PASS Summit 2010 Sessions Accepted

Excited to get the email yesterday that two of my sessions were accepted, Introduction to SQL Server Statistics and Building a Comprehensive Professional Development Plan. I’ve done both presentations before, but definitely still some practice to do prior to November. Looking forward to seeing the full and final schedule. Also saw my friend Don Gabor […]

Why Would They Coach Me?

During a recent call I was talking with someone about achieving a career goal (coaching in itself, though unplanned) and I suggested that someone we both knew would be an excellent coach towards achieving that goal. Finding a coach that has the expertise is usually hard, in this case I could easily name someone. Which […]

Life Lesson: Pay Your Dues

This is one of the lessons you don’t want to hear when you’re 18, or the newest member of a team stuck with all the miserable tasks, but it is, for me, one of the more simple truths in life. I’ve watched a lot of people spend time trying to avoid paying their dues, and […]

SSC Editorial – Learning From Experts

Another story with a lesson today, this one about learning to work smarter and not just harder. Easy to say, harder to do! It’s one of the cases when having a great tutor/role model/coach can help you get there a lot faster than if you have to learn it all on your own (even if […]

MS Access Annoyance: Yes, Save the Password, Again

Here’s another quirk that has been there forever. Open up the linked table UI and select a handful of tables, like so: Note the save password box is checked. Click ok, and then you get this fun dialog after you enter your password, once for each table/view you selected. Seriously, we couldn’t get an intern […]

Delegating

I think all managers are told they must delegate to succeed and/or survive. Seems obvious, a manager can’t do it all, nor should they. So why don’t more managers delegate successfully? The first reason is that often they were promoted from within the team they manage, and doing stuff is their comfort zone, plus they […]

MS Access Annoyance: Doesn’t Link Synonyms

I use Access when I don’t have dedicated admin tools for editing data, frequently the case for infrequently changed data in smaller projects. Linked tables work reasonably well, just have to create a DSN first. Except…it doesn’t seem to work (at least obviously) for synonyms. Here’s one I created (viewing as sysadmin): And the view […]

The Breakfast Plan Goes Awry

Here’s the editorial for SSC today and while it’s a humorous story about asking for donuts and getting a free breakfast for everyone, it’s also a cautionary tale for those trying to do good as managers, and even for employees submitting suggestions. Looking back, I still think it was a fair suggestion in response to […]

Conference Calls Are Hard

Conference calls are a fact of life for most of us. Remote offices, remote workers, clients – lots of reasons to do a call. Hard to argue with the cost, definitely a money saver. For some things they work well, for situations requiring a lot of collaboration though, they take a lot of extra effort […]