SQL Musings

Kindle - Value on the Road

2008-09-03T22:50:00Z

I still need to jot some thoughts about using the Kindle, but a quick note from traveling.

I downloaded 3 or 4 free books, classics, before I left, and I was glad since I finished one I'd bought and Sprint didn't have good connectivity in the Houston airport. Actually I was already on the plane and couldn't get wireless there. I liked the fact that I was forced to read some things I wouldn't have necessarily packed. I started "The Count of Monte Cristo", which I'd always heard was a good story, but wasn't likely to pack in my suitcase. It's interesting, though slow. I have to read a chapter or two at a time.

At the conference today, a business conference, I was listening to people talk and I had a few things recommended by various speakers, either their books or others. So while sitting there I looked them up in the Kindle store and grabbed samples to read later. The samples give an OK idea of the writing and they've let me pick a few books I want to buy.

Definitely there's a danger of spending too much $$ with this thing.

Kindle - First Thoughts

2008-08-30T18:00:00Z

I got my Kindle yesterday and I'll write some more notes as I go along, but I have to say that it's pretty cool. The buttons are a bit of a problem, but not that bad and I had it next to the bed this morning. With one arm trapped by my wife, I could still grab the Kindle, power it on, read the rest of a sample I'd downloaded yesterday (John Sandford - Phantom Prey) and then purchase the book from the bed, one handed, and keep reading.

That was cool!

I think that value will become more and more apparent as I have more books on there and I can easily switch to other things to read without the need to find the book or hit a bookstore.

First thoughts: It's slightly heavier than a paperback, noticeable, but not unreasonable. I tend to read on my back since my neck gets sore, and holding this up is hard, though I can'd hold a paperback much longer without a break. The screen is fantastic and I found that laying on my back, I could set the fonts to the middle size and read without my glasses. That alone is valuable to me. It makes for frequent page turns, so if I'm sitting up, I've set things to the smallest size so I can read more at a time.

The buttons are a bit of an issue, but not a huge one. I can hold it easily in my right hang and put my thumb on the scroll bar and hold it. If they were slightly smaller, and perhaps a space between them on both sides in the middle, this would be outstanding.

The case isn't well designed. If I keep this after my trip, I'll put some velcro on it to secure it.

Page refresh - fine when reading. Changing to the menu, back, store, etc. is a little slow, but not unreasonable to me. I would rarely do those things.

More coming soon.

Kindle - About Face

2008-08-29T03:38:00Z

OK, I reversed myself and bought a Kindle today. Or I guess I ordered one and it should be here tomorrow.

I was installing a server into the co-location facility for End to End training and while a few patches were downloading, I checked in Kindles for some reason. I saw this note from Wired that there would be no new Kindle this year. While it's possible that Amazon is trying to prevent sales of the current device from drying up, I wouldn't think there would be a denial like this. My guess is they're delaying until the spring and then they'll push through the summer and try to get college kids to buy them.

I was hemming and hawing, but I received my latest Amazon referral statement today and I was up to $330 in credits, so I figured that for $30, I should try one. I splurged the $4 to get it tomorrow because Monday is a holiday and two day shipping would get here Tuesday, just as I was flying to Boston.

So I ordered it just in time for overnight shipping, went on my way, and came back tonight to find a shipping notice as well as a "welcome to Kindle", where they've already linked my Amazon purchase account to the device. It's kind of exciting and I'll post some inital thoughts tomorrow night.

Kindle - On Hold

2008-08-25T15:00:00Z

Just as I was debating whether to take advantage of Amazon's $100 savings offer on the Kindle (with a new credit card), I saw this report about Kindles being marketed to college students, which seems like a great idea. I know I'd loved one in college, just to have all my texts with me and not have to carry a 50lb back pack around. Course it would probably be worth splurging on a $100 case with a hard shell to protect it as well.

In the article, they mention that new Kindles might be due in October. That would make some sense as to why the $100 off offer for now, trying to reduce inventory. If they could get college students to buy some, they'd be in a good spot to bring out a new version.

Since it's a marginal purchase for me, still not sure if it makes sense, I'm going to hold off and see if a new version appears this fall. I love the idea of the Kindle, and about half the time I think I would appreciate it. With 4 or 5 books in progress now, it's easy to lose track of them. I found one in my car yesterday that I'm 100 pages into and had forgotten where it was.

