In the second of my annual indulgences , I’m “treating” you to a summary of my commuting life this year. A note to the uninitiated: there has been a hidden feed on this blog since I started my position in the SQL CoE in June of 2006. My office was a mile and a half from my home at the time, so I thought it might be interesting to catalog my commuting habits given the myriad options available to me. Possessing the ability to walk to work isn't the same thing as actually walking to work, and I wanted

If it's December 4th, it must be my Dad's birthday .. After our move to Florida this past August, I'm living in the same time zone as my father and sister for the first time since we last lived under the same roof, which would be approximately 1984. I'm still struggling not to make time zone adjustments in my head before I call them. All of this is, of course, wonderful trouble to have. I'm living closer to my family than I have in quarter-century.. close enough to jump in the car and go visit, which

In keeping with the spirit of the season, I thought I’d introduce you to my latest reason to be thankful. As if a wonderful family and an incredible career weren’t enough.. Ever since this city boy relocated to rural Central Florida, his farm girl wife has been on him to get her a horse. I’m therefore hopefully as pleased as she is to introduce Gale’s early Christmas present, a six-year old Florida Cracker Horse stallion named Crackerjack: Crackerjack came to us three weeks after he was rescued from

We are 32 days in Florida as of today, and so far it's been a marvelous experience. All three boys are thriving in school. I haven't seen so many A's since my mother's book club read The Scarlet Letter. * Good on you, boys! Connectivity in the home office is stable and strong, the result of a two day effort that first saw it take 45 minutes to get an answer to the simple question, "where is the cell tower closest to my house?" Fortunately, the customer service rep on the other end of the phone was

Now the story can be told..  the last couple weeks have not been pretty around here, connectivity wise.  Think of a duck..  paddling like the dickens underwater to keep things going while looking calm and serene from above. Note that if I appeared calm and serene to you, it’s only because you’ve been too far away to hear my cursing. ANYWAY..  step one was to try to get cable TV.  No cable TV within at least half a mile of the house; they’ll be happy to run

After battling a failed laptop and Tropical Storm Fay, I'm back up and running at our new digs in Central Florida. I thought some of you might be interested in some pictures of where we've landed. The entrance to our place sits at the junction of of two County Roads (let's call them "4" and "4A", to protect the innocent), just off of a U.S. highway, about 3.8 miles north of town proper (“town proper” may be an oxymoron, but that’s more pictures and a different post). Here’s the entire length of "CR

It's been a busy six weeks since I last posted here. I've made substantial progress in my recovery from a burst appendix. My stamina is still limited (my sons blazed right by me on a staircase outside Safeco Field this evening ), and I tend to relapse slightly a couple of times a week, usually as a result of poor dietary choices. I'm slowly learning to live within my limitations in that regard. My work on the SQL RAP 2.2 release is nearly complete, despite the interruption caused by May's events.