Off Topic

This is for a friend.

Posted on August 18, 2022 by Mike.Dietrich Off Topic

This is for a friend. A dear friend. A friend who disappeared way too early.

Today we’ve got together to say goodbye to a colleague and a dear friend. Last week when I was in Switzerland I received this call nobody wants to receive. You went to the other side. I was in shock. I’m still in shock. I can’t believe it. I know, that is life. We need to accept it. But I’m in tears. And I miss you, my dear friend.

Flashback

We first met in 2003 I think when you picked up my team mate Ulrike for …

Goodbye 2021, welcome 2022 – and some thoughts

Posted on December 31, 2021 by Mike.Dietrich Off Topic 8

The second pandemic year is ending – and a new year starts. It’s time to say Goodbye 2021, welcome 2022 – and some thoughts …

Photo by Jonny Caspari on Unsplash

Goodbye 2021

This was kind of a strange year, wasn’t it? It least for me it was. As for many of you, a lot of things were quite similar to 2020 when the pandemic took off. For me this meant zero business related travel. Which was not very amusing on one side since I really miss customers, colleagues, my team – and those Oracle nerds out there. I’ve got …

In memory of Pieter Van Puymbroeck

Posted on July 20, 2021 by Mike.Dietrich Off Topic 22

In Memory of Pieter van Puymbroeck

Dear Pieter,

I’m still in state of shock. When our dear friend Philippe called the other day around noon I knew suddenly that something terrible must have happened. I could hear it from Philippe’s voice immediately. Something was wrong. You passed away. Way too early. I still can’t believe it. I miss you.

I know you for many years now. Not as long as others. But long enough to call you a friend. We spent hours together at conferences where we often met. I remember so well when you arrived at breakfast at SlOUG in Portorož one morning complaining heavily

Off Topic: How to outsmart KEF EGG’s auto power off mode

Posted on June 13, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Off Topic 35

At first, this blog post has nothing to do with Oracle databases. And not even with databases. Still, I’d like to post it here as I couldn’t find any useful solution anywhere – except a program which is not available to end-users. Hence, this is fully Off Topic: How to outsmart KEF EGG’s auto power off mode.

Photo by Mockup Graphics on Unsplash

KEF EGG

KEF EGG Desktop Speakers

Let me say at first that I’m not doing any advertising for any company here. I recently bough a pair of KEF EGG speakers for my office desk. Especially when crafting …

“My” best records for 2019 – and some other thoughts

Posted on January 2, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Off Topic 2

Oh well, the older I get the faster years seem to pass by. I think this is natural. And a while ago I read a very good and reasonable explanation for this. But I can’t complain actually. Life is not boring at all – and I learn something new almost every day. As you know, one of the main reasons for this blog is to share parts of my learning experience with you, the good, the bad – and the patches 🙂

But there’s a life apart from Oracle (at least sometimes). And as some of you may know, music …

Happy New Year 2020!

Posted on January 1, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Off Topic 0

Hi everybody,

let me start the new year 2020 (for techies: 11111100100) with a loud HAPPY NEW YEAR everybody!
I wish you all the best! Peace, health, fun, joy, love and whatever you desire. And of course, no ORA-600 or patching errors or wrong results 😉

Picture kindly borrowed from my cousin Harald 🙂

Have a great start into 2020!

–Mike…

Time flies – my first computer in 1990

Posted on April 12, 2018 by Mike.Dietrich Off Topic 8

As you may or may not know, Germany has quite a few public holidays. On the Easter days I took the chance to sort my folders (real paper, not on any computer or in any cloud). And when you do such things, you may find some rare gems. When I found an old invoice I realized: Time flies – my first computer in 1990 did cost a real fortune.

Time flies – my first computer in 1990

I posted this picture in a social network as well – and the comments I received were just great. So if you have …

My Oracle Story: How and why did I join Oracle?

Posted on July 5, 2017 by Mike.Dietrich Off Topic 2

I’ve had my 20-year anniversary Oracle dinner last week (actually 6 months after the actual date) in Munich with great colleagues who joined either 20 or 25 years ago hosted by a Country Leadership Team member, Stephan Meyer from Legal. And we all were exchanging stories about how and why we joined Oracle two decades and more ago.

So here’s my Oracle story.

Where it all started

Technical University Nürnberg – Georg-Simon Ohm

Prof. Dr. Hans-Georg Hopf

It actually started at the Technical University Nürnberg where Prof. Dr. Hans-Georg Hopf held the “Database” courses – we used to …

Happy New Year!

