The second article I had published on SQLServerCentral, ANSI PADDING, Trailing Whitespace, and Variable Length Character Columns, was re-featured in the newsletter and on the home page today.
My favorite part of being published is the discussion that hopefully follows. Even if there are some negative comments, I just consider that an extension of the learning environment.
Andy Warren and crew at OPASS have announced that SQLSaturday 21 – Orlando will be held at Seminole Community College, 100 Weldon Boulevard, Sanford, FL 32773, on October 17th. The call for speakers just opened this afternoon and we have our first session submitted, and it wasn’t by me or @SQLChicken!
This is the third SQLSaturday in Orlando and second at this location, so hopefully we have the kinks worked out. There is one change this year that there will be a $10 charge to cover lunch, likely from Jason’s Deli. You’ll still get water, soda, donuts, coffee, and fruit throughout the day for free, plus the usual swag. That’s not to mention the excellent FREE training. I attended the first SQLSaturday Orlando and was a speaker/volunteer at last year’s event. I’ve yet to meet anyone who has not thought it was a terrific event. I’ve also spoke at the SQLSaturday 14 – Pensacola and everyone there enjoyed that event as well.
If you work with SQL Server there’s no better way to get a free day of training, so register now. If you work with SQL Server and are passionate about it, then there is no better place to share that passion by presenting. I don’t think that there is anything more rewarding than sharing your experience and expertise with others. I’ll be submitting at least one session.
If you have any questions about SQL Server then suggest a session. I know I check the suggested sessions for ideas and if I have the necessary knowledge I’ll submit a session based on a suggestion.
I’ll be there, and hopefully I’ll see you there as well.
ActiveAugust started as a discussion on Twitter and Mike Walsh (@mike_walsh) has set the bar with his blog post about it. The general idea is to commit to lifestyle changes by becoming more active and/or eating healthier. The key thing is to setup a plan, blog your plan, and then blog/tweet updates on how you are doing. Because you have made the commitment public you will have some accountability. There are several SQL Server “personalities” that are taking part including the aforementioned Mike Walsh, Brian Kelley (@kbriankelley), and Jorge Segarra (@SQLChicken). There may be others that I have missed or don’t currently follow on Twitter.
Here’s my plan:
Another part is a regular weigh-in as the goal is to become more fit and weight loss is usually a good measure of that. I weighed in yesterday morning at 184.5 lbs so that will be my baseline. I’ll post my progress weekly starting the 8th.
Hope you join in.
As part of my work I need to be a “Jack of all trades” meaning I not only need to be able to do SQL Server DBA and development tasks, but I also need to be capable of doing .NET and VFP development. Yes, I did say VFP (Visual FoxPro for those who are too young to know what it is).
The major project in which I am involved is using SQL Server and ASP.NET (C#) MVC. Fortunately I had downloaded Scott Guthrie’s NerdDinner tutorial when it first came out and have just finished going through it. In the tutorial I came across some code like this:
if (item.Description !== undefined) {
description = item.Description;
}
if (item.Description != undefined) {
description = item.Description;
}
since I know that == the equality comparison operator and != is the inequality comparison operator. Well, then I found the same operator later in the code, so I thought, “Hmmm, maybe this isn’t a typo, but a real operator?”, so off to www.google-vs-bing.com to see what I could find. Well, I didn’t find anything helpful on page 1 of either search engine’s results. Next a quick question on Twitter. Ahhh, several replies that, “Yes !== and === are operators and they compare type AND value”. Having always programmed in strongly typed languages this is new and interesting to me. So basically in javascript 1 == “1” is true, but 1 === “1” is false.
I still would rather be in SQL, but at least now I am starting to understand more about javascript.
How many of you have said, “I have a real hard time remembering names” or “Excuse me, I know we must have met, but I can’t remember your name”. I know I have many times. The question is what am I going to do about? I’m glad you asked. As an addition to the PASS Summit, PASS, at the urging of Andy Warren, is adding a 2 hour networking seminar by Don Gabor, Networking to Build Business Contacts, between the pre-conference sessions and the Welcome Reception. The cost is $60 and attendance is limited to 100.
There are several reasons why I am attending:
Each of these items will be covered during the session, and the Welcome Session and the rest of the conference will give us the opportunity to apply the principles that will be taught.
This won’t just help me as a technical professional, but also in my work. I currently serve as missionary with New Tribes Mission and part of my “job” is building and maintaining a network of churches and individuals who see value in what I do and are willing to support my work with prayer and finances. This makes developing networking skills essential.
Let me give one example of how networking can work. Just yesterday, I got an email from the Space Coast User Group leaders asking if I could move up from the September meeting and speak at the August meeting as the speaker had to cancel. I had a conflict so I couldn’t move up. As I am on Twitter, I put out a message asking if anyone would be able to fill in the August meeting. I knew at least one person who would be interested, Jorge Segarra (@SQLChicken), and I heard back from him fairly quickly. I was able to connect him with the Space Coast User Group leadership and he was able to make arrangements to fill in. Both parties were happy, and I got to “raise” my profile through helping others.
I hope to see you there! Then we can practice together.
Have you ever seen this error when you have setup database mail:
The mail could not be sent to the recipients because of the mail server failure. (Sending Mail using [Account] ([TimeSent]). Exception Message: Could not connect to mail server. (No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it
I have, and so have a few others based on my experience in the forums. If you are like me, you immediately contacted you mail server administrator to find out why the mail server is refusing your mail. Then once, they told you that there was nothing on the mail server that should be causing this, you tried using GMAIL/Hotmail and got the same error. Now what do you do? Fortunately for me I had a production server setup and working so decided to investigate differences. Lo and behold, I found antivirus software installed on my desktop, but not on the server (let’s save that discussion for another time) So I looked in the antivirus log and, sure enough, mail being sent by database was being blocked by the “prevent mass-mailing worms” rule. So I disabled the rule, and, viola!, mail sent successfully. Of course the corporate antivirus policy almost immediately re-enabled the rule, but I had an answer. I contacted my corporate antivirus administrator and had them add DatabaseMail90.exe (SQL Server 2005) to the exceptions list.
So if database mail is not working, check your antivirus settings.
There may be some people wondering why I go by the name @unclebiguns on Twitter. I am basing this on the following facts:
I thought I’d blog (at Andy Warren’s suggestion) why I have that handle.
It goes back about 12 years when one of my best friends had their first child. He and I had an ongoing debate going on who ate more and who was fatter, so to try to get me going he taught his daughter to call me Uncle Biguns after my stomach. It’s kind of funny because I have grown into the name as I now wish I weighed what I weighed back then. Since it is a unique name (last night Chad Miller commented that I was the only unclebigun’s he knows), I decided to use it as a user name for fantasy sports, etc….
So if you wondered why or what it meant, there it is. I hope you aren’t too disappointed.
