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 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

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

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

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

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

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

Just had a note from John Magnabosco, the schedule for the event on Oct 4, 2008 has been published. I'll be there doing a presentation on Replication, Steve Jones is doing one on Green Computing, and I see Kevin Kline has two on the agenda as well.

This is… Read more

Paul Waters and team from the SQL Server Innovators Guild have decided to host a SQLSaturday at ECPI Greenville, SC Campus on October 11, 2008. Registration and call for speakers is now open! Read more

Part of running a businness is deciding when and where to spend your hard earned cash. It's interesting to look at those decisions as a consumer and wonder what goes into them - is there a lesson that I can apply somewhere?

For example, if you buy gas and pay… Read more

Recently I needed to make a call and the only number I had was a mnemonic one. I get why they are useful, you want something easier to remember than numbers and perhaps just memorable in general, but my phone doesn't happen to have the letters on the keys (BlackBerry curve).… Read more

With all the options we have for viewing query plans I still prefer the graphical view. Combined with tooltips and the occasional journey to the properties dialog it solves the problems I work on. The only downside is that the plan view tends to be verbose and the zoom options… Read more

My friend Jonas Stawski just sent me a note about the upcoming Code Camp in Argentina on October 24, 2008. They have a goal of 1000 attendees - yes, one thousand. Ambitious! It's their second time running this so I expect it to go well. I'm not planning to attend,… Read more

I've just posted minutes of the August 2008 user group meeting. We had two great presentations, a short one from Dolores Tofel on how she uses Access with SQL Server, and a longer one from Amy Styers of EMC on the Top 10 Storage Mistakes. Details at http://opass.org/content/showcontent.aspx?contentid=509.

Attendance… Read more

I think most people fall into two groups, the ones that change jobs every year/every time they can make another dollar, and the ones that stay in one place long past the point when it makes sense for their career. What's interesting about the frequent job changers in our industry… Read more

More and more I see business people adopt the mindset that any negotiation is raw combat with the goal of not just winning, but winning by as much margin as possible. I'm not opposed to winning, it's a basic human drive to want to win and of course we live… Read more