Ha... I'm finally sitting down today to write my homework. Homework created by my lovely husband when he tagged me in his blog post: http://www.sqlskills.com/BLOGS/PAUL/post/What-three-events-brought-you-here.aspx.

Obviously, there are many factors which lead people to where they are now. Some influences are small – almost undetectable. While others are large – and can’t possibly go without notice. Finally, some changes are fleeting while some last a lifetime. Really, it takes a lot to make a person – to make me/you. It’s hard to break this down into 3 – especially as I’m planning to focus on where I am – in this industry (and wrt to SQL Server - as it's been such a large part of my life!). As a person and the values that I have, I thank (blame? ;-) my Mother and Father. They were instrumental in giving me the personality that I have and the compassion that I value. Technically, however, my Mother doesn’t even have a computer and it wasn’t until last year that I convinced her that she needs a cell phone. Ironically, I think I’ve only called her on it once (maybe she didn't need it?). My Father is no longer with us but I’m certain his biggest influence was his value for adventure. (Donald Wayne Tripp: http://www.sqlskills.com/BLOGS/KIMBERLY/post/Donald-Wayne-Tripp-August-6-1944-November-28-2007.aspx)

As for computers, computing, databases and SQL Server…

#1: Jeremy Smith, PCDistributing -> Computers!

The first and most consequential was meeting Jeremy Smith - who, at the time, was President/Founder of PCDistributing (PCD). The funny part about how we met was that I worked at the local AM/PM Mini Mart and gas station (I even did full-serve on occasion) on the corner of Lake Ave. and Milwaukee Ave. in Northbrook, IL - only 1 block from PCD. PCDistributing had an onsite credit card (a card they could use only at our store) for the executives (Jeremy and Marie). I knew he worked with computers and well, I was interested in a better job; I was 16. During one of his stops in the store, I asked if they were hiring and he said - stop by and ask for me.

I worked after school and summers for PCD through my sophomore, junior and senior years and my job mainly consisted of data entry. However, I was pretty good at it and computers definitely interested me. I ended up starting night school at Loyola University (which was just down the street from where my Father lived in Rogers Park, Chicago) while in the 2nd half of my senior year of high school (my Mother moved from Northbrook to Vernon Hills, IL).

At Loyola I really learned a lot - some of which I learned from my partners in crime at the Data Center (where I worked). This would be Ross Naheedy (who I affectionately *still* call geekbag), Yatrik Shah (aka Yatman), Michael Dillon (aka Matt), James Kalemis, Carlos Talbot, Alvin Paul, Amy Overmyer, Cesar Lopex, John Long, Shelley Naheedy (now ;), Mike Abel, and Rita Moy - all of whom are on facebook (which is excellent!). This was an absolute blast. I remember many LATE nights and/or all-nighters in the data center. Probably the most infamous is one (probably more than one) where Ross and I wrote a program to trigger the PC alarm to wake us up from a nap we finally decided to take on the floor of one of the classrooms - where we had been geeking out all night. I have no memory of what we were playing with/on or if we were just writing code (Pascal probably, maybe LISP [I really enjoyed LISP]) - and I think it was on PCs but it may have been the mini or even the System 370 mainframe.

And, that brings me to #2 (even though I have to admit - my escapades with this motley crew definitely had an effect...).

#2: System 370 Assembler, Dr Hamilton and IBM -> Ward L. Christensen

At Loyola, I majored in Math/Computer Science and minored in Fine Arts (Graphics/Design) and Philosophy. Ah, it's no wonder that I never finished my degree. Can we say left-brain/right-brain confusion (or ADHD ;-) with too many distractions (boys, bars, jobs that paid money!). I did end up finishing most of my math/comp sci and even a fair portion of fine arts/Philosophy (I loved ethics) but I never did get my degree as I just loved working. And, in fact, this is where things are really interesting. My instructor for System 370 assembler (Dr. Hamilton) gave my name to a Marketing Manager at IBM (Dennis Kapral). Dennis called me one afternoon and I remember the call well, “Hi Kimberly, my name is Dennis Kapral and I work for IBM. We'd be interested in having you come in and apply for a job as a Marketing Support Assistant for the GET (Government, Education and Transportation) branch.” Er, I thought this was a joke. I interviewed with Dennis and then he passed me on to another gentleman for my technical interview. I remember this interview still - we chatted about how harddisks worked and the interview flew by. I remember this gentleman dropping me back in Dennis' office where he said, "Hire her!" and walked out. Dennis joked that he was impressed that I held a conversation with Ward and well, that was that - I was hired.

