On Thursday, September 30, 10:30AM EST, Bert Scalzo and I will be doing a Quest sponsored Webcast – “DBAs Versus Developers.” Sign Up/Register for the Webcast That sounds awfully contentious, Jeff! When visiting customers I am often talking to a group of developers in the morning and DBAs in the afternoon. In the morning, I tell my DBA jokes. In the afternoon, I make friends by piling on the developers. From time to time we…
Updated for 2015! If I were attending as a developer/DBA, here are the things I would be doing: Take notes, collect materials. Come back to work, put on a lunch seminar sharing the biggest things you learned during the week – make it EASY for your boss to approve #OOW16. Put Twitter handle on name badge. Plan for sessions in advance using the Schedule Builder Only pack in carry-ons. You won’t want to be waiting…
I have never been really good at telling people ‘No.’ Let me clarify that – I have never been really good at telling people I work with ‘No.’ This trait put me in an interesting position recently when both @BrentO and @CHasker Instant Messaged me at work. Apparently I was the lucky guy to run Quest’s new Wiki/Blog site, OraDBPedia. If you are plugged into the wacky world of SQL Server, then you know all…
I travel quite frequently for my job. Number one on my list of ‘must have things’ on the road is a Navigation device. This used to be my trusty Garmin, but now thanks to my new Android device, I have Google Maps. There have been times and places where I don’t have the device available – either the GPS satellites cannot be acquired or i’m in D.C. where the accuracy of the positioning seems artificially…
One of the downsides to moving off the Apple technology platform for your mobile device is not being able to use iTunes to mange your media content on said mobile device. Enter doubleTwist! I have received two recommendations to try out the program after bemoaning the ‘drag and drop’ methodology of synching content to my new Android device. It is interesting to note that the Verizon reps are being trained to push people to doubleTwist.…
I had to check out Brent’s LinkedIn account to see just how long he had been at Quest. Wow, 2.25 years. It was only about a year ago that I became aware of Brent’s presence. I actually can’t remember if I stumbled across his blog first or heard his name mentioned in a conference call. Ahhh, as I type this, I now recall how I ‘met’ Brent. Via Twitter. @BetsyLM had compiled a list of…
Tradeshows, user groups, conferences, seminars are all used by vendors to meet with customers and hopefully increase the chance of a sale in the near future. I have been working these types of events since 1999. In that time, I have never seen a vendor resort to playing a feature length movie on the big screen in order to draw customers into their booth. For the past 2 hours I have been watching Avatar in…
Updated 3/16/2014, Full disclosure: I picked up a 13″ MacBook Air this week I’m not sure I want it anymore. No, I do still want one, but the annoying voice in the back of my head has all but shut up. I know what you’re thinking, somewhere an angel has just lost it’s wings because I’m being selfish. As a professional geek, I’m supposed to buy this stuff and talk about it to everyone I…
The circle of people I follow in the IT world have recently been blogging about their travel habits. It’s no accident – companies are investing large amounts of money in business travel now. Hopefully if you meet someone face to face, they will listen to you next time you randomly call and ask for their attention in some matter. Yes, I know, that’s a bit blunt, but you’re naive to think a vendor is coming…
We went from ‘Full of Food, Myself, and _______’ to ‘140,000 Characters or Less’ – hopefully an obvious tongue-in-cheek reference to Twitter. I’m not 100% happy with this title either, but I also recognize the futility of spending multiple brain cycles trying to come up with something catchy, and probably at the end of the day do nothing to bring people to my blog. So, I’m going to focus on content, content, and whatever makes…