Kindle - On the clock

2008-08-21T22:02:00Z

In a week and a half, I start on the first of my four trips this year for work, and I'll be gone for 17 or 18 days between now and November. So I've been looking at Kindles again, since I'd be talking about buying one to keep from lugging 4-5 books for each trip. Over the years when I've been to conferences, I've typically read 3-4 books on a M-F trip between airports, airplanes, at night, etc. That's a lot of wood pulp to be carrying around.Add in the multiple trips to the book stores to browse and figure out what I want to take and it's time as well.

So I've got about a week in which to decide if I want a Kindle. Over the last year I've accumulated almost $250 in Amazon money from referrals on my sites, so this isn't a big dollar purchase for me. I won't really save on books since I mostly buy paperbacks to save on size for travel, but it will mean I'll save some bookstore trips and I can continue to use Amazon money for books.

I talked with Andy Warren today of End to End Training, and he was recently in St Louis and talked to a woman with a Kindle. He got the chance to see it and use it and gave me some feedback. First he wasn't thrilled with the refresh. He didn't understand how in 2008 we can't make something redraw quicker. I've read a bit about it and it's a technology and power limitation. We have faster e-ink type screens, but they cost more in terms of $$ and power.

The Sony reader uses the same technology and I tested this in the store. I grabbed a paperback, put it next to the reader and flipped pages on both of them. The time is about the same and it's an interruption of about the same level. It definitely feels different, but it didn't bother me. To me that's a non-issue and I'll take a second delay if I can get long battery life.

The other thing he, and the owner, didn't like were the forward and back buttons. they're large and easy to hit from either side. I've heard this complaint before and since I haven't seen a Kindle, I'm not sure what to make of this. I might have to just buy one to see it.

So I'm stil on the fence, I keep checking for Kindle versions of books I'm considering or buying, and we'll see what happens. I could always wait another month, but I'd kind of like to begin testing it. Especially as I'm guessing I'll be heading to England within 6 months as well.

Show off your company

2008-08-18T18:00:00Z

I was looking for editorial content and ran across The Planet Blog, from The Planet, a hosting company. I was struck by the variety of posts on all types of topics. The blog makes the company seem fun, a place that I might like to work. If I were in Dallas, that is. It's not that exciting.

I started an editorial on the subject as well, but I wanted to jot some notes here as well.

Attracting, and keeping, talent, should be a priority with all companies. You'll always have turnover, and you'll always have good and bad hires, but you want the hedge your bets. Show off what you do well, show off how your company treats people, what things you do to build teams, and you can attract more people.

And if you have nothing to show off, perhaps you ought to rethink the way you treat employees.

I can see this being more important over time as knowledge workers become more valuable at all levels, from secretaries to CIOs. At some point I'm sure that people will start to avoid companies if they don't market their workplace as well as their products.

TechEd Online

2008-08-15T21:09:00Z

I'm glad I'm not this slow, or maybe it's timed for the SQL Server release, but my TechEd Online panel, or one of them is online.

Advertising

2008-08-13T13:36:00Z

My first blog post, The Decison to Advertise, is up on the Business of Software blog.

Installing RTM (SQL Server 2008)

2008-08-12T13:25:00Z

I had to install the RTM version of SQL Server 2008 a few days ago since I'm tech reviewing a book on the product and it's rather important that the code works on the final version ;)

It was actually an interesting process. I had RC0 installed, had downloaded RC1 and was about to install it to check on some issues when I saw a note on Andy Leonard's Twitter that he was downloading RTM. So I grabbed it and overnight it came down, ready to go in the morning.

I had a VM with RC0, so I ran the uninstall. My "clean" VM got whacked with a disk problem when I copied the files without changing the path in the config file. So this was the easiest way to get moving. The uninstall went smoothly, I restarted the VM, and then started the install. It was slow, and I had to uninstall a couple pieces separately, but it went smoothly and I verified that everything was gone related to SQL Server.

I was surprised that it wanted to install the .NET 3.5 framework since that was there in RC0 and I hadn't uninstalled it.So I let that install, rebooted, and then started the SQL Server installation. I picked the base product with iFTS, tools, and BOL,a and went on with my day, installing everything in the background. A few hours later it was done (this is a VM and I wasn't checking often).

select @@version shows 10.0.1600.22

Now I need to get to work.

