January 2006 - Posts
Sometimes those connection problems come in the most interesting ways.
I took a few minutes over lunch today to try and get DSL working. We've
got ADSL and it actually works way out here in Elbert county, CO. The
Qwest wizard worked great and I setup the modem in the bed room, using
a hutch as a desk. Everything's working great, as evidenced by the blog
post.
But I'm about to go down. My wife wants the furniture moved, so I've
got to disconnect the modem and go back to work. It would have gone
down soon anyway as I need to get it in the office, but the office is
desks in disarray and a bunch of boxes, so it's basically an unusable
room right now.
I had a couple people ask about the move after
my editorial, but my wife doesn't like the address to go out on the 'Net. I guess I get that with kids and the world being a strange place.
So here's a Google Map image of the house land.
The red arrow obviously is where the mailbox is. The house is about 1000 or so m away and is not there on this image, but the outline shows the land roughly. The yellow arrow is a large arena next door that does exist and the black arrow is the main road, 2 miles away.
I'll grab some photos and drop them on here as we move in.
As if it weren't enough that I was moving my home, the SSC site is also moving. I'll drop some details in a editorial for next week, but for you bloggers, be prepared for a move on next Sat am (the 28th) in all likelihood.
I decided to commit to the book, so I'm waiting on some information and a contact from my co-author and I'll be able to get going. It's 70-443, and I hope it goes over well with all the readers in SQL land.
So I went to Starbucks today to get away and get into a different atmosphere. I really wanted to get a few articles done and had started a new series that I thought I could knock out 4 or 5 articles in a couple weeks before the book really gets going. I'd started one on Tuesday and wanted to get #2 done today along with some polish on #3.
So I'm writing about what I thought would be a simple topic, but as I was writing, both articles required more work because the topic wasn't as straightforward as I imagined. There were inconsistencies and I found some good places where I think I added a lot of value over BOL, which is rather skimpy on a lot of topics.
Then I started thinking about maybe I should just turn this into a short e-book for $3 and sell it. After all, I've been wanting to write another book for myself and to sell it from SSC, but it's been hard to stay focused and motivated. The contract threat from a publisher, however, has pushed me a bit to get going.
And maybe it will get me to knock out a short 50 pager on this topic, heck I've got 6 or 8 done now, and get my own title on the shelf.
That's the decision to be made.
Apress contacted me about the update for my book. I wrote 1/2 of the Designing Database Solutions book for SQL Server 2000, the one originally published by Sybex for the exam. It was a long, tough process and one that really strained my life for 6 months when I wrote it back in 2000/2001.
Understandably I was hesitant to begin another project, but Apress is pushing hard. Apparently there is a dearth of authors and they've upped their offer to me. Talking about it with my wife today, I was surprised she was thinking I should do it. The cool factor alone of having another book on the shelf is worth it. Not to mention the cash.
Writing books isn't a great way to make a living, in my opinion. Overall from the first book I don't think that it was worth it from an hourly standpoint. But it has been fun to see my book as well as get a few royalty checks every year. They are only a few hundred dollars each time, but they've come at great times and usually brightened my day.
So I'm leaning towards writing. As I think back I realize that I have learned a lot about writing over the last few years and the practice of a daily column as well as multiple articles make me think that this time it will be a much smoother process. Plus the book I'm looking at is less a deep dive into the new SQL Server 2005 features and more a business strategy book based on SQL Server 2005. That alone seems to be more of my area than detailed CLR or Service Broker features.
So we'll see. A decision due tomorrow.
I'm getting ready to look for a new cell phone and I got lots of suggestions from
my editorial on the topic. I have hated my phone from almost day 1, actually it was about day 31, so I was stuck with it. Not to mention that I ordered it from
LetsTalk.com, which gave me good service, but it's a pain for me to mail things back. I'd rather express my displeasure in person :)
I've been with Cingular, as have Andy and Brian, so our minutes are free between each other. With the rollover minutes, I now have over 1000, it's a good way for us to run a business. The service wasn't great, a far step down from ATT and T-Mobile, who I recently had, but it's not bad. And it's at the new house. So far I've been out there with my Cingular Motorola v180, my wife's SideKick (T-Mobile), and the house inspector's Verizon and they all had service. Since we're a bit out there, I'm afraid to try Sprint. I'll probably stick with Cingular, but who knows.
I've mostly been a phone person, not much chat, text messaging, etc., on the phone, I carry a separate camera (Sony DSC-150, but I don't recommend Sony products anymore) and have few needs as far as the phone. Mostly I want good reception, loud volume, vibration, and easy PC synch. I'd like to be able to enter phone numbers and appts on the phone since I usually make them away from my computer. Dr, kid stuff, my wife's out of town schedule, etc. So I've been considering a keyboard phone. I had a Nokia 6600, which was cool and I'm looking at the new 6800's, which do most of what I want.
But I've had lots of people recommend the PDA phones and I'm tempted. The cool factor is nice and I wonder if I'd be able to send the newsletter or do any remote DBA functions with it. Not that I want to, but I have a few trips planned this year where I may not be able to log in with a computer, but a phone will probably work.
I've seen some people handle emergencies with their PDAs, dump logs, run backups, kill processes, etc., but I've never really had the need. I need a trip to a store to mess around a little and see what I think.