David Gardiner - Humour

Microsoft SQL Server code-named 'Denali' - CTP1

2010-11-09T21:48:00.001+10:30

Wednesday morning I'll be giving a quick summary of all the new announcements from the 2010 PASS Summit in Seattle (courtesy of LobsterPot's on-the-spot reporters Rob and Roger) to the Adelaide leg of the PDC10 Roadshow.

In preparation for that, I did a quick search for any Denali titbits, and discovered the CTP is now publicly available. I'm downloading as we speak/type. Annoyingly, the Release Notes link is broken at the moment. Hopefully that gets fixed soon.

Download links

My top predictions for new features (seeing as I haven't got it installed yet to find out)

Failover cluster support for Windows Phone 7
Query optimiser support for X-Box 360 Kinect

Ha.. though actually I can see some possible use of Kinect with reporting and data mining in the future.. That would be cool.

Maybe they'd have to call that "Minority Report-ing Services" 😀

Error message of the day – "Something has went wrong"

2009-06-17T22:49:00.001+09:30

And I think I was probably the one who was responsible – a bit sad for someone who normally does take the time to correct grammar and spelling errors :-)

Thankfully not something end-users get to see, but it does seem quite appropriate for an error (in an ironic kind of way).

Of course you know, this means…

2009-02-21T11:23:00.001+10:30

I received an email from a “Gary” a few days ago. Unfortunately my reply didn’t seem to reach him due to problems with his email server. Looking at his email address, I’d guess Gary works for the US Army. Hence my alarm when I saw the following in GMail!

Trying to be more alert than alarmed, I’m relieved to report that “THIS IS A WAR..” is actually “THIS IS A WARNING” :-)

Mosquito Massacre

2009-01-15T19:35:00.001+10:30

Have to give this video a plug :-).

Disclaimer: Yes, I personally know Francesca, Han Solo and the one-and-only Thomas Tilley

Sticky taped

2008-08-18T21:20:00.001+09:30

I obviously haven’t been as productive as my ABB colleagues thought I should be, so they kindly taped up my mouse – presumably to encourage me to use the keyboard more.

I’m not sure what they’re saying by taping up my phone and my chair though.

Or maybe things just got extra silly on Friday afternoon after I left :-)

SQL Replication talk

2008-06-05T15:34:00.001+09:30

Browsing the Australian SQL Server User Group site today I noticed there's a talk on SQL Server 2008 Replication in Sydney next week.

I then wondered what might happen if the replication got out of hand...

Barleys!

2008-06-05T12:13:00.001+09:30

My contract with DECS finishes this Friday. I hadn't heard if they were planning to renew, and in the meantime I was asked to interview for a contract position with ABB Grain. I've accepted a 6 month contract position with them beginning next week.

ABB (which in a previous life was the Australian Barley Board) are located in the Adelaide CBD, though down on South Tce so I'll have to investigate some different public transport options.

Apparently I'll be working on some WPF applications. This will be new to me, so I hope it will be a good "learning on the job" experience.

So it's farewell to DECS and the nice people that I've had the privilege of working with, and looking forward to finding out what my next workplace will be like.

Candle (as my first agency) have been good, and I really appreciated the unexpected present and card from them on the birth of our new baby. The new position however is through Icon. One difference I've noticed already - they have online timesheets.

Every workplace has its own unique attributes - I wonder what ABB's will be?

Playing chasey, and anyone can be barleys!
Drink lemon barley water
Sing variations of "I've been to Barley too"
Write XML Cerealisers.

I guess I'll find out next week :-)

{Year} of the {Hero}

2008-04-01T10:38:00.001+10:30

I don't know who thought of it first, but it looks like if you're running a conference or product launch this year, you need to include "Hero" in the title.

Microsoft have been running their Heroes Happen {here} launch of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 over the last few months.

Now I've just received an email from IBM telling me about their Rational Software Development Conference - "Where teams are R-Heroes" (no, I'm not making this up).

And like Microsoft, IBM Rational have names for their R-Heroes too.

I think this just goes to show how bad things can get when the marketing guys have too much spare time.

And what's up with those curly braces? If we had some VB events, should they have named it "Heroes Happen Begin Here End Here" ?

An ALT.NET Christmas

2007-12-08T22:32:00.001+10:30

'Twas the night before the weekend...

The country of XBox

2007-01-08T13:10:00.001+10:30

I saw this sign out the front of the local video shop a few weeks ago, and last weekend remembered to take a photo of it!. It's a bit surprising, as I would have thought you would pick 'console' before 'consul' as the more well-known/spelled word. I suppose they do have those 'alternate world' games to which you might want to have diplomatic relations!