Gretta Outside The Box

I shared my philosophy for keeping my inner peace in a classroom yesterday, and I'd like to share it with you all in case it's helpful. It works for me most of the time anyway. I'm not trying to teach, just share. Whenever I get upset or disturbed about something that is out of my control, as soon as I notice I'm upset, I do a quick check of my wishes about what I would prefer to see happening. Then I do a reality check and see where it doesn't match the reality. There's a fundamental truth that you cannot change the present, only the future, by your actions now, so you have to accept the present for what it is. That acceptance on a deep level keeps me calm and allows me to act for the best future outcome. There is nothing to worry about in the present. Even if you are in a life threatening situation, your true essence cannot be harmed. What you do now will affect your future circumstances and so you need to concentrate your energy on doing the next right thing....

Last night I saw the movie "Across the Universe" which I can totally recommend to all people that don't mind having psychedelic experiences when they haven't taken anything! It was a stroke of genius to take some of the Beatles songs and weave a compelling story out of them. The plot is based in the time of the Vietnam war and flower power and the Pranksters . You will never forget this movie, and it might just bring it all back if you were there the first time. The movie brings up a lot of issues about war as well as being a darn good love story. I deepened my appreciation of John Lennon's lyrics - he was a truly wise and evolved human being, and I feel like grieving all over again that he got killed when he had given us so much. A food recommendation: Crossroads in Hayward , on Jackson road (Rte 92), an international food store, sells the most heavenly Greek yogurt in batch quantities, which is creamy as get out. The brand name one they sell is pretty good too. ...

OK, this is my first blog post so y'all be kind. I just have to say how blown away I was by the Oracle Open World (OOW) conference this year in SF. For lots of reasons. I just want to thank all the great presenters who answered my questions and were gracious enough to give me an email address to write to with my "issues". I mean, these poor folks must be swamped by emails from people like me. A special mention to Mary Ann Davidson, Colleen Murray, Jim Marion, Barry Hiern and Andrew Rothstein, all Oracle folks. The most exciting session for me was Barry Hiern's "Enhancing Application Users Experience with Web 2.0 Capabilities" on Thursday morning. It's the way forward! Like a portal for all your applications,with single sign on, but better, because you can embed bits of applications in the other applications even when they're from different vendors! And there's a lot of reuse of existing code, not reinventing the wheel. For any non-techie folk r...