Posted by mwidlake in Exadata, Friday Philosophy, Perceptions, Presenting.
Tags: knowledge, perception, Presenting
7 comments
This FF is a bit of a follow-up to the one I posted last week on PL/SQL skills and a comment made by Noons on how much knowledge you need to be an OakTable member.
I have a question to answer and I would appreciate other people's opinion. Should there be more intro talks at conferences? If so, should the experts be giving them?
I am an OakTable member (and really quite worryingly proud about that) and I guess that means I know a lot about some aspects of Oracle. But also, and this is a key part of being asked to be a member of the OakTable, I both try and base my "knowledge" on scientific testing of what I think I know (be it by myself or others willing to show their workings) and I try and pass that knowledge on. I don't think there is a member of the OT that does not abide by those two concepts.
This is not false modesty on my part, but most other people on the OT know a shed load {UK colloquialism for "really quite a lot"} more than I do about the Oracle database and how it works. Some of them are so smart I can't but secretly dislike them for it :-). But I have a reasonable stash of knowledge in my head and I am a stong proponent of those last two factors. In particular, I want to put what I have in my head about {ohh, let's pick partition pruning} in other people's heads. Which is why for the last 4 years most of my presentations have run over horribly. I must get every detail into the audiences' heads, even if they don't want to know it!
Of late I have started to feel that I present in the wrong way. I take a subject, I write down what I know about it and I try to present that knowledge. I've only picked topics I feel I know well and in which I can handle almost any question the audience asks. For me to be that confident I have to have used that aspect of Oracle technology a lot and had months, if not years of experience. You cannot pass that on in 1 hour. I've already said I am not that smart, but I learn over time. So I started to strip out the basics and present just the clever stuff, which shows how fabulous I am. {British self-deprecating sarcasm, please}. Just like so many other experts. Hell, if we are experts, we should be talking expert stuff!!!
To balance that I think there is a gap in what is talked about at conferences. I know this is felt by some conference organisers and attendees too, but there is just way too much "impressive smart stuff" and not enough "how X works in the real world, for people who have never done it". Not 10,000 feet up sales pitch rubbish that gives no substance, but talks on a topic where you can go from level 1 for knowledge-free beginners to level 5 for the 25 people at the conference who know this stuff inside out – and the talk stops at level 2. I've made a decision to try and address that gap, which is why I now offer more talks on "an intro to Exadata" and "how to get going with performance tuning" than the smart stuff.
The problem is, how many people, probably mostly young people, go to conferences? Am I wasting my time trying to offer these talks if no one going to the conferences wants them? Do people going to conferences, generally speaking, want the technical nitty-gritty or do they want the intro stuff? Yes, I know there is a spread but where is the real need? I suppose I thought of this recently when I did a talk on Index Organized Tables and almost everyone in the room already used them. Then, a few hours later, I did an intro to database design. Almost everyone in the room was a seasoned database designer… I doubt I said much of real value to either audience.
That leaves my last point about should the experts do intro talks? A problem with experts doing intro talks is the expert knows it all. It can be hard to remember what you really needed to know at the start (and also, my own problem, knowing what to drop out the talk as, really, it is "being smart as an ego-trip" that the new people can do without). But if you are not an expert, can you handle the What If questions? I have played with this issue with my Intro to Exadata talk. I wrote the draft when I had very little real experience and I have only modified it as I gained more experience. I'm glad I did as when I revisited the presentation recently I started putting loads of stuff in that only makes sense when you are used to it's peculiarities. Thankfully, I realised this and stripped most of it out again. So well, in fact, that one person who wrote about the talk said "it was nice to see someone talk about it who was an Oracle expert who obviously knew little about the topic". Well, something like that :-)
Enough. I would appreciate other people's opinions and experiences on this.
Friday Philosophy – Do good DBAs need PL/SQL Skills? March 1, 2013Posted by mwidlake in Friday Philosophy, PL/SQL.
Tags: knowledge, PL/SQL
15 comments
This Friday Philosophy was prompted by a discusion between some OakTable people about did we think "good" DBAs should know PL/SQL? Not all the tricks, bulk processing, using all the built-ins, but able to write PL/SQL with cursor loops and some exception handling that could eg cycle thorough tables and archive off data or implement some logon trigger functionality.
My response was "that depends on the age of the DBA".
