Or maybe part 3, depending.
Amazon reduced the cost of the Kindle yesterday. It's $40 off, a 10% discount, down to $359 from $399 and that's tempting. I've got some Amazon credits, about $100, and since I could conceivably deduct this as a business expense, review it for the site, I'm very tempted. If I had $200 in credits it would be a no brainer.
I found this very interesting review from a book lover. It mirrors a lot of what I think about the Kindle and how I would use it. This was the first review to talk about how easy it is to hold and read with the device. I'll admit that flipping from left to right with a paperback gets tough on my arms, and at night. I find myself shifting positions every minute or so to read the other page when I'd like to have the ability to keep reading the left side or right side only. It might be nice as well when I'm with a kid or someone and don't have two hands free.
I saw a post from Geekbrief on someone that keeps little around. It struck a chord with me since I have lots of books, so many that the shelves are overflowing, and lots of DVDs as well, but it I could go with less, I would. I like re-reading some at times, the last two years I've re-read perhaps 20-30 books from the shelf, but I'm a content person. I like the content, but I don't need to have them all around. I used to, and perhaps would like a library, but it's an extravangance I don't "need."
The other thing that struck me is on our trip this past weekend, I took 4 books, plus one in the car that is almost done. I found myself looking for books a few times or regretting that I didn't have a particular book with me. I also left one book at home that I wish I'd brought.
I'm getting close, and I'm not sure I'd save a lot waiting until Christmas for the Kindle. I think I'll give it a month to see if I get any more Amazon referrals and make any more $$.
After being gone for 4 days, I've got a little catching up to do. I try to be prepared before I leave, but I also like to be ahead of the curve, especially with the daily grind of articles, QODs, scripts, and of course, editorials.
I took my video laptop on vacation, partially since I thought I might do some editing and my wife wanted me to edit a video for her. I did her stuff, but decided to enjoy vacation, didn't really look at email, and didn't edit down any of the footage on my laptop. It's still there, or it was yesterday am. Since traveling home I haven't fired up the laptop to see if things are still working.
In going through things for today, I ran across this blog from Paul Randal on backups and thought it was interesting. When I was packing up last Thursday, one of the things I did was to connect my external WD drive to the laptop and run a backup. I used the standard Vista backup tool since I didn't want to pick through things and I have them fairly well organized. I didn't take it with me as I don't really need real-time backup. If the laptop fails, I'll deal with it when I get back.
However the blog got me thinking since we have lots of non-work related stuff spread around here. I typically try to get the pictures and video from the family life and get that onto my desktop and then process, upload, backup , etc. from there. I'm woefully behind, especially with kids stuff in getting pictures and video up on the web. Every once in awhile Tia will grab pictures from the camera for her machine when I'm slow, but I've asked her to leave the pictures on the camera so I can get them into one place.
After nearly 7 years of digital work, I have many GB of stuff. There's an external drive up here, but I haven't backed up in a few weeks, something I need to do today. The drive flakes a little, so I don't leave it on and as a result, I don't regularly do backups.
However moving to a more regular scheme means that we really need to then invest in backups. I have an old machine, but the spare drives were flaky, so it's off. Plus we were lacking power in the office. I probably need to put it downstairs in the "studio", use it to drive a monitor or two behind me, and also make it available on the network for a general storage place. It would be better than putting a Drobo up, at the $500-700 cost, but not easier or safer. At least not unless I put $300 in there and added RAID capabilities.
It's a similar problem with corporate data. Companies often need to invest quite a bit of money in their backup schemes to handle the amount and speed of data. Add in the desire to capture stuff from laptops and desktops, and you sometimes are talking a few FTEs and lots of $$.
If you're really paranoid, you need to have a few backups. I've taken to carrying around a 4GB flash key that holds my password safe, important documents, and I transfer stuff with it. However it's not a great solution and it doesn't handle my larger Outlook/Picture stuff.
