I'm not quite sure what the appeal of sled dog racing is. But it's headquartered in the same little town my brother lives in (Wasilla) and it's famous. So by gum, we're going to see this place!Sam and Jake don't get out very often as it turns out. So even though they live three miles away, they'd never been to the place.There was a really beautiful log cabin there that was almost entirely a gift shop with very expensive gifts. There was a small museum sort of thing there to give you a sense of history. There was also a fairly large side room with a big screen TV playing a video about the … [Read more...]

We wanted to do more things that were quintessentially Alaskan. We didn't have tons of time, since I have to work, but we wanted to spend at least a couple hours per day doing something fun and something we'd likely only do while here.Dylan (middle), Jake (left), and Sam (right) were having a good time hanging out and playing Xbox and PS2 all the time. But the weather has been absolutely fantastic. You just can't stay indoors when it's brilliantly sunny and about 76 degrees every day. So as we were driving down the road the previous day, I noticed two or three shooting ranges and/or gun clubs. … [Read more...]

Dylan and I are visiting my brother and his family in Wasilla, AK - home of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race. It's a place of remarkable beauty. I can't wait to start exploring!I took this picture at Big Lake near Wasilla at 11:17 pm last night. As you can see, it's still very bright with the sun just going down on the horizon. We haven't been able to go to sleep before 2:00 am just because it's so bright!Cheers,-Kev … [Read more...]

Sometimes a blog isn't very fun or convenient. I think mostly it just feels neither fun nor convenient because you're having an off day. But most of the rest of the time, it is fun to some degree.If you're looking for some interesting images to look at, check out GapingVoid. It's fun when the artist isn't a total downer/boar.Enjoy!-Kev … [Read more...]

An All Pro Dad moment - William Ralph Inge says there are two kinds of foolish attitudes - one says, "This is old, therefore it is good"; the other says, "This is new, therefore it is better."The same is true in parenting. Parents who believe that the best form of disciplining their children is to just copycat what their parents did are on dangerous ground. On the flip side, parents who embrace the latest psychological fad for rearing children and forget some of the traditional principles that really work are also short-changing their kids. Our children have a unique personality and … [Read more...]

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...]