What Should I Carry in My Laptop Bag

I have a tendency to carry more than I need, the equivalent of the Batman Utility Belt. I just went through and did some pruning, tried to get back to the basics: Laptop. My E6500 for now. Love the machine, wish it was lighter. Looking with awe at the ultrabooks coming out, debating how much […]

The Ten Thousand Year Clock

Ran across this in my reading about the Ten Thousand Year Clock, a project funded by Jeff Bezos. Awesome dream. Makes me think about dreaming bigger.

PASS Update #65 (Officers, September Meeting)

I wanted to start with a follow up to my last post about the officer elections and the concerns about having two officers from the same company. The question came in about whether having two from the same company increased the risk, and I want to try to answer that. The first risk is fraud. […]

No Drama

Someone I worked with recently on the server side of the business had that to say about SQL Server compared to Oracle. His perception as a guy that is on the fringe if not the middle of performance problems is that SQL Server doesn’t need much in the way of care and feeding. It’s not […]

Conflict Resolution

More than once I’ve run into situations where I’m working with two people/groups that don’t get along. Especially as a manager or consultant its easy to wind up between two factions that can’t get along for reasons often lost to history. Telling them to ‘work it out’ rarely works. If they could, they would have […]

Dreaming

It’s easy to get so busy with life you forget to dream, at least for me. Most of us have dreams, ranging from winning the lottery to having kids to the vacation to Tahiti. Some dreams are practical, such as paying off your mortgage. Some are less practical or even unlikely. Fulfilling dreams requires a […]

I Don’t Know

I wanted to write this because lately I say “I don’t know” a couple times a day to my client/boss. I know what I know, I try to prepare well, but she has an uncanny knack for asking questions that go one step beyond in some way. A lot of times it’s not a question […]

8 Weeks In

I’m about eight weeks into my current project and while I’m certain I don’t know it all, I’m finally at the point where I understand most of the work, know who most of the people are, and have a good idea on how to navigate to the finish line. It’s not as if there was […]

Checkers, Chess, and Politics

There are few games that don’t have some kind of strategy, from tic-tac-toe on up. Sometimes we take the time to master (or try to) the strategies, sometimes it’s enough to just play. If you just play though, and then decide to play against someone that takes the time to learn the strategies, odds are […]

My Sessions & Schedule at the 2011 PASS Summit–Early View

I was just checking the event calendar and saw that my Building a Professional Development Plan presentation is on Wednesday at 3:00 pm. It’s one of my favorite presentations and out of all the ones I’ve done, it’s the one that I get follow up email on the most. I’m also part of a panel […]