SQL> startup force;

Yes, after a couple of weeks away - I'm back.  Took some needed downtime.  Disconnected, just worked a day here or there for a bit. 

It was nice.  Something I plan on doing every now and then in the future.  Yeah, I did email - worked a couple of days (a vacation without going anywhere in particular).  But I haven't written a SQL query in days, if not weeks :)

Read a lot, visited people, hung out with my kids.  Did not get on a single plane. 

Even stayed away from asktom - went away for the weekend around the 11th of this month and just never got back on.  If I'm not careful - I could be on that site 24 hours a day.  It seems the more I answer, the more there is to answer.  I'm going to get back on it probably today.

Saved up a bunch of things I found interesting.  Yesterday I read this "Revenge of the Calculators" post.  I immediately related to it (even down to the Chuck E. Cheese reference) and it reminded me of an obscure story by Isaac Asimov - "The Feeling Of Power".  I liked that story when I first read it - reminded me of the "command line versus GUI" discussions I'm often part of.  The gist is in the future - people forget how to do simple math and rely on calculators for it all.  The ending of the story is funny - it becomes of strategic importance to be able to think/compute on our own again instead of relying on the machine.  A short story worth reading.

These next two articles go together.  One is about "developing patience".  Many people presume I'm fairly patient - and to a degree I am/can be.  When helping someone learn a concept or technology - sure.  But day to day - not so much.  For example, the first thing they list as an attribute of "patience" is:

Sit back and wait for an expected outcome without experiencing anxiety, tension, or frustration.

Nope, not me ;) Something to work on.  The related article I found interesting was "5 Ideas for Stressful Living".  I liked it as it was tongue in cheek "worst practices" for living. 

All in all - two articles that if taken together provide some good information.

A friend of mine recently said to me words to the effect of "if people could put their problems in a box and everyone put their box on a table - at the end of the day, after looking at every else's problems, we would chose to take our own problems back".  I believe that to be fundamentally true in most cases.  For example, if you are dissatisfied with your current job - you could see something like this exit interview - and instantly feel a bit better about your situation.  You should read that one - it is hilarious.

Ever wonder what would happen if you flew a fighter jet into a concrete bunker?  Now you know...

Have you ever wanted to link to a specific bit of a page - like say THIS BIT RIGHT HERE - to send to someone or post on a message board?  You know, instead of saying "go to this URL and then hit ctl-f and look for this text '......'".  I have - and now we can, thank you citebite.  I used that here to create the THIS BIT RIGHT HERE link above.  It not only jumps to the text, it hilites it too - pretty cool.

Anyway, we now resume normal programming here on the blog as well as asktom.

Lastly, this was a fitting thing to stumble upon as I begin in earnest the new book :)