XBRL is yet another use of XML, this time for financial reporting. It is supposed to be in place for large companies, and like most other requirements, it will eventually migrate down to smaller companies as more tools become available and cheaper. Putting the onus on large companies to implement… Read more

I write on a daily basis, and while I don't find it hard to come up with things to say, it is hard to write something great every day. Actually it's probably hard to write something great ever.

I try and I think there are some great things I've written,… Read more

I got my Toshiba Qosmio a little over a year ago and it has been a great machine for me while traveling and producing podcasts. It's been rock solid with Vista Ultimate on it, with a few annoyances, but mostly it has just worked.

Until recently.

I was actually rendering… Read more

Tia came down and asked if we should do something with the kids, bowling, movies, etc. I told her I wasn’t skiing with the bad weather in the mountains and would be up for something, but I needed to do “a little work” first.

She said I always need to… Read more

I'm sure some of the geeks out there are logging onto the web, checking feeds, and whiling away some of the day off. So, to you out there...

Merry Christmas!

Enjoy the day, hopefully you got some good geek gifts, and I'll update this post with mine since I'm writing… Read more

As we try and evolve our automotive industry, and perhaps our energy policy, to move into the future in the US, one of the big things that is being looked at is electric cars. Now I am a car guy, and in many ways I think electric cars are a… Read more

One of Google's tenets is to "do no evil" as they run their corporation. This article questions their motives as they've changed the agreement for Chrome, their browser.

I don't necessarily think that Google is evil, and in many ways I think they've learned from Microsoft in how to not… Read more

It’s my boss, or rather the owner of the company I work for (yes I work for someone in addition to owning a company), but it’s still an interesting post.

Hiring Your First Employee

I don’t know when Neil hired the first person to work for… Read more

I saw a question today on restoring a SQL Server 7 backup to SQL Server 2005, and I wasn't sure this was supported. So I went browsing through Books online and sure enough, it's supported. I ended up in the SQL Server 2008 books online first and it's… Read more

I missed the November Car update, but I was too busy with the PASS Summit to get one done.

However last night I got gas for the Prius and got inspired. Delaney, my son, was in the car with me and he was asking about how much gas the Prius… Read more

You might think it's the e-ink screen. It's not.

You might think it's the ability to carry around hundreds of books in one device. It's not.

You might think it's the lower cost of brand new books. It's not.

So what is it? The best thing about the Kindle is… Read more

I remember when each of my boys started to read a lot. There was a time when both of them picked up books devoid of pictures, with 50 or more pages, and would sit and read and really enjoy it. Kendall has done some reading on her own, but tonight… Read more

I saw this blog from Jeffrey Yao on investing in your career, and thought it would be a great editorial. It echoes a lot of what I’ve written in the past, you can’t know everything, but you have to keep doing it.

I like his advice, and while I’m not… Read more

I first saw a Surface Computer at the Sheraton in Seattle and thought it was pretty cool, but not necessarily something that I think will be widely used. However there are places where it makes sense and I think this use by BMW is a good one.

Surface is flashy… Read more

I finally got tagged for the SQL Quiz, which I've been following. Michelle Ufford, aka SQLFool, tagged me following her answers.

So here goes. I think I might look at this a little differently than some others, but I'll give you my thoughts, which are also going out… Read more

I’ve been trying the social networking thing, with accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I guess I have one on Plaxo, but I never use it unless someone wants to connect to me. There’s nothing really wrong with Plaxo, but I kind of got stuck on Linked… Read more

Can anyone here write a SQL statement that generates a Mandelbrot Set? I’m sure a few of you can, and if you want to try, please do so, but it’s something that I’m not particularly good at. I used to like solving problems like this in coding when I was… Read more

I was recently reading Joel Spolsky’s column in Inc. on management and I thought it was an interesting story. In general you want to be efficient with your time. You don’t want to waste it doing things that someone else could do better and possibly cheaper. Time management is a… Read more

Last week Steve Ballmer had issued a challenge to MVPs to have them try Live Search instead of their regular search engine if they weren’t using Live. Primarily I’ve used Google over the years, though I periodically have compared Live and Yahoo to Google to see how things work.

So… Read more

I have to admit that when I had a performance problem with some code, I would often fire up Profiler and try to trace events that were occurring right then. If you’ve used Profiler, it was clunky in v6.5, slightly worse in 7,2000, and it’s very complicated and lots of… Read more