The Quandaries of life: Mine, others, and a Little .NET...
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PAL Showcase in Toronto August 24th-25th
Should be fun. Register! There are some great businesses that will be there.
OttawaSQL.net Member of the Year Award
It's old news, but seeing as I forgot to write about it when it happened, its new old-news. Anyway...
During the Ottawa area's user group blow out bash two sets of awards were given out. You had the Partner of the Year award and Member of the Year award where each IT Professional group recognized an individual that stood out for their contributions to the success of the group. These individuals are awarded the ‘Member of the Year’ for voluntarily sharing their time, a deep commitment to community, and a willingness to help others succeed.
Turns out I was one of them. Surprised the hell out of me. Check it out http://ottawa.sqlpass.org/.
To quote David Myers:
Steve demonstrated both leadership and a commitment to get the job done. Starting a new user group requires a lot of support from many individuals. Steve was there when we needed him and he provided this support in spades!!! From helping with the executive meetings, working at the Heroes Happen Here launch, present at user group meetings, leading the study group with the first exam pass, and volunteering time to work on the soon to be released website, Steve has made exceptional contributions to the OttawaSQL.net community in the 2007-2008 season.
Congratulations to Joseph and Peter from the other two groups, and Microsoft and CTE Solutions for the Partner Awards.
2008 Summer Reading List
Over the course of the year I pick up books because I think they'll be interesting to read. Because of the amount of time I have when I pick up new books, I don't usually get a chance to read that book immediately. I'm usually a book or two (or six) behind. With summer vacation rearing its ugly head I've found time to read some of these books.
SQL Server 2005 Implementation and Maintanance Exam Cram (98% done)
SQL Server 2008 Admin's Pocket Guide (50% done)
MCTS 70-431 Study Guide by Sybex (100% done)
SQL 2000 tSQL Fundamentals (75% done)
Fundamentals of Algorithmics (99% done)
T-SQL Programming (65% done)
T-SQL Querying (65% done)
C# Databases (90% done)
Problems on Algorithms (99% done)
Object Oriented Data Structures (100% done)
ASP.NET 3.5 (40% done)
Forgotten Calculus (1% done)
Yamaha Handbook for Sound Reinforcement (5% done)
Sound Engineers Handbook (100% done)
Some of these books I have been finished recently so they deserved to be on the summer list, and some have just been started. All in all a good lot. Should keep me busy until September...
I forgot how bad drivers are down here
I was walking down the street and noticed a driver turning into a parking lot. She was driving an SUV and slowed down like crazy as she was turning. She did it to prevent the bottom of her car from bottoming out as she crossed the line. But seeing as she was driving an SUV, she couldn't bottom out even if she tried.
As she enters the parking lot she makes a right turn and roles over the curb. The edge of the curb had a crop of rocks, so she went over the curb and the rocks. As she gets over the edge, she guns it and speeds off into the middle of the parking lot.
It was the middle of the afternoon. California instated a new law on July 1st preventing people from driving while talking on their cell phones. So she wasn't drunk cuz it was the middle of the afternoon, and she wasn't on the phone. Baffled was I. Laughing my ass off followed.
Thoughts from Vacation Part 2: Human Nature Pisses me Off
Human nature pisses me off. A lot. To start off, I have fairly good intuition. I can read people really well. To put a number to it (two actually) I would say I can accurately read 97 out of 100 people. It works great in business meetings, and it's very helpful when helping friends with relationship issues.
With business, I can usually tell when someone is trying to screw me. With relationships I can usually understand the friends' better half after listening to the complaints. Although biased, you can factor in the friend's current state of mind, split the difference and get a pretty good picture.
With this I offer my thoughts and advice. If they follow through with my advice, great. If they let my words get stuffed away into the Prefrontal Lobe and ignore the suggestions, thats cool. These people are intelligent, it's their own life, and it's their perogative to accept my suggestions.
But when against all linear logic, against all common sense, these people blindly ignore the hard truths of the situation, it boggles my mind. To use a metaphor, consider a woman who is beaten by her husband/boyfriend. She knows it is wrong, and she has been told countless times to leave him. But she never does. This seems to be a part of evolution that went awry.
When you are getting the sh*t kicked out of you, what do you do? You either fight, or get the hell out of Dodge as quickly as possible. but in the previous situation, the woman stays. She knows it is more logical to leave, but she doesn't. you gotta have one damn good reason to stay. The problem is, amongst many, many others, is that there exists an emotional bond between the two people.
This is the part of human nature that pisses me off. Our emotions have final say in our actions when compared to logic.
Freud's Id has failed us. I've studied psychology for a long time, and it still doesn't make sense. I've had psychologists explain it to me countless times, and it still doesn't make sense to me. I understand the subconscious processes involved, but I just can't understand why we have allowed ourselves to allow such things to occur. Evolution failed us on this one. Stuck it's thumb to nose and waved. Existential karma maybe?
Man human nature pisses me off.
Thoughts from Vacation
I'm a little annoyed to find out my right arm is sunburned while my left isn't. Random tan lines on my legs suck too. I'm not vain by any means...just look how I dress...but ugly tans on me piss me off for some reason.
Might be the bruise on my head. Not completely sure how it got there, but it hurts like hell. Go figure...can't remember how I got the bump on my head.
A good vacation all around actually. I'm usually doing something stupid (read: fun) when I get hurt...so all I can figure is I've been having a lot of fun...just can't remember it.
Sitting in the Airport part 2
I'm not a big fan of New Jersey. Reeeeaaaaallly not a big fan of Newark International Airport. We arrive on time, no problems there. We get on the plane no problem. We sit at the gate for an hour and a half, while on the plane! They didn't give us a taxi time before we were supposed to take off, so we couldn't taxi out to the strip. We missed our take off time and then needed to reschedule that. Then we needed to get a new taxi time that worked for our take off time.
Man I hate Newark.
Sitting in the airport part 1
It's 5:30am. Sitting at the Syracuse International Airport. I arrive in California at 12:00pm. It's gonna be a looooooooong day.
On a plus side they have free WiFi here. And it's pretty fast too. Could be that I was using it during the whee hours when any normal self-respecting person would be asleep...but I digress. Let's see what happens when I get to Newark in about an hour.
Vacation!
I should be packing right now. I was! But I heard the Outlook ding. And well, it snowballed. Luckily my clothes are packed. All I need to do now is pack up the laptop and all my important documents. Maybe grab some dinner.
So where am I going? Home, sorta. California to be exact. Should be fun. One of these days I'm gonna realize how stupid it is to go to such a place in the middle of summer for vacation. But not this year! Stupid is as stupid does. I'll just be wearing a lot of shorts. Not at once mind you...that would defeat the purpose. Maybe I'll be able to get a tan? Bets are taking place a week before I get back. Odds are in favor of me not getting a tan. We'll see...
Pictures to follow!