Bibliomania - Free World Literature Online -- I've died and gone to Heaven. I've got online classic literature! Yow.

PLVlite The secret download page for the elusive PL/Vision Lite.

pl/sql commandments Joy! The Ten Commandments of PL/SQL Programming.

Finally found out why Heather was so irritated with me Sunday. She'd said she wasn't up to being social, which I took to mean that she wanted to be left alone. No. It is correctly decoded to mean "do not allow anyone into the house". Foolish me. I think we're okay now, i.e. her ire has abated. I can't be too harsh on her because she's sick, and that can make one grumpy as I Well Know. She puts up with my grumps, so I feel a certain obligation (in addition to my general desire) to humor her. Plus I'm madly in love with her.

Scrum Development Process -- My life will of course improve enormously once I find the Holy Grail of the Perfect Development Methodology. SCRUM is the latest candidate. Hah. At least it uses new buzzwords, so if nothing else I'll sound hip.

Boy's death spotlights bias in coverage of gays -- The Washington Times -- Just what I need, another bit of evidence supporting widespread media bias. Yay. I personally don't subscribe to the conspiracy angle. But I daresay the difference described in the article are striking enough to provoke thought in the thoughtful.

Overeating: OpinionJournal - Scene & Heard tells of the scary situation in Philadelphia, the Fattest City in the US. Clearly the answer to overeating is mandatory exercise and strict Fork Control.

Gack. Now I'm bummed -- Feuerstein's unit-test package (which has several brilliant features) requires me to have UTL_FILE enabled on Oracle AND (apparently) access to the UTL_FILE directory from my PC. I have neither. Can I find a way to enable this? Jay the DBA says yes, he'll happily enable UTL_FILE for any directory I want, but I have to obtain my own logon. He'll mail me the info I need.

Got some good feedback from Yashu today on the project. The prototype's scope seems under control (yay) and the only real worry she has is that I'll need to create a lot of very detailed specs for all the functions that are NOT in the prototype. Fortunately I think it's doable in the time available. Lette says the Web version of Mobius will be purchased and we'll be able to call it (we hope!) from our app... but not any time soon, so we don't need to fret.

I need some lunch.

Economist.com Rules for Saturnalia, i.e. the early pagan Roman version of Christmas parties.

Pretty sweet: I just grabbed Feuerstein's latest brain storm. The guy is a genius. He's built a package for automating the unit testing of PL/SQL. I love this man. And it comes just in time for my PL/SQL Best Practices class in two weeks (which will not be too heavily attended, I think). And I can make immediate use of it myself.

Thinking about having my dad visit, and wondering how "out" I really feel like being with him, regarding the more nonstandard aspects of my life. I don't need his approval or validation, or even his understanding. And I don't much want to get in his face. He's an old man now, and it'd be pretty selfish of me to try to make him jump through my hoops, or face this-or-that part of my private life.

On the other hand, I don't much want to have to hide things. Hmmm.

Excellent progress on several fronts today. Implemented several screens; prepared for a presentation tomorrow; had an Issues meeting with the team; and my dad and my kids are coming to visit next week. Yay!

Waiting on soft copy of support document. Got my Oracle support straightened out. Resolved the URD interface -- not my problem!

Tuesday. Trying to figure out how much detail to put into the detailed functional specs. This depends in part on the level of skill of my coders, and I'm not feeling too good about them. They're working with new tools (new to them) and don't know my database. Grr. Best to be verbose, despite the extra time that will take.