Since I bought a Nexus 7 (two of them, I broke the first one) I’ve been interested to see if and how it would change my reading habits. I still have a preference for printed books, based mostly on a lifetime of reading a printed book a week, but also… Read more

Recently I was in a small coffee/sandwich shop for early morning coffee and while waiting watched one of the employees taking cookies from a pan and putting into paper sleeves. A bit later when I returned for a refill (and was more awake) I asked how many cookies they made… Read more

Recently I ordered a Paolini Pocket Rule from Woodpecker. It is one of a series of OneTime Tools they’ve produced over the last couple years. They come up with a design, take orders for a couple months, and then process the charge when the item ships.

Think about what it… Read more

First stop was Philadelphia, mostly because we scheduled our vacation to coincide with SQLSaturday #200, but also because we had never been.

• Subway is ok, but no where near as useful or as clean as the one in DC.
• We hoped to see the Liberty Bell, but the line was…

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I’ll be attending the very first SQLSaturday held in Cocoa Beach on July 27, 2013, and doing a brand new presentation, PCI for the SQL DBA. If you store, plan to store, or think you might some day store credit card information come spend an hour with me. I’ll try… Read more

This past week I took my kids on a train ride from Philadelphia to Washington DC. It was their first train ride and they bounced with excitement and questions, among them about whether I had been on a train before. My first train trip was a long time ago, a… Read more

My first time in Philadelphia (and in Malvern, the actual event location). I drove up Friday night for the speaker dinner, nice seating area on the restaurant patio and hot enough to make me think I was still in Florida! Nice evening. I drove back to Philly to my hotel,… Read more

At the end of April I posted a bit on my change in plans and what I thought I’d be doing for the next few months, with part of that being some uncertainty on both sides about what the work would be and if it would be a good fit.… Read more

Last week I got the news that none of the four sessions I submitted for this year were accepted. Disappointing for sure, but not cause for despair. Because I’ve been lucky enough to have been accepted to speak many times in the past I don’t get too stressed out about… Read more

If you work at a company with more than a 100 or so employees you probably get an email every couple weeks about a phone or some other item being found in the breakroom/restroom/conference room, often with a note saying to email or call with a description of what you’re… Read more

I shifted to Reader about a year ago mainly for the ability to access my feeds on multiple devices. I’ll admit to being surprised that Google would close it, but given that it was free hard for me to complain. I’ve been looking at the suggestions for a replacement and… Read more

This past weekend we took a mini vacation, along the way my daughter decided to play this song, which is indeed a pretty good song to enjoy on vacation. Blame me if this one gets stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

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It’s not uncommon to get frustrated about something at work and send out an email blasting whatever person or group has caused you the frustration. It rarely ends well. It’s usually not very effective in generating the change, and it doesn’t do much to build your reputation as someone that… Read more

I read quite a bit and it’s rare that I don’t have a book or magazine with me in case I’m stuck waiting on some meeting to start. Most days at lunch I read for a few minutes too, just another way to get to my weekly goal of professional… Read more

Recently at work we had a “Hawaiian Shirt Day”, a nice change from the usual business casual. I picked one of my brightest SQLSaturday shirts and off I went to work, where someone remarked that they couldn’t believe I had a Hawaiian SQL Shirt. I remarked that not only did… Read more

For the past couple months I’ve been looking forward to a 5 week break, a chance to think about what I’ve learned and what I want to do next. I haven’t take 2 weeks in a row off in almost 3 years, so a nice vacation, some thinking, some yard… Read more

As I re-read the original Looking Back post I realized I didn’t include anything about the fear part – stepping away from an established career focus to do something else for a while. I’ve been a SQL guy for a long time, I started using SQL Server in 1998 and… Read more

• Spend a few minutes reviewing 20 Critical Security Controls. Very interesting stuff. For example, #1 refers to having and maintaining an inventory of authorized devices/etc. Do you know all the servers running SQL and would you know if someone set up a new one?
• Add this blog about servant…

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In July 2011 I took what felt like a big chance and a detour to lead a large and complex security upgrade for a large company. The project included replacing firewalls, re-ip’ing  hundreds of servers, implementing updates to hardening standards, updating application logging, and a lot more. A ‘lot more’… Read more

The Way, starring Martin Sheen and directed by Emilio Estevez has been on my want to watch list for a while, kept putting it off because it looked like (and sometimes is) a sad movie. Tom (Martin) gets a call that his son was killed in Europe on the… Read more