sqlplus /nolog
conn sys/sys as sysdba
shutdown abort
startup
Perception is everything (when defects are not defects)
I worked on a project in the early 2000s where the client didn’t like to be told that we had x hundred defects in our backlog. To address the negative connotation of the tickets being called “defects” we renamed them System Investigation Requests or as we called them day to day “SIRs” (a quick Google will tell you that this is not not a unique name for defect tickets, but in 25+ years something I’ve only come across a couple of times, and only for projects with this same client).
The truth was was the majority of tickets were actually genuine defects but there were also some requests for refactoring, TODO follow-ups, potential issues that should be investigated that could lead to identifying a defect, or just areas for improvement.
it’s interesting how we perceive things either positively or negatively just based on name, The client was more comfortable knowing these issues were vaguely called SIRs, but if I was the client I would have thought “I know these are defects, you’ve just renamed them” but in this case they were happy calling them something else.
Oracle Container Registry logon failing with correct Oracle account credentials
docker login container-registry.oracle.com with your Oracle SSO logon no longer works after 30/6/2025, you need to create an Auth Token and use that as your password. See this banner across the top of the Container Registry site:
- Go to container-registry.oracle.com and logon
- Click your user account top right
- From the dropdown menu, select Auth Token
Use this auth token value in place of your SSO password when logging on with docker login and this should work as expected.
This is described in the Oracle docs here.
IRC quick tips
I rarely browse a few IRC channels, infrequently enough that I can never remember how to log on and switch channels 🙂 Here’s a quick cheatsheet of useful commands:
Connect to libera.chat (Europe):
/connect irc.eu.libera.chat
Join a channel:
/join channelname
A few channels on libera.chat:
- linux
- hamradio
- raspberrypi
Channels listed by users: https://netsplit.de/channels/?net=Libera.Chat
IRSSI notes
Hide joins and quits in current window:
/window hidelevel +joins +parts +quits