Working for IBM was a blast. I worked with a sharp group (including Ward, Mike Jania and many other folks that were fantastic but I’m struggling to remember everyone’s names) and my position was all about marketing. In '89, I learned PageMaker (on the 286/386) and I created an advertisement for our College Education team (that was the main area with whom I worked in GET). We were marketing the new PC line (286/386) to colleges around the country and I designed a simple advertisement that ended up going nationwide. See here:

But, you really need to read the text of the PCs for sale... especially the "Lightning Bolt" 386 (click the picture for the larger version):

To track all of the customizations (school name on the front, school colors for the titles, 8x11 brochure or folded/mailer style, etc.), I needed a database. I used DataEase. The advertisement was a huge success. In fact, we cross charged the other branches a *VERY* small fee (something under 1 cent per brochure) and we actually made some money for the branch. I won a "Branch Managers Award" (it was a first for an MSA) and I was even invited to the branch party at Arlington Race Track (I think it was Arlington). And, this was a HUGE deal because MSAs were not supposed to attend; they had to get Regional Manager sign-off for this. So, that was pretty cool!

The long story short is that I loved the advertising side but this database stuff was even better. A new project came up (working with FoxBase) and they asked Ward who they should hire and he said me. They asked him if I knew FoxBase and he said it didn't really matter (THANKS Ward!!). After 9 months coding in a large corner window office in 1 IBM Plaza (fyi – the office/view was gorgeous – I must see if I can find a few pics) with Stan Podolsky, the project was over and I really loved databases. Ward had heard of a small company in Chicago that was into training (and he knew I enjoyed training as I had delivered courses on WordPerfect at the Computer Center at Loyola) and the next thing I knew, I was working with LAN/mind. They were a training and consulting firm that specialized in NetWare but were branching (more and more) into OS/2, Windows, LanManager and this new thing - SQL Server (thanks to Marshall Olsen).

Oh, and here's a throwback to the 80s - my badge pictures from my IBM badges (I can't believe I'm posting these??):

#3 Marshall Olsen, SQL Server and finally, Microsoft

I started working for LAN/mind and immediately loved the Microsoft side of things (absolutely LOVED the team - Marshall Olsen, Jeffrey Starzec, Garry Forman, Charlie Spencer, Alice VonHansen (RIP Alice) and many others - we had a great time there). With LAN/mind I became a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP #128 (I just recently stumbled on my old card :)) and soon after I applied to work for Microsoft - specifically, Microsoft University. I still feel like I could have spent a lot more time at LAN/mind but I loved Microsoft and I had fallen in love with the Pacific Northwest on my first trip out here. As for MSU, it was a great place to work as well - trainers played practical jokes on other trainers and once my good friend Robbie Laws (RIP Robbie) rollerbladed through my classroom.

However, it wasn't long after I joined Microsoft that they realized local training by their own trainers just wouldn't scale. This is when Certified Partners and Solution Centers really kicked off and MSU slowly turned into only content development (this is now Microsoft Learning). I joined the SQL team (and learned a lot and worked with some amazing folks!) but never really found my groove.

I loved writing, training, speaking at conferences and consulting... what do I do? I start my own company.

The rest has been here (SQLskills) for the past 8-9 years (well, that's when I started the web presence) and before that I did consulting/training mostly through word of mouth (since 1995). Speaking at conferences has also been an amazing experience. Not only have a traveled the world and met some of my best friends but it’s conferences that brought Paul and I together. The funny part is that we had exchanged emails on a few problems (as early as 2002 – we think) but it wasn't until TechEd 2006 where we first met. That was probably my biggest life changing event... As you know, there’s a lot of energy around Paul and as you can imagine, he came into my life like what I expect a huge steam engine roaring into the station would seem like... he asked me to come aboard and well, the rest has been smooth traveling (and lots of it!) since.