And don't forget iTunes. It asked me today to backup my purchases since I bought a few things. It took 5CDs to do that, which is annoying. I need to see if they support DVDs, which is what I really need.
This is really interesting to me:
I posted a response to the person that it must be a conversion with Unicode that allows things to match up, but they don't in non-Unicode. I'd expect that this would work the other way, since I'd think that the first "s" would get converted in the varchar to an "s" and it would work correctly.
Someone else said to be sure you're using Accent Sensitive collation, which would remove the row from the second one, but I'm still not sure why this works. I should send to Sorting It All Out blog.
This year I've been lucky enough to have been offered some prizes or promotions from a few different companies for different things. I don't really want to name names, because I think the offers or awards were nice gestures and made with the best of intentions to me and others. In most cases, these awards resulted in credits or even cash that I could use to purchase things I might want from a limited prize list. That's cool and it definitely is a little exciting.
However in more than one case, there was a substantial delay in the award being processed and made available. That wasn't made clear early on that this might occur, and it kind of removes a lot of the goodwill that the award might generate.
Suppose I sent you a note that SQLServerCentral was going to give you a $500 certificate to Amazon. You'd be excited, right? What if I didn't follow up on this for a couple days and then when you pinged me I said it would be a month before I could get it out to you? Probably you'd be disappointed or less excited.
You'd still appreciate it when you got it and it's a nice gesture, but I think a lot of the goodwill I'd gained with the announcement would be lost.
It's a simple thing, especially these days, to be prepared to distribute awards to people quickly. You can stage them up early, and you should, and make sure they are delivered quickly, or that you set expectations immediately. If I told you that you'd won the certificate and it would be delivered in 4 weeks, you'd probably be more accepting of that than if you didn't know when it was coming.
In the past I've always contacted people, usually sending them gifts before I make the announcements so that the delays are minimal. I'd hope that companies would do the same because if I have to come asking what happened, I definitely feel a little like a jerk asking for my free gift.
Some very interesting responses to my CLR editorial today including some good details that I haven't seen elsewhere. I'm still thinking that we're missing a lot of examples that might convince people to give the CLR a try, or implement it in their applications and I'm going to try and contact some posters to see if they'll write a bit more.
In the meantime, it seems that most people are still down on the CLR.That's definitely my first reaction, but I'm less concerned, especially as I hear about some small successes.
I'm sure that some people will make mistakes, and it's a little scary, but I also see many people implement poorly written T-SQL code all the time. It doesn't do well, so is it really that bad an idea to try and write something with the CLR? Wouldn't it make sense to implement some trivial, perhaps string splitting routines, in the CLR to gain some practice?
I'll draw an analogy to the building trades since we seem to like doing that. If someone offered me a nail gun, I'd be slower at using it than a hammer initially. There's a certain amount of skill that I'd need to build up before I could easily, and quickly, start using the nail gun in an efficient manner, at which point you'd be sure that I'd be more productive.
I'm not sure if the CLR falls into that category, but I do wonder if it's worth investing some time in it to see what can be done, build some skills, and then see if can be something you can use.
I saw that Erland Sommerskag posted a Connect item that asked for a "View Variable" to be added to the SQL language. The idea is that you would be able to declare a variable that was a query of some sort and then use that in places where you might otherwise need the query code. Such as this:
delcare @v as (select orderid, customername from orders o inner join customers c on o.customerid = c.customerid)
if exists ( select * from @v)
select * from @v
It's an interesting idea, but I'm not really sure how this is better than Table variables, or maybe those need to be enhanced. It would definitely be handy to be able to use a table in some places to keep your code clean and I'm sure people would come up with some very interesting ideas for creative coding.
If you agree or disagree, rate this on Connect (1 for "don't do this" and 5 for "it needs to be done")
After the editorial on the Kindle, which got quite a few responses, I've continued to look around and research things. I saw an interesting comparison with a husband and wife who have both. There are some interesting things on the Sony reader, especially in the comments, but I'm not sure it's worth it.