If you had asked me that question 15 years ago I would have said Yes, a good DAB would and should know PL/SQL.
If you had asked me 10 years ago I would have said I'd hope they would and most DBAs I respected has some PL/SQL skills.
If you had asked me 5 years ago I would have sighed and had a little rant about how they should but the younger ones don't and that is wrong.
But now, I would say that no, a good DBA does not need PL/SQL skills as so often they have so many other things they have to do and the tools to manage the database are somewhat better than they were. But inside I would still be thinking any DBA beyond their first year or two in the job would benefit from knowing the basics of PL/SQL.
It seems to me that a DBA now is generally expected to look after a very large number of instances, application servers, agents etc and all their time is taken doing the bread-and-butter tasks of backups and recoveries, patching, duplicating data, raising SRs (and that seems to take more and more time each SR every year), unlocking accounts, sorting out permissions…
Not only that but there is more and more to Oracle that a good DBA needs to understand as the technolgy gets more complex. Oracle has tried to make Oracle look after itself more but the result seems to be that for larger systems there are more moving parts to go wrong – and when they do it is often the DBA who has to sort it out. As an example, you no longer need to set several instance parameters to allocate memory to the components of the PGA and SGA. Just set the Memory Target. But if the system starts to throw odd errors about components being out of memory, the DBA needs to sort that out. They need to know about the dynamic memory adjust ments and check them out. They need to understand that certain components are now calculated in a different way, like the log buffer size. And probably they will have to revert back to the old parameters so they still need to know all about that!
So unless a DBA is an old hand and "grew up" with all this, they have no time to develop PL/SQL skills. Thus my response was "that depends on the age of the DBA".
Should a good DBA know SQL?
Yes. I still see that as a given. Buttons, widgets and assistants will only get you so far.
RMOUG – Here I Come February 9, 2013Posted by mwidlake in Exadata, Meeting notes, Private Life.
Tags: exadata, Meeting, private
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Well, I've just finished pushing the last few bits into my suitcase for my trip to the US for the Rocky Mountain User Group Training Days 2013.
It is a few years since I went to the US for pleasure (3 years?) and much longer since I went there on a combined work/pleasure trip – as I HATE going through US immigration.
I was tempted into this trip when I met up with a fellow OakTable member Tim Gorman at the Slovenia User Group last October. Tim was a true gentleman throughout that conference (and this is not to detract from the kind ministrations of Jože Senegačnik who was a wonderful host and also a fellow OakTable member) and he suggested I put forward a talk or two to the RMOUG training days conference. I was in two minds due to my huge dislike of being shouted at by the {I am sad to say, usually bl00dy unfriendly} members of the US immigration services. I mean, I went to Moscow in around 1994 and those chaps in the USSR were positively oozing cordial welcome compared to the hard-nosed and antagonistic attitude of the US chaps a year or two later!
Anyway, Tim swayed my opinion in a simple and direct manner. He mentioned Skiing. I went skiing in 1992. My one and only Skiing holiday. I loved it, I spent 2 weeks going from terrified starter to someone who could swish down Blue runs with the rest of them, the occasional Red run towards the end. Not Black, I saw enough sad-looking stretchers coming down from the Black runs as I sat in the bars at the bottom to think there was something to be scared of there – and when I chatted to the barman in my chosen watering hole he told me how so many of them were us Brits who had lost the brains to realise what our limits were.
So, I will be at the conference doing my bit about "first things to know about Exadata" and then I will be up in the mountains, scaring myself on hills that when I was 20 looked like a walk in the park…. What is the betting I do not get as far as Red runs this time?!?
Friday Philosophy: It's Not What you Know – It's What you are Getting To Know. December 7, 2012Posted by mwidlake in Friday Philosophy, Meeting notes, Perceptions.
Tags: Meeting, perception, Presenting, UKOUG, user group
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This has been a good but tiring week. It started with the UKOUG TEBS conference where I saw lots of people I know, a few who I didn't but now do and I had good times in pubs and restaurants. One evening culminated in my singing part of "Two out of Three ain't bad" in the style of a munchkin with Nial Litchfield in a pub at 1am, which I am sure he woud rather forget about – so if you know him, ask him about it. For me that was the indicator to go lie down in the dark and sleep. Irrespectve of drunken singing, I must had talked about 20 topics with 40 people over the conference, exchanging ideas, tricks and war stories.