So, in a nutshell - I blame (but in a good way):

#1: Jeremy Smith

#2: Ward Christensen

Sidenote: It's wonderful to cross post with Brent Ozar's “What inspired him” post on how BBSes were so instrumental… why? Because Ward (and his business partner at the time - Randy Seuss) invented XMODEM and it’s this which led to the first public dial-up BBS. So, I think both Brent and I (and quite a few other folks too ;-) owe a lot of our direction to Ward! And, I still chat with Ward after we reconnected on Facebook. Even today, he commented on a picture from my early days (it’s “retro photo posting time on FB”) and quite a few of us were trying to think of where the time has gone.

#3: Marshall Olsen

What has and who have inspired you?

Or possibly better yet, where do you want to go from here?

Thanks for reading,
kt

PS - Be sure to check Paul's blog post for trackbacks and links to other great stories/posts. Enjoy!

OK, I know I don't blog all that often but when I do, I do try and post as much useful information as I can :). I've got a few posts in the queue and a few more tests to do and code to write before I can wrap them up. In the interim, Paul and I have both decided to throw a bit of our "spare time" to keeping up with friends and family more and just staying "more connected." In that effort, we've both joined facebook and twitter (www.twitter.com/KimberlyLTripp and www.twitter.com/PaulRandal). Our end goal is:

• Blogging: large/complex posts with detailed info/code, etc.
• Twitter: short, quick posts on things to check out, review, etc. Maybe I'll do a weekly summary of tweets that I do and/or followed? Would you be interested in that? And, as for my interface, I'm currently using TweetDeck and Twitter.com and I've also joined via WeFollow.com: #sqlserver, #mvp and #womenintech.
• Facebook: more fun stuff and keeping up with friends, etc. I have to admit that I really love the interface and I'm constantly impressed at how easy it is to upload video, photos, etc... It's just NOT what I expected before I tried it out. I'd truly recommend this to anyone that wants to asynchronously keep up with a large number of people and wants to share photos, comments, video, etc. It's really well done. However, beware of many of the facebook apps. They tend to spam your friends list - sometimes even when they don't ask. Outside of better requirements on fb app developers, I don't have a lot of complaints there.

Having said that, neither of us is doing anything else (no Plaxo, no LinkedIn, etc.) so if you want to find us - we're definitely around but we're going to stay somewhat focused. ;-)

And, now that I'm back home again, I hope to have a few more of my longer posts done.

Cheers everyone!
kt

This morning, I woke to a wonderful email and I thought I would share it:

Good morning Kimberly, I just wanted to send you an email to let you know how awesome you are! I have applied some of your indexing strategies to our website’s homegrown CMS and we are experiencing a significant performance increase. WOW....amazing tips delivered in an exciting way! 

Thanks again,
Jim

OK, I seriously can't complain about the awesome part ;-)... but, what I think is so cool is that he sent the email. No, I don't expect everyone to send me mail after they implement a tip/trick BUT, it's really nice when I do get an email (especially like this :). There are so many ways to improve performance and some can lead to significant gains (or minimized downtime/data loss, etc.) and this is exactly why we (speakers/RDs/MVPs, etc.) do this stuff!

The long story short is that it does cost you money to go to a conference (or, at least, time to read blogs, etc.) but what we try to do at events like Connections is distill down the key points into our sessions so that you can [hopefully] apply these techniques immediately. It makes for fast-paced sessions and an information packed week but our conference just ended yesterday and I already have email from it. That's just really cool!

So, I know the economy is in a tough state and I know that quantifying the gain of a conference is hard (especially when the cost of the conference is so easy to quantify) but the end result of some of this time away might be more than worthwhile!

