Things That Make Me Want To Chew Tinfoil

Utility Control Point

By Thomas LaRock ⋅ May 13, 2010 ⋅ 12 comments

I’ll be honest, I was *really* looking forward to using the Utility Control Point feature in SQL 2008 R2. I wanted to give the UCP a test drive, kick the tires, and get out on the open road. I even started asking around to see if we could get our hands on the shiny new [...]

What 5 things Should SQL Server Get Rid Of?

By Thomas LaRock ⋅ May 11, 2010 ⋅ 3 comments

I was tagged by Paul Randal (blog | twitter) in a recent chainposting on what features I would like to see removed from SQL Server. Paul did not say if I was allowed to repeat any of the items he listed but I am going to do so anyway because I feel that strongly about [...]

Canceling a SQL Azure Account

By Thomas LaRock ⋅ April 26, 2010 ⋅ 2 comments

or…not…
I wanted to cancel my account before I got hit up for “hidden charges” or something ridonkulous like that and could not find any way to cancel my subscription short of calling someone on the phone which could be my least favorite thing to do.
From what I could tell, I should be allowed to “opt-out” [...]

Finding Servers On Your Network

By Thomas LaRock ⋅ December 21, 2009 ⋅ 15 comments

I have seen more than one blog post written about how you can use sqlcmd /L to find the SQL Servers on your network. I have seen it mentioned so many times, in fact, that I started to believe it myself. I mean, why would I doubt such statements, especially when I have never used /L [...]

AutoGrow Apparently Means “I Don’t Care”

By Thomas LaRock ⋅ May 27, 2009 ⋅ 4 comments

Well, at least that is the impression I have from Operations Manager. Let me explain why.
It all started around the time we were making some adjustments to one of our servers that was not performing as well as our end users would have liked. The short end of that story is that we ended up [...]

Just Blame The Database

By Thomas LaRock ⋅ May 12, 2009 ⋅ 3 comments

Enough already.
How has it come to be acceptable that whenever issues arise with any computerized system it is okay to use the phrase “there was a problem with the database” and everyone just accepts that and moves on with their lives but not before kicking their DBA around? For the record, as a DBA we [...]

Cold Calls

By Thomas LaRock ⋅ April 23, 2009 ⋅ 8 comments

I am thinking I should blog about this, but I didn’t want people to think I am a bigger ass than I already am. I have been assured that is not possible, so here goes.
Just a quick note to all those sales-persons out there that have me on their list of call to make. Stop [...]

More Violated Now Than Ever Before

By Thomas LaRock ⋅ February 24, 2009 ⋅ 4 comments

Last week while I was trying to have a vacation in Las Vegas, something came up at work that seemed rather strange. It seems that our monitoring scripts for a particular server stopped working. Worse, our backups also started failing. We can live without monitoring for a period of time, but we really need to [...]