A busy month — a new book, a new car, a new phone

I don’t know why Septembers are always busy. This one feels like it’s been interesting, and I’m not sure life will be the same again.

But first, some of the biggest news – the book that I wrote a couple of chapters for is now available for purchase!

A challenge was put out a while back for SQL MVPs to write a book for charity. Paul Nielsen spearheaded it, and I’m pleased to say that there was a massive response. I wrote two chapters, and this week we have had the notice that the book can now be purchased from Manning Press. If you go to http://www.SQLServerMVPDeepDives.com you will be able to buy the Early Access Edition, which will get you updated electronic copies as the chapters become available (final layouts, images, etc still appearing). All the royalties for this book go to charity rather than the authors, so buy up! I promise to sign any copy put in front of me, but if you go to the PASS conference in November, you can probably get at least 40 or so of the other authors to sign it instead.

I’m planning to get a signed copy brought back from the US, and will auction it off to members of the Adelaide SQL Server User Group, giving the money to charity too.

It feels good to have the book finished!

September has also busy for a number of reasons. The company is growing nicely, celebrating a year this week, and keeping my time somewhat occupied. We achieved Gold Partner status with Microsoft at the end of August, and are ticking along well. On a more negative note, the winter has taken its toll with flu in the family, which is lousy – but we also bought a new car (finally got the people mover we’ve been promising ourselves). I replaced my old phone with an iPhone (part of me thinks that I’ll go back to Windows Mobile next time), and bought my wife one too (plus a DS for her birthday). I feel like we’re more gadgety than ever!

Not to mention TechEd Australia, which was a fun time. Grant Paisley surfing at Dreamworld was a sight to behold, and I hope there are photos somewhere! I gave a talk on SQL Azure, which gave me a number of headaches leading up to the conference, finding new things I wanted to mention on a daily basis! I also gave a talk on the danger of scalar functions in SQL Server, which I will be repeating in just over a week at Wagga, a couple of days after presenting at the Albury/Wodonga .Net User Group. An email arrived about half an hour after my scalar functions talk, saying that someone in the audience had just applied the principles I showed and made some vital queries run thirty times faster! Terrific news I think.

Bringing another laptop (an HP Mini) home from TechEd has also added to the number of gadgets in the house…

Tomorrow I hope to be able to write that I have been awarded MVP status for another year, which will be a tremendous honour. I keep wondering how much longer I’ll be able to remain in the company of such a fantastically skilled and helpful crowd. Every time I receive the award I’m both humbled and proud, and feel amazingly blessed.