Free MSDN Azure Event in Orlando

Joe Healy is doing a four hour Azure training event on March 6, 2010 in Orlando, details and free registration at http://www.devfish.net/fullblogitemview.aspx?blogid=728. I’m already booked for that day, will go if plans change. I like the four hour single topic format, lets you see something fairly deep, but not so long that you start to […]

Chicago Next Week

I’m in Chicago for a couple days next week, flying in on Sunday. Anyone in the area available for dinner Sunday night?

Join the PASS Summit 2010 Program Committee

Just in case you didn’t see it, we’re looking for volunteers for the 2010 program committee – the team that evaluates all the abstracts submitted which in turn leads to decisions about who gets on the schedule…and who doesn’t! It’s fairly intense work from what I’ve heard, but a great way to participate in the […]

The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good (Again)

I wrote an editorial for SSC back on January 19th about the perfect being the enemy of the good. It’s hard thing to explain well, yet it’s worth explaining (and learning). The comments that followed were interesting and worth reading as well, and I think reflect the challenges of our profession in that it’s just […]

The Power Grid (No, Not THAT Power)

Yesterday I had the Adversity Index, today it’s the Power Grid from MediaIte. It attempts to score the power of reporters and writers, media owners, etc, by using a lot of different data points; number of TV minutes, number of Twitter followers, etc. Here’s the view as I write this: Being mildly competitive, I have […]

Windows 7 Presentation Mode

Recently I was just killing a few minutes and was looking for some tips for Windows 7. I get along fine in Windows, but sometimes I wonder if I’m doing things the same way I did in Windows 95! I found this list by Tim Sneath and found something I’d missed – presentation mode! The […]

Farewell, Robert B. Parker

I heard the news via a blog post by Ward Pond that one of my favorite authors had died at age 77. Parker wrote a lot of stuff, but by far my favorite were the ones featuring Spenser, the tough smart, and intellectual detective from Boston. The books led to the TV series Spenser for […]

Growing the Pool of SQL Server Speakers

In a nutshell, I’m interested in growing and diversifying the pool of speakers that focus on SQL Server. You might ask why, is there a shortage? The answer to that is…in some areas. For example, when Greg Larsen set up SQLSaturday #11 in Tacoma we really struggled to find speakers. But that’s not all of […]

Notes from the February 2010 oPASS Meeting

Really rainy in Orlando today, traffic is horrible. We had a higher than usual number of RSVP’s for the meeting, but attendance ended up being about our usual, 19 total. Jack did the intro using the PASS chapter deck (the color/gradient on some of the slides needs some work!), and we stretched out the opening […]