2012 was, simply stated, a year that kicked my butt.  When I wasn't struggling professionally, I was struggling personally.  Health issues, culminating in a diagnosis of Type II diabetes, and the passing of my father soon after Thanksgiving marked my biggest struggles.  I apologize to those of you who are normally on my Christmas ...

I have two new articles up on Database Trends & Applications magazine.  I'd love to get your thoughts and feedback!Welcome to the Weird, Wild World of SQL Server LicensingNot long in the past, SQL Server licensing was an easy and straightforward process. You used to take one of a few paths to get your SQL Server licenses. The first ...

For all members of the Professional Association for Server (PASS), are you downloading slides and videos from all sorts of great PASS events?  If not, what are you waiting for ... an invitation?Ok, here it is.  I invite you to download like a madman!  (How a madman downloads, an almost entirely virtual activity, is not the ...

Ok, I have to admit the painful truth. I'm reliably slow to the finish line. This year, I got my slides into PASS HQ by the skin of my teeth, the weekend before the event was to begin.  Although I could say with a straight face ''I uploaded my slides!''.  I have to be honest that I wasn't surprised when many of my attendees said that ...

One of the most positive experiences I can have, as a former leader of the PASS organization, is when I see a neophyte become a passionate support and champion for the community. On my first day in Seattle, before the event had even begun, I was stopped several by people who'd attended their first PASS Summit last year. But this year, they were ...

Click this link to register: http://www.houseofbrick.com/education/sqlserverbootcamp/Registration. Presented by my buddy, David Klee at House of Brick, one of the nations top VMWare consultancies specializing in Oracle and SQL Server deployments. David has a great write-up of this boot camp ...

It's always a feel-good experience for me to return to SQL Saturday in Orlando, the place where SQL Saturdays  were started by Andy Warren (Twitter | Blog).  On this trip, I delivered a full-day, pre-conference seminar on Troubleshooting and Performance Tuning SQL Server.  I also delivered a session on SQL Server ...

PASS SQL Saturdays are free 1-day training events for IT professionals interested in Microsoft SQL Server, providing a variety of high-quality technical sessions, all happen through the efforts of local volunteers.  The leadership team of the local chapter of PASS here in Nashville (Facebook | LinkedIn) have ...

I had the honor of traveling the great state of Colorado last week, speaking at the PASS chapters in Boulder, Colorado Springs, and Denver.  At all three events, we had a stellar attendance and, at least in Denver, broke all the records in recent memory both in terms of overall attendance and in first-timers. ...

Even though I've recently changed jobs, I'll still be speaking at a lot of SQL events across the country and internationally.  There are still a few trips that I've yet to finalize, in particular with the fine folks in Houston, run by my friend Nancy Hidy (blog | twitter), and my friends in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, run by ...