Well, I had a pretty good week this week. I made an effort and met all my goals:
Last week I weighed in at 180, Saturday morning at 178.5. Here’s a chart to plot my weight loss:
I’m pretty happy with the weight loss, 6 pounds in a month. It’s been about 2 years since I was last under 180 so I’m very happy with that. As I have said all along, this is more about life style change and I think that has been pretty successful. I’m definitely eating less and eating healthier without really missing the snacking and junk food too much. I’d like to continue to work on my diet and exercise and continue to slowly and steadily lose weight (1-2 lbs a week). If I can keep that pace, I should be down to about 165 by the PASS SUMMIT and that would be great!
Thanks to Mike Walsh, for starting ActiveAugust, and others involved for keeping me motivated.
This is the third year that Orlando has hosted a SQLSaturday. In 2007, I was an attendee; 2008, I was an event volunteer and speaker; and this year I’m an organizational volunteer, event volunteer, and, most likely a speaker. Because of my increased involvement this year I have gotten to see the event build up from nothing to what I would say is a great event.
My main responsibility as an organizational volunteer is selecting and scheduling sessions. With 2 days left to submit sessions we have 65 sessions from 41 different speakers, including 2 MS employees and 10 MVP’s, which is up from 56 submissions and 38 speakers last year. Currently we are planning on 8 “tracks” with 6 sessions each, for a total of 48 sessions.
The goal is to have something for everyone from beginner to expert, developer to DBA, technical to professional development, traditional SQL to BI, and new technologies like cloud computing, so really there is no reason not to attend.
The training is free (lunch provided for $10), continental breakfast, snacks and drinks throughout the day, post event social, and plenty of SWAG. Why wouldn’t you attend?
When trying to open Default Trace files on Windows 7 and SQL Server 2008 I got the “You don’t have permission to open this file” error. My first and second thoughts were “How can this be, I’m an administrator!?”. SO the first thing I tried was reading the files using fn_trace_gettable in SSMS. This works, what is different between SSMS and Profiler? Nothing that I can think of.
First step, check permissions on the folder, yup, full control. Second step, turn off inheritance. Third step, bang head on desk! So off to google/bing I went. I found this post by the SQL Server PSS team, , which told me about the issue, but not a good way to solve it. I can’t just grant rights to each file because the Default Trace rolls over and creates new files, I need rights all the time. Then I found this post, which says the owner of the files needs to copy and paste them out to a another shared folder. While not the most helpful idea for my situation I tried it, and it worked! I’m still annoyed at this point because I don’t want to have to move the files to read them.
Once again it is Twitter to the rescue. I tweeted my problem and got a pretty quick response from Brian Kelley (Twitter|Blog) asking about OS and if I ran Profiler as Administrator. I answered Win 7 and Yes, I was mistaken on the Yes it turns out. I thought because the account I was running under had administrative privileges that I was running as administrator. This is not the case in Vista, Win 7, and Windows Server 2008 when UAC is on. With UAC on you still need to run Profiler using elevated privileges by right-clicking and selecting “Run As Administrator”. That is the answer. I should also note that Ken Simmons (Twitter|Blog) also produced this answer. Jonathan Kehayias (Twitter|Blog) also chimed in to let me know that you can set individual applications to always run as administrator by right-clicking, selecting Properties, Compatibility, and checking the Run as Administrator box. All of this in about 20 minutes and this is after I spent at least an hour fighting with it and searching the internet for a solution!
I really need to get a better understanding of UAC, and believe it or not, Twitter works!
Last week I weighed in at 180.5, Saturday morning at 180. Here’s a chart to plot my movement:
I think dessert on Friday night is what kept me from getting under 180, there were mornings I was under, but couldn’t do it on the official weigh-in.
Wow! Andy Warren has put together a week of low-cost seminars filling the entire week before SQLSaturday #21 – Orlando. What a great list of speakers and topics. Here’s the list:
I think that there is something for everyone in this list of sessions and if you don’t see what you want in this this list then sign-up for SQLSaturday as it will probably be covered in one of the sessions there. If you don’t see what you are looking for suggest a session and someone may do it!
As I have said before this effort is more about lifestyle change than weight loss which is why I don’t have an official weight loss goal, but losing weight is definitely welcome. Last week I weighed in at 182, this morning at 180.5. Here’s a chart to plot my movement:
I’d like to think I’m making progress in a healthy manner, but I have to be honest, I’d like to have seen 5 pounds a week gone instead of 2, but as I said, it’s about a healthier lifestyle not fast weight loss.
When I first started by career in IT and SQL Server about 10 years ago I lived in a small town in northern New Hampshire. I used my location as an excuse not to attend user groups and other events, unless the boss was willing to foot the bill. Now I realize my mistake, I’m in charge of my professional development, and now, location is no excuse. Here’s a list of just some of the FREE training available online:
I’m sure there are other resources as well.
Now on to the FREE events.
As you can see there are plenty of training options that will only cost you time and maybe travel expenses and that’s really an investment in you.
Since I have an MSDN subscription I downloaded Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit this past week. I installed it on my laptop and then began installing applications. When I went to install Office 2007 Pro Plus it would start and then hang looking for ProPlsWW.cab. I attempted the install at least 10 times. I tried copying the install from the CD to my hard disk, I tried moving PropPlsWW.cab to another location, I tried screaming and yelling at it to “Work you piece of junk!”, but to no avail. I did look it up on the internet (I am currently using Bing Vs. Google). The most promising link I found was to delete the 11.0 or 12.0 registry entry under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Office. I did try this and it didn’t work.
I finally unpacked the cab file and saw that the files in it seemed to relate to MS Access. I re-attempted the install, but this time I did not include Access and I went through all the tools installed and deleted any that referred to Access. I did not write down what I found because I wasn’t planning to blog about it, and not planning on re-installing again!. Finally at this point Office installed successfully. I then re-ran setup, added Access, and viola, install complete.
I caught this blog post, Who says technical presentations can't be engaging?, today thanks to Dana Coffey (@crazeegeekchick on Twitter). My takeaway from the post is that good speakers tell a story.
Now, this doesn’t mean you just tell stories, what it means is that you are organized and know where you want to go and how you are going to get there. Think about some good stories you’ve heard or read, the speaker/writer didn’t just wander around, did they? No, they were coherent and went from point A to point B. Everyone group of friends has someone who can’t tell a story to save their life (if you don’t know who that person is then you probably ARE that person), and the common theme is that they can’t tell a story without wandering all over the place. Well, the same principle applies to technical presenting, “A good story has a point”.
The best feedback I ever received about my speaking was in Bible school, when I had to teach a Bible lesson to the class. At least 3 people in the class said, “I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to learn”. If that’s the reaction, then you haven’t told a good story.
The point I’m trying to make is that you need to know what you want your listeners to learn, and make sure your presentation takes them there. If your presentation is “How to create SQL Server Login” stick to the point and don’t do into database roles because they have nothing to do with creating a SQL Server Login.
I hope I made my point.
PASS is sponsoring a 24 hours of PASS event on September 2nd. Consecutive live (Live Q&A also) 1 hour sessions by some of the best speakers in the business. This event is loaded with MVP’s, authors, and SQL Server gurus. Here’s a few names:
Wow! As far as I’m concerned that’s and impressive list. I won’t be staying up 24 hours, but you can bet I’ll be taking in several hours.
It looks like a nice preview of what you can get at the PASS Summit, minus the networking, but free!
Check it out and attend what you can! Registration opens Wednesday, August 5th.