I also presented on the Sunday, teaching people. I went to many fine presentations through the week and learnt stuff, balancing the knowledge books. This included one talk on Wednesday where I found out I had been teaching people wrong on Sunday! *sigh* Oh dear. And it is something I have been getting wrong for years. I'll check the fine detail before I blog about that though. I now hate SQL Maria for pointing out my error – which is unfair but that's life. Sorry Maria, I'll buy you a beer sometime to make up for it.
After all that, I came back to work to find we had some big issues with one system. I won't go into the details but there were half a dozen of us working on it, coming up with ideas, knocking each other's suggestions down or agreeing with them – and coming up with working solutions. None of us could have done it alone and I reckon most of us learnt a couple of things in the process (such as how bad some of the app design was :-) ).
So all in all, a week of learning that has worn me out but left me happy and that is what I like about my work life at present. I am working with people who know stuff and who want to know stuff. I am in a role that exposes me to a lot of issues. I am working for a boss (and team) who let me take time out from the official job to learn stuff too. I suspect it is going to end soon though as the company I am working for are taking large numbers of people to the carpark and shooting them (figuratively speaking only, I should point out). It will be a shame if it does end. But then, just as when I worked with the best IT person I ever worked with, I'll be happy I had the experience.
Yes, I know I am lucky to have such a good working life at present {but, you know something? I did take efforts to make it like this – maybe a future FF on that}.
So having said I like my working life so much, who is willing to bet I'll be complaining like a spoilt child all next week?!?
Friday Philosophy – The Tech to Do What You Need Probably Exists Already November 30, 2012Posted by mwidlake in Friday Philosophy, Perceptions.
Tags: documentation, knowledge, perception, system development
4 comments
How many of you have read the Oracle Concepts manual for the main version you are working on?
This is a question I ask quite often when I present and over the last 10 years the percentage number of hands raised has dropped. It was always less than 50%, it's been dropping to more like 1 in 10 and Last year (at the UKOUG 2011 conference) was the nadir when not a single hand was raised. {Interestingly I asked this at the Slovenian User Group 3 months ago and something like 40% raised their hand – impressive!}.
Why do I feel this is important? Well, do you know all the technology solutions available across just the core RDBMS with no cost options?. No, you don't, you (and I) really don't. If you read the concepts manual, even just skimming it, you will be reminded of a whole load of stuff you have only dim memories of and perhaps you will even see some features that passed you by when they were first introduced.
Of course, you would need to read a few more manuals to get the full picture, such as the PL/SQL Packages and Types References, as so much good stuff is introduced via built-in packages, and the SQL Language Reference, as SQL has been extended quite a lot over the last couple of versions. Dull reading indeed but I'd estimate that if you read those three you would be aware of 90%+ of the Oracle technologies that are available to you out-of-the-box and considerably more than all but a handful of Oracle Experts. You'd know more than I as (a) I have not skimmed the PL/SQL one for years and (b) I have a rotten memory.
My point it, you can't consider using Oracle technologies you don't know about or remember – and they could be just what you need to fix the problem you see in front of you.
I'll give a couple of examples.
Problem, physical IO is too high, your storage system is bottle-necked.
Answers, Reducing Physical IO:
-First up, Index Organized tables. Some of you will be aware that I am very keen on IOTs and the reason I am is that I've used them to physically group data that the application needed to select over and over again. It can make a massive improvement to that sort of system. They are rarely used.
-Clustered Tables. Even less used, in fact has anyone reading this used them in anger in the last 10 years? Great for situations where you need parent-children or parent-children-type-1+parent-children-type-2 data. I confess, I have not used them in anger for years.
-Move table (and order them as you do it!) and re-build indexes to remove "dead" space. This one got a bad name, especially the index rebuilds, as people were doing it needlessly without appreciating what the intention was, but now I hardly ever see it done – even when it is of benefit.
-Compress your tables and indexes. With normal Oracle compress (no need for HCC). In tests I've done I pretty much always see a drop in physical IO and run time. Being candid, I can't remember doing any tests and NOT seeing an improvement but I usually only test when I expect and improvement and I don't want to give anyone the impression it will always help.
All the above were available in Oracle 7 or 8 and all have improved over the versions.
