Happy Halloween

Okay, it was yesterday here in Oz, but you guys in the US are just warming up to it, so I thought a halloween post was in order.

One of my namesakes happens to be a writer of horror stories (see Gary Myers) in the H.P.Lovecraft / Dunsany style. Thats sort of a fantasy style where any barbarian hero is likely to end up a gibbering wreck. I'd like to point out I didn't discover him by ego-surfing, but rather when my wife bought me a collection of short stories which included one of his (The Last Night of the Earth ). The book was the 'Azathoth Cycle - the Blind Idiot God' and its contents are listed here. The subsequent story, the Daemon Sultan, was written by Donald Burleson, a name familiar to many in the Oracle field. Okay, to spoil the story, the story's author was actually Donald R. Burleson and the Oracle personality has the middle name of Keith, according to www.dba-oracle.com/resume_don.htm.

The moral of this story is that, if you have a sufficiently large data set, coincidences will happen.

PS. One thing I don't get about Halloween is, we spend all year telling our kids not to talk to strangers, let alone accept sweets from them. Then they go off to strangers' houses DEMANDING them. I only had one visit last night, and I didn't recognise them (though perhaps my wife would have). They got a small chocolate bar though.
Then I took my two out, with a rubber mask each, to 'Nana next-door' who had a biscuit for them. But they like to visit her anyway.