Misc

SSMS Tools PACK is featured in May issue of SQL Server Magazine

Mladen Prajdić — Sun, 04 May 2008 11:57:04 GMT

Just as the title says :)

You can read the article here.

Thanx to Kevin Kline for publishing it!

Weekend Fun: Bruce Schneier Facts

Mladen Prajdić — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 23:19:44 GMT

We all heard about the Chuck Norris Facts, right?

Well if you're a fan of security you have to be familiar with Bruce Schneier and his excellent blog.

What I didn't know is that he also has a collection of facts!

Just how cool is that???

Here are some I found funny:

- For Bruce Schneier, SHA-1 is merely a compression algorithm.

- Bruce Schneier once compressed a single bit of information to half its size.

- Bruce Schneier doesn't need backups because his hard drive knows that failure is not an option.

- Bruce Schneier shaves with Occam's razor.

- Bruce Schneier knows the last digit of pi. He won't say it because it's considered a matter of national security.

- Setting SSID of an open Wi-Fi network to "bruceschneier" makes it completely secure.

- Santa Clause doesn't know if Bruce Schneier has been good or bad

- When Bruce Schneier observes a quantum particle, it remains in the same state until he has finished observing it.

- When you email Bruce Schneier, you don't need to press "send".

- Deep Blue couldn't beat Kasparov until Schneier pwned it.

Read others here.

The dangers of blogging by Yossi Vardi

Mladen Prajdić — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 23:15:09 GMT

This is a very "serious" talk presented by legendary Israeli investor and community-builder Yossi Vardi.

It talks about the dangers of blogging especially for males.

Direct video link here.

Worth the watch!

A chance to win one of fifty ApexSQL Developer Studios

Mladen Prajdić — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 14:33:41 GMT

We're having a contest over at SqlTeam.com. Go take a look it might be worth your while.

All you have to do is have a post in the forums.

The more posts you have the better the chance you have of winning.

What can you win?

Well the title says it all. See what that is on the ApexSQL Developer studio page. It's a whole lot of goodies!

Read contest details here.

Become a Better Developer in 6 months. How?

Mladen Prajdic — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 15:51:03 GMT

Yes, me too. :)

I was tagged with this by Denis who has liven (is that even a word?) up to his nick "The SQL Meance". Bad Dennins, bad!

As lame as this thing might be and it does reminds us of the dreaded chain letters (anyone remeber getting those by normal mail. you know the one where people acctually deliver it... by vans even...can you believe it???), it's quite a nice excercise when you think about it. It kind of clears your path career wise.

So I have to find a few things, huh? Here goes:

1. Spending more time looking at art works.

Why? Because paintings, besides being nice to watch (most of them), have a lot of patterns that you can see in them. It jogs your imagination.

It gives you a more abstract (kick-starts the right side of the brain) why of thinking. And that is good for software development.

Plus art is a lot more interesting to talk about with women that how you've built a super-duper highly transactional, kick ass, loosly coupled,

awe inspiring something (you've lost them after lously coupled, trust me :))

2. I'm going to start playing with Lego's again.

As juvenile as it may sound, a part of me being an engineer is Lego toys and wonderous things you can do with them. Anoter part is Star Trek :)

Also somehow building stuff with Legos remindes me immensly of classes and interfaces and object oriented stuff in general. build a block on

top of another block, expose it's functionality to another block via a widget, etc... it's pretty much Object oriented design and

Service Oriented Architecture combined. Let me tell you when i was 10 i was one mean Lego builder. None of todays specialzed toys crap.

You had basic blocks and you could build the most amazing space station or an underwater hideout or a speed racer or ... you NEEDED imagination!!

I had a Lego pneumatic system combined with electrical one doing all kinds of stuff. You should've seen my automatic crossbow. That thing rocked!!

3. I'll start learning Ruby On Rails

I think it's a bit hyped up but i've read some nice things about it.. so let's give it a chance.

4. Play chess a bit more

I'm quite an active player, but not as much as i'd like to be. Why chess?

It gives you a way of thinking and planning ahead about all possible moves. At least 3 moves ahead is great.

Trust me, this comes in handy when designing systems of any kind.

