Author: way0utwest

I’ve always seen business cards with my phone and business address, which for the past 8 years has been my home. However concerns about identity stuff have prompted me to consider changing things. I’ve been meaning to get cards without the address and today I did it.

I got a mailing from VistaPrint, offering free business cards (you pay shipping) and so I updated my business card to have my Twitter and FaceBook addresses, but removed my home. I left my cell on there as it’s a business line for me. $10 in shipping, and avoiding about 30 other offers VistaPrint gives you (I like those options, just don’t need them now), I have business cards on the way.

It’s not often that I’ve had the need to trace back a client to their host computer, but there are time it’s handy. I had thought that the easy way to do this in the past was with sp_who.

However that’s not correct. I checked back in the SQL Server 2000 BOL entry for sp_who and it has hostname, but not IP. That could be the same, but not necessarily.

I saw a post where someone had listed this code

declare @IPAddress as varchar(15)
declare @data XML
set @data = EVENTDATA()
set @IPAddress = @data.value(‘(/EVENT_INSTANCE/ClientHost)[1]’, ‘nvarchar(15)’)

That’s interesting. It uses the EVENTDATA(), which tracks data about events. I presume that the IP is in the clienthost all the time, and that it likely comes from the view below, but I can’t find documentation on that. The XSD schema for EventData is beyond me.

I kept thinking this had to be stored in a system table/view somewhere, and sure enough I found sys.dm_exec_sessions. It actually contains the client IP and port, so you can trace things down at a more detailed connection level.

On my local instance it doesn’t seem to work great, but if I connect remotely, I see an IP.

I saw a note that T-Mobile is accepting trade-ins of an iPhone for credit towards a new HTC HD2. That’s interesting, and almost tempting. Not that I don’t like my iPhone, but I’ve been tempted to look on eBay for a 16GB one as I’m running low on space. Plus I’d like to have a GPS on mine. That’s one thing I miss from my G1.

I read a review on the HTC today, and it said that it was like an iPhone, but had better hardware in the device. The only thing lacking was apps.

Like that’s not a big deal. The apps make the phone. That’s the power of the iPhone/iPad package. All those apps, the silly one the useful ones, the quick reference ones, those are all the things that make the iPhone powerful. I listen to music, read books, check mail, and just handle a bunch of little things.

I do wish I had multi-tasking, and I’ve been slightly scared to add Backgrounder to my jailbroken iPhone, but I might do that soon. It would be nice to keep a few things going at a time. Not often, but there are times that it’s slow to switch between things. If nothign else, I might like to keep the Kindle app running all the time.

Recently my son had a short paper to write for school. He’s a sixth grader, and this year is a turning point for him where he’s expected to think a little more about his writing as well as tackle longer assignments. In this case it was a 2 page paper on Sophocles, and he was struggling one night with the paper due the next day.

Before you say that he should succeed or fail on his own, I agree with you. However as a parent, or manager/mentor/helper, you pick and choose those places where you provide assistance, and to what level. In this case he’s had a major change in his life with sixth grade and the beginning of Boy Scouts. While this doesn’t matter for college in terms of his grade, it is the place where he is gaining a base of learning, and I think it’s the time where I provide more assistance than I might otherwise provide.

Next year will be a different story. I’ll let him struggle, and potentially mis assignments if he doesn’t manage his workload. But I digress.

The issues that he had with producing a coherent paper that explains his thoughts while presenting information were similar issues that I see from many of my authors at work. The issues are also similar issues that I see in many blogs. While I’m not a top-notch writer, and I take liberties at times in blogs and editorials, I tend to see a few common mistakes in a lot of pieces that people write.

Don’t use pronouns

That was the main advice to my son as we worked through his paper. He, and many others, tend to use pronouns (“it”, “his” and “they” especially) to convey their thoughts. However they often have not tied the pronoun to a specific noun and the reference in ambiguous.

Most people learn this in grammar school, but they seem to forget it when there’s no grade attached to their work. As an example:

Sophocles was a great writer. He often worked with Aeschylus and his plays were similar.

What does “his” refer to? Is it Sophocles or Aeschylus? Either could be the reference and the reader has to take a guess. It’s possible that context before or after this sentence will help you to understand the reference, but it’s equally likely that you will mis-interpret what is intended.

This same type of ambiguous reference occurs in many technical articles, often when someone is trying to compare two items and show how they work in a similar manner. I correct this type of reference constantly, and often ask for clarification from authors.

So my advice is…..don’t use pronouns.

If you can avoid one, avoid it. Repeat the noun and make it clear. This does two things. One it helps the reader to better understand your meaning, but it also forces you to be more specific.