Category: General

On the 31st we drove from Ottawa to Midhurst, Ontario, via Toronto. We spent New Year’s and the next day with Kirk and Petra (and their three girls) and James and Laurie (and Talbot...

On the 30th we drove from Quebec City to Ottawa, and had a visit with our friends Matt, Sam and Jakson (oh and their cats, Brian and William).

We took a quick walk around Old Quebec this morning, here are the pics. Sorry for the fisheye lens but it came in real handy for a few of the shots of our hotel....

A few more shots of Madeline during the rare hours when we’re not in the car:

Madeline is now three months old. It is tough to find time to blog. Or eat or sleep, for that matter. 🙂 She’s actually been a really good sleeper – 7, 8, 9 hours...

Nicole, Madeline and I drove to North Carolina last week to visit SQL Sentry. Here is about the only interesting thing I notice every time I pass through New Jersey:

…and that means a whole lot of things. We went to Michelle and Henry’s for Thanksgiving. We had a great meal, laughed at the collective ineptitude of Tony Romo and Ryan Sanchez, and celebrated...

Here are a few pictures from Madeline’s first photoshoot, which I described in agonizing detail last month. Click on any picture to enlarge.

Since my last post, a lot has happened. We had a great visit with Kirk, Petra and their three girls – we even made it to the Jack-O-Lantern spectacular at Roger Williams Zoo, on...

Well, another Hallowe’en has come and gone. And as usual, we have more candy left than we gave away. I bet if I bought candy I didn’t eat, I’d buy less. Ah well. Some...

Today we were finally able to bring our daughter home. Huzzah! It was another busy day – discharge took a lot longer than I expected. Of course, just as we were paperworked up and...

Today was a little quieter for our little girl. Lots of commotion in the morning but a relatively uneventful afternoon and evening. She’s getting the hang of the whole eating thing, and her ability...

I tried to shower at the hospital this morning. Really, I did. But I failed to distract the one 5th floor nurse’s attention away from the clear anguish of returning a fake Gucci purse...

I’m glad I can stop calling her SheBert, though I will probably still refer to that way from time to time. 🙂 We named our first daughter Madeline Autumn Pearl Bertrand. She was born...

It only took us 8 months, and we still have a couple of little fixes to make, but I’m happy to say that yesterday we declared our daughter’s room “ready.” We still need to...

Nicole is due on September 28th, so we thought we could take one last weekend while we could to get away. I’ll be in Cambridge for a SQL Saturday this coming weekend, then a...

A few weeks ago, Mat Honan changed my life. Okay, it wasn’t that drastic, but he really made me step back and really take a look at how I manage my digital life. Because,...

Since my blog content at my old company’s site seems to be selectively disappearing, I’m grabbing the content that I can and re-publishing here, before it all goes away. This was originally published on...

I have two services with National Grid: electricity and natural gas. I have opted in to both of their paperless billing systems. When an e-mail comes telling me that a bill is ready, the...

Last week I spent in Germany, Austria, Slovenia and Croatia. The purpose of my trip was a work conference: SQL Server 2012 & SharePoint Connections in Berchtesgaden, Germany. The conference was interesting, though there...

Since my blog content at my old company’s site seems to be selectively disappearing, I’m grabbing the content that I can and re-publishing here, before it all goes away. This was originally published on...

Since my blog content at my old company’s site seems to be selectively disappearing, I’m grabbing the content that I can and re-publishing here, before it all goes away. This was originally published on...

I’m switching to Bing today. Both Google and Bing are fast (the differences in performance are unnoticeable to me). And they both produce near-identical results for me, at least for the searches that I...

I want a battery caddy. I know initially it seems like a bizarre thing to want, or maybe it is difficult to even determine what the h-e-double-hockey-sticks I’m talking about. I have several items...

UPDATE February 26, 2012 We are organizing a Pub Trivia night on Sunday, March 11th at 6 PM at Ciro’s in Woonsocket. This event is a fundraiser for 2-year old Melody Corbett, recently diagnosed...

On New Years’ Day, Tim Ford (@sqlagentman) and I started a game of Words With Friends. The game started out innocently enough – I played ALTER. And then I thought, why not make this...

Today, Denis Gobo (@DenisGobo) tagged me in Meme Monday. The topic: what is the first blog post you wrote, and when did you write it? I have two answers.   My first personal blog...

Kirby at 80% Last month, I talked about Kirby’s car accident and initial recovery – I am happy to report that Kirby is doing very well, and is returning to a lot of his...

In November we bought a Dell for my mother, against my better judgment. The computer was a Christmas gift, and we ordered it in November to be sure I had it before I drove...

Please turn comment moderation off. A few weeks ago, I left a comment correcting a Microsoft Tech Evangelist’s blog post, where a suggestion was made to unnecessarily expose a surface area of SQL Server....