THANKS Jim!
kt

OK, in my quest to blog more often, I realized I have the perfect thing to blog about today... stuff I did that I haven't yet told you about. :) :)

At TechEd US, Paul and I were on a panel created to debunk some of the more common questions/concerns when setting up High Availability. It's an interesting panel and I think there are some particularly interesting moments based on the strange turns the discussions take... but, overall, it's expecially good for people seeking a 100-200 level overview of HA (Clustering, Database Mirroring, Replication, Log Shipping) with a few other related topics (Database Snapshots and Backup/Restore). Here's the direct link to the recording: http://mfile.akamai.com/14853/wmv/microsofttec.download.akamai.com/14853/TechEdOnline/Videos/08_NA_ITP_TEOPanel_57_low.asx. And, here's a general link to everything TechNet so that you can check out TechNet Radio, TechTalks, etc. there's some really great stuff out there: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx. Have fun!

Also at TechEd US, I hung out for a bit in the bloggers lounge...when it was just about to end, it turned out there was a "Women in Tech" panel starting - in which I was then asked to join in. I have to admit that I'm sometimes reluctant to get involved in these because my general (and this is *very* general) opinion is that it doesn't matter if you're a woman or a man (wait - wait - let me explain!!). What I mean by this is that the key to ANY job is that you have to enjoy it. You need to find something in it that's exciting. If you can do that - then you'll be good at your job... plain and simple. If you don't like it (regardless of whether you're a man or a woman) then it's never going to be satisfying and/or you're never going to get ahead. Having said all of this, I do have to admit that I find it especially exciting when I do find other women that can geek out and really enjoy doing this whole IT thing (like MLB, Kate Gregory, Stacia Misner, Julia Lerman, Kalen Delaney, Eileen Brown). So, I don't really intend on actively trying to get more women into technology but the fun part about this panel was the fact that a lot of us talked about how children these days are already way more into IT - without realizing it (our girls asked what film was recently because we were scanning a lot of negatives... and, can you imagine any of our lives without cell phones??). And, my hope, is that if people find ways of getting more into IT (and computers/digital stuff - in general) at an earlier and earlier age... then maybe more kids (girls as well) will find a passion in IT. Here's a link to the panel from TechEd: http://mfile.akamai.com/14853/wmv/microsofttec.download.akamai.com/14853/TechEdOnline/Videos/08_NA_ITP_TEOPanel_67_low.asx.

And, here are a few resources regarding Women In Technology:

• WITI - Women In Technology International: http://www.witi.com/
• Women in Technology Organization: http://www.womenintechnology.org/
• Womin in Technology (a government funded project): http://www.womenintech.com/
• Girl Geek Bloggers: http://www.geekgirlblogs.com/Home.aspx (which has a lot of links to other orgs - including the City-based "Girl Geek Dinners" like London Girl Geek Dinners, etc.)

And, I think that's it for now...

Thanks for reading,
kt

OK, so, I don't blog very often. I don't know what it is... I think it's that I feel like I always need to blog huge posts and the thought of writing my huge post makes me not want to blog... so, sometimes my time-between-blogging (TBB :) is long. I'm going to turn over a new leaf (no, really... I'm *really* going to try this time!!) and I'm going to try and write smaller posts and more of them. And, yes, don't worry, I'll still write the long in-depth ones but I'll at least try to give you a few tidbits of things that I encounter - more frequently. And, that's partially why I'm posting this entry...

I've been working quite a bit with SQL Server 2008 and yesterday I went to test of a few things with database mail. Normally this gets setup quite early and gets setup with a lot of other things so restarts of the server/agent happen because of saving/tweaking my test VPC. I don't usually go in and setup Database Mail and then immediately try to send mail. Yesterday, I did... and, guess what, it didn't work. I got error [264] An attempt was made to send an email when no email session has been established. So, I felt like I had seen that before... and, with a bit of web searching I landed on Gops Dwarak's blog for a known issue of SQL Server 2005: http://blogs.msdn.com/gopsdwarak/archive/2006/04/25/583434.aspx. And, yes, restarting the SQL Server Agent solved the problem. I'm surprised that this is still a bug in 2008 but it's not entirely the worst I could come upon. However, having said that, I also thought that there was a general initiative for software to stop requiring restarts of services and/or the OS. And, yes, it's *just* an Agent restart so it won't directly impact your server's availability but, I'm still surprised that it wasn't resolved. Has anyone else found a bug (or even a documented "issue") that requires a service to be restarted - and you think it shouldn't?