Kindle Update - August

2008-08-04T21:09:00Z

Apparently the Kindle is a great success, financially, for Amazon. That's good to hear, though I haven't made the decision yet. I've been looking for places/times when it would help me, but I haven't found a ton.

And I think I might suffer from the same issues that my friend, Ted Pin, suffered from. I'd buy too many books. When I asked Ted about his, or his wife's, they were going to return it. But not because they didn't like it. Rather because they were spending too much $$ on books. I could definitely see that happening with me, so I'd need some budget as well.

I still like the idea of carrying around lots of books. I've been stuck a few times with no books handy, and a Kindle would be nice, but I'd have to carry it everywhere to be sure that wouldn't still be the problem. With 3 cars, I'm not sure that I'm not better off just stashing 2-3 books in every car.

I've gotten up to about $200 in my Amazon account, so I'm getting close to just trying it. I'm thinking perhaps to wait another month and see if there are any new announcements coming on changes or a new version. My guess is it's slated for 2009 to get through another Christmas season, but with competition from other areas, perhaps even Apple heating up, I could be wrong. If I were Amazon I'd be getting a second version out, lower the price, and grab market share. Once people have one of these, they're unlikely to switch to something else.

Filestream and Full-Text Issues

2008-08-01T23:27:00Z

I'm tech editing a book on Full-Text Search for SQL Server 2008 and the last few weeks have been quite a bit of hassling with setup. I haven't done a lot of work with Full-Text since 2000, when we tried to implement it at SQLServerCentral.com. We dug through quite a few search products, including full-text search and I spend quite a bit of time trying to figure it out. I thought this project would be a good way to get me learning about the changes in 2008.

I wanted a ready made database for some testing. I got one from the authors, but I didn't want to be just using that, so I downloaded AdventureWorks. As soon as I got ready to attach the files, I got an error about FileStream access. No big deal, I went an enabled Filestream for the server, setting it to full access and tried it again.

The same error.

I dug around, flipped through some docs and finally found that you have to enable filestream in the Configuration Manager's properties, on the second tab for the database server. Not sure why this is different than doing it for the server, but I did it and got AdventureWorks going.

My second error was with the database the author's sent. It had full-text catalogs, but I couldn't search them. I could rebuild them, kick off populations, but a FREETEXT query gave me an error. Since I had chapters from various points (I didn't get 1, then 2, then 3, I got 2, then 6), I thought maybe I missed something in an earlier chapter.

I emailed the author and noticed the the FDHOST.EXE wasn't running, though FDLAUNCHER.EXE was. I then found a reference on the Microsoft TechNet boards that someone had added the Local Service account to the FullText security group created by the install and it worked. I tried that, restarted SQL Server, and it didn't work.

Then forgetting the policy of changing only one thing, I also checked protocols.TCP/IP was disabled, which was strange, but perhaps because I was in a server VM. I'd accepted the defaults when installing, so I changed TCP/IP to enabled, shut down the server and restarted things and it was working.

Bottom line, seems like many things in 2008 are easier, but there are quite a few things buried in there that aren't obvious on how to enable.

Stored Procedures Reconsidered

2008-07-30T21:40:00Z

Quite the debate going on from today's editorial: Stored Procedures Reconsidered. I chimed in late, and going on the "pro-sprocs" group. I think stored procedures are helpful, and a better idea, and most importantly:

Don't take that much more effort

You should be able to auto-gen trivial procs, and you should be able to auto-gen the stored procedure calls from .NET. Actually that's a little utility that we've considered writing before. Something you can point at a server, give it a proc name, have it sniff out the procedure parameters, types, etc. and write the code. How hard can that be?

I don't think that stored procedures are required everywhere, but I think they do provide benefits and ignoring those benefits because you don't want to write them (laziness) just doesn't make sense.

Database Weekly

2008-07-26T15:48:00Z

At least this project is moving forward. We deployed a new design to the site this week, and turned it live this morning. Instead of altering the Dot Net Nuke framework that it was on, we built a new site, mostly because it's a fairly simple type of site and really is based on the newsletter only, not people visiting the site.

There are a few minor issues, but they're mostly on the administrative side, not the public side. The front page shows the news from the previous week and you can click links to follow them. On the admin side...a few issues, none really major, although without developers this weekend I suspect that the newsletter will be a day late.

