... and the stupid editor removes the link from the picture :-(

http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/Home/

Public opinion suggests that Vista is not really ready for the enterprise market. Good. This should give me a competitive advantage: I've been testing Vista SP1 on my test machine for quite some time and decided to upgrade my work environment today.

While the - public - upgrade procedure through WindowsUpdateServices (WUS) had some hick-ups (primarily caused by my own ignorance - translate to: not reading manuals), the CorpNet upgrade went extremely smooth, took less then two hours, did not cause any issues. And, after the first day, I've the impression that my machine does not only run faster, but also more stable.

None of my app's cried foul - three thumbs up! May even help against today's weather report :-(

Xing just calculated my network value at 375k$, pretty close to double of average humans and half of the average top ten - very funny, indeed.  Even better: They would help me to optimize my network value. Now I'm wondering if they took the global reach of LinkedIn into account, or how they quantify Facebook's social (previously pro-bono) networks.

On the other side I just received an example of how you can screw-up things in large networks: A befriended competitor (yep, that exists!) forwarded me an e-mail which showed that the e-mail address of one of our business partners was publicly exposed by my employer - in the subject header of a mass mailing. What a stupid error. It just confirms, again, that you cannot replace brains with automated processes, and that all control mechanisms, that are based on such erroneous assumption, must fail.

An interesting discussion with IBSA's CEO, Sharon Coates, revealed that Australia is still an immigration country, with the economy continuously suffering from a dramatic shortage of skilled workers. Our talk was focused on differences between the educational systems and vocational education Europe and Australia. That topic reminded me of a question, a lot of people had asked me several times in the last few weeks: What's the difference between old Europe, especially Germany, and the emerging economies in the Asia-Pacific time zone?

Aside from vibrant economies I noticed two major differences: Youth and diversity.

My personal, biased impression was that the majority of people on the streets seemed to be younger than in Europe. And I guess that's not only caused by elderly people not walking around on streets.

I've never seen so many young mothers and pregnant women as last Saturday morning in downtown Sydney. Compare that with shrinking birth rates of countries like Germany.

Now compare Germany on the dimension of diversity: The primary language in most major cities will be undoubtedly German, maybe with some local flavor (dialects). Zooming-in on Sydney again: German was as well represented as Italian, American ( :-) ) , Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, etc.

My personal conclusion: These countries, once they opened themselves to the world,  are much better in attracting - and assimilating - foreign cultures. That stimulates additional growth, which then again attracts more young talent.

As everybody knows - well, should know - Canberra is the capital of Australia. In other words: if you're doing business with the Australian government, you'll need to go to Canberra. It's actually not too far away from Sydney: half-an hour by plane (seemingly scheduled every hour), or three hours by car. Some of my colleagues brought-up the alternative of taking a train, which is supposed to be a scenic, but also adventurous journey.

In hindsight it turned out that the the fastest way to Canberra would have been to travel by car. Why? Because of the cab-mess at Sydney Airport (see below).

Bruce had provided me with some interesting background information about Canberra I wasn't aware of. E.g. that it is an artificial city, similar to Brasilia, only built for the purpose of being the state capital. That no building's height is allowed to exceed the line between the parliament house and another low rising building (I forgot what that was. That they tricked a little by removing a hill, building the new parliament house, and bring the hill back. Very clever idea. High rising, but the down-under-way :-)

Canberra itself was not as bad as Frank had described it:

"Canberra is an arm pit. Nothing to do… and any other city that is close by is 1 hour by plane (Sydney, Melbourne) or hours by car.
 
I’ve worked in much worse locations. The city is pretty clean (accept for all the construction dirt constantly blowing around). And it’s easy enough to walk any place you need to go. But it’s down right boring. All the Accenture types who worked there over the years have said the same thing.
 
There is a pizza place in the main mall there that is OK. The Aussies are almost ½ French with the frequency in which they take espresso breaks (about once every 2 hours).
 
There was also a good theatre (that I think closed) that played all kinds of interesting movies (ex. Obscure 1970s Italian stuff). It was called Electric Shadows.
 
Everything closes down at 5PM. It’s a government city. The casino is rather boring. A lot of degenerates there. The Crowne Plaza there has the universal consensus that it smells like urine. The only hotel worth its salt is the Park Hyatt—which is good.
 
The off track betting is interesting… I played the Melbourne Cup there and won…
 
Everything is expensive, too. Cabs, food, etc…
 
As you can tell, I have fond memories of that place.
 
Best Bet: Find someone that will take you to their house and feed you. The MCS guy did that for me… I got to watch him feed his 3 year old beer… or better yet, try and book a charter to go out deep sea fishing. I had one booked on a Sunday, but weather kept us in. If you are into art, there are several interesting galleries there that I have bought painting and massive aboriginal boomerangs at (please note, the locals look at you funny and say things like “you know what they call a boomerang that doesn’t come back—a stick”—to which I show them this huge war club I bought with remnants of teeth and hair on it still… and then they stopped laughing and looked at it with awe…)"

Frank was not too far off from reality. Canberra is a nice little village with some very nice people.

