Daily Archives: August 17, 2004

I sometimes forget how famous…

Just Rambling

…or how well-known Robert Scoble is. I was chatting with a woman tonight (not an I.T. person) who blogs and out of the blue she said “I really like the weblog of Robert Scoble.” It was odd to me. Robert has become “this guy I know…”. But it’s funny to have that reminder of how well known and influential he is outside of our little geek-world. The more I thought about it, it made sense, because she is a marketing person. She focuses on marketing to women. Here’s her blog.

Here’s her book.

But you know, Robert’s just a geek like all the rest of us – only that now he’s a kid-in-the-candy-store geek. And I quote: “heh”.

Welcome to Eric Zamore – new Longhorn team member!

Community Cheerleading

I was at a small party tonight (dinner cruise on Lake Champlain on one of the few nice nights all summer) and met a woman who, upon hearing I  was a programmer, told me that her friends son just started working at Microsoft. Just yesterday! And he’s working on the “next version of Windows”. I think she was surprised to see how impressed I was – “Wow! He’s on the Longhorn team!” Very cool.

So all you Longhorn folks, go seek out Eric Zamore from South Hero, Vermont and tell him hello!

Good Morning. Your SQL Server license has expired.

Tools

This was the phone call at 7am from the sys-admin at my client site. After a major server hacker problem a few months ago, they threw together a new box with Win2003 Server and a trial version of SQL 2000 to tide them over until they rebuilt the other machine. Things have been running smoothly on this temporary box and they had put off upgrading the regular server (which had SQL7 and Win2000 on it) for a few months because of the cost. Apparently they miscalculated the dates. They will have the the new license tomorrow but the immediate solution (while everyone in the company sat on their hands) was to put another trial on another server machine that is on the network. There are a lot of applications using SQL Server including a bunch of Web Applications.  So I had a fun morning. But we got past it and everything’s fine and they’ll be breathing a little easier after tomorrow. One person in the office did call to ask when SQL 2005 is coming out. It’s painful to pay the $5,000 knowing that they will have to do it again soon. I promised them that I won’t force them to SQL2005 too quickly.

My lake’s bigger than your lake and historic, too!

Vermont

When I was in Redmond last month, we were taken on a beautiful Lake Washington dinner cruise. Tonight, I am going on a Lake Champlain dinner cruise. It has been raining all summer but today just happens to be sunny beautiful and 80 (well that’s what it looks like from in here). Lake Champlain is the nation’s 6th largest lake! It is 120 miles long and 10 miles wide at it’s widest point. There is a bike route around the lake …. it is 363 miles. Lake Champlain is also one of the most historical lakes in the country. Many battles were fought here during the revolutionary war. Benedict Arnold was the captain of the historic fleet of 1776 and the Philadelphia , brought up from the lake bottom in 1935, now sits in the Smithosonian. The lake itslef is a treasure trove of sunken battle ships as well as other boats throughout history. If you’re curious, here is the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum which does some fascinating work.