I got my Java 1.4 Certification at the end of January. Now I can move on and look at the more interesting certifications. I think the next one will be the Business Components one. I need to write off to Sun to get the logo.
I thought maybe I could do some J2EE stuff through Oracle because we get a discount but all I could find was the usual Oracle tools stuff which I’ve been doing for nearly 20 years.
Paddled the river Crake on Saturday. Not bad when it has some water in it. My forward paddling is rubbish. Because I shepherd groups down rivers I’ve got into the habit of sitting on a low brace and watching other people. If I want to improve I’m going to have to do a lot more me paddling on grade 3+ water. To that end I went to the Tryweryn on Wednesday (we were going to do the Conwy but no water). Colin helped me a lot and I’m now doing much better. I need to keep it up if I want to get anywhere though. Was paddling my Dagger Redline which is quite a bit longer than the playboat and will actually get up waves and things. I enjoyed paddling it a lot more than I thought, which is interesting.
Oracle Portal/9iAs is a pain in the proveribial
I’m really struggling with 904. It keeps locking up. I think it’s something to do with using session variables in PL/SQL. It’s very hard to keep up a sustained development effort when you have to reboot the server every 20 minutes.
Rosie’s Birthday Party
Festivities started on Saturday when Rosie’s mum took us to an excellent meal at Oriental Delight where several beers were drunk. On Sunday the party was muppet themed and we got into the swing of things quite well, with me as the swedish chef (hat and rubber chicken), Rosie was Animal, Katherine was Beaker, Deb Miss Piggy. We now have enought chocs to stock a small shop and we’re both trying to lose weight.
Old Friends
Met an old school friend with whom I hadn’t parted company on the best of terms a couple of weeks ago. It was nice to see him and talk through old times and people. It’s interesting how we both hate a lot of the same things and at least some of my enemies (who he still keeps in contact with) have mellowed into reasonable folk. Nice to catch up, it’s a shame he didn’t make Rosie’s party but I suppose he might have felt a little out of it.
Buddhism
Going back to this again. Unfortunately Lama Jampa has moved to London so it’ll be difficult to get to him to ask for advice. I will write him a letter. One of my relatives was quite sarcastic about my beliefs which made me quite angry. Maybe if they had ever seen something worthwhile through to the end I could take it seriously. I have come to the belief that any connection with this tiny foolish life and an enlightened being somewhere downstream of me is very tenuous. This doesn’t mean one should give up, more that what you have now is even more precious.
I came up with a personal mission statement the other day:
Spend the rest of my days helping other people to succeed in between having lots of fun!
Blessings all