Thursday, August 23, 2007

Why I Blog

I never really had a true mentor, well, a physical one anyway. I could ask questions to my first boss, but it was apparent rather quickly that they better be good ones.

So I took to reading AskTom everyday. Mostly the new posts at first but as time went on, there were fewer and fewer of those. Tom was mostly answering old questions. But they were fun to read and you could really get insight to his thinking. That's what I needed the most. The Why of doing things. I think this post illustrates more the Why, I still read that one from time to time.

Then a couple of years ago he began blogging. That really gave me a view into his mindset. I learned about instrumentation there, how to ask questions, how to answer them and the rule of thumb, to name but a few.

I think that was the first blog I read consistently.

I found his advice and his technical expertise inspiring. More than anything though, I liked have a view into his world. I believe that alone helped me get over the technical hurdle, to begin to really understand what was going on and why I should do things a particular way.

I hope I can do the same. I want to share my experiences, challenges and mistakes so that others may learn from them. I also want to provide more technical content, even though much of it is answered in one place or another, just because I have a different take. Someone might relate to my style and find me inspiring (that would be way cool).

I now consume about 40 or 50 different blogs daily. Most of them are Oracle related, but I also read many business blogs, opinion blogs, security blogs and data warehousing blogs (though I haven't found one yet that really inspires).

I believe it is a good thing to be well rounded and I try to be.

So that's why I blog. I want to share. Hopefully you'll find something you can relate to here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

i enjoy reading your thoughts, and look forward to doing so in the future! what a great outlet for your thoughts!

Ardilla

Anonymous said...

Very inspiring, Chet. I love the open minded approach. And sharing. From this moment on, I'll try to bounce in between the two of you, reading your blogs that is. The two of you being Tom K. & Chet J. Thanks.