Tuesday: it's raining today

The streets of San Franscisco are awash with rain. So are the pavements, sorry, sidewalks. Here and there stand clumps of delegates, in shock. Not just at the rain, but the fact that it is cold rain. Apparently Californians are only used to warm rain.

My colleagues back in Englan have gleefully e-mailed me to say they are having some lovely sunny autumn days. I say it just goes to show, Open World is work and not a jolly.

Anyway, next year Oracle are going to scale out the Howard Street tent to provide a covered walkway between all the hotels. Until then, it's unmbrellas and soggy shoes.

Saturday: The light of San Francisco is a sea light

Weather is going to be a feature of the conference this year. As the plane made its final approach into SFO out of the windows we could see this enormous blanket of fog laying siege to the city. The city itself was clear and the towers of Downtown glittered in the sunshine. Outside the airport, waiting for a taxi the sun was shining strongly enough to make me wish I had brought some sunscreen. But walking about SF later there was a cool wind. So a jacket, while not strictly required, was welcome.

There's more weather to come. Apparently some "tropical moisture" left over from a hurricanetyphoon is heading our way from the Pacific. So they are forecasting rain, some of it heavy, for Monday through Wednesday. It is unfortunate that the conference rucksack doesn't include an umbrella this year; some sponsor might have got a lot of goodwill, not to mention advertising. Being English I never travel without a brolly, but I may end up wishing I had brought a mac as well.

So the Howard Street tent might get more use this year. Outside the Moscone Center a couple of its staff were having a cigarette break. One of them, staring morosely at the tent, said to his companion "Between tomorrow and Thursday, it's going to be hell".

We shall see.

Another rainy day in this twenty-first century metropolis

Yesterday I decided to do a bit of work at home, as I wanted to do some data modelling (documentation, documenation, doncha just luv it?) and, for some tedious reason, I have Visio Professional on my home laptop but only Standard on my work machine.

First I decided it was finally time I activated my licence. Not having internet access at home meant having to do it over the phone. I can see now why the web method is recommended; typing in seven sets of six digits twice, once on the phone keypad the second on the computer with the added fun of pressing the phone hash key after every set is not a lot of fun. Particularly when you have a four-year-old boy registering their displeasure at you being on the phone by playing a toy synthesizer in the most unmusical fashion possible. Because I'm a masochist I registered my Office licence at the same time. Of course, MS don't seem to think people will register two products so I have to hang-up and redial.

Then I discovered that Visio doesn't support cut'n'paste of multiple lines into the Entity Definition column sheet (unless there's some trick I need to discover). After a while the repetition got to me so I decided I would be better off trying reverse engineering. Only I didn't have the database schema on my home laptop (having cleared 9i to install XE), so it's into the office after all.

On the way I decide to go to the parcel office to collect my latest consignment from Amazon. After all, I have Tooting Bec tube station at the end of my road and it's only one stop. And they are work-related books. Except that the Nortyhern Line is undergoing emergency engineering so there are no trains going south. Because it's be raining the traffic is blocked solid so I decide to walk instead of waiting for a bus. This is a sound decision: in the fifteen minutes it takes me to walk to the parcel office I overtake about half-a-dozen buses; not one overtakes me back. I casually note that most of the traffic consists of single people sitting in cars, leavened with the occasional van.

At this rate I'm starting to think that the post office will have lost my parcel but no, they have it and it contains the correct books. Hurrah! Now all I have to do is get into work, which is slow but at least I get there.

On the way home in the evening the service is suspended because of a security alert aty Balham. Naturally London's superb bus service is available to take up the slack. As if. Very long wait, very crowded buses, very slow journey.

When I get home I install the schemas into my XE database. At least that works. I fire up Visio, click into reverse engineering mode and it shows me all the objects in my XE database. But when I tried to actually import a table it fails with fatal error. No clues but I'm guessing some kind of driver issue; I'll give it another go this evening.

But wasn't the twenty-first century supposed to be different? Where is my helicopter for commuting to the office? Where is my holiday on the moon? Where is the technology that works properly, first time, all the time?