I feel like it’s been a while since I’ve been to Melbourne (although I did pass through the airport there on my way back from Wagga). I don’t know when I’ll be there next, but I have felt tempted to try to get there this week. Partly it’s because my mum is about to turn sixty, but also because my friends Kimberly Tripp and Paul Randal are in ...

A new Financial Year in Australia, and a bunch of technical events coming up. Of course there’s the usual monthly user groups, but there’s more – particularly if you’re in Adelaide. July sees CodeCampSA in Adelaide on the weekend of July 18/19. I’ve put my name into the hat for speakers, and will try to be there for a chunk of Saturday (Sundays ...

If you’re an MCP in Australia and you haven’t passed any exams over the past couple of years (since July 1, 2007), then Microsoft has an offer at the moment to let you do an exam for only US$25 (until June 30, 2009). Ok, so that means the price really depends on the value of the Aussie dollar, but either way, it’s not a bad opportunity. The offer ...

Australia is currently in an interesting week for time zones. Up until a couple of years ago, Daylight Savings finished on the last Sunday in March. That’s when the clocks got put back to Standard Time, as the Australian summer ended. Last year though, this got extended by a week, until the first Sunday in April. A similar change was made in ...

I haven't been to ADNUG for a while. I love that the group is there, but over the past year or more, I haven't prioritised getting to the meetings. I've been to meetings of equivalent groups in Melbourne and Sydney, but not to the Adelaide .Net Group for a while. But this week I will! I've offered to be a stand-in presenter, and ...

A good friend of mine from Perth got awarded MVP status this past week. Mitch Wheat runs the .Net User Group over there, and does a terrific job. He does a lot for the community, and is incredibly smart. I'm really pleased for him. PS: There are a bunch of other new MVPs this October as well (plus I got rewarded) - I'm just mentioning ...

I've given this presentation a couple of times at user-groups now - last week in Adelaide, and this week in Melbourne. I posted the scripts to my blog recently, making them available to people who heard this talk at TechEd Australia at the start of the month, so now I've got around to uploading the slide deck as well. I actually plan to ...

TechEd AU this week. I'm giving a talk on "T-SQL Tips n Techniques: Improving Your T-SQL Arsenal" on Friday morning. The slides are available from CommNet for people registered, but the scripts are here as well. Come along to the talk to see how I use the scripts, but do grab these if you want to be trying them out on your data while ...

It was unfortunate news when I heard that the UNICEF Australia site was hacked a little while ago. An old colleague of mine called me to let me know, and to ask if I knew anyone who could help them out. I used to work at a hosting company with this guy, and had seen quite a few websites get hacked one way or another (the typical methods being SQL ...

So I'm at the Heroes launch in Melbourne today. I'm going to hang out at the Experts booth, so if you're here and have a question about SQL Server 2008, why not come over?