Posted on January 9, 2017 by Mike.Dietrich Off Topic 0

A Happy New Year 2017 to all of you!

Thanks for visiting our blog quite often – we promise to keep that level of technical information in the new year as well. But let me review some things and give you an outlook for 2017.

Flashback

2016 was an exciting year in terms of technology. Oracle moves strongly towards more and more cloud offerings – and Oracle Database 12.2 got released in the Oracle DBaaS Cloud as well. Roy and I did a good number of workshops internally with our Support and Presales people all over the world. And some …

Have an Excellent Start into 2016!!!

Posted on January 13, 2016 by Mike.Dietrich Off Topic 0

Roy and I and the entire Database Upgrade Team would like to wish you a very good start into 2016!!!

And thanks for your confidence in our work in the past year(s). The Upgrade Your Database – NOW! Blog had over 440,000 hits in 2015 which is quite a surprise as neither Roy nor I do update the blog full time. But the many mails and comments we consistently get demonstrate your interest.

Upgrade Your Database - NOW! Statistics 2015

We will continue to report about things related to upgrades and migrations and performance and testing and the cloud and … and … and regarding Oracle Database …

Just to remember what happened on July 13, 2014

Posted on July 13, 2015 by Mike.Dietrich Off Topic 3

Just one year ago on July 13, 2014 in Estádio do Maracanã in Rio De Janeiro… 🙂

Germany World Cup 2014 Goal Argentina Mario Götze

🙂

–Mike…

Happy New Year 2015!!!

Posted on December 31, 2014 by Mike.Dietrich Off Topic 0

We would like to wish you and your families a Happy and Peaceful New Year 2015.

-Mike

PS: The picture doesn’t show Roy and myself – these are Lilly and Bonzo! …

Today the Upgrade Blog has its Fifth Anniversary :-)

Posted on July 29, 2014 by Mike.Dietrich Off Topic 5

Not sure if 5 is a lucky number 🙂

But in fact today the Upgrade Blog “Upgrade Your Database Now!” has its fifth anniversary.

Well, there’s not an update every day – and there are spans of silence for weeks when I’m either too busy (traveling most likely, writing etc) or when I feel there’s not much important to say.

So it’s time to say THANK YOU to all our visitors and readers. I can’t say exactly how many people have visited the blog so far as I have put up the Flag Counter only less than 3 …

Deutschland ist Weltmeister!!!

Posted on July 14, 2014 by Mike.Dietrich Off Topic 1

No tech stuff this morning 🙂

I’m still so exited. It was a true thriller yesterday with 127 minutes of suspense, fights and even blood – and chances on both sides. But overall I think Germany was the better team not only yesterday but throughout the entire tournament. Last time when Germany became Weltmeister (World Champion) in Italy in 1990 I was in Turkey on after-school-vacation celebrating a win over … well, Argentina 🙂

And this time I watched the match again with friends in an Italian restaurant in Munich – and the best team of the World Cup 2014 …

Boat Successfully Arrived at Oracle HQ

Posted on May 26, 2014 by Mike.Dietrich Off Topic 0

Wondering what you can transport with a Sikorsky S-64 SkyCrane? For instance you could fly a Trimaran from the Bay to Oracle’s HQ and park it in the lake 🙂

Credits go to Cindy Lim for the picture – and you may watch the entire arrival via this link:

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/sTh3GCCkXJI

–Mike…

Nuremberg Sausage???

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Mike.Dietrich Off Topic 0

I’ll try almost all food wherever I am in the world (except for Scorpios-on-a-Stick, Sheep Penis and such stuff). But I didn’t try this in our hotel in Rio:

No offense – but Nuremberg (or in German: Nürnberg) is my hometown – and Nürnberger Bratwürste look a little bit different. If you’d ever visit Germany and you’ll have to chance to see Nürnberg you might order “Drei im Weggla” (three [sausages] in a bread bun) and every Franconian will understand you 😉

But still Roy and me had some fun at the breakfast buffett 😉…

Blogs got migrated

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Mike.Dietrich Off Topic 0

Dear Readers,

as you can see the blogs from blogs.oracle.com and the former SUN blogs got migrated last weekend. There was a content freeze the whole week before. And as you might already have found the design has changed a bit. But with the design change everything I did customize on the blog’s right column to download slides, access workshops dates or links to some other useful blogs has been erased completely. Even the “About” section hasn’t been migrated (which was a default template). I’d recommend that YOUR migration strategy is a bit more careful in your environments …

Japanese Food :-)

Posted on October 24, 2010 by Mike.Dietrich Off Topic 5

I love Japan not only because of the great variety of different food – in almost all cases you’ll get excellent quality of meat, fish, tofu, vegetables – and things which I haven’t seen, tried and tasted before.

