Voice of the DBA

Tag: misc

Cool Tech Tools

Completely off topic from SQL Server, but cool nevertheless.

I have been using Skype to communicate with Red Gate on a regular basis for video calls every week. It’s been over a year, and I’ve always had to get my laptop ready for weekly calls. I often take them in another room when my wife has a call scheduled at the same time, and it’s a slight pain. It also means that I sometimes interrupt what I’m doing on the desktop when I have a call, which is annoying.

I downloaded the Skype app on my iPhone awhile back, and I’ve used it for calls with family, but never for work. It didn’t buy my anything since I’d need to hold the iPhone up, which defeats some of the purpose as I can’t look something up on the call, which I often do as we refer to data, prototypes, or something else.

I have had a GorillaPod for sometime that I’ve carried in my laptop bag for use with my camera

I decided to search around and see if I could find some mount for the iPhone. I have one that lets me use it as a teleprompter, but it isn’t very portable. I ended up finding a snapmount for the iPhone. They make a bunch of other ones for various phones as well.

It arrived recently and I hooked them together. I had a call with Andrew Clarke last week, and I decided to use Skype on my phone, rather than tracking down the laptop. It worked out pretty well, allowing me to see Andrew, and he to see me, as well as letting me still use the computer and send him a couple emails while we were chatting.

Not the neatest desk, but it worked well.

I paired this with my wired headphones from Body Glove, which worked well, but the cord is a little short. I like to lean back to talk when I don’t need to type, and this one is a little restricting. However it’s my favorite for traveling.

however I’m really looking forward to next week when I’ll use my Gogroove bluetooth headset. That will be really cool.

June 20, 2011
SQL Dream Cars

A mini debate on Twitter the other day got me thinking about cars. People that know me know I like cars. I’ve owned (or my wife has owned with me) 26 cars since I started driving. I used to write a car update, but found that there are a lot of passionate people out there about their vehicles, and too many people got upset during the debates, so I stopped.

However this is my blog, and I decided to talk about dream cars, or any vehicle that you’d like to own. I’ve got my list of the cars that I’d like to own one day, but here is a good list of five:

1929 Mercedes Gazelle – Not a real one, but a kit car. The technology for running a car from that era isn’t great, but give me this body with a modern fuel infected engine, brakes, and a good transmission.

Ferrari 308 GTS – The Magnum PI car. This one always caught my eye, and I love the targa tops (my 911 has one), so this would be one that I’d like to drive. Once again, I’d consider a kit car because it’s hard to drive this one around town on a regular basis.

VW Thing – At the same time I was first shopping for a 911, I was also looking at Things, in case I couldn’t find a 911 in my budget range. Something about these cars just seems fun to me.

CJ-7 – I had a friend in high school who got one of these. He put a 308 8 cyl engine in it and I went with him to get 33” tires. I actually helped bolt on headers, and love cruising around with the doors off and a bikini top on it in the summer. One of these days…

1965 Lincoln – Not necessarily this model, but a big old boat convertible with suicide doors. That would be cool.

There are more I’d like, but these are some fun ones that I came up with today.

I’ll tag Brent Ozar (blog | @brento), Allan Hirt ( blog | @sqlha), and Aaron Bertrand (blog | @aaronbertrand) to talk about what they’d like. Hopefully a few more of you will post your own dream cars.

June 10, 2011
[OT] Running With Steve

I woke up to this very cool photo from my employer.

I was checking my Twitter feed, and noticed quite a few #runwithsteve hash tags, from various people already knocking out mileage for the goal of 1,000 miles today. The tally survey is here: Running With Steve. I am looking forward to getting out there in a bit with my wife, maybe a kid if I can convince them. I hope to do five today.

It’s been quite a journey to get to 1,000 days. I was inspired in Sept 2008 and was thinking to get to one year and then see. When I got to 366, I did a Forest Gump. I kept going since it was fairly easy. I made it to two years, and then started thinking 1,000 days, and made it today. I’ll run this afternoon, when my wife has some time, and enjoy day 1,000.

The act of doing something every day has been amazing for me. It’s not so much the physical benefits, which seemed to peak after about 4-6 months, but more the mental benefits. I know I’ve accomplished something every day, and it inspires me. It becomes a habit that helps me manage the rest of my life, keeping perspective, thinking long term, and balancing out the various things in my life.

Where do I go from here? I’ll run tomorrow, day 1,001, and see what happens after that.

June 8, 2011
Catching Up

It’s President’s Day in the US, and technically a holiday for me (I think). Hard to tell since my company is a UK company and the holidays get a little weird for me. However it’s a holiday for my wife and kids, so I’ll take part of the day off.

I do have some things to do, and a ton of messages piled up from vacation, so I need to go through things a bit and get some things done for tomorrow.

Strange to be back, after being gone for a week and mostly unwired. I took my laptop and checked some email, thinking I might work and write a bit, but didn’t. I did get some MCM studying done, so it wasn’t a complete sit-by-the-pool-and-drink-fest, but not as much as I might have liked. Some notes, and some good questions to run on SQLServerCentral as the Question of the day.

February 21, 2011