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Digging in a Habari sandpit

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Sunday 23 November 2008

There is a darkness deep in you

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jet lagged

I am jet-lagged because a customer asked me to fly, at short notice, from Newcastle to Belfast at 07:05 on Wednesday morning.

I had a suspicion this was important because when I told the client that my flights between London and Newcastle were non-refundable he replied 'I don't care about that. Just get on a plane to Belfast.'

Initially, I was harbouring hopes of watching Newcastle play Stoke City in a Cup Replay on Wednesday evening and I was about to politely enquire about the possibility of departing early on Thursday morning when the project manager added: 'Oh and take anything you might need to install Siebel and clone our existing environment on to brand new, standalone infrastructure.'

My normal concerns about oversleeping were accentuated by the fact I was booked for my first ever flight on EasyJet. I was worried about no e-ticket, additional charges for a seat, additional charges for checking my bag into the hold, additional charges for an overpriced cheese and bacon panini. I was terrified about lengthy queues of people going to Florida and the Alps for £24.99 (+ £110 tax and fuel surcharge) blocking my path to the single check-in desk.

So, I duly went to bed at 20:30 and set my alarm for 04:45 to allow a full half hour to get dressed, double check my passport and Siebel DVD's, find the night porter, check out of the hotel and impatiently wait for my taxi (booked for 05:15).

However, recurring nightmares about being 16 seconds late for the check-in desk and featuring on 'Airline' woke me at 04:12 precisely. I also dreamt of Tony Robinson filming my arrival, flustered and stressed, at the bright orange check-in desk at 06:26.

'Mr. Norman Brightside is desperately trying to get to Belfast for an urgent business meeting but unfortunately for Norman and the hordes behind him, the check-in desk for the Belfast flight has just closed. Norman is now having a discussion with Lisa.'

Holiday makers with young children and lads going to Prague for a stag week are tutting behind me as I plead:

'Listen Lisa, it's not my fault. I have been up since 04:30 but the taxi driver kept talking about Kevin Keegan and I simply must get to Belfast to install Siebel for a training course that starts on Monday.'

'Well I am very sorry, Sir but I have asked the pilot and there's simply no way you can catch this flight. You will have to book on the next one at 17:25 tonight.'

'Listen. You don't understand. This is a brand new environment, on machines yet to be installed, isolated behind a corporate firewall.'

'Why don't the network, comms and infrastructure team just create a secure VPN link between the two data centres ?

'Yeah, I know, Lisa. Tell me about it, but if that was feasible, I could tunnel through from the Sunderland office and I wouldn't be standing here in my pyjamas, would I ?'

Solihull to Amsterdam via London

Norman - Your next post will be in the style of Micro-Blogging... Monday - NSCR. Plaintive request from a customer to truncate a Siebel intersection table. Siebel's official stance on the use of any direct SQL to modify data in Siebel base tables is well documented. However, for reasons that are too lengthy and tedious to divulge here, this particular request was approved. Mainly because they deposited £2500 into my offshore account. Tuesday - Team Meeting at BVP. Interesting to hear what my counterparts on eBusiness Suite do. Ate here. Not as dire as the reviews suggested. Few beers in the interests of team morale. Wednesday - Try (and fail) to avoid being dispatched abroad on my birthday. Cristiano Ronaldo keeps going till the very last minute and gets his reward. A lesson to us all. Thursday - Early start. Sleep downstairs on the sofa bed. Wake up 3 hours early. Fly to Amsterdam. Mundane Production Health Check for Siebel 7.7 on SQL Server. Set up various monitoring tools (perfmon, OM logging and Profiler) to identify low hanging fruit. There wasn't any. Staying close to Schipol (good), far away from the city (bad). Back to hotel. Tired. Process email while thinking about lyrics to 'Sappy' and listening to 'Low' on a tight loop.

optimizing airports

Spending a lot of time in airports is an occupational hazard in the glamorous and fast moving world of IT consultancy. Most of us are intimate with the various methods of tuning Oracle databases and Siebel CRM but here are some quick tips about optimizing the airport experience.

