Two Posts About PASS

I’m a little late getting to this, but I think both of these are worth reading: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/open-letter-pass-group-leaders-sql-saturday-steve-rezhener-mba/ https://medium.com/@SteffLocke/sqlsaturdays-shouldnt-give-up-pass-money-a478a97ee0c7 Suggest you post any thoughts on them to the appropriate post. I’m working my thoughts about them for a post tomorrow.

The Failed One Laptop Per Child Project

I wrote about OLPC back in 2010 (and before that, somewhere back on a post I didnt port over here from SSC). It was a vision worth pursuing. It failed though, for many reasons, perhaps not the least of the killer branding around the “$100 laptop” which turned out to be unachievable. Here’s a good […]

Zero Width Characters

Another bit of miscellany, this one shows how you can use zero width characters to tag/fingerprint data. Reminds me of the Canary Trap (if you’re a Clancy fan).

Paper Model of Hubble Telescope

Not even close to being about SQL, I ran across the plans for a paper model of the Hubble Telescope while doing some follow up reading on the Hale Telescope (because I just read a book about it). I haven’t attempted the model, but wanted to note it here in case I want to come back […]

Getting Schooled by Brent

Earlier this year Brent Ozar invited me to attend some of his online classes for free. Free is good! Training is good! I signed up with a few thoughts in mind: I had not taken a class recently (I like to self learn, perhaps to a fault) I was curious to see how Brent did […]

SQL Solver

A few months back I ran across this article for checking semantic equivalencies of queries. That’s interesting, from the perspective of someone that has once or twice rewritten a query to be faster and then discovered it was subtly different. I don’t think we have the equivalent. We can compare query plans hashes, but often […]

Notes From SQLSaturday Houston 2018

Various and possibly amazing notes: Because I waited too long the best flight I could get was into George Bush instead of Hobby, which meant driving around (literally, on the beltway) Houston and it left at a not-so-fun 7 am on Friday. I got a car from Dollar. Got the cheapest one they had, wasn’t […]

South Florida Vacation Notes

I extended my trip to SQLSaturday South Florida for a couple days vacation. If I’m going to drive 3-1/2 hours may as well make the most of it. Stayed at the Sheraton Suites Plantation for two nights, fairly close to Nova. Nice hotel, parking was a bit of a mess due to a lot of […]

What Twitter Account Should SQLSaturday Use?

Last week PASS sent out an email saying that on June 15 all the tweets from @sqlsat would be changed to come from @sqlpass (and no more “attending” tweets”). The next day the deadline was moved to June 22 in response to feedback. You can read the official post here. Handled well? Probably not. Is […]

Notes on SQLSaturday South Florida 2018

Notes: Due to travel delays I missed the speaker dinner. I missed the chance to catch up and meet new people, but I have to admit the introvert in me enjoyed a quiet evening before a busy Saturday. That’s not to suggest that I will plan to miss more, it’s an invaluable networking opportunity (if […]