Before You Hire a Head of AI
March 20, 2026
I’ve told this story before, but it keeps applying to new things, so here we go again. A few years ago, we built a duplex. In-laws moving into the downstairs units, my office going upstairs. About a month out from moving in, I called the cable company to get service set up. Figured a couple
SQL Server Best Practices: A Practitioner’s Guide
March 17, 2026
Changelog: March 2026 – Initial publication This is a living document. Next up: SQL Server Best Practices are not Universal Aside from maybe autoshrink, not all SQL Server “best practices” are always applicable to all. But some are. And we find them misconfigured on almost every new server we touch. After 15 years of managing
VMware SQL Server Best Practices
March 16, 2026
Broadcom just published updated technical guidance for SQL Servers running on VMware, and it’s bundled with the VCF documentation, which includes vSphere. (You can get that 90-page PDF here.) VCF is the Broadcom bundled platform that includes vSphere, vSAN, and NSX. Below are some of the best practices we work with our clients’ sysadmins to
SQL Server Critical Security Patch Alert
March 12, 2026
I should just create a blog post template for these, it feels like every 1 to 3 months we have another critical one to share. But here we are again, just yesterday, Microsoft released a fix for CVE-2026-2162. This one can, ultimately, lead to anyone with a SQL login and the ingredients for the exploit
Risks? I’ve Taken a Few
March 10, 2026
I still remember the time I got in a shouting match with my HS biology teacher… “You’re never going to amount to anything – I don’t even know why you are in this class – you should work more hours and drop out already…” He was a bit of a hot head so when I
Call Dig Safe Before You Start Your AI Project
March 10, 2026
I’m about to save our company 2 hours a month in invoice processing and renewal checks… So far, I’ve “only” invested 80 of my own hours into working with Claude Code, and I’m not halfway there yet. I alternate from excitement and amazement to horror and depression every other build, test, and commit. I keep
When Software Runs Slow Is it the Vendor or the Customer? (“Yes” probably…)
March 9, 2026
I’ve lost track of the number of long term clients we have at Straight Path who started out with “It’s the vendor’s fault! They had the nerve to tell me my servers weren’t running great!” or “Our environment is perfect, it’s this (ERP/CRM/eDiscovery/Integration/etc.) software we installed that is just running like garbage!” True to human
Psst: “Vibe Ops” Isn’t a Thing…
February 27, 2026
I was maybe 12 years old the first time I really smelled ozone. Not from a thunderstorm. From a Radio Shack 200-in-1 electronics kit… the kind with the spring terminals and the little instruction booklet that made you feel like a real engineer. I forgot what I was supposed to be building, maybe a lap
Life moves pretty fast…
February 21, 2026
I went to Harvard Business School executive education at the end of January, expecting to come home with a list of tactics. Where am I leaking efficiencies? What strategy have I messed up all of these years? What’s the one thing that will change everything? The case study in my head sounded something like, “How