Image by jepoirrier via FlickrI have been tied up lately doing a number of things, and fixing a couple of things at work, and at home.At the work front, I thought I'm done experimenting with ODP.NET 11g, but I was not!
And what could be worse, our old desktop PC broke down, and kept on flasing the blue screen of death, with a very consistent message that says:
UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME.
And the other newer machine, a laptop, stopped recognizing my wife's iPhone 4 device.
To which, when I was looking up some help in the web's wealth of stored information, I came upon a 1-liner, attributed to a man (whom you will find out if you look up the line below):
iTunes ain't done 'til Windows won't run.
How about that?
At Work
I look after 3 PCs, with one machine as my primary platform for developing applications and designing systems, reading mails, looking up the web, etc., etc. This runs on XP, and I have installed VS2005 and lately, VS2010. I was originally running oracle 8i, and in the past couple of weeks, when I attempted to install ODPwithODAC112021, my system crashed, leaving me no other choice but to do a full, forced uninstall of all Oracle client installations. This I did, and after a thorough clean-up, I managed to reinstall 3 sets: Oracle Instant Client, ODAC92070, and finally, ODAC112021, xcopy version.
I left all the other 2 PCs alone - or so I thought.
I couldn't rest. The curiosity in me kept on brewing, until it burst into a continued attempt, which I picked up again, and this time, on the other 2 PCs (small server PCs, which are actually normal desktop PCs, but which we use to house our small applications and batch jobs).
I've installed VS2005 and VS2010, if I havent' done so, and tried to install ODAC112021 using xcopy version on both machines.
And while I attempted to fit all three into the same mould, to the end of making my applications and programs run virtually in any of the 3, my attempts failed. Then I tried again. Which still failed. Then I tried again. Still failed. In fact, I've lost count of how many times I've been trying and failing, attempting and not succeeding... and now, I have stopped, but only temporarily.
I will keep on trying, and I will continue testing, until I succeed. I am learing a lot in the process, and I am very sure, sooner or later, I would just be surprised that things are working as I expected them to work.
Isn't that a sweet victory?
At Home
At the home front, my 2003 desktop PC is acting up lately, until it stared me in the face with the sullen and unrelenting blue screen of death: UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME is all that it keeps on saying.
I tried to do a repait, using my laptop to fetch help from the mighty web wizard, but whatever I find, and whatever is suggested by completely anonymous nerds and wizards, it didn't help me to do the recover.
I guess my C: drive was really that corrupted. I did find that somehow, this would be cause by power shutdown without a proper PC shutdown (caused by kids who has no cares in the world, huh! other than their playing activities - which includes flicking the switch on or off).
After several attempts to repairing, I had to do a reinstallation of my XP OS, and since this is not the first time, I already had my installer disc ready.
Tooks hours, to days, to install back the softwares needed by my older kids who use that PC, not to mention the updates that should be installed from time to time, and with time being measured by hours, I've been sleeping late this week and in the past, but I am able to catch some 15- to 30-minutes of shuteye during lunchbreak, so that ain't so bad after all.
My wife has been rearranging the plants in and out of the house as well, and laying them out anew at the front corridor, to keep insects (hazardous, that is) and mosquitoes at bay.
And after all the caring and tending, one of the orchids (the pink one) is starting to shoot out some buds from the stalks where flowers used to bloom. Yes, the stalks are still alive, and in one of the tips, some buds are getting a bigger bump from day to day.
This is the first flowering after they were brought home. Can't wait to see them open up!
At church
And last Saturday, 23rd July, I was able to complete a 3-hour session with a small team on basic music lessons, primarily focused on vocals, and a little bit on keyboard-playing. Of course, a lot of music theory has to be injected, and a lot of practicums has to be carried out, for what use is head knowledge, if it ain't gonna be applied.
At least we know that we don't know yet while we learn it, and we know there's a lot of ground to be covered, and we're not stopping now till we're up to some heights.
Now, isn't that some ambitious target? It should be. And we are getting all the help that we can.
3 sessions more, and there will be some flowers budding up. Expecting to sea and hear the team do well as we all give our best.
Till then!
But I didn't know that it was that bad. To me, I deemed it something intermittent, for why would I be able to access internet using Flock 2.xxx version, and not the others?
And with that, all things are back to normal. I should say that it got me worried at the time I was hit, because there were critical updates for Windows that I know are coming, but they fail to be downloaded, so that actually added on to the pressure of me getting back my home internet connection (on my laptop, that is).
For the past couple of weeks, I have been struggling with the usage of ODP.NET 11g version, together with 
But that is in exchange for a non-functioning TOAD, which is now unable to access some 'older' systems. 8i, 9i, etc. The error messages I got, which when I googled out to see if anything can be of help, did not help my situation. Yes, there are a ton of articles that should help me out, but to my situation, no help from the web was of help.
I tried back ODTwithODAC112021, which resulted to the error: "
After so many days doing install and uninstall actions, my system seems to have been corrupted. I can't even unstall the 8i, 9i clients completely, and also the ODAC 9, 10, and 11 versions. They remain in the system even after I have performed 
I quickly went to our User 
I was getting curious if Oracle Instant Client works, for me, I should say, since many do vouch for it. So as part of my curiosity, and with my exhausted energy that I can only do little and quickly at that, I now tested Instant Client, especially that the procedure is fast and simple.
With all hopes dashed with the failed attempts on ODTwithODAC112021, I switched to ODAC112021, which is basically the same as the former, but is just different in the manner of installation, I tried the XCOPY version.
Oracle Instant Client with ODP.NET