I wanted to write a touch more, since this is a subject that's near and dear to my heart, reading. I love to read, try to get to 50 or so books a year, often new fiction, so this makes some sense to me. I decided to browse the comments a bit and then talk about the complaints and advocates of both readers. I'll tackle the various points and then talk about both the Kindle and Reader from that point of view. Notice that I don't have either one of these, though I've used the Sony Reader at Borders for 15-20 minutes a few times to see how it looks.
Size: From what I read and see in pictures, the Kindle is substantially larger than the Sony Reader. That being said, it doesn't appear that either is that large. The screen size is the same on both, though the Kindle has the keyboard and that adds space below the screen. The Sony is a nice, fairly small size and I definitely do like that since I'd be carrying this around in a lot of places.
Both have covers and there are 3rd party ones, so the knock on the base Amazon cover doesn't make sense to me.
Cost: The Kindle is roughly US$100 more than the Sony. Right now as I write this the Kindle is $399 and the Sony is $279, and based on what I've seen from the Sony and Amazon stores, there's a $2 a book difference quite often. Neither of these is cheap, and I'm not sure why. You're locked into DRM content from these sellers and so if they sold these things for $150 and gave you some deal, like 15 books for $100, I bet lots of people would jump on this and they'd grow the business. Operating at this price level it's an early adopter mode rather than trying to build the market.
I checked on some books I've read recently or thought about buying:
The last one disturbs me. That's a new one I saw in the store and considered buying the other day. If there were many at that price, I'd say the Kindle really wins out. If we're talking $6, 7, or more a book difference, than I'd really be thinking the $100 evaporates in months.
Dictionary: Kindle has one, you can add one to the Sony, but I'm not sure how easy it is to look things up in the Sony. I don't do this often, but I think about it and it's that I don't have a dictionary handy that I don't do it. I wonder if I'd use this more and grow my vocabulary.
Search/bookmarks: I'm not a big highlighter/bookmarker, tending to just flip to find things in the book. From what I've read this works well on the Kindle, not so well on the Sony. Might not matter for me too much.
Wireless: I don't want another computer. I have a browser on my phone if I need it, but honestly most of the time I'm not looking for a laptop. The e-reader takes the place of me carrying a BOOK, not a computer. If I think I need a computer, I'll bring one.
The Sony doesn't have anything, but the Kindle works in my area, or I'd expect it to. My wife has Sprint service and it works great. The EVDO is find with me, analog networks got turned off in 2008. I expect EVDO will be here for a long time.
Sharing: I don't really share books with people. Once in awhile I might give a book to my wife, but not to friends. If this takes off, I think we'd share things in the family only. Not really a consideration for me.
Convenience: To me the big advantage of the Kindle is that it's convenient. The wireless buying, no computer required, like if I run out of books on the road, makes this TiVo-like simple. That's what's important to many people, and to me. I hear a lot about how easy it is to grab free books, or convert them for the Sony (or any PDA).
The reality is that nothing is free. Most of the free books aren't necessarily ones I want to read, though I'm sure I could get them if I wanted. However I don't want to mess with things. My iPod is as dirt simple as it can be and I like that. If I have to manually copy things over, it has to be rarely done. It's just a hassle. If I subscribed to more periodicals, this is a no brainer.
However I do buy things in iTunes and they don't always get onto my iPod in a timely manner. I forget to plug it in, it's in the car, etc. and so I miss things. Wireless delivery, or at least that option, is very cool.
Battery Life: I see that the Sony can run 2 weeks, which is a long time. That is very tempting since I don't want to have to charge everyday, but if I can flip wireless on and off easily and get 3-4 days from the Kindle, I'd be happy with that.
Why not a PDA? - Go see the screen somewhere. It's not even close for me. I dread reading things on my phone, the e-ink looks much better.