And, well, that's definitely not the most interesting thing I've learned/found with SQL Server 2008, there's lots more (yes, I know - I need to blog a lot of it :). The most fun I've had has probably been learning sparse columns and filtered indexes. For right now, I want to give you some quick key points about some of the changes around indexes and in particular around sparse columns/filtered indexes:

1. Do NOT create non-clustered indexes on sparse columns without filters (a filter that says WHERE sparsecolumn IS NOT NULL) because indexes do NOT have sparse columns in their definition. So, if you don't use a filter you will end up storing all of the NULL values in the index - which will waste a tremendous amount of space.
2. A non-clustered index on a sparse column (without a filter) will be the same size as a nonclustered index on a non-sparse column (which is essentially the same point as above but, this might help clarify it a bit).
3. Do NOT think that the increase in total indexes (from 250 in 2005 to 1000 in 2008) is because you should have more indexes... it's NOT. It's specifically because you might have a lot more columns (these changed as well from 1024 in 2005 to 30000 in 2008) because even that increase should not be used unless you're using sparse columns... So, you STILL want to use a lot of the best practices we've recommended in past webcasts, whitepapers, etc. and you still want to care about row size (and page density) and therefore work to create narrower tables (in general and relatively speaking - depending mostly on usage patterns). However, if you have a need for *lots* of wider tables BECAUSE you have an interesting set of properties that only some rows will have (i.e. the main reason to use sparse columns) then using sparse columns to handle these columns that will largely be filled with NULLs is a good thing. It's a good thing because a row that has a NULL for a sparse column will take ZERO BYTES. Absolutely no space is used for a sparse column that is NULL. So, this allows your tables to be wide (in definition) but your rows to be narrow (in practice). And, with well defined indexes you can VERY efficiently and effectively search on these properties.

OK, I hope to get some examples posted as well. Between Paul and I and our upcoming events - where we're demo'ing/discussing a lot of these principles, we'll plan to post a demo or two on how effective these really can be. And, I know... some of you will fight back with the thought that sparse columns introduce bad database design practices... I know, you want (instead) tables that have name/value pairs - which are the way most of us did this in all versions prior to 2008. However, name/value pairs tables become fragmented messes that also have fragmented indexes and therfore overall poor performance (for both inserts and queries). Not to mention, they can be difficult to query/join with (because you need to join multiple times to retrieve multiple properties) and the code gets messy quickly. Anyway, sparse columns - while they may not seem quite right at first - can really be a *MUCH BETTER* way to design (and perform!!!) around this problem.

And, speaking of events. We have a bunch of upcoming events... I'll give you the short bulleted list here because I'm sure many of you also read Paul's blog and he's mentioned quite a few of these coming up. Also, if you're interested in learning more details for these, the full abstract/links for many of these can be found on our Upcoming Events page. However, specific links are also listed below!

• Best Practices in Performance and Availability for SQL Server 2005/2008, 1-3 September 2008 in Hatfield, England. You can get more details/register here. 
• Dublin SQL Server User Group, Index Internals and Fragmentation, 4 September 2008, Dublin, Ireland. Bob Duffy blogged about this here and you can get more details/register here.
• Microsoft SQL Academy 2008 - Session 1, 5 September 2008, Dublin, Ireland. You can get more details/register here.
• Indexing for Performance in SQL Server 2000/2005/2008, 8-9 September 2008, Edinburgh, Scotland. You can get more details/register here.
• SQL Connections "Power Workshops Series" Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Overview for Database Professionals (Hands-on — Bring Your Own Laptop), 6-8 October 2008, San Francisco, CA, USA. You can get more details/register here.
• Microsoft Tech Ed EMEA ITPro, 3-7 November 2008, Barcelona, Spain. You can get more details/register here.
• SQL Connections Fall Conference, 9-14 November 2008, Las Vegas, USA. You can get more details/register here.
• PASS Community Summit 2008, 17-21 November 2008, Seattle, WA, USA. You can get more details/register here.

