It Sucks to be Me, TechEd Edition

[singing]

I planned a trip to go to TechEd this week

We chose to go by car, 9 hours of GEEK

But then it turned so bad around hour three

Oh gee,

Kill me,

It sucks to be me…it sucks to be me…

It sucks to blow chunks in a car driving at 70

It sucks to be me…

That’ll only be funny to those of you who listen to Kidd Kraddick in the Morning regularly, so sorry, everyone else.

But yeah, that’s what happened. The car is fine, I’m alive and no longer wishing for death. but it was a very, very rough 20 hours or so.

HOWEVER, we’re in an all-day reviewer’s workshop right now, and I’ve already run into Allen White, Denny Cherry, Adam Machanic, Teresa Burger, and a couple more people whose last names I don’t know 🙂

New Orleans is very humid, and beautiful. And, you know, there’s Bourbon Street, which everyone assumes is the source of my illness.  And there was peach cobbler at lunch! And two days of #TechEd ahead for us! (Gotta get back for kiddos and work, you know).

If you’re here, be sure to come up and say Hi. And compliment Sean’s hair.

SQLPASS Submissions and Whatnot

Okee dokee, I have two PASS Summit submissions in now, and one or two to go. 16 hours till the submission deadline, and I’m still undecided. It’s all good.  I’m working on the abstract for my soon-to-be-updated Code Sins session, and here are the two I’ve submitted so far:

T-SQL Brush-up: The Best Things You Forgot You Knew About SQL Code

You’re a good SQL professional – you attend conferences and webinars, you read articles and books, you know your way around SQL Server. But sometimes – just SOMEtimes – some piece of T-SQL slips by you unnoticed, or falls out of memory. Come and revisit old favorites, and brush up on new T-SQL features and enhancements like MERGE, OVER, and PARTITION BY. This session is chock full of code examples, including before-and-after demos and how-to illustrations.

Slay the Development Dragon: Source Control for the Out-of-Control Shop

Do your coworkers test code against the production server? Do you have 300 files on your hard drive labeled “USP_insertData 1.0.sql” and “USP_insertData 1.2.sql”?  You’re not alone.  This session is a workshop on how to lead an unstructured IT shop into the happy lands of solid development processes and source control.  Attendees will learn why process and source control are important, and walk through a case study of setting up a repository, scripting database objects with Powershell, and orchestrating the migration to a better way to code.

I’ll be making videos out of portions of these, both for site content and to get my rap down. And I suspect I *may* be speaking at a SQL Saturday (or two) between now and November.

Oh, and Sean’s submissions are up!  He put in 5 instead of the maximum 4, but I suspect he’ll remedy that shortly. Here are his:

Beginning Powershell for DBAs

This workshop will give DBAs what they need to get up and running in powershell. Learn how to install and configure powershell and then move into the basics of the language. This course will assume zero knowledge of powershell and take you to the level where you’re very comfortable performing routine maintenance tasks. All major aspects of the language will be covered with a heavy concentration on SQL Server administration including gathering stats (server and DB), scripting objects, creating users in multiple DBs and multiple servers, sending well-formatted alert emails, etc. You will also learn how to automate the gathering of server specs, perform blocking analysis on multiple servers, and even BCP data in and out with dynamic powershell scripts. You should definitely walk away from this course knowing how to admin your environment with Powershell.

Powershell for complete beginners: Part 1

Have you been wanting to learn powershell but don’t know where to get started, or even why you should bother? This is where you start. Here I’ll show you what powershell is, what it’s all about, how the language is organized, and how to do some real work in SQL Server. Come see why the world is so excited about Powershell and join the club of the DBAs who work faster and smarter. After this session you won’t be a Powershell guru, but you will be able to understand blog examples and continue your learning from other resources. Don’t put off Powershell any longer.

Powershell for complete beginners: Part 2

You can’t learn something as complex as Powershell in a single hour so we’re going to have another one right away. This class picks up where Part 1 left off and continues with more SQL Server administration tasks. This session will delve more into the day-to-day tasks that will make your life as a DBA much easier and allow you to go to lunch on time.

 

Have you been deploying SSIS with Powershell or are you just happy to see me?

Managing SSIS packages in large environments can be a real challenge. This session will show you how to deploy, transfer, monitor, standardize, and automate your SSIS package environment using Powershell. You’ll learn how to keep packages on data marts in perfect synch with each other, deploy packages to multiple servers, consolidate packages to a single server, enforce naming and security standards, and much more. The session starts with the basics and builds up to a final script that gives you a completely automated hands-off solution for deploying any package to any server in your organization. You will honestly be wondering how you ever got by without this.

The Blackhat DBA

Follow the blackhat DBA through a day of administration tasks as he punishes his company and co-workers for minor infractions by using his knowledge of SQL Server for evil. This is a fun way to learn some excellent powershell tricks as well as a wide range of other administration topics. You’ll walk away with a good understanding of how to perform both common and uncommon tasks with efficiency and speed so you can get back to your busy day.

I really, really hope the Blackhat session makes it in..it sounds wonderful!  Thanks for playing everybody, and happy days…

Jen McCown

http://www.MidnightDBA.com

Product review: HP Mini 5101

I’m reposting this from our last-minute Xmas wish list 2009 posted in Sean’s blog on InfoWorld.com and ITBookworm.com, just because I’d like to have it around on my blog.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

My mini!I wanted a netbook. When it came time to choose a netbook, I did some reading, and quickly found: netbooks are very much alike. They’re all very small and light, with about a 10″ screen and a squashed together keyboard, wireless networking. But there are a few key differences that can mean the difference between a happy netbook user, and a netbook owner who never touches the thing. These differences include:

  • Storage – 80-250Gb
  • Memory – Usually 1 Gb, though I have seen 2Gb (on the Acer Aspire One)
  • Battery life – 3 to 6 hours
  • Keyboard – style, layout, action, and size
  • Windows version – XP or Vista

I realize that I may alienate the hardcore hardware guys because I’m not acknowledging the different processor speeds, but for me, 1.33 Ghz vs 1.6 isn’t the deciding factor. Oh, and some netbooks are prettier than others, but you can weigh asthetics as heavily or lightly as you like.

Here’s the rundown for my HP Mini 5101:

  • 160Gb hard drive
  • 2Gb RAM
  • an integrated webcam
  • gigabit ethernet
  • bluetooth connectivity
  • Windows XP (now comes with Vista Business, with downgrade to XP Pro)
  • rated 4.5 hours of battery life – I’ve found this to be pretty accurate, depending on what I’m doing.
  • 95% full-size chiclet keyboard

The keyboard was what largely sold me. I find I lose a huge percentage of my productivity if I’m on a funky laptop keyboard, like my work laptop, which puts my often-used keys in the weirdest places. But the Mini has done very well with the space it has. The top row function keys (F1, etc) are toggled off by default; I found this annoying at first, but it turns out that I use the replacement functions (like volume, mute, and change display) far more often than I use F5 et al. Page Up/Down and Home/End are toggled with the fn key; that has been slightly bothersome, as I use those keys CONSTANTLY. But, I’m getting into the habit , and I consider it a very small price for a box with such a small physical footprint.

The speakers are perfectly decent. We regularly watch instant play Netflix movies on the Mini. And I love the webcam. I’ve heard tell of people scoffing at integrated webcams, but I’ve had no problems with it. I made a couple of movies in Windows Movie Maker, and on a trip, I used it to walk my kids around the conference center via instant messenger video call.

Okay, so: Great little box, perfectly respectable battery life, nice features, and a great keyboard. Verdict: Love it!

Happy days,

Jen McCown

http://www.MidnightDBA.com