Archives for June 2006

I'm sure that this won't make any sense to most of y'all. But one of the products that I was responsible for was a big winner at TechEd. It's called Spotlight on SQL Server and it won Best of Show in the data management category at Microsoft TechEd.Speaking of having some hard work pay off nicely, William Wilberforce, the English politician who helped to legally abolish the slave trade after 20 years of trying, wrote, "No one has a right to be idle. Where is it that in such a world as this, that health, and leisure, and affluence may not find some ignorance to instruct, some wrong to redress, … [Read more...]

When I was at the TechEd party in Fenway Park, Boston, the entertainment that night was the band Train. You know 'em - "Drops of Jupiter", "Meet Virginia", "Calling All Angels", and "Drops of Virginia Calling Angels".Well, at one point in the show, the lead singer called up ladies to dance on the first base dugout while he was singing. There were probably 30 women up there - about all of the women that attended TechEd, but I digress. Anyway, they had to stop the concert for a while because a couple of the women fell out the dugout. Here's the video: … [Read more...]

Here are some more pics from the cemetery. Don't forget that you can click on the picture to see a more detailed version of the picture.-Kev … [Read more...]

If you want to see a TON of good quality pictures of our event, check out http://www.pbase.com/baguleys/teched_2006__boston. Joe Baguley (pronounced "Bagly") took lots of pictures with his very high quality digital camera. They came out looking really good, except for a couple close-ups. The trip was a lot of work - a LOT of work. Plus, I got sick right smack in the middle of the week. But I did find a couple hours over the course of the week to see a bit of Boston. It's a very pretty city with an incredible amount of pedestrian traffic. That makes for some very nice people watching.I did, for … [Read more...]

I had a mixed week while in Boston working the Quest Software booth in the Microsoft TechEd exhibit hall. Our booth was really grand, perhaps one of the best booths there. And believe me there were tons of booths - easily a couple hundred. (There's a picture of me with my bud, Jason Hall, in the SQL Server kiosk of our booth.)SQL Server was definitely one of the hottest technologies at the show and we got lots of traffic from the conference attendees. In fact, Jason told me that we had as many customer visits on day 1 as we had all week long at TechEd last year. Wow! Quest definitely had the … [Read more...]

I'm going to have to get the girls little digital cameras of their own. They've been snatching my cell phone and using it to take pics for quite a while now. Even Katie Jo is getting good at it - picture at left is evidence. I'd appreciate a recommendation for a good, cheap digital camera if you have one!You just have to watch this video of driving in India. I'll never complain about drivers in Huntsville, AL again (for at least a little while).http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2519892298681325903Cheers,-Kev … [Read more...]

Whenever Emily and Bailey got too much sun when they were out on the beach or at the pool on our trip to Orange Beach, they'd do their best to cover up. I was reminded of nuns in their habits, for some strange reason, so I started calling them the "beach nuns" whenever they'd wrap up to get away from the sun.Another part of the Orange Beach trip was that folks had brought along a few "adult" beverages. So even though I hadn't brought any and didn't really drink much, there was plenty to be had and it sure did help me relax on the nights when I had some.In some ways, it was a little more … [Read more...]

Y'all know that I love to garden. I love both vegetable gardening and flower gardening. I also like trees a lot, but I'm not sure if that's gardening or something else (arborist?).Anyway, I was never able to get in any new flowers into the flower beds nor was I able to till up any ground for a vegie garden. In fact, I've barely had time to keep the flower beds weeded. However, I'm happy to say that the old owners did a half-decent job of putting flowers in the beds. So we've had a few bright spots in the gardening world. For example, the daylilies bloomed just a few days ago and looked really … [Read more...]

Emily had a friend spend the night last week and, after many hours of fun, we needed to drop her off in our old neighborhood, Hunter's Crossing. So we were passed by an ambulance and a fire truck, with lights flashing and sirens blaring, as we drove way to the back of the neighbor hood to drop Deanna off. (Note to self: don't go down into a no outlet street without knowing where emergency vehicles are going!)Sure enough there was a fire at the old McNamie place and, because there were now so many emergency vehicles there, we couldn't get past them. We were stuck until the fire trucks and fire … [Read more...]

TechEd is Microsoft's biggest technical conference of the year. It's an educational conference for programmers (a.k.a. developers) and administrators (a.k.a. IT pro's) to learn about the newest software and techniques for keeping their IT organizations running at top efficiency.This year is sold out, as have the last couple years, which means there are about 8,000 paying attendees and a few thousand more non-paying attendees such as exhibitors, speakers, Microsoft staff, etc. It is big! With such a large event, there are only a few venues big enough to hold the crowds - LA, Dallas, New … [Read more...]