vi-curious Gary J Little's Weblog

Trip to Brussels.

...the geek in me, and there is quite a lot of it couldnt resist blogging on the plane with my new Palm Pilot. Ive been in Brussels (Belgium) training on Oracle. For some reason, I got a nice club class seat on the way home, which only made me more worried about taking a 10 hour flight to the US next week with Ruth and Erin in the bowels of economy hell, but since we got the flight and accomodation for nowt (well only nowt if you discount the amount of time Ruth spends on competition web sites) I cant really complain about the seating. At least its not on a 747 which I really hate - it reall does feel like cattle class. So, here's a thing that bugs me: People who carry on those mini suitcase things, as well as a laptop and god knows what else. It's the whole attitude, which sems to be "I'm far too important to wait at bagggage reclaim, so I'm going to take up as much hand luggage (carry on) as I can possibly get a away with..." Arrrghh.. why you little....I was so annoyed that I needed a Gin and Tonic, which was handy because.... here comes the nice lady with the drinks trolley...

Anyhow, I have a few tips for anyone going to the Brussles training centre in Vilvoorde. There is a 'hotel' about 4 minutes walk from the office. It is called something like 'Euro Volley Centre' Basically it is a largeish sports centre with some accomodation. But it is not really a hotel at all. The rooms are clean but very basic. There is no room service, late bar, lounge or other Hotel norms. There is a basic continental breakfast, and a reasonable menu for dinner. Provided you dont stay for more then a week, you should be OK. The staff had a bit of a problem remembering what to do. Two out of the 4 evenings that I at there, they managed to cock up my order. Once, they gave my dinner to some other bloke, and on another they totally forgot to cook it. I went and asked what (TF) was going on and they sorted it out. The next problem was that in the haste to get the food to me (now about 45 mins late) they burnt it, and it was pretty bad. Also one day they totally forgot to clean my room. I had to fold up my own towells. I was apopletic, no really. I had to have a Chimay (Blue) to calm down.

On the plus side it's really close to the office. And it is *very* cheap (51 Euros/night) And that's about it. There is nothing whatsoever to do in the vicinity, as you are basically on an industrial estate! A bus from the office to the center of Brussels took about 40 mins in rush hour, and only 30 mins back in the evening. Most of the museums seem to close at 5pm which is a bit of a bummer, but you can still have a wander around, check out the Cathedral and so on. The bus fare at time of writing was a very reasonable 1.4 Euros.

At Brussels airport, there is a WiFi point provided by Proximus, but you need to get some sort of scratch card to access the service. These cards can only be bought BEFORE you go through security to 'airside' so once you are through to the lounges you are totally buggered. And try as I might, I couldnt get netstumbler to recognise my centrino wireless card :-( so there was no fun to be had with either. Luckily there was an endless supply of gin, nuts and Telegraphs. So I had a G&T, read the Teleraph and calmed down.

Oh, by the way, the course (Oracle 9i for Solaris Administrators) itself, was excellent, and the presenter really knew what he was talking about. It's been about 5 years since I last did any real work on Oracle, and it was great to have a refresher. Many of our customers run Oracle databases, particularly on the large scale machines. It all semed pretty straight forward, dunno why these DBA's are always moaning so much :-) ( Oct 18 2004, 02:00:29 PM BST ) Permalink

Big night out in Aldershot

So we've pretty much given up on the beer for the time being, because frankly it was making me far too fat. However, after I hard week tap tap tap tap'ing away, I needed a night out. My mate Gareth was able to help out, and we headed out to Aldershot on a Friday night. As tradition dicatates, we found ourselves in the Unicorn, and wondering what to do next. For some unknown reason we decided against Tiffany's (yes its as dodgy as it sounds) and we decided to head to the West End Arts Centre where they had The Deborah Bonham Band who were playing some kind of Bluesy stuff, and it was all very nice. Anyhow, part way through, to our utter astonishment they introduce "...England cricketer, Mark Butcher", and it bl**dy well was him. So he came on, sung a few tunes, and was pretty good. I mean it's bad enough that someone else can play world class cricket, whereas I could barely see the ball, the last time I played, but to also be able to sing, is too much of an insult to bear. I think Gareth bought him a drink (being a big cricket fan), I can't really remember having had quite a few Stella's by then and not being used to it, and we had a good old chat at the bar. I guess we should of offered to take him to Tiffany's but sadly it was already closed. ( Oct 04 2004, 09:39:31 PM BST ) Permalink

Heavy metal soundclash...

AKA lots of noise in a small pub in Reading. I went over to see my mate Tobes and his band Severed State at the Rising Sun pub in Reading, that's different to the Rising Sun arts cente, where they seem to have some sort of spiritual drumming circle, and 'Not the heavy metal you are looking for'. In fact I dont think it's called 'Heavy Metal' any more, just 'Metal'. Anyways, much as I like to take the piss, they were really rather good. Also playing were Stalefish1 fronted by the superb Charlie. They're slightly more um, 'musical' than Severed state, which makes sevstate sound bad, which isnt what I mean, it's just that I lack the vocabulary to accuratley describe one sort of shouty guitar music Vs another. Let's just say they're both food in their own special way :-) And topping the bill were a band called Baseborn whom had a very strange following of office types who came down to what can only be described as a spit-n-sawdust biker pub. Funnily enough I think a lot of the blokes came to see the bassist. And why not. ( Oct 04 2004, 09:15:16 PM BST ) Permalink