For quite a while now I've been intrigued by the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard (DSK). I was first introduced to it by my mentor at an internship during college, and after reading about how Dr. Dvorak's layout of the keys came to be, I thought it would be neat to learn given its advantages. After giving it more thought, …

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Take a moment to think about the really important passwords you use – maybe for your computer at work, email, financial information, or even the 'sa' account on SQL Server. How many characters long are they? Are they really all that difficult? Are they: Dictionary words? Words with a few numbers or symbols substituted …

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This month's T-SQL Tuesday is brought to us by Jason Brimhall (Blog | Twitter) and he's asking what we do to prepare for some time off. Databases don’t take any time off, and in my experience DBAs rarely do either. We do earn our vacation like every other employee though, and every once in a while we might even be …

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Back in January, Paul Randal (Blog | Twitter) started a wonderful blog meme that asked you to write about 3 events in your life that brought you to where you are today. I had the pleasure of reading many excellent posts written by people that I really look up to. I wanted to participate, but I didn’t have a blog back …

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Tomorrow night I'll have the pleasure of speaking at the August 2010 Chicago Suburban SQL Server User Group meeting. Here's the details: WHERE: Microsoft Offices – 3025 Highland Parkway Suite 300, Downers Grove, IL WHEN: Tuesday, August 3, 2010. 6:00 – 9:00 pm I'll be giving my presentation entitled "Backups and …

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Note Picasa Web Albums no longer exists, as that offering has been replaced by Google Photos. I'm leaving this post up for posterity and to show what Picasa Web Albums were like, as well as my opinion of them at that time. This is the fourth post in my series on cloud backup solutions. Previous posts were: Disaster …

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Do you like it when your schemata are easy to understand and maintain? If so, keep the following in mind when choosing names for tables and columns. If you're feeling evil and want to inflict some frustration on others, this might give you some good ideas too…

1. Data types make horrible names There's no rule that says …

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Note Jungle Disk no longer exists, and is now known as Cyber Fortress. I'm leaving this post up for posterity and to show what Jungle Disk was like, as well as my opinion of it at that time. This is the third post in my series on cloud backup solutions. Previous posts were: Disaster Recovery Strategies for the Home A …

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I've seen many articles and blog posts concerning what to do when you have to switch between SQL Server Recovery Models. A lot of these tips are very important, as they can mean the difference between being able to recover your data and the much less desirable opposite. After a lot of web searches on the subject I came …

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Images make just about everything more interesting, which is why I do my best to include at least one with each blog post even if for nothing more than comic relief. I run a few different websites, and a while ago I decided to host the images for all of them in the cloud using Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service). I've …

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