Closing Out 2014

I’m writing this on Monday as I’ve been thinking about the year and what I’d like to do next year. More than ever I appreciate that plans and lists are important, but so is the ability and willingness to adapt as things change, A once a quarter plan/review has worked reasonably well for me. I […]

How To Improve The PASS Connector

I saw this tweet this morning: The Connector is the primary way PASS communicates with the membership, improving it in any way is certainly worth doing. I’m posting my ideas here because it’s noisy on Twitter and it’s a different channel, maybe some of you will see this and submit your own ideas. […]

The Sony Breach Lesson For SQL Professionals (And Everyone Else Too)

As someone who lives the data world I know that we work hard at protecting certain types of data more than others. PII, PCI, HIPPA, they all get extra attention, or perhaps the “other” data just gets less attention. We think of the worst case as a breach that leads to millions of credit cards […]

SSC Editorial: Kitchen Culture

I continue to be a student and observer of culture at work, it’s always interesting to see a unique twist of an idea, or to see how various groups within a company have their own sub-culture. Often it’s about seeing an idea and amplifying it, something I thought about when I read an Inc Magazine […]

SSC Editorial: We Want Maturity, But Is It Fun?

I wrote We Want Maturity, But Is It Fun? for SQLServerCentral to begin sorting out my own thoughts about when and why I see work as fun. I’m a problem solver at heart, so a good day (and a good job) is one that gives me interesting problems to solve. I enjoy the process of […]

Requiring SSL for WordPress

Last week I wrote about adding an SSL cert to this blog. That left me the remaining task of figuring out how to force SSL for all connections. Azure doesn’t have a checkbox for this; the options are to make a change to the WordPress config, try a plug-in (a variation of changing the config), […]

Adding SSL to SQLAndy.com

I’ve had this task on the list for a while. I wanted to do a refresh on the basics of SSL and certs, plus I’m in favor of using SSL everywhere, even personal blogs. I ended up using The complete guide to loading a free SSL certificate into an Azure website by Troy Hunt as […]

WordPress, Project NAMI, and Azure

I’ve been running WordPress for years now and find it to be a solid solution for what I want to do. The only negative in my view is the requirement to use mySQL. There’s nothing wrong with mySQL itself, it more than does the job. I can quibble that it is one more thing to […]

Starbucks Clover

I recently read Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul by Howard Schultz. Not bad reading all in all. Part of it talked about the new Clover machine, the first time I had heard about it, though it’s been around quite a while. I did a quick search and it turned […]

Deciding On a Presentation Topic for 2015

I’m spending some time this week and the next few weeks thinking about what I want to talk about next year. 2014 was about learning plans and I will continue using that presentation in 2015, but my focus this year is to pick a topic that will work well for chapters/user groups. That really speaks […]