Sage and Pepper's Musings

I am changing my name to object Object, because IT is dumb and I’ve noticed that what would have been caught by a QA department with humans seems to have slipped out into the open, because they were all fired.

I should start at the beginning of this story, I suppose.

Back in March (2026), my good Aussie friend Bruce decided he’d had enough of software development and quit, retiring at the ripe old age of 50. He can afford to do so, and that was a good move on his part – less stress and more time to enjoy life. I had already planned to retire at the end of 2026 so this gave me the incentive to solidify those plans and validate the financial stuff.

Then about a month ago, my project became a lot less fun and I was thrown into an operational group that did 24/7 support. I am too old for that shit. I kept that team at arms length for a couple of weeks because I was doing critical project stuff but I saw the writing on the wall. Had a call with senior leadership who said nice things, but ultimately didn’t commit to making material changes. That was a Friday. Monday came around and I put in my two week notice.

So, 38 years in IT with 34 of those years in the Oracle database space. It’s been fun and of course, high and low points. I have zero regrets about leaving the workforce and excited for my next phase of finding things to do.

Ironically, the last couple of weeks were spent working with colleagues trying to get Oracle Veridata to work. So the past few days, I have set up my own lab machines and got Veridata working. I will continue to dabble around the Oracle tech stack for many more years, but as a hobby.

There’s life in the old dog, yet.