A month or so ago I posted Blog Review - Yours & Mine to see what I might get for feedback about my writing efforts, and to spend some time taking a deeper look at my Blog Likes & Dislikes. The effort was mildly sucessful overall. I had a… Read more

This is an unpaid/unsolicited comment about a product now owned by Red Gate Software. Purely my opinions, and I'll try to make clear my biases as I go.

It's been a while since the announcement, but it was interesting to hear about the acquisition of Reflector by Red Gate. For… Read more

For the past few years I've been using Frontpage 2003 for basic HTML work, usually to write content for SQLServerCentral. Let's me use a decent UI for most of the stuff, it it looks wrong I can easily switch and tweak the HTML. Not recommending it for advanced design work,… Read more

Yesterday I posted an overview of the event, today I want to go over some areas where we excelled, and some where we didn't:

• Check in still needs some work. Took longer than it should have, but we learned some too. Having the greeter hand out event bags spread out…

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By any measure the event was a success. We had a solid 275 attendees this year, up about 50 from last year. We actually registered 465, and then in the last week we worked on reminding people to cancel if plans had changed, resulting in 94 cancelations. It's the nature of free… Read more

In Good Ideas Take Time or How to Brainstorm - Part 1 I wrote about how I come up with ideas for blogging. Today I'd like to take that a step further and talk about how I generate ideas for business.

The first step is to have ideas, to find… Read more

Occasionally I'm asked how I come up with ideas for my blog to maintain the just about one a day tempo. The answer isn't complicated, I come across an idea or two every day, then I just add that idea to my todo list and revisit when I need material.… Read more

Obviously, right?

I managed to knock my Blackberry Curve off the bar and into a bowl of water in the sink. Sinking feeling. After a day of drying it would power back on, but only show a JVM-102 error. Found some instructions via Google on how to fix; download a… Read more

Recently I posted about Managing My Todo List and I had a question via email about what notepad I was using - good to know I'm not the only one that sweats the details. For the past few months I've been using a Journalbooks 91340 that I was given by… Read more

 I posted Do You Understand Microsoft Licenses about a week ago, and today happened to run across a note about some MS exams that seem to target the question:

• Exam 70-671: Designing and Providing Microsoft Volume Licensing Solutions to Small and Medium Organizations
• Exam 70-672: Designing and Providing Microsoft Volume…

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I suspect final preparations will stretch all the way through next Saturday morning, but at this point we've done most of the prep work that can be done in advance. I thought I'd share with you some of the work we've been doing and just overall progress on the event. Read more

I've just recently acquired a new laptop and my resolution is to install no software on it that I'm not previously experienced with or have first tested on a virtual image. Why? I'm completely tired of watching the lastest and greatest hardware take minutes to boot as it gets junked… Read more

I was teaching a private class recently that had both DBA's and network types in the room, one of the items that came up for discussion was about the 'correct number of drive letters' that should be used. The DBA's had set up separate drives for:

• Master & MSDB
• TempDB

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Back in May I wrote about signing up for FlyClear as a way to save time travelling and in doing so, trading off (potentially) some privacy. Since then I've used it a few times with no real problems and it's always been fast in Orlando. For those who haven't tried… Read more

I saw the recent Call for Nominations for the election this year, so the title of this post is only slightly rhetorical. I thought I'd post some thoughts here and see if a few of you might serve as a sounding board.

I guess a start is to discuss why I'm considering… Read more

Thought I'd post these notes based on feedback from the event organizers, wasn't able to attend myself due to scheduling constraints.

SQLSaturday #5 - Olympia. Around 130 attendees, everyone got fed, had one speaker cancel another fill in for him. Overall things went well, attendees happy with the results. Kudos… Read more

Can't say I ever expected to say this, but as of October 1st I'm a SQL Server MVP. A nice milestone in my career and cause for mild celebration.

Many people ask about the MVP program and what it takes to get in. I can't tell you much because I… Read more

I had an email from a friend recently asking about a licensing question pertaining to Microsoft. It reminded me of how much I dislike trying to understand their various licenses and as far as I know there's not a place where you go and say "I want to do this… Read more

I've been using a Blackberry Curve for a while and I'm been entirely happy with it. Great phone, great battery life, and no problems - save one. When I purchased it I also added a tethering plan as I often work remote or head to a coffee shop for a… Read more

Recently Tony Davis posted some thoughts (almost a rant) about his opinions of PASS, and there is a great follow up comment by Karla of the Pensacola SQL Group that I think shows a positive side, and a really terrific blog post linking to it by Grant Fritchey. I… Read more