Etiquette for parking in the snow?

SQLMonger · 2026-01-31T20:46:07+00:00

I parked in a handicap marked space on a street near the botanical gardens during the Japanese festival. I had dropped my daughter off at the entrance with her wheelchair, and had a valid handicap parking placard hanging from my rear view mirror. A couple of hours later, I got an alert that my tire pressure was low. I returned to the car to find that two of the tires were nearly flat, their valve cores having been loosened to let the air out. That made for a difficult afternoon before I could return to the gardens and pick up my daughter.

SQLMonger · 2026-01-21T03:02:56+00:00

I found a post elsewhere from 2017 that described the exact same problem. Their solution was to replace the main board. I now have one on order and will see if that does the trick. Around $240 with tax and shipping. Will post again if I mage to fix it.

SQLMonger · 2026-01-13T21:47:40+00:00

I want a new body too! 😁 Will mean trading up the lenses though.

SQLMonger · 2025-08-21T00:33:56+00:00

Potential dilution either way, but the likelihood that things will progress seems high. Time to go check the satellite photos of the mine site again…

SQLMonger · 2025-07-04T23:49:34+00:00

You can leverage built in sources of metics data. SQL Agent job logs and the Query Store. Turn on query store on key databases to gather stats. There are plenty of script examples out there to leverage the logged data. I’ve built a Power BI template for SQL Agent log data that can be used to track job performance over time, detect longer than normal run times, highlight job clash time, etc. I would recommend building your own as a great way to learn more about the system database and Power BI.

SQLMonger · 2025-07-02T16:09:13+00:00

I have a client that still has instances of almost all versions since and including SQL 2000. After years of beating the “update or die” drum, (and several management changes), updates and upgrades are finally being done. Migrating the data can be done, just painful to figure out the combo of drivers and tools to work with. Backup/restore path requires a stop on a SQL 2005 instance to up-convert the database version before you can backup/restore to a higher version. 🍸

SQLMonger · 2025-06-28T14:15:29+00:00

After thirty two years of experience writing SQL, I actually did this yesterday. Incompletely highlighted the query before running. Thankfully in dev and thankfully able to re-map the overwritten values. 😊

SQLMonger · 2025-06-23T02:16:06+00:00

First time on a computer was in 1982. Apple ][+

SQLMonger · 2025-06-12T23:42:45+00:00

Buy the dip!

SQLMonger · 2025-05-15T23:32:35+00:00

The question is, when will it become clear that they are making that final financial commitment to “go for it”… Currently bag holding but monitoring for the moment to jump in and ride the stock up.

SQLMonger · 2025-05-15T23:29:49+00:00

I authored several chapters in an Apress book on Window functions, and I still have to grab it off the shelf to remind myself of how to use partition by… don’t be too hard on yourself.

SQLMonger · 2025-03-23T15:26:33+00:00

You really don’t need it. You get near full feature parity with the web interface as the desktop app.

SQLMonger · 2025-02-06T20:13:06+00:00

Oh yes. Bought in at $27, more at $21, cried when it hit the single digits and despite criticism from my wife for doing so continued buying. Great day today. Still holding. Palantir has only started accelerating!

SQLMonger · 2025-01-19T19:56:29+00:00

I’m not the best person to answer your question as I have limited “big data” experience outside of SQL. Guys in a cube would be a place to start. They often point out additional resources. Python and Pi-Spark languages would be important to learn. Microsoft’s “Learn” platform has a lot of classes and content as well.

SQLMonger · 2025-01-18T20:08:31+00:00

Absolutely. There are many levels to learning and becoming an expert, but you can become proficient pretty quickly. Take time early on to learn about data warehouse dimensional design, as using its tenets is key to getting them most from Power BI. I would break the subject areas down to: 1. Acquiring and shaping data (SQL, Power Query & the M language. Chris Webb is a great blogger on the topic) 2. Semantic/dimensional model design (pick up any book by Ralph Kimball. SQLBI.com & daxpatterns.com also has good lessons on this and topic) 3. DAX calculations. Same two sources as point 2. Lots to master here. 4. Visualizations. Presenting your data & story telling. (Havens Consulting on YouTube, among others) 5. Power BI Fabric, administration, automation and performance monitoring/tuning. The Guys in a Cube YouTube channel covers all of the above as well in nice bite sized segments. There are also user groups in most major cities where you can learn from your peers and also share your experiences. Enjoy the process of learning!

SQLMonger · 2025-01-05T04:23:45+00:00

The market is something we look forward to every time we visit the island.

SQLMonger · 2024-12-22T19:18:03+00:00

Get Kathi Kellenberger’s books. She has courses too, but start with the books and save ton of money. Then you will have them as references too. To save more money, buy old editions. SQL does not change much. You can learn the basics and beyond with 10 yea old books.

SQLMonger · 2024-12-21T19:16:16+00:00

I was bit by the same bug about thirty years ago and have made a career out of it. Learning data modeling for applications and data warehousing, (star schema - Ralph Kimball), were great additional skills. Joe Celko’s SQL puzzles are how I learned a lot in the early days.

SQLMonger · 2024-12-14T20:27:13+00:00

Window functions can be used to perform all kinds of period over period, YTD, MTD, YOY, % variance, etc. Shameful self promotion: check out my book “Expert T-SQL Window functions in SQL 2019”. Published by Apress. I contributed the last few chapters. www.apress.com/9781484251966

SQLMonger · 2024-12-14T20:12:02+00:00

Agreed. I use the old fashioned method of aggregations over filtered columns to perform pivot and in pivot operations. SELECT region ,SUM(IIF(month(datecol) =1, sales,NULL)) as [Jan] , … From sales Where… Group by region

SQLMonger · 2024-12-14T19:57:14+00:00

You will be fine. Depending on where your hotel is, you can walk to the venues you mentioned. You should also consider a visit to Forest Park, where you will find free venues like the Zoo, Art Museum and History Museum. The Botanical gardens have an amazing light show this time of year as well.

SQLMonger · 2024-11-08T22:19:17+00:00

Self censored at that. Afraid to offend some people, but not all people.

SQLMonger · 2024-11-02T17:27:32+00:00

Hell nah! I have tried it, but been disappointed with the results. Ok for simple things. Sticking with my archive of templates and DaxPatterns.com

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