Ajarn Mark Caldwell Blog

Bringing Business Sense to the IT World…

Twitter Follow-Up

A few months ago, I announced that I was going to do a test-run with Twitter. So now I thought I'd share a few thoughts. Probably the most telling bit of evidence that shows how my test of Twitter went, is that I haven't posted anything to my Twitter account since December 5th, a whopping 3 weeks after I started, and two and a half months ago. Read more →

Off-Topic: Understanding the Financial Crisis

Since we're all super-geniuses, I'm sure you don't really need this, but you might "know a guy" who does, and you can pass this along... I stumbled upon some really good, short videos on the Marketplace Whiteboard that explain in layman's terms what the heck has been going on in the U. Read more →

More Performance Notes from PASS

As I was reviewing my notes from the PASS Community Summit, a couple more things from Greg Low's talk on Avoiding Recompiles stood out as worth repeating here. First, was his comment that using single-part names when referencing your objects causes a performance hit because they cannot be resolved until execution time. Read more →

PASS 2008: Days 2 & 3

Thursday and Friday of the PASS Community Summit blurred together a bit for me. Not because of the parties Thursday night which apparently left many people bleary-eyed, but the cold medicine I was taking sure didn't help things. Read more →

PASS GO 500

And you thought that you only got $200 for passing GO, didn't you? Well, this isn't Monopoly, my friends, this is SQL Server. And while attending the PASS Community Summit this year, I saw Joe Webb do this trick. Read more →

Conferences are Expensive!

Rushabh Mehta, current Executive Vice President for Finance and Technology for PASS, gave a quiz today to see if any of the volunteers had any idea how expensive it is to put on a conference like the PASS Community Summit. Read more →

PASS 2008: D-1

Spent the day today in the PASS Volunteer Training session. It covered a variety of things from the History of PASS (started in 1999 in Chicago) to updates from each member of the Board of Directors about what is happening in their areas. Read more →

Last Minute Presentation Tips

By now (we hope) you have fine-tuned your slides and demos, and are feeling very comfortable and confident in the material you are going to present at PASS this week. There are a lot of things that go into preparing for a live presentation, and there are a lot of bad examples out there. Read more →

FREE Parking

Although, officially, the posted parking rates said 0-1 Hour: $5.00, apparently the Washington State Trade and Convention Center has some minimum amount of time that you can park there for free. Read more →

It's Time for PASS

Well, here we are on the eve of another PASS Community Summit in Seattle. Last year it was in Denver, then two years ago it was here in Seattle. I'm looking forward to another great event! Read more →

Certification Update

Mea culpa. A friend pointed out to me that I was behind the times. I kept using the acronym MCDBA to refer to SQL Server certifications when that is "SO 2000s". Read more →

What NOT To-Do

One of my favorite authors on the subject of Leadership is Dr. John C. Maxwell. Occasionally, he talks about how most people have To-Do lists, but more importantly, he recommends that leaders develop a NOT-To-Do list. Read more →

Rethinking Old Habits: The Comment Header Block

Old habits die hard, but occasionally it is good to look at them and see if they still make sense... When I started writing code, many moons ago, it was ingrained into my work habit to create or update a comment block at the top of the code file. Read more →