Bert Simonis, Author
Fiction
Please check my other web site, www.desertdreaming.com, for the full length Henry Wright Mystery detective fiction novels. You can purchase them online as eBooks.
Short Stories
Coffee (Humor)
Why is ordering coffee so difficult?
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Holes (Humor)
My kids have holes in their bodies. A humorous look at body piercing.
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Car Wash (Humor)
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Songs
Will someone please write some great blues melody to these words?
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Non-Fiction
I Tripped on the Yellow Brick Road - Lessons I Learned While Working in the Start-up World (unpublished)
I managed the team that designed and built Oracle Corporation's first 100% Internet membership site based on my vision and direction. This was revolutionary in 1997, and Oracle management was not too keen on our idea at first, but supported our effort after a lot of lobbying. My team fired the company that collected the member's faxes and took their credit card information. We shut down the toll-free 800 number and only accepted e-mail communication. That was revolutionary, even for a leading edge company like Oracle.
With the Internet explosion surrounding me, I wanted to be a part of that and in early 1999 left Oracle and became the fifth employee at an Internet startup. That effort lasted a year, after which I went to another startup, still hoping to make a difference in the world and strike it rich along the way. Another year, and I took a safe job at a large company in order to ride out the remainder of the Internet bust. I learned a lot of lessons along the way, this book details my experiences and the lessons I learned.
The Day the World Changed - Essay published in the Sonora Union Democrat, September 21, 2001
The sun came up last Wednesday, just as it did on Tuesday morning, and just as it will for the foreseeable future. The skies were eerily quiet though, there were no jets carrying business people and tourists to far off destinations. Practice of take-offs and landings at normally busy San Carlos airport were halted. The usual highway patrol and traffic reporter helicopters were left on the ground but it didn’t matter, there was little traffic to report and drivers seemed to be mindful of speed limits and traffic laws.
In Tuolumne, the birds were at the feeders, the hawks and turkey vultures were circling in the canyon, and a smoky haze filled the skies with remnants of the Darby Fire in Arnold. The airplanes and helicopters fighting the huge fire received special permission from the Federal Government to fly so that they could finish the task. Nature continued on its course, but even in remote Tuolumne, where it is always quiet, it was extra still, as the commercial jets that begin their descent into San Francisco over the Sierras could not be heard.
Despite the wonderful, not too warm, gorgeous late summer day in Tuolumne, when ordinarily we would sit outside and enjoy the sunshine and take in the views toward Yosemite, we sat inside gloomily glued to CNN on the television. We were watching the news, but by the weekend, there was no news. Body counts were revised by one or two, tons of rubble were moved and removed and yet the total numbers didn’t change. Talking heads espoused political rhetoric, people told heart wrenching stories of last telephone conversations with those now gone, and as the story took on a human dimension, it became harder and harder yet all the more compelling to continue watching.
In another lifetime, I walked the streets now barricaded, had lunch in the building now gone, bought shoes in the mall now at the bottom of what is called ground zero --- knowing the size and enormity of the World Trade Center complex, even I have a hard time imagining the devastation and destruction that is now there. If you live on the other side of the continent or ocean, you have no idea the magnitude of the obliteration that occurred in a few hours last Tuesday morning.
But just as the sun came up Wednesday morning, and the birds were at the feeders in Tuolumne, the U.S. markets opened today and airplanes are once again in the skies carrying people home, reporting on traffic and fighting fires. That’s what human beings do after any calamity, we lose buildings, we lose loved ones, or grieve for strangers, but for most of us, the sun will come up tomorrow and life will go on.
Technical Writing
Integrating Enterprise Data Using ODBC (Published)
Published in Oracle Informant, July 1996, Volume 1, Issue Number 7
This article describes the use of Oracle Gateway Technology using ODBC Drivers to unite data transparently in a disparate database environment.