11Jan 2010 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Horror… sort of

Misc
You must read this post from Tim Ford to understand why I might do this on my technical blog. But Tim's a friend and the chance to branch out, at least a little, could not be avoided. I hope I don't lose too many of my eight readers from this.... The sign read "Live Nude Cats," so of course, I had to go and take a look. It wasn't the best part of town and I certainly didn't have any reason to be there, but the sign read "Live Nude Cats." How could I resist? How could anyone? I parked and locked the car, scanning the parking lot. Not good. There must be 50 different ways a person could get jumped in here, and did I mention this part of…
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11Jan 2010 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

New England Data Camp v2/SQL Saturdy #34 Update

Misc
The second annual New England Data Camp is shaping up to one excellent event. We've put together a great set of sponsors. Thanks to them we're providing much better food than last year and the chance at a bit of swag, again, better than last year. But, most importantly, we have an excellent selection of speakers. The schedule has been posted so you can go and check it out and start laying out which ones you can hit. Some of the people speaking are known internationally (Adam Machanic, Aaron Bertrand), some are local luminaries, some are up and coming, and several are probably on the fast track to being MVP's. In other words, this is the place to go to learn something about SQL Server in New England. It's not…
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06Jan 2010 by Grant Fritchey 6 Comments

PASS Summit Evaluations

PASS
The big day has arrived and all the speakers are poring over their PASS Summit 2009 evaluations, me included. These things are always a mixed bag. On the one hand you get nice positive reinforcement. On the other, you wonder how you may have fallen short to not get even higher marks. I'd say I take them as guides and move on, but I don't. I really sweat them and worry about lower marks and ways I could improve... makes me a bit crazy. Be that as it may, here are the evals from my two sessions. Best Practices for Working With Execution Plans (AD-419-S), 59 evaluations Usefulness of Session Poor:0 Average:2 Good:19 Excellent:38 Speaker's Presentation Skills Poor:0 Average:2 Good:18 Excellent:39 Speakers's Knowledge Poor:0 Average:1 Good:12 Excellent:45 Accuracy of Session…
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04Jan 2010 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

SQL Server Standard Article Abstracts

Misc
I'd really like to publish your article in SQL Server Standard. All I need from you is an abstract, a description of what the article will be. I've posted this before, but I've never provided examples. So, to get people started, here are a few examples of articles that have been accepted and will be published (shortly I hope). Here's a great example from Andy Leonard. It includes a great amount of detail, more than I need to make my decision, but with this much detail, the decision is much easier because I know exactly what this article is likely to look like:    I'm interested in writing an article on SSIS for SQL Server Standard. I'd like to cover ways packages can exchange information at run-time. There are a couple…
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01Jan 2010 by Grant Fritchey 9 Comments

Plagiarism

Misc
UPDATE: Lulu has removed, not just my stolen material, but all offending material. That means some of the links in this post will no longer work. Back to the post... And really bad plagiarism at that. I received an email from someone suggesting I check out a book on Lulu.com, that it might be a copy of my book. Sure enough, this other guy, William Miller, had posted my book, with the original cover (that had my name on it) and the original description on his own "author" page. He also offered a decent little discount on the price. Nice guy. I tried to get an image of his copy of my book, but I can't find anything on any of the internet archives, which is just as well. His work…
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