Quote of the Day
Those who say religion has nothing to do with politicsOracle Moving Its Headquarters
This is big news to me personally. Familiar readers know that after leaving academia, I've made my living since the mid-90's as a professional Oracle DBA after leaving academia without a follow-up appointment in a recession. I had taken a couple of graduate database courses under Richard Scamell at UH and we had an early version of Oracle on our mainframe (at the time Oracle documentation came in 3-ring binders, and sqlplus was known as 'ufi' (user-friendly interface). Our campus DBA had sucked; I remember our entire first class had to take an incomplete because we didn't have the database up long enough to complete our projects. So when I had to reinvent myself in a new career, I was fixated on becoming an Oracle DBA. But it took a while to get my foot in the door until a government contractor gave me an opportunity at a bargain basement salary.
Oddly enough, I've never been at headquarters, although I worked as a senior principal at Oracle Consulting GEHS in 1998; I've driven past the giant database/barrel shaped headquarters visible off Highway 101 frequently from my Santa Clara apartment to San Francisco. (Oddly I flew out of SFO more often than San Jose. Plus, some of my clients, like KRON-TV, were located in San Francisco or its suburbs.) I only lived in California for about 18 months. I have refused to return ever since California's tax board charged me for a segment of my Roth IRA conversion made while I lived in Illinois (I had no idea I would be forced to move to California and they raided IRA conversions; I would never have converted; none of that income was earned in California; the thieves felt that because they didn't chase taxpayers leaving California, they were entitled to steal from me) and also refused to refund excess mandatory insurance contribution (I had 4 employers in 2000 and hit my cap under the first employer). They had "lost" my W-2's. Talk about legalized plunder! I can only wonder how Ellison put up with their greed for decades.
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