Only a few changes planned for this coming year to the blog (so far), none of them huge:

• I plan to update my blog roll more frequently and try to highlight both new bloggers and those that I find especially interesting, SQL or not
• I'm going to comment on other…

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Something new for the end of the year - a recap of everything I posted for 2008. 303 posts if the data/my query is correct. Not all earth shaking posts, a couple typo's in the titles I had still missed, but some good ones too. For 2009 I don't know…

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Steve Jones tells me that the biggest advantage that the Kindle offers is the ability to browse and buy a book now. That seemingly small change moved it from a cool gadget to a useful gadget (and well, still cool I guess!) for him. I still think it's over priced,… Read more

I know it's not April 1st yet, but I wanted to throw out a couple comments and a challenge well in advance. I like April Fools jokes...if they are done well. Done well for me means creative, but also shouldn't take 4 pages of reading before I figure out I've… Read more

During a recent class I happened to mention something about grasshopper, and a student wasn't familiar with the reference to the old Kung Fu TV series. I found a portion of the quote on IMDB, as follows (Master PO is an old blind monk, Caine is the young student):

Master…

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I'm enjoying today with family and hope you are as well. Nothing complicated today, just some appropriate music!

Bruce Springsteen - Santa Claus is Coming To Town

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It was only a year ago that I moved from the Blackjack to the Blackberry Curve and overall I was happy with the Curve. Great battery life, great phone, so-so on tethering so I ended up moving to a USB air card instead. The other feature that wasn't great was… Read more

I guess I'm stuck in the past, but the Office Ribbon still hasn't grown on me. I think it makes discovering stuff harder rather than easier, more than once I've been stuck on trying to find the word count menu button (if it's so smart, shouldn't it know I was… Read more

There's one report that I look at every day to assess how things are going on a project we launched this year. The report is nothing fancy, if anything it's down right ugly, but it is very easy to modify when needed and lets us measure things and then see… Read more

Last and not least this week, The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life. This is an authorized biography that I wanted to read this during the trip to/from PASS, but the book was too big to stuff in the laptop bag. If you're not familiar with Buffett… Read more

My friend Jack has been blogging for almost a year now and is looking for feedback. If you're a blogger you know what it is to crave feedback and how hard it is to get it, so I'm hoping some of you that visit with me here will offer him… Read more

Magazines today instead of books, but hopefully you'll count that as close enough to my theme of the week. I find magazines a great way to learn a new topic and to stay up on what's latest and greatest. At times I've had as many as 20 subscriptions going (most… Read more

I'm still finishing up two books that I'll mention today. Most non-technical books I read straight through, anything technical/learning based tends to be start and stop effort as I absorb it.

First up is Follow The Story by James Stewart is about how to write non-fiction by a well published… Read more

I'm just finishing up Boards At Work which talks about how a good board of directors can make a big difference to a business. It also covers a lot of ways that a board can be made ineffective. It was written in 1998 and shows its age just a little,… Read more

I've been catching up on reading over the last month and I feel like taking a break from things technical/community/etc minded, so I'm going to share some mainly non technical books I've read.

The first is Red Thunder by John Varley. Totally sci-fi, it's about going to Mars - but… Read more

Just as I did last year I'm posting my evaluation scores for review. I co-presented with Steve Jones a session about Moving Into Management that had about 50 attendees, of which 16 of them submitted an evaluation. Scores are ok, questions aren't that useful to me as a speaker, probably… Read more

Ah, if you're reading this aren't you the curious one! I ran across the link below a while back and have been saving it for a rainy day/debating whether it's suitable for my blog. It's almost raining today, but I decided it was suitable because every blog needs a humor… Read more

One of the things I'm not fond of is self-deprecation. Smacking yourself on the forehead when you screw up a demo is counter productive, as is calling yourself dumb compared to someone else in the same line of work. I believe that if you do enough of that it actually… Read more

It's fun to just sit and talk with people, never know what you'll learn or be forced to rethink based on a different view point. During a recent conversation somehow we got around to security and went beyond the normal IT stuff to security in the real world. I mentioned… Read more

Managing by the numbers often gets a bad name among employees because it can lead to a lot of gaming the system. For example, most businesses set an annual revenue goal and then manage to that by setting monthly goals. That's smart because a year is just too long to… Read more