This is based on a post with respect to where our focus and efforts should be that I wrote at my Goal Keeping DBA blog:

SELECT Task, Priority, DueDate
FROM [What_Is_Important] AS I
  INNER JOIN [What_I_Can_Control] AS C
  ON I.TaskID = C.TaskID
ORDER BY DueDate, Priority, Task;

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This falls in line with a previous post about common sense in IT.

I was having lunch with a co-worker, whom I will call Marcus, to protect the guilty (he's not). Marcus in an IT director for a medical services provider. About two weeks ago the vendor of the… Read more

Auto-deploying AV definitions has become common place throughout the industry. However, this post from the SANS Internet Storm Center raises the question about whether we should stagger deployments, much as we should be doing with security patches. This is a hard call.

AV updates can happen a lot, depending on how… Read more

It's been a while since I was in the day-to-day business of security patches. However, I still keep up with vulnerabilities and fixes as I expect every Microsoft SQL Server DBA should. Here are some resources I recommend to do the job right:

• Secunia Advisories - You'll need to…

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I was watching a training video last night and the instructor made the statement we hear all the time:

"Test this in a non-production environment before you make a change in production."

In fact, he repeated it several times. In a recent article I wrote, I included the following warning:

 The… Read more

If you are in or around the Charlotte, NC area, there is a PowerShell Saturday coming your way on September 15, 2012. You can find out more information and register at:

PowerShell Saturday 002 Charlotte, NC

There looks to be a great set of speakers from infrastructure folks… Read more

As I blogged about previously, tomorrow (Wednesday) I will be speaking for the PASS Professional Development virtual chapter. My talk will be on my career, how I got to where I am, and how I have developed the views I've developed with respect to the job, building yourself up in… Read more

Around April this year, my men's accountability group was talking about a shared pain: income taxes. We were all worried that we were going to get hit with more taxes than we had planned for. Okay, that's really not a correct statement. The problem is we hadn't adequately planned at… Read more

This coming Wednesday I will be speaking for the PASS Professional Development virtual chapter. My talk will be on my career, how I got to where I am, and how I have developed the views I've developed with respect to the job, building yourself up in the profession, etc.… Read more

A Facebook thread by one of my friends brought this one to mind. He was asking about what the current guidelines were for strong passwords. They vary, based on the capabilities of the system. A lot of the guidance nowadays is on passphrases modified in some manner, usually with a… Read more

One of the first questions I hear from folks wanting to grow in their Microsoft SQL Server DBA or database developer careers is, "What tools/books do you recommend?" I've noticed my first answer catches quite a few folks off guard:

"Learn to use Books Online."

To the old hat SQL Server… Read more