I read Chasing Daylight by Eugene O’Kelly after a reference to it in an audio book. It’s the story of KPMG CEO Eugene O’Kelly, a man that worked his way to the top and worked a lot. A great example was flying to Australia just to sit next to a…

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It’s the end of November and this will probably be my last update on PASS for the year as things slow down for the holidays. This seems like a good time to update you on ongoing projects and to think about where I’ll be headed next year.

As I look… Read more

TechEd will be in Atlanta next year, May 16-19, 2011 at the Georgia World Conference Center. I went this year to the one in New Orleans and would like to go again in 2011, though the one wrinkle for me is that it’s the week immediately following SQLRally. I’m…

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I’ve been living with my Droid X phone for a couple weeks now. It’s definitely a big change from my Blackberry. As I think about what to you tell about it, it’s hard to separate the phone from the software from the usefulness, but I’ll try to share thoughts on…

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I ran across this article in Visual Studio Magazine that tracks the source of a missing object to an embedded use statement. It’s not wrong to do that, but maybe it should be! For admin scripts, testing, etc, USE is valuable, but in the dev world it’s far better to… Read more

Somewhat of a strange title, but it’s been an interesting journey to understand that I do take risks and to realize that taking risks isn’t bad. I’ll start at the middle of the story. A few months back I let the PASS Board know that I was cancelling a project…

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One of the ideas I mentioned in my presentation on Comprehensive Professional Development was to set up some type of tracking system. It’s important to write down goals for time and money to devote to professional development, and to keep track of how you’re doing towards those goals. I keep… Read more

My friend Mala is heading up the 2nd annual SQLSaturday in Louisville, KY, being held next year on January 22, 2011 at the University of Louisville. The final schedule isn’t up yet but the list of submitted sessions looks good, lots of great speakers on the list. Somehow I had… Read more

As always, this represents my own views, I’m speaking only for me and not the entire PASS Board.

Early last week Joe Webb announced on this blog that he will be the chair of the PASS Election Review Committee (ERC). Read his post for some his thoughts, and then I… Read more

First, if you haven’t tried PAL yet, I highly recommend downloading it from CodePlex and giving it a try. You start by capturing a set of performance counters (which PAL recommends), then feed it to PAL to analyze against a set of recommendations and then output problem areas flagged as… Read more

Thursday ended with a ‘Meet the Board’ meeting where attendees could come ask the Board questions or present ideas. It went better than last year; smaller room, more attendees, less formal. Wayne Snyder did a nice job as the moderator. We’ll see about getting the full notes posted, but a… Read more

Quick recap of yesterday afternoon: blur! I know I did stuff, but the pace is brisk and I’m just keeping critical notes for follow through. Hard to convey how much fun and tiring it is to continuously interact with different people over the course of a 16 hour day. From… Read more

Started the day with a work call and some email, then down to Top Pot with Ron Dameron and Aaron Nelson for coffee. Back to the hotel for my bag and SQLSaturday shirt, and then to the Convention Center to set up at the bloggers table for the keynote.

Bill… Read more

I’m writing this Wednesday morning, and it’s hard to describe the feeling of speed that comes with being here this week. After the keynote yesterday I had a short break, then it time to host the MVP Birds of a Feather table. I had about 10 people join me for… Read more

Started my day by going up to the club floor for the continental breakfast, met Mark Souza on the elevator and had a good chat over breakfast. For those you of who don’t now Mark, he’s on the Board of Directors and the guy who started CAT. We chatted… Read more

I’m writing this on Tuesday morning, Monday was a blur. I awoke at 4 am, finally decided that sleep wasn’t going to return so went for a brisk 5 am walk, brisk in both pace and temperature. To be fair the weather so far has been pretty moderate. Back to… Read more

My day started at 5:15 to get moving for the airport. Arrived right at 2 hours early to find that there was no curbside or self service check-in for Alaska Air. By the time I waited in line to check a bag and then waited in line again for security… Read more

I wrote the editorial asking what people would have been if they had been born 100 years earlier. It’s a mix of answers, many serious, some humorous, some missing the point of thinking for a minute or two about who they are, with or without technology. It’s a question with… Read more

There’s no doubt that the PASS Summit is about learning. In just a few days you’ll max out your learning capacity for the week and go home wishing you could take in more! But there’s more to a conference than technology, it’s about people too. Just because you’re not looking… Read more

Earlier this week I posted the announcement about an informal get together on Sunday night November 7th for those arriving early for the PASS Summit. After a few more calls with the team at Lowell’s we’ve worked things out so that we’ll have the entire restaurant to ourselves from 6-8… Read more