I spend a lot of time at the command prompt and to be perfectly honest, I'm tired of looking at:

  C:\Documents and Settings\Brian>

Or whatever directory I happen to be in. Back in the old DOS days we got rather creative with command prompts, usually through the use of… Read more

Back in this blog post, I indicated which books I was using to complete the MCITP certifications for SQL Server. Of course, there are always mistakes found after a book goes to press. I've gone ahead and tracked down the errata pages for them (some may not be populated… Read more

I did end up pre-ordering the first DVD on SQL Server internals by SQL Server MVP and SQL Server internals expert, Kalen Delaney. If you haven't pre-ordered the DVD yet, there's only a few days left to do so at the pre-order price:

  Pre-Order Kalen Delaney's SQL Server… Read more

I was doing some development on my laptop tonight and I was getting fed up with the default font, Courier New, in Visual Studio. On my other laptop I have a different font and I found myself mighty frustrated, because Courier New isn't exactly the easiest to keep staring at.… Read more

The Midlands PASS Chapter is pleased to announce our own Paul Shearer and Bill Stevenson as our speakers for our February meeting. They will be speaking on Resolving Common Disk Subsystem Bottlenecks.

This is a refresh of the presentation they gave last year. As this topic will also probably… Read more

I never did complete my MCDBA. As I was preparing to, I transitioned to my systems architect role, meaning I had to deal a lot more with security, server configurations, and Active Directory. So my focus shifted, just as I was preparing to go after that particular certification. I… Read more

James Luetkehoelter has announced his book on SQL Server Disaster Recovery is complete. It is published by aPress and due out in March, according to the aPress site.

 Information here:

• James Luetkehoelter: Finally...finished....book...
• aPress.com: Pro SQL Server Disaster Recovery book details

I will try and grab a copy as soon… Read more

This is a small surprise, mainly because it looked like only Visual Studio 2008 was actually going to make the launch date based on previous press postings. But according to Mary Jo Foley, Windows Server 2008 RTMs today. So should Vista SP1. Both should be in the pipeline by… Read more

In case you haven't seen this elsewhere, if you want Microsoft to release SP3 for SQL Server 2005. It's time to start rattling the cages, as they don't feel there has been enough customer demand to warrant a service pack release. Huh? That's the message from SQL Server MVP Hugo… Read more

SQL Server MVP Randy Dyess has a short webcast which provides the highlights of SQL Server 2008 security.He includes some demos which show the centralized management features inherent in SQL Server 2008.

You can find it on the SQL Server Magazine's site. It is part of the SQL Server 2008… Read more

SQL Server MVP Andy Leonard is on the latest edition of .NET Rocks! If you're not familiar with .NET Rocks!, it's a podcast targeted at the Microsoft .NET Framework developer. As far as podcasts go, it's one of the best out there. I've been listening to it for a while,… Read more