Sorry about the late chime-in (I'm always behind on reading the SSC daily e-mails), but this was a good editorial and sparked a couple of thoughts hopefully worth sharing:

First, interesting...

I originally went to college for a technical communications degree, and IT was my fallback. I still consider writing to be my primary vocation, but IT has turned out to...

In the big picture, the "greed is good" mentality isn't good for anybody -- IT or otherwise. Wall Street fat cats with an overabundance of that thought pattern are what...

The public perception of computer systems is that they are mindless robots who interpret commands from operators literally and then follow through with them relentlessly, even when the operator realizes...

We did the production server upgrade last night. The SQL portion was a bit bumpy, but thanks to our experience with the test upgrades (and Cirque's answers), it wasn't anything...

Much appreciated, Cirque, those answers really do help. They basically confirmed what I suspected already, but it's good to have some confirmation that I'm thinking on the proper wavelength.

Just...

I still like my code for "SQL DBA on the prowl in a singles bar":

SELECT Partner

FROM Clientele

WHERE Status='Available'

ORDER BY BloodAlcoholContent DESC

Alternatively, leave off the DESC if you prefer sober partners....

The CS students were apparently not competent enough to use the following commands to either kill the Pet major jobs, or to set their priority so low they couldn't bother...

Nakul Vachhrajani (11/16/2010)

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I guess that in today's world, knowing everything about any product is a physical impossibility. What matters most is:

1. You know what the product can do (not how!),...

Keith Langmead (11/19/2010)

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I've always said that there are three types of computer users :

1) Know little or nothing about computers, admit that fact and will always ask for assistance. They...

This talk about code efficiency reminds me of a "war story" from college (in the mid-1980s).

The college had a couple of mainframe VAX/VMS computers, with terminals in several different locations...

From a hundred years ago almost continuously up till now, there are plenty of preachers and teachers on both sides of my family, so most likely one of those.

Whether they know it or not, every network / tech support / helpdesk person is in customer service, although it's correct that in the high-tech realm sometimes you have to...

CirquedeSQLeil (9/13/2010)

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To add to that - not everybody needs to have point in time recovery. Due to this, it would have been bad design to force everybody to perform...

SQL Server DBA on the prowl at a singles bar:

SELECT Date

FROM Clientele

WHERE Attached = 'FALSE'

ORDER BY BloodAlcoholContent DESC

😛