Problem, you want to carry out some long,complex data processing in PL/SQL and if a step fails, be able to handle it and carry on.
– Savepoints. You can rollback to a savepoint, not just to the last commit. In this way you can break the task into chunks and, if something towards the end fails, you roll back one step (or several, your choice) and call an alternative routine to handle the exception.
– Autonomous Transactions. You want to record that an error occurred but not fail the original action or not save anything it has done to date. An autonomous transaction runs in it's own sub-session and commits in it do not effect the calling session.
– Temporary Tables. You can put your working information in them as you progress and if you need to bomb out (or some evil DBA kills your session for running too long) the temp table contents just disappear. No clean up needed.
Maybe the above is not so fair, I have not been a proper PL/SQL developer for a while now, but I hardly see the above used. Especially Savepoints. I can't remember not having savepoints available (hmm, maybe Oracle 6) and Autonomous Transactions and Temporary tables are Oracle 8 (I thought Temporary tables might be 9 but Tim Hall's OracleBase says 8)
Another thing I have noticed over the years is that so often I will read up on some oracle feature I know little about, only for it to come up in the next few weeks! There is a psychological aspect to this, that we only remember these "coincidences" and not the more common situations where we read up on something which does not subsequently come up before we forget about it, but I think that it is also that we tend to use only a few solutions to solve the problems we see and adding another solution to our list means the chances are high it will be suitable for something soon.
OK, so it would help us all to read the manuals (or other Oracle technical books) more. Now the big problem is finding the time.
Why Present (UKOUG TEBS 2012) November 27, 2012Posted by mwidlake in Friday Philosophy, Presenting.
Tags: behaviour, Presenting, UKOUG, user group
3 comments
The annual UK Oracle User Group Technical and E-Business Suite conference is fast approaching and rather than just say "hey everyone, I'm going to present at a conference" I thought I would say why I present at conferences (and SIGs (and any opportunity I get) ).
The UKOUG TEBS conference is the one that is, in my eyes, the UKOUG conference. It covers E-business suite and the core database stuff – DBA-type things and developer-type things. The things I am interested in. You can see the details and agenda via this link. If you would like to see someone else's view of this year's conference, from a delegate's perspective, check out this post by my friend Big Dave Roberts. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I've personally got more out of the UKOUG TEBS conference than when I have been lucky enough to go to Oracle Open World. For me, I want to see user stories and opinions as well as the Oracle company line – and user groups give far more of that. UKOUG is the biggest and most encompassing of the European conferences, but check out and attend your local user groups if you are not based in the UK (or are in Scotland) – I've been to a couple now and all have been good.
{Oh, I should add, I am not presenting at the main TEBS conference, for the first time that I've made it there in…10 years! I'm presenting on the OakTable Sunday. I get to fully enjoy the whole 3 days of TEBS this year, as a normal punter!}
So why do I present?
First up, I am lucky that presenting does not scare me. Oh, I get nervous before I start and I worry about my material and doing a decent job of it, but I never feel sick or faint before starting(*). I've got some good friends who know as much or more about database technology than I and, in a social situation, they will let fourth with eloquence and passion about some topic. Usually in a pub. But the idea of formally presenting fills them with the heebie-jeebies if not the screaming abdabs. Or, when they get up to talk, they morph from erudite and eloquent {ie they speak clearly, concisely and interestingly) into stuttering, uncomfortable rabbits caught in the lights. And they quickly drop back from it. It's a real shame as they have a lot to say. Actually, it is a blessing as it leaves space open for me :-)
Secondly, I want to be noticed. There, I've said it. I'm pretty sure that 75%+ of the regular speakers at conference want to be noticed and that is a factor in why we do it. Oh, of course, we can wrap it up as "marketing your skills" or "maintaining a presences" but that's fluff. We want you to see us talk and we want you to like what you see. Well, not the physical aspect of it, that would be weird, but we want you to either think we know what we are talking about or enjoy listening to us prattle on. We want to be appreciated. That's not so noble, huh? But true.
