Hey, I have a lot of those skills!

Actually going to work on them now as a break from work. See what the horses have left. :w00t:

This isn't T-SQL code. It's VB Script, so you can't use CAST. You could use a VBscript function, such as CDBL

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/3ca8tfek(VS.85).aspx

SQL server has a listener that must respond to connection requests. The listener has to "take" a port from the OS when SQL server starts up. If you look in...

Strict timekeeping doesn't make sense unless you're being paid hourly. People will do the work or they won't, and that's what you track.

I usually let people know in an interview...

CAST works, but without seeing data or errors (or attempts) we have no way to help.

The error messages are usually obvious. You might not like what you're seeing, but they...

Quite a few slick car salesman here in the US have great soft skills. Not sure that's good.

Yikes, ouch, hey!:P

I'm slow, apparently in more ways than one, but it's corrected. No spell checked in that text box :w00t:

-E does trusted connections (as noted above).

-U/P is for SQL Authentication.

You can only choose one for your connection.

Why not just use the SELECT UNIONS instead of the temp tables in the select? It appears that you're using static values in there.

sp_lock

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa213025(SQL.80).aspx

what does the error log show for listeners?

what about netstat -a?

Run a trace. There must be some shrink command being run.

Is there a listener on #1? Check the error log, be sure that it's listening for remote connections. It could be set to only local connections.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure that I'll eliminate them since it adds a lot to the processing time (can't let it run) and many people seem to like...

Are you capturing suser_sname() as well?

If you have permissions denied, there shouldn't be a way they can update the column. I bet you have some strange permissions mismatch.

Can you check...