To refer and to be referred

Referrals have never been more important in the job market. They’re no longer nice to have; in many cases, they’re what gets your résumé through the door. I’ve been...

Keeping Track of my ConEmu CLIs

I use ConEmu for my terminal interface. I’m still on Windows 10 at home, and for consistency’s sake, I run this on my Win11 laptop and the home machine....

SQL Server Is Still Here and Microsoft Is Still Investing in It

I recently attended SQLCon and FabCon Europe in Barcelona, and as you would expect, there was a LOT of talk about Fabric, Azure, AI, agents, Copilot, and where the...

SQL Server Transaction Log Forensics: Preserving Evidence During an Incident

SQL Server Transaction Log Forensics: Preserving Evidence During an Incident

SQL Server Transaction Log Forensics: Preserving Evidence During an Incident

This is the companion to Why sys.fn_dblog...

Tell It Once: Setting Up Claude With Skills and MCP Servers

Many of us use AI the same way every single day. Open a tab. Paste in a question. Copy the answer out. Fix what it got wrong. Then tomorrow,...

Differences Between xp_readerrolog and sp_readerrorlog: #SQLNewBlogger

I was creating a question on sp_readerrorlog and realized that this procedure is different from the one it wraps: xp_readerrorlog. This post digs into a few differences. Another post...

What Does It Mean to Make Data AI-Ready?

Making Data AI-Ready, Part 1 (This is the first article in a three-part series on making data AI-ready. Part 1 explains what AI-ready data actually means, Part 2 looks...

Car Update September 2026

Software is hard. While I love our Lucid Gravity, I realize that they are behind Tesla with software. A few of the weird UX and software engineering decisions they’ve...

How to Check TDE Progress and Elapsed Time in SQL Server

How to Check TDE Progress and Elapsed Time in SQL Server

Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) protects SQL Server data and log files while they are stored...

T-SQL Tuesday #202 SQL Server Outage You’ll Never Forget: A Roundup

When I put together the invitation for T-SQL Tuesday #202, I wasn't sure what kind of stories would come out of it.
The topic was simple:
That one SQL Server outage...