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Music and Technology
09 September 08 06:39 AM | Buck Woody | 1 Comments   
I've noticed something interesting since I've been working at Microsoft, specifically at the SQL Server organization. All of the folks here are incredibly smart - you'd probably expect that - but they have two other traits that I've found. Many of them Read More...
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The Bellevue Arts Festival and Software Development
28 July 08 09:05 AM | Buck Woody | 0 Comments   
This past Saturday my family and I went to the Bellevue Arts Festival near our home here in Washington. I'm constantly amazed by the "artist's eye" - someone gifted with being able to see what they want to draw, or paint, or make art out of any material. Read More...
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The Green DBA
13 May 08 07:30 AM | Buck Woody | 0 Comments   
Well, this morning I'm feeling a little "under the weather", so I'm working from home. Other than physically attending meetings I'm able to do just about everything else from here, thanks to a VPN, Remote Desktop, and Livemeeting. As I'm sitting here Read More...
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Meet the new boss, Same as the old boss...
18 April 08 08:58 AM | Buck Woody | 0 Comments   
In an article I read recently by Ian Bramley from Mainframe Executive Magazine, several advantages were put forth on why you should consider moving to or staying on mainframe applications. Many of these dealt with downtime and security, which I’ll capitulate Read More...
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"Hey.....Hey...Hey...Don't be mean. You don't have to be mean."
19 March 08 09:16 AM | Buck Woody | 4 Comments   
Well, I had another post I had planned for today, but after reviewing some customer bugs and some newsgroups where I give out free help (on my own time, mind you) I had to change my mind. I've seen this behavior in grocery stores, online forums, and bug Read More...
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Do we use the same tools and processes at Microsoft that you do?
19 February 08 09:26 AM | Buck Woody | 3 Comments   
I’ve spoken quite a bit about some of the processes and constraints we have in developing software here at Microsoft. I haven’t explained the actual tools or specific paradigms we follow. When some people come to work here, they are often surprised to Read More...
Engineering or Manufacturing
15 February 08 09:50 AM | Buck Woody | 7 Comments   
From the metrics on this blog, I see that many of you are either software developers or are database administrators involved with developing software solutions, either for your own company or for sale. I have often seen the process of creating applications Read More...
Generalists are just second-class citizens
10 January 08 07:24 PM | Buck Woody | 1 Comments   
I was in a meeting with someone the other day who I knew had some input, but didn't give it. They told me that they felt a little overwhelmed because they thought the other people in the room knew more. Now, I agree that if you don't have something to Read More...
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When the PC becomes the server
08 January 08 09:28 AM | Buck Woody | 2 Comments   
I was speaking with a friend yesterday about a requirement he has to separate the maintenance tasks running on his SQL Server from the regular user transactions. In specific, he wanted to throttle the reindexing tasks while users were on, since his shop Read More...
The Very Big and the very small
03 January 08 09:54 AM | Buck Woody | 2 Comments   
We’ve been seeing a renewed interest in two different areas in databases – embedded databases and large-scale enterprise systems. Sure, the core database audience remains in the department-level and higher sized machines, but as developers are working Read More...
We Have a Winner!
01 January 08 08:17 AM | Buck Woody | 1 Comments   
You'll recall that I posted a crossword puzzle in December from the Management Studio framework. We have a winner, selected at random from the correct entries: The artist formerly known as ravenbrk. Here are his winning answers: Across 1 TEXT 2 PROPERTIES Read More...
New Year's Goals
31 December 07 08:37 AM | Buck Woody | 1 Comments   
Happy New Year! Do you make New Year's resolutions? I don't do that. Instead, my family and I always go out first thing New Year's Day (we don't party much on New Year's Eve - I know, I'm kinda weird like that) and find a food joint that is open. We have Read More...
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The Most Important Skill You Can Have
18 December 07 02:26 PM | Buck Woody | 3 Comments   
OK - it's a little light in some of the hallways because of Christmas, so I had a few minutes to actually chat with some friends. We played one of those mental games where you ask "if you could only have one thing for X, what would it be". I was asked Read More...
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Are these really blogs or not?
03 December 07 07:37 AM | Buck Woody | 3 Comments   
Steve Jones, my friend over at SQLServerCentral.com had a podcast the other day (Voice of the DBA) where he commented that blogs should be blogs - not a form of corporate communication. I agree. It's not that you can't have corporate content on an RSS Read More...
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Do you code or Don'tcha?
30 November 07 07:21 AM | Buck Woody | 1 Comments   
I've met a lot of DBA's that don't do a lot of coding. Sure, they know basic T-SQL, and are probably pretty handy with a scripting language, but they don't write code for a living. In some shops where I've worked (usually larger ones) we had separate Read More...
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