Windows Themes (We need a PASS Theme!)

I imagine most of us change our wallpaper on the desktop from time to time. Frivolous but fun, a simple way to personalize what is otherwise a not very exciting tool most of the time. Windows 7 does a nice job of taking that further with some really good themes – you can get a […]

Stay Interview Instead of Exit Interview

I had not heard of the stay interview until a friend sent over a link. The idea is that rather than waiting until they leave to diagnose what went wrong, you do periodic interviews to find out how they are doing and encourage them to stay. I’m interested in this from a management perspective, and […]

Automating Imports from Access

Access is actually pretty good at importing files, and doesn’t on the surface work much different that import/export from Management Studio. I wrote this up after a friend had asked for assistance, I remembered the import specification part but couldn’t find at the time how to drive it from code. Finally dug through (it’s been […]

PASS Update #26 (Bylaws & Upcoming Board Meeting)

Most months we do a conference call, but a couple times a year we get to meet in person and it’s a much better experience for collaborating. For the first time since I joined the board we’re meeting on the east coast saving me some travel time and more importantly, avoiding the jet lag. We’ll […]

A Wiki Wiki

I was killing a few minutes browsing while waiting on a call, had been thinking again whether a wiki would be the right approach for enhancing the SQLSaturday documentation, and ran across http://www.wikimatrix.org/, a site that compares in great detail all the various wiki apps out there. It’s the great part of browsing, sometimes you […]

Review: Virtual CloneDrive

It’s pretty common to download software as an ISO file (a disk image) and it seems like a waste to burn it to CD/DVD just to install it once. Instead, it makes a lot more sense to treat it as a virtual drive – if you have the right tool! I use Virtual CloneDrive. It’s […]

Operation: Dinner Different

My wife and I try to have dinner out every other week or so, but we tend to fall into ruts, visiting the same handful of restaurants that are close to home, reasonably priced, and reasonably dependable. Sometimes that dinner night comes at the end of a long week or a hectic day, and while […]

Orlando Code Camp – March 27, 2010

I’ll be attending and speaking at the Orlando Code Camp on March 27, 2010 at Seminole State College along with Kendal Van Dyke, plus SQL sessions from Adam Jorgensen, Plamen Ratchev, Wes Dumey, and Sean Chambers. It’s always a good event, and I enjoy the chance to sit in on a couple .Net sessions to […]

PASS Update #25 (Summit Location and More)

By now you’ve probably seen the official announcement from PASS about the Summit being located in Seattle for both 2011 and 2012, along with preliminary plans to host an event of some type on the East coast in the spring of 2011. There’s been a lot of good discussion on it, much of which you […]

The Name Game

I’m in charge of networking and social time for oPASS and I do what I can to help get our members (old and new) get better at networking while at our user group meetings. In the past we’ve done introductions and games and discussion about networking. Worth doing, and effective to a point. This month […]