This page will serve as a compendium of Pond’s Laws posts. The individual posts which promulgate the laws may be found as follows: Pond's First through Tenth Laws Pond's Eleventh Law Pond's Twelfth Law Pond's Thirteenth Law Pond's Laws of System Design (or, How To Be A Competent Professional...

Thanks to yet another kick-in-the-pants from Jimmy May (did he play soccer as a youth?) the Pond’s Laws Home Page is now live. Jimmy wanted to find all of Pond’s Laws in one place, and now he (and you) can. There’s also a link to the new page in the A Bit More From Me section to your left (if you...

Herewith, a discussion of the emergence of Pond’s Thirteenth Law (if you need to catch up, here are Laws One through Ten , Eleven , and Twelve , as well as three ruminations on the implications of Pond’s Seventh Law ).. One of the great things about my job is that I get to spend an embarrassing amount...

After a long hiatus , Pond’s Laws of System Design (or, How to Be a Competent Professional in an Irrational World) returns. Thanks to Jimmy May for a kick-in-the-pants on this topic several months ago; I hope he’ll understand why I just had to wait until right now to publish this post (the clue lies...

And I remember what she said to me How she swore that it never would end I remember how she held me, oh so tight Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then Bob Seger, Against the Wind All you need is love Love is all you need John Lennon and Paul McCartney, All You Need is Love My pal Jimmy May apparently...

I had a couple of extra minutes today and found this post on Linchi Shea’s blog ; I wanted to commend to all of you who’ve taken in the programming methodology and set-based thinking discussions in this little corner. While I disagree some with the point in the main post about views (JOINing views...

UPDATED 16 Oct 2008 to fix a broken link. UPDATED 10 Oct 2008 to reflect Giuseppe's comment . Welcome to installation #118 of Log Buffer , the weekly review of database blogs. Today, we’re gonna party like it’s 1999 ! For those of you who might be new to this little corner of the Internets,...

Marc left a great question on a Pond's Laws post from July of 2006 : Hi, I have a flashcard system that randomly pulls a word from the database. I also have a testing module that allows a user to test him or her self on words. For each word the user answers incorrectly it is flagged. I want...

In the age of the blog, it may well be that republishing is the sincerest form of flattery. The same RSS technology that many of you use to read the blog through wonderful rollers like this one also can be turned to far more nefarious purposes. I'm going to rant a bit about one particular instantiation...

[ UPDATED 17 August 2007: the first story turns out to be a hoax , which places the second one in doubt as well. Please consider this a parable rather than a reportage] A colleague sent along an email earlier today which, at its root, strikes me as a plea for Pond's Seventh Law , so it seems a good...

Egad, a technical post! And after I'd already said goodbye for the month. A long time ago, a friend taught me that expectations are small murders. What does that make plans? At any rate, Peter asked a FAQ on one of the internal discussions this morning, and since we haven't discussed it here.. ...

Another application of Pond's Laws comes to light from an exchange on an internal SQL Server discussion list. My good friend and colleague John Huschka, a Senior Software Development Engineer for Microsoft Business Solutions' FRx Software Corporation, alerted me to this post on the list: I am...

( updated for grammatical issues on 21 July 2006 ) When I first published Pond’s Laws , I promised it would be a living document. Herewith is the first evidence. Perhaps it’s the fact that when I left my old job, I had a month-long programming push towards an intractable deadline coincide...

I first promised this list in December, and at long last here is its current state. Hopefully you will find both humor and technical merit in.. Pond's Laws of System Design (or, How To Be A Competent Professional In An Irrational World) 1. This list is perpetually a work in progress. It is never...

You've perhaps seen this item in the news, which discusses the woes which have befallen the Tokyo Stock Exchange and one of Japan’s largest brokerages after a typographical error in a stock trade resulted in a loss of at least $225 million for the brokerage firm involved and also contributed to an almost...