Returning to Sydney was less pleasant: Friday evening, in a state capital, on the day before election! The frequent flyer lounge, to which Danny had invited me, was completely packed, and mean really packed - no seating available, and the lounge was huge. The flight itself was completely booked, and that was only the beginning of the long journey. During my frequent travel around the globe only three occasions caused me to queue for a taxi and wait for more than an hour: Hamburg, during the construction of their new terminal, New York JFK, on new years eve, and: Sydney.

That's what I call targeted marketing. Or in this case rather targeted recruiting.

If somebody wonders why - just check the profile, as their crawling agent obviously did.

I'd better not answer my phone anymore. Four job offers in three days indicate that I'd better revisit my retirement plan.

Very clever idea. The biggest challenge for keynote speakers, opening large conferences, is the task to set the emotional tone for such an event. Charles Phillips did a great job by opening Oracle Openworld on Veteran's Day. National anthem, himself an ex-Marine, and then the reference to the Fisher House Foundation.

But he lost it right there, deep-diving into product demonstrations. The very best: "Interfacing to legacy applications, such as SAP." Great statement from a legacy database vendor, aspiring to somehow unify his acquisitions into an enterprise application portfolio.

Btw: The demos actually went quite well. They did demonstrate, that Oracle's apps could interoperate with each other.

"Does that mean, that by drawing this line [in J Developer], one could achieve the same level of integration that previously required the work of 50,000 consultants?" (Charles Phillips)

"You could put it that way." (Demo guy).

Based on my personal experience as a Siebel user I knew it was difficult to interoperate in the legacy ERP space. But I´m shocked to hear that it requires normal customers to employ 50,000 consultants, working three years, for linking Oracle´s stuff to the rest of the open world.

"The job of the CEO is to position the company strategically, to position it operationally, and to find and motivate the best people to execute. At the end, math wins."

Mark Hurd, CEO Hewlett-Packard

US legislation requires that cell phones sold in the US carry a GPS device for enabling locating the phone. But what other uses can be made of that requirement?

How about tracing, visualized in Virtual Earth? Colleague Daniel Walzenbach created a showcase for demonstrating the integration of GPS tracing with VE's (aka Local Live - http://local.live.com) API. And he's sharing the source code in case you'd be interested.

The next step maybe further integration with Live Messenger by displaying your friends' physical location, and moves, in Virtual Earth, which itself is displayed on your cell phone. In other words: Your cell phone displays your own location and that of your friends. Ready to party?

Hey - are there still any eCapital Solutions developers of the "Buddies" application out there in the cloud?

This is for Fred and other addicted - or convicted?

:-)

It always was one of my favorite places, and I was immediately attracted again, even after 10 years of absence.

Following the recommendation of a local was an excellent idea, and the ACME Chop House, aside the Giant's stadium (3rd / King), still was in walking distance.

Finding the location on the Internet was a little difficult, because both, the Restaurant, and the location were communicated wrongly to me. But at least I now know how Willie Howard Mays Jr. is related to AT&T.

 Btw - Flying (not choosing) ANA was not the most impressive experience. Two reasons: At check-in they challenged me with my luggage. With 28kg I was accusedly 3kg over the limit and supposed to pay 3,000 Yen - and my flight was going to board in 20 minutes. My response that this hasn't been an issue with any of the other air lines, I had to use in Asia, only caused the remark that they have the baggage piece concept - whatever that may mean. The final hint that my Star Alliance status normally allows me much more at least caused her to check the Ops manual. And suddenly all issues were resolved.

 

The second issue was related to my tight schedule: I couldn't sync my emails in the office and also had no chance to see ANA's (hidden) lounge. So my last chance was to copy the already written mails to my smartphone, and sync from there. Forget it. I was shut down by a flight attendant before my laptop had even started to boot - it took them another 15 minutes to complete boarding but I was not even allowed to use my smartphone. And all Japanese around me continued to sync their Blackberries.

Back to SanFran: After using chop sticks over weeks handling knife and fork was a an unexpected challenge. Starting with an Ahi Tuna Tartar was the ideal transition when just having arrived from Japan. The steak was as excellent as recommended - although not matching the Tepanyaki in Tokyo's Hokigawa - and the 2003 Malbec from Catena Alta was a perfect match. Only negative: I returned to the so called 'civilized' world from Asia, which is a relatively quiet part of the world. And the noise level here, as the place starts to get crowded, is absolutely incredible. Unacceptable. Disgusting. I'm going to flee.

All in all it still was a nice evening - for a professional single - with the penalty following en suite: 154 USD, unexpensable, and excluding tip. Even worse: It'll take me at least three hours in the exercise room for addressing, and removing, the non-financial impact.

Maybe I should retire instead to relocate. Maybe LH 455 should bring me back home today, instead of heading to Atlanta for visiting a Kindergarten. I'll spend another weekend thinking about that proposal of my other consciousness.