5. Read Freakonomics!

I've heard about this book too much to ignore it, which i've successfully been doing so far. Shame on me!

6. Keep blogging, writing articles and answering questions in the forums

People seem to like reading what I write, so i'll keep doing that

I'll try to not read any tech books for a while because i've read a few in the last 3 months. Look under Reviews category in my posts.

I've never stop reading normal books so that will continue. Any tips on that front?

And no, i'm not going to tag anyone.

Die chain letter, Die! Bad Denis, BAD!! :))))

I Passed the SQL Server 2005 MCP 70-431: Implementation and Maintainance Exam

Mladen Prajdic — Thu, 10 May 2007 10:21:35 GMT

So as of today i'm a proud member of the MCP club :)

The exam wasn't that hard. I had 35 "Pick a correct answer" questions and 15 simulations.

The simulations threw me off a bit because i didn't expect them.

So you have to be comfortable with T-SQL syntax and Management Studio alike.

Knowing what all of the little buttons and options do helps :)

The tools i used for learning are SQL Server Books Online and

EXAM CRAM: MCTS 70-431: Implementing and Maintaining Microsoft® SQL Server 2005

I've read some more books but they were really not needed to pass this exam.

I'll post my reviews of all the books in the following days.

Why is MVP Summit under NDA?

Mladen Prajdic — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 13:46:32 GMT

We had an interesting discussion here about Katmai (the next SQL Server version)

Of course it was discussed in the latest MVP summit, but noone can say anything because it's all under NDA.

So i'm wondering why.... WHY is it under NDA? Is there some very special reason for that?

Nigel responded to my question with this:

I think it's more to do with managing expectations.
A lot of things talked about are under development and may be dropped from the product if they look like they might impact the release date.
They want an opinion on the usability of proposed functionality from a closed community before a public announcement and how the public might react.
Think the main reason though is so that they can talk freely without being worried about saying something that may be incorrect - bit like the difference between talking to your team and talking to the board or investors.
Or it could all just be a public relations exercise.

Somehow i don't think MS has anything to worry about here...

What do you think?

P.S. yes i'm jealous :)

How Yahoo! Mail just made me laugh

Mladen Prajdic — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 11:35:19 GMT

I use Yahoo's mail service since 1996. But today i doscovered a new thing that made me laugh for half an hour.

You have to use their ajax-ifed beta version. Click Compose and start clicking on the subject button.

It auto generates the subject line.

Here are some examples:

- LipSmack heartAttack girlie girl in a pink sleep sack

- How to Comb Your Curly Hair

- Is your coffee table decaff?

- Your earrings would make a great fishing lure!

- Quote me as saying I was misquoted.

- RE: four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie

- Thank god and Greyhound she's gone

- Scratch golfer finds ball in poison oak

- rotating platinum pants

- My favorite color is Vanna White

- ...

this is just simply hilarious! :))

I guess this is what spammers also use for their subject lines. :))

Math geek humor

Mladen Prajdic — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 09:10:32 GMT

A derivative is walking down the street and sees a hot function.

So he grabs her, takes her into the bushes and differentiates her once.

Little later he sees another function and differentiates her twice.

He goes on an sees this super hot function. really sexy.

So he grabs her and differentiates her once and nothing, differentiates her second time, still nothing.

After 10 unsuccessfull differentiations he gets tired and asks the function:

"How come i can't differentiate you???!???"

And the function answers:

"HA!! That because i'm e^x!!!"

and beats the crap out the derivative.

RFC 1925 - The Twelve Networking Truths - a must read

Mladen Prajdic — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 17:55:08 GMT

This document is a must read for any serious network admin and i do dare to say also for a DBA.

.Net developers are welcome to read it since it is usefull.

A few excerpts:

(1) It Has To Work.

(3) With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land, and it

      could be dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead.

(4) Some things in life can never be fully appreciated nor understood unless experienced firsthand. Some things in networking can never be fully

      understood by someone who neither builds commercial networking equipment nor runs an operational network.

(5) It is always possible to aglutenate multiple separate problems into a single complex interdependent solution. In most cases this is a bad idea.

(10) One size never fits all.

(12) In protocol design, perfection has been reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Full document can be found here.