More Bing

I have no idea how this stuff keeps finding me, other than to think the Universe is really trying to tell me something. A while back I wrote about how I found out that the word ‘bing’ means ‘disease’ in Chinese. As with most of my cultural intake from China, I learned about this word [...]

Presenting at Columbus SQL Server Users Group

Actually, it is more like I am presenting for the C-Bus UG, since I will not physically be at the Kid’s Battle in C-Bus when the talk is given. And the idea that kid’s are going to be fighting during my talk seems distracting, not to mention it makes C-Bus seem a little violent. So, I [...]

Apple Tablet Price is Right

Apple is about to launch a new product today and I thought we could have some fun guessing the initial price. Winner gets a copy of my upcoming book, DBA Survivor. The rules are very simple:

use the #tabletpriceisrightgame hashtag on Twitter, or leave a comment to this blog post
select a specific price. not a range [...]

Find Database Sizes With Operations Manager

I was asked last week if  knew a query that would return the size of the databases that have been discovered by Operations Manager. I went about digging through some old queries I put together and found the information that was requested.
Inside the OperationsManager database look for a view named MTV_Database. All discovered databases will [...]

Book Review: Outliers, the Story of Success

During the holidays my father-in-law was telling me about a book he had recently read. It was “Outliers: The Story of Success.” I was intrigued by my father-in-law recounting the stories about how all hockey players are born in January, towns in Pennsylvania that have no heart disease, and why Asians are so good a math. [...]

New Tip at MSSQLTips

Linked server configurations are often overlooked when it comes to environmental baselines. I don’t know of too many people who go out of their way to track such details. And I have often been surprised by vendor software packages that claim to track system changes but do not include linked server information.
One thing about linked [...]

Speed Versus Time

Back in the day, I drove an ’83 Pontiac Grand Prix. It was actually my mother’s car but at some point during my college years it was transferred into my name. Probably at the time I sold it right before moving to Washington State is the precise moment it became “mine” and “not mine” all [...]

Three Things

OK. Here it goes again.

This Web 2.0 chainposting is brought to you courtesy of Mr. Paul Tripp and his post “What three events brought you here?“ He tagged me and several others (luckily he also tagged Kevin Kline, otherwise Paul would never hear the end of it). Paul’s question was a tough one for me to answer [...]

Rankings updated

OK, updated once again. Discuss amongst yourselves. I have come across roughly 15 new bloggers in the past six weeks. Well, new to me, but most of the names are recognizable. I’ll keep my eye on them and include them when the time is right.
Nobody was promoted this time around. As the old saying goes [...]

Whose Crazy Is It Anyway?

This post is a response to the challenge explained by Tim Ford in his Whose Blog Is It Anyway post. I suggest you go and read his post first otherwise this one will probably not make much sense to you.
“I’ve started, so I’ll finish!”
That’s how Sonny would react when anyone tried to interrupt him while he [...]