Catching up

 In gun fighting they say the key is to get the first shot off fast to make the other side duck, then take your time with the follow up shot.

I got the first post to restart blogging off fast, did you duck?

In the 4 years since I was posting, I was laid off, semi-retired, learned bee keeping and black smithing, did some painting and then, after 2 years, rejoined the work world. I work with a great bunch of folks at Rimini Street, Inc. doing remote Oracle database support (no surprise there!)

Recently I also purchased and setup a Park Style RV as a rental on my property. For those not familiar, a Park Style RV is one designed to be placed in an RV park and left there, so essentially a house on wheels that is moved to a spot and left. Here is a picture of the one I set up:

Park Style RV

As I said above I also took up beekeeping with 2 hives to start with, which will generate over 10 gallons of honey in a good year. I am also making mead which requires a good bit of honey.

I took up blacksmithing, just because I remembered doing forge work in shop in Junior High School and remember enjoying it, I have made knives, hooks, coat hooks, brackets, towel racks and other miscellaneous items, even hair barrettes.

A set of Daggers I made for a friend

In the image above I made everything (display box, daggers, sheaths) except for the frogs (the leather holsters that allow the dagger and sheath to be attached to a belt.)

As I said I also rekindled my artistic bent by doing some acrylic painting.

An acrylic I did of my Daughter, Son-in-law and Grandson

After all, you have to stay busy. Better to wear out than to rust out. So now that I am working full time it is harder to do the "fun" stuff, but I will try to keep a hand in.

So that is all for now. Hope everyone has a wonderful Holiday time! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

 

Back in the Saddle - How to be a good support customer

 Sorry it has been so long between posts, life happens I guess. I will try to do a better job with posting. I will try to provide information on interesting support cases (redacted of course) I encounter in my work. I will also cover things going on in my life such as hobbies, investments, and family life.

I will also try to keep political rants to an absolute minimum. 

As a support engineer I try to provide great support for my clients, but, as clients here are some things you can do to make support work better:

7 Rules on how to be a good support customer:

1. Open cases at the proper priority level. We generally respond as fast to P3 and P4 as we do to P1 and P2.
2. Always provide the Oracle release, App release and OS version and release level.
3. Respond to information requests quickly.
4.  Provide feedback on solutions as soon as you try them.
5. Treat your cases with the same priority we try to, we can’t leave cases open indefinitely, generally we will allow 2 weeks of inactivity, we will ask for updates every two days or so, then we usually make a call to you. If there is no response we close the case.
6. If you are going to be gone, for example, on vacation, ask us to suspend activity until you return, or provide an alternative contact if it is important to solve the case immediately.
7. Provide feedback on our surveys, this is how we are evaluated as to performance.

Well, that is all for now! Hope you have a great Holiday Season!