2014 – Wow, What a Year!
December 31, 2014
I once heard someone say that as you get older – time seems to go by faster. 2014 was a busy year for me in a lot of ways. But it was the first year that I really felt like the year was just a tiny ripple of time. It’s that time of year when … Read more
PASS BoD Thoughts
November 7, 2014
I can’t make the PASS Board Q&A this year at the Summit. I had to fly out early. I spoke with a few board members off and on, though. I wanted to put some thoughts down about an organization that I do care about and have gained much from. Will it be looked at before … Read more
It’s The Data, Stupid
November 6, 2014
No Offense I mean no offense by the title. The title goes back to American election politics. Someone somewhere (James Carville said this in 1991 about the focus of the campaign he managed for Bill Clinton.. Forgot that, but I found it in about 8 seconds because of fast data in the cloud). I’m not … Read more
PASSPrayers 2014 – Sixth Year
October 30, 2014
SQL PASS isn’t that far off. Every year now since the 2009 Summit (Had to count on my fingers a couple times to be sure it was really 6) there has been a quick gathering in the morning at some central location of Christians who wish to start the conference day off with a quick … Read more
kCura’s k-rad Idea & A Vendor Doing SQL Better
October 15, 2014
k-rad.. K From kilobyte.. A thousand.. A thousand times Rad.. Back when a 40MB hard drive was perhaps average or maybe around the time of those big 1.6GB hard drives, it meant “really cool”.. Maybe today it would ex-rad or p-rad. Anyway. There’s a reason for this trip down BBS or mIRC memory lane.. We’ll get … Read more
Hey DBA Managers, Don’t Be Like the Secret Service!
October 2, 2014
Continuing from yesterday’s advice to DBAs… Three Four (hey it’s for managers, brownie points…) lessons for management from the Secret Service “issues”. Trust But Verify At the White House “upper management” at Secret Service didn’t realize how bad things were with recent lapses. At least I hope they didn’t and I’m going to assume they … Read more
Hey DBAs, Don’t Be Like the Secret Service!
October 1, 2014
Last week, I ripped a story from the headlines to draw lessons for Technologists from – it was about the Secret Service lapses that allowed a fence jumper to get into the threshold of the White House residence. That was bad. This week, though, we’ve learned of some additions to the story that makes it … Read more
How to Set Up SQL Server Alerts and Know if SQL Server is Healthy [Quick Tip]
September 30, 2014
SQL Server alerts let you know what is happening on your instance. They let you become a proactive DBA and know about problems potentially before your users do. If you don’t have a monitoring tool and it isn’t in the budget right now, setting up and monitoring SQL Server alerts is a free and very … Read more
DBA Reminders from an FAA Fire
September 29, 2014
Last Friday a long time employee set fire to the FAA’s Chicago Control Center. You can read about the fire and the 2,000+ flight cancellations that resulted here and here. Keeping with the spirit of ripping lessons from headlines like I did in last week’s learning communication skills lesson from a police shooting, I think there are some lessons us … Read more
Slow Down and Communicate!
September 26, 2014
Earlier this week I ripped a headline for blog post inspiration. Looks like the week will end that way, too. Before you ask – this isn’t about the PASS organizational struggles – though I think it applies there – and looking inside I think it applies to me there. It also applies to parenting. I’m writing … Read more