I’ve worked in a lot of different offices and office layouts over the years. Looking back I’ve been lucky (or not as you prefer) to not spend much time in a cube, almost always having my own workspace or sharing it with one other person. I’ve helped assemble furniture, move… Read more

I’m writing this because I was thinking about a member of the local PASS chapter on the way home last night, a friend who lost his spouse to illness after a long and happy marriage. I had known about her illness, but only knew that she died because he chose… Read more

I’ll be driving south a few miles tomorrow night to talk to the great group at MagicPASS about the basics of statistics in SQL Server – what they are, how they can help (or hurt) performance, and how to maintain them. I’m looking forward to it, hope to see you… Read more

I was recently talking with a friend about doing some research into a NAS solution for home and that I was trying FreeNAS out in a VM. He asked…why? Why not just buy one? He had one, a model I knew about, and said it was solid storage if maybe… Read more

Let’s start with a quick review of the pieces and what I paid:

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With the motherboard and CPU installed I was ready to add the final and perhaps easiest parts to the build. I started with a DVD drive. In practice I almost never use DVD’s any more, preferring to mount ISO files as drives (which also means I can keep them all… Read more

Reading about the motherboard choices took a while. Because I had already decided on a CPU, the Intel I7 I at least had an initial filter. If you’re shopping for one today you want a board that has the Z77 chipset with an LGA 1155 socket – easy to spot… Read more

I saw it in the Connector, but just had time to read the minutes to see what was behind the decision to end the SQLRally franchise in the US. The minutes had precious little to say:

The Board evaluated the revenue, resources, and sustainability of the SQLRally NA model and…

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I was reading about the American Association of Woodturners annual symposium that will be held in Tampa this year (and yes, I plan to attend) and ran across this document that describes their process for picking a site each year. It’s not an equation, but here is the opening section… Read more

With a case ordered and a CPU in mind I decided to focus on the power supply next. Remember that the better cases come with fans but not with a power supply (and in general that’s good, you want to pick you own).

As I did the reading I found… Read more

This past weekend I was back in Tampa for the sixth annual SQLSaturday. It’s a trip I always look forward to – its only about a 2 hour drive, the event is in Ybor City with tons of dining options, and the event always attracts a great crowd.

There… Read more

One of the minor features/quirks/annoyances of MS Access is that if you create a single macro or code module you get a prompt to ‘Enable Content’, designed to prevent malicious code from running without you knowing it. I tend to just leave it open for long periods and so it… Read more