This year I broke my string of College Football Bowl Game attendances even though the Wisconsin Badgers did get invited to the Champs Bowl ( Orlando Florida ). I had been (along with my son) to five straight prior Badger Bowl games ( Nashville TN, Oralando FL, Tampa FL, Orlando FL, Tampa Florida ), but I was flat out exhausted from 2008 and decided to stay at home this year and have a few of those “forget what day of the week it is” days. Is today Saturday? Ah yes, it must be as yesterday was the Cotton Bowl! Ole Miss came through for me (Ka-ching! ) yesterday by handily trouncing the formerly #1 ranked Texas Tech Red Raiders.
#1 is a strong statement. Yup, they absolutely have a 9 – 4 record. They are not a Utah with an undefeated season. They are not a USC, Texas (yes, my friends, Texas will beat Ohio State ), or Florida ( hint hint ). But here is why I think Ole Miss is the best College Football team in America during the 2nd half of the season:
The only team to beat Florida. If (when) Florida does beat Oklahoma and is crowned #1 – what does that make Ole Miss? They beat #1.
Won their last 6 games of the season
Let their opponents ( three (3) of which were SEC teams ) score only 20 total points their last four (4) regular season games. That’s 5 points a game. Meanwhile, they scored 152 points during those four (4) games. 152 – 20 : I did not hear that statistic mentioned once by any of the ESPN commentators or other Pundits ( speaking of pundits … Kirk Herbstreet move over on Gameday – my Notre Dame ( big ) over Hawaii call was much … well… more correct ).
New coach ( Houston Nutt ) and an ever increasing shift in momentum / success each of the last 6 weeks of the season. It’s this last item that really makes them the #1 team at the end of the season. Why? Because as a Team ( capital T ), they can go out and execute better than any other top 20 team today ( including Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, and certainly Texas Tech ).
As I mentioned early on, I found 2008 to be an exhausting year. So many changes and new things to learn throughout the year as the seasons unfolded. But as Spring turned to Summer, Summer to Fall, the economic changes added “stress fuel” to the already hot “change fire”. Don’t get me wrong – 2008 was a great year professionally and personally. I’m just hoping for a little less “stress fuel” and a little more sleep in 2009 ( oh, and a few more Badger Football wins ).
The Oracle Data Integrator 10.1.3.4.6 cumulative patch is now available. If you are using or plan to use ODIInvokeWebService as part of your data integration / governance plans, I recommend applying the cumulative patch.
The patch number is 7485029. The ODIInvokeWebService fix ( bug number 7238234 - ODIINVOKEWEBSERVICE IS UNABLE TO PROCESS LISTS AS WS ARGUMENTS ) is within the 10.1.3.4.6 patch.
Have you got your application / solution to connect to ODI by WebService? Have you integrated from ODI to another application by WebService? Which Application / Solution? Post your answer as a comment, I would be interested in knowing the user experience of inbound/outbound applications that ODI has been used successfully when integrating by WebServices.
If using ODI and WebServices, I highly recommend being on at least patch level 10.1.3.4.4, and going to 10.1.3.4.6 shortly. I am upgrading my Oracle Data Integrator environments to 10.1.3.4.6 today.
Oracle Service Bus 10gR3 has gone Gold – Golden Master production. You can download the product on Oracle Technology Network. Below is a snippet of the announcement from Deb Ayers, the OSB product manager.
Collaborate and contribute with thousands of your peers on topics ranging from Database, to Fusion Middleware, Application Integration Architecture, Siebel, Hyperion, …
This year, I’m presenting on advanced SOA usecases for Data Integration at Oracle OpenWorld 2008 ( September 21 – 25 ).
Join the mix – become a member at http://mix.oracle.com . I found it interesting that “ThoughtWorks” ( Martin Fowlers company ) is collaborating with the Oracle Mix community collaboration site.
I do not normally comment or blog on national or social issues, but the person who has been accurately predicting oil prices ( “80 before I’m 80″ is a famous quote he made on CNBC in November 2007 ) displayed a sense of leadership recently that struck a chord with me.
$1 billion a day plus of lost national wealth ( a run rate of $700 billion a year recently ), General Motors at less than $10 a share ( having not much more net worth than what GE recently paid to acquire ”The Weather Channel” ), Ford at less than $5/share, and Ethanol (from Corn) – they don’t have an emoticon to capture my thoughts on the negative energy efficiency of that program ( it uses more energy to produce than it provides - did you know they use Natural Gas to produce it? Oil to move it from one location to another? ).
I’m not saying I agree with everything that his plan advocates. I do not have any financial interest in any of his companies. I do admire his leadership and intelligence.
I used to use the SNAGIT software tool periodically the past 3 - 5 years when doing software development and needing to leverage an existing image on the web. When I was doing web work, I tended to do a cut/paste and then manipulate and work within the Macromedia Fireworks.
Now that I am doing a mix of software development, web development, and presentation creation, I find myself using SNAGIT more and more for productivity. It’s ability to “understand” application destination sources and targets ( like Internet Explorer, MS Outlook, Word, Powerpoint, … ), I find it taking 10% of the time it used too when I want to “mashup” and/or manipulate content ( a portion of a powerpoint slide, an image, … combining pieces into a new content item ). I believe this is the first blog entry I’v done on a product since starting to Blog in 2004, but SNAGIT saved me so much time today ( and made the results better )
How many times do “less time” and “better quality” come together? With SNAGIT, it does. If you have not tried an image / content capture utility, I recommend giving SNAGIT at try. I believe I bought mine at $39.95, I see it is $49.95 presently. Perhaps I got it on special? Either way, the productivity to me just today makes makes it worth that much to me when I was writing some new Business Processes using BPEL Process Manager, and then documenting ( in Word and Powerpoint ) what they does. I now find myself using it at least weekly, usually several times a week.
I recommend the investment. You can check SNAGIT out here. It’s available as a free 30 day trial download. The usability on it has increased so much through these “source” / “target” application adapter like architecture, that I bought it earlier this year, and have been more productive since.
FWIW – your mileage may vary – but this one is one of those tools that ( to me ) falls in the “jewel” category.
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