Well, PASS got off to a rocky start… well,  for me anyway.  It started with of course not being chosen to speak, which is fine really.  Plenty of people don’t get chosen so I’m good with that.  I did have one of my sessions put on the reserve list though.  However, they actually needed to pull someone from the reserve list and they asked Jen to teach a 2nd one instead of pulling me in.  Ok, that hurt, but I’m alright.  I’ve still got a good attitude about the event.  I’m good.  Then I got here and they wouldn’t give me a conference bag.  Alright, now this is just ridiculous.  So I don’t have a conf guide because they’re in the bags.  On top of that they didn’t have me listed as an MVP.  Then I didn’t have an Alumni ribbon.  That’s not the biggest deal, but Jen’s only been here twice and I’ve been coming for a decade and she got one.  Next I didn’t have a spot at the blogger table at the keynote.  I’ve been a blogger here for years and I’ve had a spot at the blogger table for years and I even answered the email saying, yes, I want my spot at the table.  Jen got her spot, where’s mine?  There are lots of bloggers at the table I’ve never seen at the table before, and yet I don’t have a spot.  Jen went to complain in the press room, and today I have a spot, but now it’s like I’m just this whiny little baby who cried and got his way.  And I don’t want it to be like that. 

Apart from all that, I’m still having a good time.  I’m putting this conspiracy to make me cry behind me and just doing my thing.  So PASS kicked off to a slow start for me, but all’s well.

As many of you know I spent the weekend in Red Stick at SQL Saturday #28.  It was held on LSU campus and I personally had a great time.  They had about 650 signed up and about 350 show up, but the size of the venue made it seem like there was hardly anybody there.  I don’t remember a time when it was impossible to walk around.  The event was put on really well and I love the black speaker shirts with our names on the sleeve.  And the only really criticism I’ll offer is for them to put more effort into the food next time.  Breakfast was almost horrendous and lunch was barely passable.  The best thing I can say about the food was that the cookies they got for the snacks were actually pretty good.  I think they were grocery store cookies, but they were big and soft and actually rather good.  I, as well as some others I talked to, were pretty surprised by the cookies.

The biggest thing that happened to me this weekend is something that happened to me again and again.  Everyone apparently would rather have had Jen there instead of me.  Every time I met someone, they’d say, so is Jen here?  It usually went something like… oh you’re with MidnightDBA?  Is Jen here?  I only didn’t get that from 2 people I talked to.  And I believe those were Patrick LeBlanc and Wes Brown.  And it got me thinking… it’s like going to an event and having them announce that a Mythbuster is coming.  Then the crowd starts chanting Ja-mie, Ja-mie, Ja-mie… and then Tori steps out.  So you went through the trouble of getting a Mythbuster and all you could get was Tori?

So I guess I’m the Tori of Midnight, but you know what… sometimes you  get Tori.  Maybe I’ll try to bring Jamie next time.

Ok everybody, I’m off to SQLSaturday #28 in Baton Rouge tomorrow.  I hope to see as many of you there as I can.

If you see me and you want to come up and say hi, then by all means do.  I love talking to readers.

Oh, and a little trivia on Baton Rouge.  When the french settlers were scouting for a good place to start a town they were scouting from boats.  They came across this patch of land they liked and the Indians had already marked it with a big wooden pole that they painted red at the top.  So they referred to it as the place marked by the baton rouge.  And they just decided to name it that.

As far as I can tell that’s the real story.  I work with a guy who took Louisana history and this is what he was told in class.

For many years now I’ve considered InfoWorld Magazine my home.  I’ve blogged and raised many issues that have gotten both good and bad responses from the database community.  However, as of very recently InfoWorld has pulled my access and cancelled my blog of several years because they didn’t think I was writing often enough.  And while it’s true that I could write more often, quite often when I go to blog something the editor would deny it because it didn’t fit in with some image he was trying to make InfoWorld fit into.  This ‘image’ is not the image that made InfoWorld what it was and it’s not the image that built my blog as big as it was. 

This kind of treatment for someone who has worked hard for you for many years is just ridiculous.

So Database Underground is officially dead.  The blog may stay online for a little while, but there’ll be no more updates.  I’m told by a fairly reliable source that the guy who killed it is likely to delete all the content.  I don’t understand thinking like that.  Why wouldn’t you want to keep the content that has gotten so many hits over the years?

Anyway though I’m currently in talks with another publication to move my blog over there.  I’ll let you guys know when that happens.

Oh, and if you want to write a nastygram to the “admin” at InfoWorld who thinks good content should come down just because he wants it to then you can send as many emails as you like to Galen_Gruman@infoworld.com.

I know Jen’s already blogged on this, but this is my little contribution to the whole, how cool are we, theme.

Brad Mcgehee just came to speak at our user group and to my surprise he thought enough of what we’re doing to write a blog about it.

So I thought I’d take this time just to explain a little more so maybe some more of you can start doing it at your user groups too.

I started doing this last year when it really started bothering me that the user group model is so limited.  The problem is that you bring in a speaker to give a session on a topic, and next month you do the same thing with a different speaker and a different topic.  The problem is that you don’t have time to go deeper into any of the topics.  You only get to barely touch on the subject and there’s no time to really learn it.  So I decided to start up a progressive class before the user group.  I lasts like 6-8 mos and each session builds off of the previous ones.  The downside however is that it takes you 6mos to complete the class, but it’s better than nothing and it’s a free class.  I actually treat it like a real class that you would go to at a training center only I like to think I go into more depth sometimes.

It’s a really good model because if you hold it before or after your main user group meeting the people are coming anyway so you’ve got a built-in audience.  And you’d be surprised how many people show up to the group that never did before.  So anyway, that’s all I’ve got on that.  I hope some more of you start doing this and if you do I’d like to hear how it works for you.  And I’d like to also give a special shout-out to Brad for recognizing my genius.

Petri for us all

The Petri IT KnowledgeBase just opened up its SQL section and Jen and I are the authors.  I know, Jen also wrote about this too… what can I say, I have nothing original so I have to steal others’ material.  Anyway, it’s really a nice site they’ve put together for us so come check it out.  Currently we’ve got some nice barebones “I know nothing about SQL” articles so if you’re a complete newbie then you can start here and we’ll explain what all this stuff actually means.

I’ve also got a couple techie blog planned so I’ll get back on the horse here in a bit and start giving you some real content again.