Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • Talking about the New Open-Source SQLCMD on Data Exposed

    I was on the Data Exposed: MVP Edition show recently, talking about SQLCMD. I’ve written a few articles on the topics as well, and a blog post about setting up a node HTTP server, which I show in the demo.

    Check out the show below:

    Read these articles for more info:

  • A New Place: Alaska!

    I’m very lucky in that I get to travel all over the globe for work and see many places. It can be hard, and this year has been a challenge. Through the first six months of the year, I’ve taken 13 trips (not all business).

    However, this week I’m off on vacation. In a new place I’ve never been: Alaska. My wife and I booked a cruise and we’re somewhere today on our way to a state neither of us has ever visited.

    Enjoy the week, and I’ll be posting pictures if you follow me anywhere else. I might write about it there, but I’m offline the rest of the week.

    For the trivia nerds, and because I like data, this is my 46th state. Four to go. Here’s my list:

    • Alabama – driven through, never stayed. One I’m missing
    • Alaska – This week!
    • Arizona – Been here many times, Grand Canyon 3 times
    • Arkansas – Never been here. Not sure I’ve even driven through
    • California – I love Cali. Fortunate enough to have been north, mid, and south here.
    • Colorado – I live here Smile
    • Connecticut – I had a client here a long time ago, so I’ve been here quite a few times
    • Delaware – Driven through a few times, spent time at Assateague Island with my wife.
    • Florida – three trips to Fl this year.
    • Georgia – Visited
    • Hawaii – lucky enough to go twice.
    • Idaho – Been here twice, once for volleyball, once to see a horse Winking smile
    • Illinois – Went to Chicago this year, going back again. Not sure I’ve done much else
    • Indiana – Been to Indy twice
    • Iowa – Driven through, stood on the border in Omaha, but never stayed here
    • Kansas – Driven through, spent time in a few cities lightly. Stayed here for a volleyball tournament and commuted to Kansas City
    • Kentucky – Family living here. Been a few times
    • Louisiana – not sure I’d have been here except for SQL Saturday. Love Baton Rouge
    • Maine – never been
    • Maryland – Family here, been many times
    • Massachusetts – Love Boston and been to quite a few cities
    • Michigan – Traveled here a couple times and spent time in Traverse City
    • Minnesota – Only been to Minneapolis. Want to go back
    • Mississippi – Spent a few nights here driving cross country. Jackson only
    • Missouri – Lots of events in KC
    • Montana – Family trip to Glacier. Highly recommended
    • Nebraska – A few times for various things
    • Nevada – Three times in Vegas this year
    • New Hampshire – Wanted to go to Dartmouth. Didn’t get accepted, but been here a few times
    • New Jersey – Quite a few times. Used to go stay here and commute into NYC for fun.
    • New Mexico – Lots of trips, and good times at Taos.
    • New York – Usually go once a year since my daughter is in uni here.
    • North Carolina – Used to skip school to surf here
    • North Dakota – Only Fargo, but went for SQL Sat
    • Ohio – Been to Cleveland a few times. I think that’s it.
    • Oklahoma – Think I’ve only been for SQL Sat
    • Oregon – Quite a few trips here. It’s beautiful
    • Pennsylvania – Lots of trips here.
    • Rhode Island – One trip to Providence in college
    • South Carolina – A few trips
    • South Dakota – Love to go camping here
    • Tennessee – A few SQL Sats and other events here
    • Texas – Been four times this year, more scheduled
    • Utah – Only one trip here, SQL Sat SLC
    • Vermont – Been here playing ultimate frisbee
    • Virginia – born here
    • Washington – Summit many times
    • West Virginia – Stayed here a couple times, but mostly driven through
    • Wisconsin – Visited family here and SQL Sat Madison
    • Wyoming – Lots of trips across the CO boarder

  • A New Word: Licotic

    licotic – adj. anxiously excited to introduce a friend to something you think is amazing – a classic album, a favorite restaurant, a TV show they’re lucky enough to watch for the first time – which prompts you to continually poll their face waiting for the inevitable rush of awe, only to cringe when you discover all the work’s flaws shining through for the very first time.

    I’ve felt this quite a few times, often with my kids. Usually it’s an older movie or show that I loved and I try to introduce to them. Only to realize that in my naiveite of youth, I loved it more than it deserved and ignored the shortcomings.

    I also think that the cinematography and storytelling in media has improved so much over the years that many shows I loved as a kid don’t resonate anymore because the skill of media has grown.

    From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

  • Typing Strange Characters–#SQLNewBlogger

    I’ve had to type a few non-English characters lately, and this blog talks about how to do this.

    Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

    The Need for Non-English Characters

    Recently I wrote a blog on using Chinese characters. While you can copy/paste from Google, perhaps you want to actually type something regularly. For example, I have been learning French, and I sometimes need to

    Another one I’ve used fairly often is the British pound symbol.

    Typing Unicode characters

    There are Unicode characters for these symbols. While some keyboards may include these, the US ones do not. I can switch keyboards, and I have a Japanese keyboard, but

    A few commons ones for me are:

    • é (French e with acute (forward) accent) – 0233
    • è (French e with the grave accent) – 0232
    • ô (French o with the circumflex) – 0244
    • ç (French c with the cedilla,hanging thing) – 0231
    • £ (British pound symbol) – 0163
    • はい (Japanese yes, hai) – a little harder

    To type these, I press the ALT key and hold it. Then I enter the number. So, holding ALT and entering 0163 gives me this: £

    The Japanese is a little harder. There I needed to enable the Microsoft IME keyboard that lets me type the phonetics for Japanese characters. There are other ways to do this, but that’s what I did.

    Learning to work with other languages and characters has been interesting to me, and it’s nice to be able to type São Paulo instead of Sao Paulo. Especially when I communicate with people whose names contain non English letters.