[Today’s run: zero ; yesterday’s run: watson road 3.5 miles]
Job rant to follow:
I like my job for the most part. But it has one large downside: there are too many different technologies that I am supposed to know. (maybe that is the upside too… every day is different)
When I first started this job, 12 years ago (?), I had to know something about Oracle database and HP-UX. I wrote some scripts in Perl. The application we bought has C, COBOL programs, SQL files and shell scripts.
Over time I would get bored when things were going smoothly so I would investigate newer tools and technologies. For example, I did a bit of Java and some Perl CGI. Later I did some XML/XSLT (and integrated that with Perl CGI).
And then Oracle comes out with something called the Oracle Application Server which moves a bunch of stuff from the desktop PC’s (which were not my responsibility) into the server world. I went to some training and I muddle through with Oracle App Server stuff.
Our App Server runs on Linux. So I have HP-UX, Linux, and some Windows to mess with. I do the networking so I know a bit about that. And I do printing stuff so I get to play with PCL and fonts and all of that stuff. I recently implemented Intelligent Barcode. Mailing standards, Dell remote console, Apache, gpg encryption, cobol compiler flags,… did you know that the cpio command on HP-UX is a worthless implementation? (I copied my cpio file to a linux box, unpacked it, tarred up the result, copied that back to the HP-UX box and untarred it.)
My head sometimes feels like it is going to burst. If I were to keep better records of all of this that would be helpful. But I get too busy to type up and file papers (or to look for answers in the filing cabinet).
Tonight I was trying to figure out how to create a second Oracle Reports Server process on our app server. That is going to take some practice before I inflict it on the production environment, so I gave up and left things alone.
I missed my run tonight because I got going with this report server thing.
If I ever ask, always remind me that it is better to run in the morning. If you wait you may not run at all.