I have to say that Database Weekly, evolved from Database Daily, has changed somewhat in it's mission. I was against the idea of the site 4 years ago, but Andy convinced me to give it a try. He said that there was value in having an editor pick through news and put the newsletter together and he was right, I was wrong, and it's a valuable web property that added value to the bottom line. Our plan was to eventually try and go daily ot twice a week with the newsletter, but we never go the process down to that level.

When Red Gate purchased the site, they decide that Database Daily was too confusing (I agree), bought Database Weekly, and now we have a new site. Eventually I'm hoping we find a way to automate most of the functions of DBW, or I get to hand it off to someone else. It helps for editorial ideas, but it's also a PIA each week and now that I'm stuck with it for the foreseeable future, it's a chore every week to walk through hundreds of links.

A Bad Karma Project

2008-07-25T17:16:00Z

We've had a project underway to upgrade these blogs, moving to a newer version of Community Server, better skinned, etc. The project is scheduled to deploy in a couple weeks.

A couple weeks ago, I heard the project would be ready in a couple weeks. I've heard the same thing for months, possibly going back to the beginning of this year. At this point it's gone on so long that my memory is failing a little on when we even started it. It wasn't my project, an outside consultant was used because all of us here in the publishing group are fairly busy, and our consultant appears not to have put this as a high priority. To be honest, I'm not sure how high a priority I put on it as well.

I've seen a few posts (part 1 and part 2) on blogging from Andy Warren lately. I like his assessment of blogs, and we've debated offline quite a bit on the value of blogging. Early on Andy wasn't sure there was value, but he decided to try it and commit to a year to see how it went. I think he sees some value in it, but it's a nebulous value. Most blogs are fairly low exposure unless you can write something sensational, or it becomes your publishing arm. But if you have another publishing arm (like SSC), then why blog?

My view is that you should have a professional blog that you use to blog about work. What you've done, what you've read, what you think of things. This is in addition to any publishing someone pays you for. You want to blog regularly, at least a couple times a month, and show what you are doing. It becomes part of your resume and something you can use in interviews. If you want to blog about your life, band, cat, whatever, do that elsewhere.

So do we need blogs at SSC? It's a nice add-on, and I think there is some value for people, but I'm not sure we get a lot of value out of it. It's almost a good karma thing for us to offer this as a free service to people, let them blog. Of course it has to work, including offline posting using the various blog APIs from LiveWriter, Word, etc.

However with the time, $$, and resources this has consumed and continues to consume, I'm not sure if we're not better off getting some type of "group blog" at Blogger or something. Hey, maybe I need to check on that :)

Building Better VMs

2008-07-22T16:25:00Z

The other day I fired up my old desktop, intending to use it as background in the podcasts. It gave me a "Activate Windows" error for the W2K3 installation on there. I know I was thinking that I would use it as a file server, but downstairs it has no Internet access, and I'm not in the mood, so that will go back to XP.

What does that have to do with VMs? Nothing really, but it was foreshadowing for me. Today I went to build a new VM to hold RC0 for SQL Server 2008, which will let me do some tech reviewing of a new book. Since I hate installing the OS, it's simple, it's the same every time, and it tends to waste my time, what I did last year was install a copy of W2K3 as a VM, shut it down, and copy it to a file called "BlankW2K3". Now I have a blank VM and building a new one is as simple as copying the files over, renaming them, and then starting them up. I did that today and ...

"This copy of Windows needs to be activated"

Grrr, not what I wanted. Especially since I didn't get a W2K8 VHD downloaded last week because bandwidth was moving slow around here. That's something for today.

I typically install TechNet or MSDN versions of the OS's for testing. I have licenses for them, so that's not a big deal. My VM has internet access, so I activated and then moved on to installing SQL Server 2008. Unfortunately it didn't go smoothly.

The first thing needed is the .NET Framework 3.5. And that needs SP2 on W2K3. Enough acronyms for you?

So setup shut down and I set about installing SP2. In this case, since we're far enough along in the process, as soon as SP2 downloads and installs, I'll shut down the VMs, copy the files over and rename them as W2K3SP2, and then bring my new SS2K8 VM up and put RC0 on it.

It's going in the background now, aren't VM's great? If this was my desktop I'd be done for now.