As a sub-topic to "I want to be noticed" let's deal with getting work. For me personally, speaking has never got me a job. Asking around friends and contacts most people are the same in that Presenting does not get most of us any work. Maybe it's a factor when I get interviewed but no one has once come up to me after a talk and said "can you come to our site and be paid a vast sum of money to solve this problem". I'd love you to be the first, though…
Third, and this may seem noble – or corny or self-worthy – but I talk because I want to teach. I want you to have in your head the knowledge I have in mine, preferably with less pain and anguish than it took me to get it in mine. I love teaching people stuff. It is a common trait to the OakTable network. We teach and we demonstrate why we think what we think. Usually. I can't decide if I prefer making something that is broken work or teaching people more. Those two are why I do what I do. Frankly I gave up on making a "significant difference" years ago, I'll stick to making lots of insignificant differences.
Fourth, I get to meet people. It's taken a while as, except in small groups, I am not great at being sociable. That might seem odd given I said I like to be noticed, but I don't like to be noticed as a fool and for reasons I will side-step, I'm not too great at judging how I am coming across. Plus I cannot remember names or faces, which is tricky sometimes. Actually, a lot of actors are not "social people", for some they act because they can't "do" people. Anyway, presenting has opened doors to me by meeting other presenters who know their stuff, non-presenters who know their stuff and, generally, people. Most of whom have been nice.
Fifth, and this is quite rare. I get asked. If you ask me to present the chances are I will say "ohh, yes please!!!!" We are back to my second point about being noticed, aren't we? Caveat. If you ask me to present and you live thousands of miles from the UK, as I have no employer to fund my demands for limousines and four-star hotels, I might have to say no. Unless you buy me a LOT of beer.
That is why I present. You probably now expect me to say something to encourage you to present but, mehh, if you want to, just do it. If you don't, don't do it. It's not for everyone. Except you over there. Yes, you know who you are. You need to present more. :-)
(*) I confess, when I do a talk that is aiming to be funny, I get very nervous. When I do my "disasters" talk I can get very nervous as the whole idea is that people will be amused. If I get the feel of the talk wrong I can look preachy or obnoxious or bitter or daft or all four and more. But it is still the talk I most enjoy giving.
Friday Philosophy – The Importance of Context November 23, 2012Posted by mwidlake in Friday Philosophy, Perceptions.
Tags: Architecture, behaviour, Humour, perception, system development
1 comment so far
A couple of weeks ago I was making my way through the office. As I came towards the end of the large, open-plan room I became aware that there was someone following behind me so, on passing through the door I held it briefly for the person behind me {there was no where else they could be going}, turned left and through the next door – and again held it and this time looked behind me to see if the person was still going the same way as I. The lady behind gave me the strangest look.
The strange look was reasonable – the door I'd just held for her was the one into the gentleman's bathroom. *sigh*
I was doing the correct thing, I was attempting to be helpful to a fellow person, I was in fact being very polite. But because I had utterly failed to consider the context, there is now a lady who works on the same floor as I who considers me, at best, as strange. At worst she thinks I am very strange – and more than a little creepy. I fear the latter given her reaction when she saw me in the kitchen area recently and turned around. {By the way, if anyone can think of a good way I can clear this up I'd appreciate it. After all, I can't exactly go up to her and say "sorry about holding the door to the gents for you the other day, I did not realise you were a woman"}.
My point is that you can do what you believe is the right thing but, because you are not thinking of the context or are unaware of the full situation, you end up giving utterly the wrong impression. I had a work situation like this a while back.
Without going into too much detail, I was working with a client on a data warehouse project. The Oracle database bulk-processed large quantities of data, did classic big-data queries and was sitting on some fairly expensive hardware with dedicated storage and the intention of implementing Dataguard. One of the issues they had was with a subsidiary part of the system that created a very large number of small transactions, lots of updates. High volume OLTP on a DW setup. It was hammering the storage and eating up all the available IO. The data for this subsidiary system was transient, no need to protect it.
I realised that the hardware was not correct for this subsidiary system and it needed no archived redo. Archiving redo is an all or nothing situation for an Oracle instance. So happy that I had worked out what to do I proposed {with a smile} moving the subsidiary system to it's own database on it's own hardware.
When I said this to the client, their response was a stony look and the comment "We've just spent a fortune on this platform……". Having dug my hole I proceeded to jump right in there "It's OK, what I am proposing is only about 5, 7 thousand pounds of kit – nothing compared to what you spent already!". The client now got very, very annoyed indeed.