We’ve had plenty of different styles of sushi including the best Maguro I’ve had so far.

And we had lots of fun during one night at a small place in Akasaka we’ve found just by accident with an indoor barbecue with “some” Asahi beer on the side … and very nice beef, porc, chicken and some things we couldn’t really identify 😉…

Candy??? Who’s Candy?

Posted on October 19, 2010 by Mike.Dietrich Off Topic 1

What are all these people looking at???

Gold?? Diamonds??? Other treasuries????

No, not really – they are having a nice time with Candy.

Candy???

Yes, Candy is the Oracle dog of Oracle Japan.
And yes, Oracle Japan has its own company dog.
May I please introduce Candy to you?

Candy is a bit lazy today but I could fully understand her as this much of attention is simply overwhelming 🙂

And as we don’t live in risk-free days anymore somebody entering the building needs also a batch as the armed security guards in the lobby won’t …

Windows CE, dog food and similar experiences …

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Mike.Dietrich Off Topic 0

Finally arrived in Germany on the weekend. Another stressful but very nice week. Met lots of customers in NY and New Jersey and got plenty of very good questions. So hope you’d enjoy the days as well. And Roy will run the workshop in Minneapolis on Wednesday on his own (just in case you miss the download link – it’s
http://apex.oracle.com/folien – please use the keyword (Schluesselwort): upgrade112). I drove up to NEDC to meet with Carol, my manager, Brian from our team and some other nice folks.

And then I’ve headed down to Boston Logan to catch my …

World Cup 2010

Posted on July 1, 2010 by Mike.Dietrich Off Topic 0

Hi there,

I’m currently running an internal Upgrade Workshop in Madrid with many colleagues from other EMEA countries together with Prashant Barot, our EMEA Tech Director for Database Upgrades and Options. And as Prash is from the UK and yesterday and today there were no World Cup matches in South Africa (and as Prash keeps his fingers crossed for Argentina on Saturday 🙁) I’ll have to tease Prash a bit and send my kindest greetings to some friends in England 🙂

P.S. Thanks to Jesus Robles for forwarding this 😉 …

Welcome to the Oracle Database Upgrade blog!!!

Posted on July 29, 2009 by Mike.Dietrich Off Topic 78

Glad that you’ve found your way to my Oracle Database Upgrade Blog 🙂

“Uhhh … yet another blog …” you might think. But the intention is to give you the most recent database upgrade tech news and findings. Discuss with you about best practices. And offer you access to upgrade workshops we are running right around the world – at no extra cost.

So I hope to see you more often – and maybe we’ll meet one day in one of our workshops in person.

Enjoy – thanks and kind regards
Mike…

Off Topic

This is for a friend.

Flashback

Goodbye 2021, welcome 2022 – and some thoughts

Goodbye 2021

In memory of Pieter Van Puymbroeck

Off Topic: How to outsmart KEF EGG’s auto power off mode

KEF EGG

“My” best records for 2019 – and some other thoughts

Happy New Year 2020!

Time flies – my first computer in 1990

Time flies – my first computer in 1990

My Oracle Story: How and why did I join Oracle?

Where it all started

Happy New Year!

A Happy New Year 2017 to all of you!

Flashback

Have an Excellent Start into 2016!!!

Just to remember what happened on July 13, 2014

Happy New Year 2015!!!

Today the Upgrade Blog has its Fifth Anniversary :-)

Deutschland ist Weltmeister!!!

Boat Successfully Arrived at Oracle HQ

Nuremberg Sausage???

Blogs got migrated

Japanese Food :-)

Candy??? Who’s Candy?

Windows CE, dog food and similar experiences …

World Cup 2010

Welcome to the Oracle Database Upgrade blog!!!

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Off Topic

Flashback

Goodbye 2021

KEF EGG

A Quick Recap

Time flies – my first computer in 1990

Where it all started

A Happy New Year 2017 to all of you!

Flashback

Archives

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Upgrade @YouTube

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