Matt Oldham

This is something I periodically tell my daughters, although they are not really old enough to fully appreciate the meaning.  The point I make is based on the following passage of scripture:

A woman who is beautiful but lacks discretion is like a gold ring in a pig’s snout. –Proverbs 11:22 (NLT)

And I make this point because as I read this passage growing up I for some reason always related the “beauty” to the “gold ring” instead of relating the “woman” to the “gold ring” and the “[in]discretion” to the “pig’s snout”.  Now, I could obviously be misinterpreting the scripture, but it seems to me the message is much more profound when you look at it this way. Continue reading

I finally decided to go for it.  Sure, I  could end up bricking my phone and have to shell out $300 for a replacement.  And sure, it’s my only cell phone…tied to my main phone number…which also happens to be printed on my business cards…the sole means of my family contacting me once I leave the house in the morning.  Who was I kidding – I could not afford to fail. Continue reading

My current development environment has to be the best configuration I’ve had to date in my development career.  Here are some of the specifics:

• HP EliteBook laptop (8730w)
• 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo 64-bit
• 6GB Memory
• openSuse 11.1 64-bit

The move to Linux from Windows has been a huge plus, though not without its own challenges.  But it’s not just the hardware and OS.  Here are the tools that round out a highly productive development environment: Continue reading

A number of years ago a man whom I consider my spiritual mentor early on in my walk with Jesus Christ gave me a challenge I will never forget.  In short he said, “Long after the world is gone two things will remain – the Word of God and the souls of men.  Where are you investing your time?”  Please join Scott Wilder and Bible League International today in sending Bibles.  This is an opportunity to be part of something bigger than ourselves and impact the lives of people we will likely not get the chance to meet this side of eternity.

Give now and take advantage of the dollar-for-dollar matching grant (don’t forget to mention “Scott Wilder”). Beginning 9/15/09 you can watch a counter of the total number of Bibles donated over in the sidebar of my site.

Well, even though I am not a numerologist, I still think 9/9/09 is a special day.  Why so? Clearly it’s because today is the first general WASABI-SIG meeting.  If you have an interest in data warehousing, business intelligence, data management, systems analysis, data visualization, etc., and most importantly, if you live in the DFW metroplex, I encourage you to come out and be a part of this new special interest group.

Continue reading

Welcome to mattoldham.com.  This is something I have been considering for quite some time but have just never taken the time to get off the ground. Finally, today is the day. My intention is to post content on a variety of topics and hopefully of interest to many people.  I hope you find it helpful, thought-provoking, and encouraging.