You see, the context is that they had been sold a system that was very expensive – it was to do a demanding job. They had been getting poor performance with the system and that is partly why I was there. They also did not really understand the technical nuances well (at least, not the chaps I was talking to) and they did not appreciate why I said what I did. From their perspective, this smiling loon was suggesting that a system costing 2-3% of what they had spent on their data warehouse platform was going to be able to do the processing that the expensive system could not. Either they had spent waaay too much, this new "expert" was an idiot or else I was lying to them. And they did not like any of those options.
Looking back it is clear I should have been more aware of how they would receive what I said. I've done this before {several times}, bounded into a situation like a wide-eyed puppy and gone "Look! We can just do that!" without considering things like upsetting the guy who had suggested the original solution, or making the on-site expert look stupid or blowing away a salesman's pitch. Or that I have missed a glaring and valid reason why they can't "just do that".
I suspect that a few people would say "no, you just tell them the way it is and if they don't like it or you upset someone then tough". Well, maybe, but not if you want to be there to help fix the next problem. Also, I know I am not great at appreciating the context sometimes. That is part of why I will never run a company or be a senior manager, I lack the skills to judge the impact of what I propose or say sometimes, in my rush to be helpful. I am slowly learning to just hold back on ideas though and to run things past friends or colleagues with more "whole picture" skills first though. I might be rubbish at it but I can learn I am rubbish at it.
In the case of the situation above, the expensive system was correct for what they wanted to do – and maybe not quite expensive enough. I was suggesting a slightly unusual fix for a specific problem and I should have been more laboured in explaining the problem and more circumspect in leading them to the solution. I should have taken more time.
I should have checked who was following me and where I was going before I held the door open.


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Samsung Galaxy S Plus30 August 2011
The first Samsung Galaxy S handset caused quite a fuss for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was a remarkable device and one that people genuinely wanted to own. Secondly, though, was how much it looked like an iPhone, down to the home button and curved,... >>


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Women's business center slates panel discussion in Fontana
The Inland Empire Women's Business Center will have a panel discussion July 23 in Fontana to connect business owners with experts in insurance, banking, lending, asset recovery and financial planning. "Women, Wealth and Wisdom" will be held from 3 – 5:30 p.m. at the Hilton Garden Inn, 10543 Sierra Ave. Cost: $10 for center members; $20 for non-members. Information: Carla Ulloa at (909) 890-1242; www.iewbc.org.
Rancho chamber CEO completes business accreditation program
Rancho Cucamonga Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Michelle Alonzo recently graduated from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles with a four-year accreditation in business management, IOM, a professional development program. "On behalf of the Rancho Cucamonga Chamber and its Board of Directors, we are proud of Michelle and the work that she has done to complete this prestigious award, and wish her tremendous success in her career," Chamber Chairwoman Renee Futter said in a news release.
City of Riverside joins U.S. Green Building Council
The city of Riverside is now a member of the U.S. Green Building Council , a nonprofit dedicated to making green building practices commonplace. "Becoming a member of USGBC is directly in line with the city's efforts," said Scott Barber, the city's community development department director. "Riverside had the nation's first incentive-based Green Building Program. We also have a building official who is both LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Accredited Professional and Build-It-Green-certified." Membership in the nonprofit entitles the city to council programs such as workshops and courses, LEED reference guides and accreditation, e-newsletters and information on green building. "The USGBC is on the cutting edge of green building technology," said Mayor Ronald O. Loveridge. "Green building is Riverside's future, and this organization can help guide us there."


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West Florida Hospital to Offer Free "Hip and Knee Arthritis" Seminar
April 02, 2012
Pensacola, FL – West Florida Hospital will offer a free seminar entitled "Hip and Knee Arthritis" on Thursday, April 12 from 6-7 p.m. in the hospital's 7th Floor Auditorium, 8383 North Davis Highway, Pensacola. The seminar will be presented by Donald Dewey, M.D., orthopedic surgeon.
At the seminar, Dr. Dewey will discuss how arthritis affects the hips and knees as well as the treatment options that are available. Dr. Dewey will also talk about the latest implants available today and how they can offer a shorter recovery time and increased range of motions for many patients.
In the United States, approximately 600,000 people have hip or knee replacement in a given year. Contributing factors include osteoarthritis, obesity, repetitive wear and tear, and injuries.
The session is FREE and open to the public, but registration is requested. Please call (850) 494-3212 to register or for more information.