You should be documenting your day, your week, your month, on a regular basis. Take a few minutes when you accomplish something and make a blog entry. This is a great way for you to keep track of what you’ve accomplished during the year, and be ready to talk about… Read more

Disaster recovery can be a huge project at any company. Considering the ways in which you build a plan that covers all the infrastructure, and it can quickly become a full time job for someone. The details, and the scope of the project can be overwhelming when you try to… Read more

This series of blog posts are related to my presentation, The Top Ten Skills You Need, which is scheduled for a few deliveries in 2011.

Databases are built to store data. That’s the primary purpose, and in SQL Server, we store data in a relational form. That means that… Read more

It’s your career. It’s something you have to take ownership of and work on. I know that life is busy, and training budgets are tight. That’s one reason we started SQL Saturday; it’s a way to bring a training event and a conference experience to many people.

I posted this… Read more

Various photo uploads from the past year.

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Buck Woody wrote a fantastic post this morning for speakers to think about. All too often I have seen some speakers at technical events adopt the prima donna stance, expecting gifts, special treatment, free food and drinks, and more. I do think that events should try to recognize speakers when… Read more

There was a recent uproar about a session delivered recently. A company thinks that the session infringed on their intellectual property. The Midnight DBAs had a short write up here that summarizes, and expresses some amazement.

I am sure that this accusation is baseless, but there are likely a few… Read more

Last week was the PASS Summit in Seattle (again, but only for 1 more year) and I was up there for a long week of shaking hands and talking SQL. It was a good time, and I’m sorry I didn’t do a bit more while I was there, but I’m… Read more

The DBA in Space competition continues today with the third question. This time I get to ask it, a sci-fi film question. No hints, but do a little research and don’t make a mistake. You only get one chance at each question to get… Read more

One of the sayings that I’ve heard a few times from professional atheletics is this:

“Amateurs practice until they get it right. Professionals practice until they don’t get it wrong.”

Most of us working in technology would like to think that we’re professionals, but do we really practice restores, practice… Read more

When Jes Borland suggested we do a group SQL Run in Seattle, I was thinking that we’d have a few people. Allen White and I run together when we’re in the same town, and with all the people that ran the Portland half and full marathons this past weekend, I… Read more

It’s completely unrelated to work, though there is a computer science section.

I can’t take credit for this, that goes to Andy Warren (LinkedIn | Blog | @sqlandy) for turning me onto the Khan Academy. It’s similar to what we built at SQL Share, but much broader… Read more

It sucks getting older. There are any number of reminders of that fact on a regular basis as I move through my 40s. A kid in college, the aches and pains from moving my body too quickly, the paunch that I struggle to keep under control, and the most annoying… Read more

There’s a bunch of stuff scheduled for the PASS Summit next week. You can see some of the events on the After Hours page, but there are a few other events happening during the week as well. Most are private, which is fine for the people that get invited,… Read more

This post is part of a series based on my presentation The Top Ten Skills You Need for SQL Server. This post is part of Skill #4 – Joins.

This post is also serving as my T-SQL Tuesday post for the month. This month the party… Read more

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When you create a SQL Server login (with SQL authentication), you have the option of enforcing password policies from Windows (in SQL Server 2005 and above).

The recommendation is that you check all three and force strong passwords. You also force a password change so the person has a private… Read more