Oracle announced it's earnings Thursday, or maybe Wednesday. Net profits were up again, although only just. This coming in the middle of a recession where other companies are losing money and going out of business. But you have to look a bit closer at the numbers. Revenue is down a bit, which is bad. But operating expenses have gone down even more, making up for the lost revenue. There are easy ways to reduce operating expenses, the primary being laying off people.

It's a credit to the company that we have done very little of that. In fact, at least in my division, we've grown and added people, bought a few smaller companies (Oracle likes to buy small companies, easier to digest than a big company). So if you don't cut expenses by firing people, you have to do it by running leaner and more efficiently. And we have, by using our own software, cutting down on overt expenses, cutting down on luxuries and bonuses and raises. You can't keep doing that every year, but hopefully with that and our $4 Billion in cash we will endure this recession without losing people.

For the danger in laying off people is that the rest lose their morale. If you lose confidence in your company, in your job security, how can you keep doing a good job? Ellison and Barrenechea have assured us that Oracle's employees are its most valuable asset and that nobody is going to be fired. Unless of course the company totally tanks, though even in that case we have enough money to last 6 months with no income.

Speaking of which, licensing made up about 40% of revenue, the rest coming from support and consulting. Compare that to last quarter when licensing was only 1/3rd of revenue. My point is the usual, for a company that sells to businesses, support is where the money is. Hence why Open Source Software companies can survive and thrive even without a revenue stream from software sales and licenses. Naturally, take out our licensed sales and we'd have a huge deficit, but then again with a company structured around consulting you'd be fine.

So we had a Hands Across the Lake event, this Friday. Really more of a Hands Around the Lake, or the big pool at Oracle HQ. Lots of people wearing red, white and blue and carrying little flags. I hear it was a really nice event, though a bit early for me. Strange that I don't have any red clothing, not that I had much before I threw it all away a few months ago. I also don't have a flag or a printout of a flag posted on my cubicle and I haven't signed any cards or well wishes or anything. Does that make me a bad person? I'm not sure either way...

Meanwhile, the national networks have not run anything besides news since Tuesday. Twenty-four hours a day, at least for ABC which is the channel that I'm watching. Regular programming will resume Monday, or maybe this weekend. There's only so much you can watch. People being rescued, people dead, reactions, politicians, analysts, reactions worldwide, more analysis, local news, it goes on and on. Not that I begrudge that at a time like this, people have a need to know as soon as possible. It's just depressing at times and I'm tired of it...

Something else that's been annoying me at work are my cube neighbors. Not that I really should mind, but the two new guys are quite noisy. Not noisy themselves, but they always have people at their cube and they're all talking and working away. Very distracting, even with my headphones on. That's one of the perils of working in a cube, and yet I do like it. An office is a symbol, of responsibility and the need for privacy because you do get visitors and I don't want any part of it. At least not yet.

The worst thing that can happen when you submit a bug is the dreaded "can not reproduce". If they fix it that's great, if they say they can't at least you know that. If they can't reproduce it on the other hand, then you have to go through trying to convince them that it is a problem, that it's not an environment issue. It's especially bad if they don't have quite the same hardware that you have, because then you don't know if it's your hardware or if you misconfigured something or what. One reason I'm relunctant to submit bugs to outside parties.