It had been about 5 years since I’d bought a new desktop machine for my home, and with my oldest starting school this year, it was time to add another computer to our inventory. Since my son’s computer needs are relatively minimal at this point, I decided to buy a new computer for the tall people in the house and hand down the current machine to the rugrat. Our home desktop has always been a multipurpose device; it’s got some of my business information on it, most of our personal finance stuff, our entire music and home video/photo library, and several games that I rarely get to play. While I had no intention of spending two grand on this box, I wanted to get something that wouldn’t need an upgrade in the next couple of years.
After a couple of disappointing stops at local electronics retailers, I bought an off-the-shelf Dell from, of all places, Wal-Mart. It’s a 64-bit multicore Athlon with lots of disk space and 8gb of RAM. Even more striking is the 24” widescreen monitor; I’d gotten used to the poor, neglected 17” CRT we’ve relied on for years, so I felt entitled to splurge a bit on the display.
I’m saving the setup and data transfer for tomorrow, after which I’ll get to be the hero for giving my kiddo his very own PC. Everybody wins!
I was tagged by Scary DBA and recent MVP awardee Grant Fritchey with the latest viral question:
“So You’re On A Deserted Island With WiFi and you’re still on the clock at work. Okay, so not a very good situational exercise here, but let’s roll with it; we’ll call it a virtual deserted island. Perhaps what I should simply ask is if you had a month without any walk-up work, no projects due, no performance issues that require you to devote time from anything other than a wishlist of items you’ve been wanting to get accomplished at work but keep getting pulled away from I ask this question: what would be the top items that would get your attention?”
Yes, it’s a bit silly, but think about it – a full month to do the stuff you’ve wanted to do all along. No ringing phone. No midnight SPID-killing. No “I accidentally deleted all of our customers, can you drop what you’re doing and fix it?” support tickets. Thirty days to show off how smart you are, or to get even smarter. A month to work on real projects with real value.
With that in mind, the first thing I’d do is to remove any visible signs that I’m on the island, which should keep the rescue craft from easily finding me. This might buy me 2, maybe 3 more months on the island.
Seriously, with that kind of unallocated time, I’d round out my Analysis Services knowledge and learn everything I could – including MDX, data mining, and DMX. I believe business intelligence is the future of SQL Server and of the data profession as a whole. Those who are well-versed in these technologies will bring enormous value to any organization.
With any remaining time I had left, I’d finally get around to writing some tools to make my job easier. I’ve had many moments of pause throughout my SQL Server career when I’d tell myself, “Someday, I’m going to create an application/script/add-in to make this task easier". With my time in isolation, I’d spend the time to streamline those tedious task that take up too many mindless clicks or keystrokes.
Now to keep this rolling, I’m going to tag my friend Jack Corbett, who I’ve “known” online for a couple of years but only met in person last weekend in Pensacola. I’ll also reach out to Ken Simmons, whom I also met at the same SQL Saturday event.
... and other times, they are stop-you-in-your-tracks funny. Here's an example of the latter:
http://msmvps.com/blogs/brianmadsen/archive/2009/04/21/funniest-code-comment-ever.aspx
During the month of February, I participated in the Get Fit in February challenge last month. Along with a few hundred other folks, mostly technical professionals, I set an aggressive weight loss goal and worked hard to meet the goal. Although I didn’t hit the mark I set for myself (12 pounds), I did lose a significant amount of weight (9 pounds) during the month, and trimmed off at least an inch from my waist. Through this process, I have learned some things that worked for me, and a few others that didn’t, when trying to lose weight. More importantly, I gained some additional confidence along the way, proving that I can make significant sacrifices when I set my mind to something.
Where to from here? I’m still looking to lose more weight – ideally, I should be about 15 pounds lighter than my current weight. I’ll continue to eat responsibly and stay physical to continue my weight loss, though it certainly won’t come as quickly as it did in February. I intend to drop a pound a week for the next 10 weeks, which will put me within spitting distance of my final goal just in time for summer.
I’m on Day Two of the Get Fit in February Developer Challenge. This month-long competition boasts around 200 participants who are vying for some nice prizes to the fittest of the fit. Judged in 3 categories – total weight lost, percentage of weight lost, and most active participation – the winners can claim one of two Zunes or an MDSN subscription.
So I’m committed to this thing… here’s my starting point. I’m at 183 as of last night, which puts my BMI squarely at 27, making me technically overweight. My goal by the end of the month is to lose 12 pounds, which would land me at 171 by the time March arrives. Beyond that, I’d like to trim down to an even 160, but we’ll reevaluate and set further short term goals once this challenge is done.
My plan goes something like this:
So I’m a full day into this thing and, excluding last night’s Super Bowl party, I’m doing quite well. Tonight’s dinner was Special K cereal and a banana, and I pounded out 20 minutes of 10 degree climbing on the treadmill.
Now this is a technical blog so I’m not going to post all of my weigh-ins or notes here; I will follow up here with a single final results post at the end.. If you’re interested in my progress or the event as a whole, visit to the Facebook group for this challenge.
… and joined Twitter. I’m only doing it ‘cuz everybody else is doing it. With all the other social networking tools out there I don’t see what sets Twitter apart as The Next Big Thing, but I’ll give it an honest try. There was apparently a lot of PASS-related traffic on Twitter over the past few weeks, and as a result there may be more SQL gurus participating.
By the way, is “tweet” a noun or a verb? Do I “tweet” someone, or give them a tweet?
In case you’re interested in my petty updates: http://twitter.com/Tim_Mitchell. FWIW, this post doesn’t count toward my quota.
For my colleagues and friend who visit my websites (www.bucketofbits.com, www.tyleris.com, www.timmitchell.net), I just discovered that my web host has gone offline. In truth, it appears that they have gone completely belly-up – their own corporate website is down, and the sales and support phone numbers indicate that they are disconnected.
If anyone has any news about Sectorlink (www.sectorlink.com) and their future plans if any, let me know. In the meantime I could use some suggestions for a new multi-domain web host.
I got my first opportunity to visit New York City last week. I was actually sitting in on a training class in Whippany NJ, which is about an hour away (by train) from the city. I went over to NYC for both evenings that I was in town to see the sights and generally act like a tourist.
On a SQL Server-related note, I did feel that I was cheating just a bit on the SQL BI stack. The training class in which I was participating was for a Cognos setup...
The picture above is uptown looking at the NYPD substation (which looks more like a 1950s diner than a cop shop). The picture below is from the 86th floor of the Empire State Building; if you look very closely at the middle of the picture, you can see Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, and to the left of there is where the World Trade Center buildings once stood.
First it was CNN 24x7. Next the Internet brought us live information from around the globe.
Now this... real-time pizza tracking...
