Last Friday I posted about turning my first pen on a lathe, this week I'm discussing my other recent project, a playhouse for my two daughters. Hopefully by the time you see this the paint job will look a little more complete. It's based loosely on a plan I found… Read more

I serve on the PASS Board of Directors, but this post reflects my personal views and not an official PASS position.

One of the things that has always interested/amazed me is how many people wait until the last minute to register for PASS, and that wait typically results in spending… Read more

My friend Brian Knight is leading the 2nd annual SQLSaturday in Jacksonville on May 2nd. Right now it looks like 37 sessions scheduled and over 200 registered so far, but there should still be plenty of room if you want to attend. I'm trying something different this time, doing a… Read more

If you haven't already, start with Part 1 and Part 2. In Part 2 I mentioned that I have hired Don to coach me on networking, and this week I'll share some results from our first 1.5 hour session.

Prior to the call Don asked me to identify 3… Read more

I saw this post about Why I Dislike Newsgroups from Tom Larock and he did a pretty good job of summarizing the negatives, and then went to to discuss how the MVP forums are the exception. One of the comments was about the forums here on SQLServerCentral are also generally… Read more

I drove up on Friday with my friend Kendal Van Dyke. Long drive from Orlando, just over 8 hours. Arrived just in time to find the hotel and then meet up with some of the other speakers for dinner. Joe Celko was there, same suit as always! Robert Cain, Louis… Read more

I'm going to West Palm Beach on Apr 29th to visit Scott Klein and his group. I'll be doing a presentation on statistics in SQL Server and also a discussion of PASS. If you're in the area hope you'll attend for the session and some networking. The meeting is held… Read more

I finally finished up reading the Speed of Trust and have to say I struggled with it. I'm a big believer in trust, it's an incredibly powerful tool (much like The Force!) that takes a lot of effort to earn, and interestingly, very little effort to lose. The book does… Read more

A little further off topic than usual today, something not about technology and work for a change. Woodworking is one of my hobbies, and I find all too little time to work at it as I try to move from amateur to craftsman. But here and there I do find… Read more

I've had a few requests for these, so I'll take orders through May 8, 2009. The polo is a very good quality white shirt with embroidered SQLSaturday logo, the t-shirt is while with the SQLSaturday logo embroidered. I can only ship to US addresses and please allow 4 weeks for… Read more

We'll all heard about or lived with outsourcing, and hopefully we know it's good and bad. Outsourcing the janitorial services is a good idea, outsourcing the help desk...maybe not such a good idea. We outsource for a variety of reasons, but usually it's to save money or to leverage skill… Read more

My friend Will Strohl is managing the Day of DNN on June 13, 2009 at the Microsoft office in Tampa. This is sorta the 2nd iteration of it, but the first time really run as an independent community event. Will was one of the key volunteers at our last SQLSaturday Read more

I currently write the editorial for the PASS Connector which is published every two weeks as part of my role on the Board of Directors. I'm cross posting those editorials here as well as to the main PASS blog

We’ve made some minor updates to the PASS web site recently.…

Read more

I was reading a book recently and it equated brand with reputation. My first thought was "aha", that brand is just a fancier/newer word for reputation and why I hadn't I matched those two up before? But as I thought about it a little more, I'm not sure the two… Read more

Karla just emailed that the schedule is set, details at http://www.sqlsaturday.com/schedule.aspx, but to save you time here are the speakers that will be attending:

Andy Warren
Arie Jones
Brad McGehee
Brian Knight
Bryan Soltis
Chris Eargle
Devin Knight
Don Demsak
Eric Wisdahl
Jack Corbett
Jessica Moss
Keith Rowe
Ken…

Read more

Tom has been doing a series of interviews on his blog lately and I ended up on the list. Interviewing is one of those skills that requires a time investment each time, have to build the questions and then look for opportunities to follow up that might clarify or open… Read more

I've written a few posts in the past about time management, and thought I'd post an update with some lessons from the past few weeks. Typically I do pretty well with keeping up with what needs to be done and when, but there are times when I struggle - part… Read more

Blogging is both more fun and harder than it looks, so when someone is getting started I try to offer what I can for encouragement. My friend Kevin is a .Net developer with an interesting sense of humor, and recently I was able to get him to talk himself into… Read more

I've written quite a few posts lately on networking and a very common question is - where's the results? What do I get out of all the effort, and so far my best (if lame) answer is that networking is an investment based on faith that it will pay off… Read more

If you've never looked at one of these they are compilations of some of the best/most popular articles since the prior volume was published. I just received my printed copy in the mail (authors in the book get a free copy) and if you want a copy, you can download… Read more