1. Most airlines have succeeded in shifting the massive queues from the check-in desks to smaller queues at the self-service kiosks. The most obvious method to avoid this is to check-in online and print out your own boarding pass from the comfort of the office. One word of caution - ensure you have the hardcopy of the boarding pass in your hands before leaving the Web page. If, for any reason, printing is unsuccessful, it is impossible to check-in online a second time to print the page again. It is a little embarrassing to explain to the customer service agent that an unknown pre-sales guy mistakenly took your boarding pass as it was sandwiched between his 89 page RFC. Worse, it also wastes a lot of time.
2. Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to attach your own luggage labels thinking this will save time. The baggage label must be coiled in a loop Origami-style and stuck together in a very specific way. Please, I urge you, leave this to the experts at the Fast Bag Drop desk.
3. Look nervously at your shoes and repeatedly wipe your sweaty brow in the queue for security screening. This behaviour guarantees that you will be 'randomly selected' by BAA security staff to go through the new full body scanner. Don't worry when other passengers start giggling as you are asked to raise both arms and stand on one leg to assume a star shape. Revenge will be sweet when you are re-introduced at the head of the queue in front of the X-ray machine, skipping 23 people and saving a vital 17 minutes.
4. In the current climate, passengers are increasingly asked to remove their belts and shoes as part of security checks. Save time by investing in a pair of black, leather slip-ons. No need to waste time struggling to tie up your shoe laces. Consider buying some tighter trousers that don't need a belt.
5. Always select a seat at the back of the plane. Do not think you will disembark quicker if you are located near the front of the aircraft. You won't. Everyone else thinks the same way so the most determined, forceful personalities will always be seated in rows 1-18. You also risk being struck by an oversized case (that should have gone into the hold) from the overhead lockers. Worse, your brain will be irradiated by the hordes of business types eagerly turning their mobile phones back on after being incommunicado for a whole 55 minutes.
6. Make a date with Iris. In the UK, you can register to trial the optical recognition system at immigration. Watch your colleagues from Consulting gasp in amazement as you leave them behind in a lengthy queue as you waltz up to the empty Iris desk and quickly make your way out of the terminal.
7. Use a professional, competent taxi company and arrange to be collected at the airport. This may seem blindingly obvious but for reasons that now escape me, for a period, I used a completely incompetent taxi firm who were always late for the rendezvous, didn't have the right change for the car-park and couldn't even find my home address. The final straw came when they woke my family, in the middle of the night, by ringing my door bell at 05:45 for a 06:00 pickup.
8. The ever increasing capacity and falling prices of USB memory sticks now make it possible to think the unthinkable. Leave your laptop behind. Copy your mini-technical library onto a memory stick. I have done this on a couple of domestic engagements and it is truly liberating. My dodgy, aching back is also feeling the benefit. You can normally access SupportWeb, MetaLink and collect email from most customer sites.
One advantage of being severed from the laptop is that it really focuses the mind on what technical material is truly essential to do your job. Consequently, you incrementally build up relevant content on the stick. It is also perfectly feasible to copy all your email folders onto a memory stick. The only element I have occasionally missed is my own Siebel 7.8/Oracle 10g sandbox environment.

Have a good trip. [An edited version of this article was originally published in the Spring 2007 edition of the Expert Services' Newsletter where, unsurprisingly, it was met with a stony silence.]

inevitable parting of the ways

When I went to bed, I closed the curtains. Unfortunately even at full stretch, the curtains only spanned half the width of the window. This was excellent news as I was able to cancel my 07:30 wake-up call as the morning sun streaming into the room at 05:45 was just as effective. The shower worked although it was a little tardy to empty. So slow, I thought I was going to have a minor flood on my hands but fortunately the sill was pretty deep and disaster was narrowly avoided. Breakfast was disappointingly adequate - cereals, bread, cheese, ham, fruit coffee and tea. The churn labelled 'Milk' was empty so I took my chances on an adjacent, unlabelled silver vessel. Consequently, I drenched my Frosties in natural yoghurt which was an unusual combination but a pleasant change. There was also a strange fruit juice which was a hybrid of mango and orange. Similar to what is called cheap 'Orange Drink' in England; neither fresh orange juice nor orange squash and tasting rather artificial and very sickly. After breakfast, I decided it would be prudent to double-check on the availability of the presidential suite in 406 just to ensure that Carol Smiley, 'Handy Andy' and Laurence Llewlyn-Bowen had finished building walk-in wardrobes from MDF and covering the bed in dark red, Gothic materials. Slowly and carefully, I explained the situation and the pretty receptionist duly confirmed 'Yes. Mr. Anderson. I have you booked into room 406 for 4 nights.' I immediately crossed over to the Hilton, heaved a huge sigh of relief as the desk told me they had some availability and booked in for two nights. I crossed back over the road and checked out of Grand Central 2 days early, claiming my Grandmother had just died and I had to return to England immediately. The nightmare was finally over. Only it wasn't. The young lady on reception was a new-hire and couldn't process my booking (or cancellation) using my credit card. Finally, with the unconvincing words 'OK. I have read the big book and I think I have done it now', I left, thankful to make my escape. I am now installed in the Hilton which is bland and very overpriced but it's like going into Macdonalds, you know exactly what you are going to get. Pity really as the Dutch version of 'Flowery Twats' would undoubtedly have provided a wealth of valuable blogging material for the next 48 hours.

fun and games in Rotterdam

Arrived in Rotterdam and checked into the Grand Hotel which isn't quite as grand as the inviting and expensive (but fully booked) Hilton across the road. The kind lady on reception welcomes me to Rotterdam, quickly locates my booking, gives me an electronic key and directs me to room 401. I take the lift to the fourth floor. There is no room 401 - just 403-417. I know because I walked all around the fourth floor with my bags. Twice. Convinced I am an idiot, I ask two decorators where room 401 is hidden. One of them puts down his roller and accompanies me around the fourth floor with me before concluding there is indeed no room 401. Thinking I must have misheard the receptionist, we try to force entry to rooms 407 and 411. The startled honeymooning couple in 407 thought it was a drugs raid and were very cross. The decorator helpfully offers to paint their bathroom as compensation and I claim to be part of the International Tulip Delegation who got separated from his party. I deposit my bags with my new found friends, the decorators (must include that piece of good news in my review) and return to reception. Either the lady was mistaken or the stupid Englishman misheard and so it transpires. The correct room number was in fact 406 all along. Silly me. I return to the fourth floor and look for room 406. I walk the familiar circuit of the fourth floor wondering where I will finally end up. Only I don't have to wonder. Deep in my heart, I already know. Sure enough, I find room 406. Unusually for a hotel, the door is already open and curiously, the bed is positioned in the middle of the room. There are two familiar bags (a stylish black Samonsite hold-all and a battered laptop case) sitting on the floor. And, inevitably, there are two decorators feverishly applying white paint to the walls. They look perplexed, I admire their work and we all laugh. We return to reception. Thankfully, there are a couple of spare rooms so I get re-allocated to room 116 and have the option to take room 406 tomorrow (if the paint fumes have fully dissipated).