Kaleidoscope 2009 highlights

Another great conference has just been archived and i must say i really had a good time at ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009.

Can you believe it?
I even swam with Tom Kyte, but he didn't know i was a fan of his, so i preferred to not bother him with my silly questions about the optimizer while he was peacefully floating in the pool at the hotel.
This bizarre coincidence was caused by the fact that most people were staying at the Hyatt, whereas me (and Tom as a matter of fact) were at the Monterey Beach Resort.

Now, seriously, it was a great "happening", especially for the oracle apex fans, with the exception of a couple of sessions presented by an Italian dude...

Unfortunately, as happened at OOW 2008, there were just too many promising sessions and it was really hard to pick one, especially when you are interested in multiple technologies, like PL/SQL, Oracle Application Express and XML, so i ended up attending only one non-apex related session, a funny presentation of Tom about Database worst practices where, fortunately, i discovered that we share the same opinions: swallowing exceptions in the WHEN OTHERS clause or installing multiple database instances on the same production server are not the best ideas you can have.


Favorite Apex presentations (in random order) were those of John Scott (Increasing Scalability with Oracle Application Express), Scott Spadafore (Apex Security Essentials), Joel Kallmann (Effectively Managing an Application Express instance using the Oracle Database Resource Manager), Mike Hichwa (Oracle Application Express 4.0) and Scott Spendolini (Extreme Makeover Apex Edition).

And for what concerns myself, it could have been worse, but it could also have been better, at any rate, the brave ones can download my two presentations and a white paper from my company's site.

The only real complaint i have is with Monterey's weather in late June.
How come it so cold?!?!


For most of the time it was cloudy, on a couple of days there was even a thick layer of fog lingering on top of downtown Monterey.


We came to spend some hours on the beach, but we ended up sipping the traditional hot clam chowder in a bread bowl at one of fisherman's wharf's restaurants, wrapped in wind-resistant jackets bought in an emergency in local shops.


Well, in the end the clam chowder was really yummy and also the car i rented wasn't too bad, just a bit aggressive when pushing down the pedal...


But it was the right car for strolling through the posh streets of Carmel, the town where Clint Eastwood was mayor until some time ago. Indeed i went there with the idea of having lunch at Hog's breath Inn (what a picturesque name!), Clint's cozy restaurant, but after looking at the menu, i had to choose from eating a Dirty Harry fillet mignon or refilling the tank.
I chose the latter option and downgraded my lunch to a hamburger at Friar Tuck's.

Next time I'll definitely rent a less eccentric car, some energy-friendly pickup like this one i spotted in Phoenix:

I leave the reader with the task of finding out what's true and what's a joke ;-)