It's Labor Day here in the US today, a holiday that is tribute to those of us that work, the journey to decent working conditions, and it marks the end of summer (here in Fla, that means temperatures will soon be bearable again). Hopefully you're reading this on Tuesday and took Monday off… Read more

I got my Kindle yesterday and I'll write some more notes as I go along, but I have to say that it's pretty cool. The buttons are a bit of a problem, but not that bad and I had it next to the bed this morning. With one arm trapped… Read more

I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of value.  Earlier this week a colleague of mine tendered his resignation quite unexpectedly and at a very inconvenient time, a mere four weeks away from the consummation of a 2-year sofware implementation and data conversion project.  Citing health and family… Read more

I was recently working with a student in a one on one format and one the scenarios he wanted to learn to handle in SQL Server (he was an Oracle DBA cross training) was how to recover from the proverbial accidentally dropped table when there wasn't enough space to do… Read more

OK, I reversed myself and bought a Kindle today. Or I guess I ordered one and it should be here tomorrow.

I was installing a server into the co-location facility for End to End training and while a few patches were downloading, I checked in Kindles for some reason. I… Read more

The Jacksonville SQL Server Users Group (www.jssug.com) is hosting a SQL 2008 launch event on Friday, Sep 12, 2008 in downtown Jacksonville. Plans are for 15 sessions, all focusing on SQL 2008 and most being presented by speakers who live in the greater Jacksonville area. Registration is open at… Read more

Slightly off topic today. 

It's fair to say I'm not a great traveler. Waiting for planes, dealing with the hassles of travel, etc, etc, all result in me prefering to stay in Orlando as much as possible. But I don't quite have the luxury of not travelling at all, and… Read more

I've used Quicken for a long time now and it's the center of how I manage finances at home. There are similar packages on market from other vendors (MS Money, etc) which probably offer similar features, but I've always liked that Intuit stays focused on their market and I love… Read more

Just as I was debating whether to take advantage of Amazon's $100 savings offer on the Kindle (with a new credit card), I saw this report about Kindles being marketed to college students, which seems like a great idea. I know I'd loved one in college, just to have… Read more

One of the things I teach in our admin course is that it's not enough to just be the gatekeeper/central point of change when it comes to being a DBA, we should be adding value:

• Look at each change and ask ourselves 'is this obviously stupid?'. For example, we might…

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As I write this a tropical storm is passing over Orlando and has turned out to be milder than expected (good) and authorities have taken steps to cancel school and ask people to stay at home if at all possible just in case (also good in my view). Yes, you… Read more

In a week and a half, I start on the first of my four trips this year for work, and I'll be gone for 17 or 18 days between now and November. So I've been looking at Kindles again, since I'd be talking about buying one to keep from lugging… Read more

The following was sent to me by my friend and colleague Dave Miller:

Dave's Email:

Wanted to pass along something I hadn't used before and found useful to easily get rid of duplicates in a set of data. The functionality has existed in the SQL language and was supported in… Read more

Registration has been open for only a few weeks and we've got 110 registered so far, a nice start! We already have a number of potential sessions submitted and more on the way. Registration and call for speakers is open at http://www.sqlsaturday.com/register.aspx?eventid=11.

If you haven't attended a SQLSaturday before… Read more

I was visiting with a client recently when they asked me to come take a look at an incident in progress, the number of connections to the server had just about doubled over what they were normally. As far as troubleshooting this scenario I always start by checking for blocking.… Read more

I got my first opportunity to visit New York City last week.  I was actually sitting in on a training class in Whippany NJ, which is about an hour away (by train) from the city.  I went over to NYC for both evenings that I was in town to see… Read more

Actually it was subset of the group, but Kathi & Julie from the St Louis SQL Server User Group did a great job of marketing  my free Succesful Technical Speaking class. Microsoft was kind enough to provide both meeting space as well as lunch in a great show of community… Read more

Andy Warren made a trip to St. Louis this past weekend to put on a speaker workshop for our user group.  Several times a year he offers the free workshop at End to End Training in Orlando. We had a pretty good turn out. Hopefully, we will get… Read more

Error when importing RegServer list from SQL 2005 to SQL 2008

I discovered the already known bug in SQL 2008 that you can't import a SQL 2005 server list (exported as a regsrvr file). For someone like me who deals with a large numger of SQL Servers, this is a… Read more

This was actually posted about a week ago, fell behind a little during travelling. Building a Security Philosophy was written to get people to think about they approach security. Do you give the proverbial Junior DBA only partial access? Do you believe in table access? Do you use the built… Read more