After months of deadlines, late night writing sessions, getting my ass handed to me by ADD and editors, and a loving wife pushing me to write some more the book is now done! A HUGE thank you to Ken Simmons for inviting Colin Stasiuk and myself to be a part of this project. Also huge thanks to all the folks at Apress for doing a great job pushing this along as well as Tom LaRock, whose technical editing on this book was a great asset. According to Amazon, the book should be available April 27th so make sure you buy plenty of copies for you and your loved ones. After all, nothing says “I love you” like the gift of policies that stop developers from horrendous naming conventions Policy-Based Management. You can also get the book directly from Apress by going to http://www.policybasedmanagement.com.
PASS Log Reader Award Winners
Well last week was rather hectic and with all the PASS Summit madness one thing seems to have been lost in the mix: The PASS Log Reader Awards!
For those not familiar with this contest you can read the official announcements of the contest here (Brent Ozar’s post), here (Andy Warren’s post), and here (Jeremiah Peschka’s post). Don’t worry, I’ll wait until you come back. You back? Cool. Alright now that you know what it’s all about let’s talk about the exciting part: the winners! Yup, last week at the beginning of the week the winners were announced. Now thanks to the magic of the interwebs and copy/paste feature here are the results (courtesy of Brent Ozar)
Best Blog Series (Multiple Posts):
- Winner: Kendal Van Dyke for Disk Performance Hands-On Series (Blog – RSS – @SQLDBA)
- Runner-Up: Tie:
Aaron Alton for SSMS Series (Blog – RSS – @AaronTheHobt)
Aaron Bertrand for Bad Habits to Kick Series (Blog – RSS – @AaronBertrand)
Best Business Intelligence Blog Post:
- Winner: Chris Webb for Implementing SSRS Drilldowns (Blog – RSS)
- Runner-Up: Michelle Ufford for Using Variables in SSIS (Blog – RSS – @SQLFool)
Best New Blog:
- Winner (Tie):
Aaron Alton for The Hobt (Blog – RSS – @AaronTheHobt)
Michelle Ufford for SQLFool (Blog – RSS – @SQLFool) - Runner-Up: Jorge Segarra for SQLChicken (Blog – RSS – @SQLChicken)
Best Professional Development Blog Post:
- Winner: Kendal Van Dyke for Off-Hours Work Guide for Managers (Blog – RSS – @SQLDBA)
- Runner-Up: Sean McCown for Landing That Job (Blog – RSS – @MidnightDBA)
Best T-SQL Blog Post:
- Winner: Aaron Bertrand for Stored Procedures Best Practices Checklist (Blog – RSS – @AaronBertrand)
- Runner-Up: Grant Fritchey for Unpacking the View (Blog – RSS – @GFritchey)
Best Unusual Blog Post:
- Winner: Alex Kuznetsov for Reproducing Deadlocks with One Table (Blog – RSS)
- Runner-Up: John Magnabosco for Encrypting Large Values (Blog – RSS)
So first off big congratulations not only to all the winners but anyone and everyone that submitted entries! Thank you all so much for your blogging efforts, keep it up. I’m also very honored to have been named a runner up in the New Blog category. I’d like to thank all 12 of you who read this blog as well as Brent, Andy and Jeremiah for putting this together. I highly recommend you check out all of the blogs listed above as they are clearly of high quality so make sure you check them out.
In addition to this great contest you should also check out PASS board member Tom LaRock’s Blogger Rankings to keep up with the cream of the SQL crop in the blogging community.
On one final note there was an entry I personally should have won an award for most creative posting of all time (queue Kanye) and this was David Stein’s (Twitter | Blog) entry “Encylopedia Brown and the Case of Data Corruption“. If you haven’t read it go read it right now as its (as Tom LaRock/Brent Ozar would say) pure liquid awesome.
Going to be Co-Authoring a Book…
This weekend I had quite the shock (other than realization that Ikea is overrated) in that I was asked to co-author a new book with 2 others authors: Ken Simmons (Blog | Twitter) and Colin Stasiuk (Blog | Twitter). As Colin mentioned in his blog post I’m EXTREMELY honored to even be considered for this project so huge thank you to Ken for getting this together. I bookmarked an article earlier this morning on Readitlater about starting the writing process but any and all advice is welcome and appreciated!