Amazon Links:
A minor change for the podcasts next week. I got my wireless microphone, and I'm working with it a bit for Monday. It's nice, especially as I have to get up, change clothes, adjust things, etc. In the past I've had to worry about undoing the mic so I could walk, even just to hit the rest room, and now I'm a little free-er.
Of course this thing uses batteries so I need to be sure I turn it off when it's not being used. There's also a touch of interference, so I have to watch that.
One of the big upgrades should come this weekend with a teleprompter put in place. That will make things easier and eliminate some of the dead tree waste that goes on here.
I thought they were, but I've had a bit of a debate in the forums with someone. There was a question on backup schemes and one person mentioned they use backup devices and send the full and differentials to one file behind the device and logs to another. We went back and forth a bit and I think that it's a sound strategy, but it's not one I've employed.
I smell an editorial, or possibly a Friday poll on this one, but I've felt that backup devices were an older technology, left over from Sybase, and not needed in the SQL Server world. I have had a few places where I've seen people dumping dozens of backups into one file and then having that file get corrupted. Granted that was in the 90's, in teh v6.5 and v7.0 days, but I still have been nervous about putting too many backups into one file. Once the scripting mechanisms got better in SQL Server, I was only using file based backups (BACKUP TO DISK) with a new filename for each backup, with the time and date included in the filename.
Personally I think that it's safer to use a separate file for each backup, especially if you have any concerns over disk space or you're getting low. The last thing I'd want is a partially written file run out of space. Who knows if you'd still have good backups.
But I'm not sure I think backup devices are wrong. Listening to the debate in the forums, I think the DBA (a banker) is doing a good job and being careful with his backups, so I wouldn't say he's in any way negligent. I still think my way is better, but perhaps I should solicit other opinions.
I've never really been a big fan of many of the aggregation sites. As such I have never really used Digg, Delicious, etc. However we heard at the recent MVP Summit that Technorati was used by Microsoft in their examinations of the community. So I decided to check it out and research how it's used a little. After all, perhaps I'm missing something.
So I set up a Technorati Profile here that should link back to this blog with my posting.
We'll see if there is any benefit to this over time.
One of the things that I made a conscious effort to do last summer was make a regular effort to post in the forums at SQLServerCentral.com. I'd been neglecting them for a couple years, rarely tracking anything other than the Editorials, Suggestions, and Anything Not SQL forums and putting posts in there. Fortunately we have had a great community that could keep things going.
When we started this site in 2001, Andy, Brian, and I posted every single day, with one of the three of us answering every single post. We had 3 other partners that helped, but they weren't as motivated as the three of us. Often two or more of us would answer posts, disageeing or agreeing, but ensuring that we put out the best advice that we could to the community.
Over the years, slowly the three of us posted less and less. When I went full-time in 2003, I made a new effort to look for threads that hadn't been answered, but it was sporadic and I didn't track things as well as I should. Sometime in 2005-2006, I noticed the most things were getting answered quickly, and I kind of fell out of the forums. With the sale in 2006, I was somewhat unmotivated to hit the forums hard being unsure of my future and not being an owner. I did answer more posts to be sure that I was doing an adequate job, but my heart wasn't completely in it.
After my trip to Cambridge in 2007, however, I got excited again, I felt more secure in this position, and I went out with the intention of posting 10 times a day during the week. I got one free one from the editorial, so it was really 9, but I worked hard on that. It's possible that contributed to the MVP award I got this year, but that was really a secondary effect for me. I enjoyed answering questions and it helped me keep in touch with SQL Server.
This year I'm continuing that, but aiming for 300 posts a month. We track the last 30 days contributions on the front page, so I'm always trying to be sure that's over 300 for me. It's a regular effort, almost 7 days a week to keep up, but I've gotten over 400 at times, especially when I'm in a groove. Recently I went to the MVP Summit and it dropped into the 280s for about a week as I struggled to keep up, but now I'm back over 320 and looking to see if I can maintain that for the rest of the year.
