Ajarn Mark Caldwell Blog

Bringing Business Sense to the IT World…

PASS 2004: D - 1

While some people like Lance Harra took the time today to attend one of the pre-conference seminars, some of the others of us just relaxed by the pool. Unfortunately, I also had other work to wrap up, so I didn't get as much pool time as I would have liked. Read more →

PASS 2004: Swag

Just got back from breakfast with Graz, Chris, and Denise. Went over to registration to pick up our stuff. So far, we've got a large soft-side laptop case/briefcase. It's thick enough to hold a laptop computer, 3-ring binder, and several other things. Read more →

PASS 2004: D-2

Technically, it's 1:30 AM on Tuesday, but for me it's still 10:30 PM Monday night. After leaving Seattle at 1:30 PM local time, I flew to Kansas City with a screaming child sitting behind me. Read more →

Dog Food vs. Prime Rib

Salespeople should beware of using trendy lingo. A couple of years ago, I am sitting in on a series of group presentations for web content management systems. I don't want to mention any names here, but we're talking the initial bids were coming in around $1 Million. Read more →

What's New in DTS 2005

What's new in DTS 2005...that was the title of tonight's local SQL Server User Group meeting. We're a bit spoiled here in the Pacific Northwest, with our local SQL Server User Group meeting on the main Microsoft campus in Redmond. Read more →

How NOT to Select Records

From The Daily WTF... How NOT to SELECT records in your database. Apparently in his version of SQL Server, WHERE clauses only work on Temp tables. Legacy Comments Brett 2004-09-01 re: How NOT to Select Records That's great. Read more →

Top 15 Business Mistakes Consultants Make

Ever since I started the Doing Business series, I have thought that I should put together a Top 10 list of mistakes people make. Well, I finally did, but it turned out 10 wasn't enough, so here are the Top 15 Business Mistakes Consultants Make. Read more →

Top 15 Business Mistakes Consultants Make

There are a lot of Top 10 lists out there, some of them focusing on the most common mistakes that small business owners make. While they contain some good points such as getting the support of your family, establishing a dedicated work space, focusing on good customer service, etc. Read more →

My Other Blog

Out of respect to Graz who gave me the opportunity to blog here on the subject of SQL Server, and puts up with my ramblings on business; and in order to keep this SQLTeam blog more pure, I have setup my own personal blog where I am free to rant and rave on any subject (like politics). Read more →

What Language do you THINK in?

A question on SQLTeam a few weeks ago got me thinking about the idea of what language you THINK in. Do you remember the movie Firefox? (Okay, that came out in 1982, before some of you were even born, but at the time I was a Clint Eastwood fan and into military aircraft, so back off! Read more →

How Many Test/QA Instances do you Need?

A while back, I blogged about having separate dev, test/QA, and production environments. Recently, I was discussing with one of my clients the fact that they really needed more than one test/QA environment because they needed specific scenarios in their data to test the functionality of a broad spectrum of code paths. Read more →

Microsoft Webcasts

I spent my lunch time today watching a Microsoft webcast that was shown live back on April 7 (today is May 20). I'm impressed and appreciative that Microsoft has put energy into making these available “after-the-fact”. Read more →

MVP Summit Comes to a Close

The MVP Summit here in Redmond came to a close just a couple of days ago, and I didn't even get a t-shirt. Of course, that might be because Microsoft has not yet seen fit to bestow upon me the title of MVP. Read more →

Scripts and Source Control - 102

In the comments section of my SCRIPT IT post, Lisa asked a couple of questions for clarification. These were a good reminder to me that some of the things that I just take for granted these days are actually very new concepts to others who haven't had the same experience. Read more →

Networking - The Business Kind

One of the most common questions I get when someone finds out that I've been self-employed for 12 years is, “How do you get new business?” Before I answer that, let's see if we can agree on a couple of things. Read more →