And, the last thing I'll leave you with is a recipe for the best darn Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies *ever*. OK, I did a web search for exactly that (ok, it all started when Paul (who really doesn't really like sweets) decided that for his birthday he wanted Choc Chip Oatmeal Cookies (we asked becuase the girls and I wanted to bake something)). The search led me to here. And, they're definitely right that these are the best cookies ever! And, they make a few really good points:

1. Don't microwave the butter... set it out for an hour before you're going to make the cookies. It's definitely different/better when the butter is naturally soft.
2. Definitely take the cookies out when they look like they have a few more mins to go...

But, Paul's birthday was in July... and, it was not the only time we've made these cookies... mostly because *everyone* we introduce to these cookies is addicted - yes, the girls, me, Paul, my Mother, Brian Randell (who was forced to take some "togo" after a BBQ here) and countless of our other friends since this is now our "when-we-entertain" dessert ;-). So, since I've had the opportunity to tweak the recipe myself, here's what I do differently...

1. I add less chocolate - usually 1-1.5 cups of chocolate chips. Sometimes I mix half/half semi-sweet and milk chocolate but I always use closer to 1 cup...
2. I add about 1 cup of coconut - right at the end, with the chocolate chips...
3. I make a single 12x18 cookie sheet "uni-cookie" and then I cut it up like brownies. As for the cook time, I've found that this giant cookie takes right about 14 minutes (but, you'll have to experiment with your oven... I usually take the giant cookie out when it's puffed up and the edges are just starting to go lightly brown). Oh, and you don't have to spread this out perfectly to the edges - it will expand and fill in. Just get somewhat close. The nice thing about this form factor is that it's a lot faster than making 36 individual cookies and then you get to choose the size(s) when you cut up the uni-cookie.

Oh, and don't blame me when you make 10 batches of these things and get all of your friends addicted as well. They really are yummy!!

Next up... installing Data Dude CTP16 with SQL 2008 and Visual Studio... what works with what and what's the best install order!!!

Thanks for reading!
Kimberly

Paul just blogged about all of our scanning here...

Overall, this is a very daunting and time consuming task (scanning and touching up hundreds of images) but it's also very therapeutic. However, I have to admit that I'm sorry that I didn't do a lot of this sooner. I can't believe how much I've enjoyed going through thousands of photos - triaging them down to: scenery that I don't care about, people I can't recognize, and the most important - stuff I really care about.

Once I got the piles down to more manageable sizes, I scanned 5-6 photos at a time (on a very reasonable (< $150) HP flatbed scanner). Once scanning, I've been separating them and then tweaking them in Elements. I've spent many, many, many hours doing it - but I'm really enjoying seeing things I did (many have me in them as a baby/child) and/or things my Father/family has done. It's really something that I wish I had done while my Father was still alive but at least I'm able to do it now. Maybe a good thing to think about as we all approach Memorial Day!

Speaking of Memorial Day - my Grandfather, a Major in the US Air Force, [Clarence] Wayne Tripp (April 3, 1922 - February 22, 1985) was a fighter pilot in WWII and also served in Korea and Vietnam. In going through all of these photos, I found one of my Grandfather that is just WONDERFUL. I thought I'd share:

Cheers to everyone,
kt

Have you ever written something and then lost it... for whatever reason: your own stupidity (come on we've all accidentally done something at some point where we lost data or a spreadsheet or a document or something...), the software eats it (this might be self-inflicted but I've been in apps that just hang and that's it... there's nothing you can do except power off), or....whatever.

Well, during those times... have you ever thought - I'd do almost anything to get that data (and time) back?

Before I go any further - yes, backups are good. No, let me be clearer... Backups are an absolute requirement of ANY environment!!! 

Even personal/home environments should have something to protect the data. Something to consider is even offsite copies. Burn a DVD or two of your precious family photos and then swap DVDs with a friend... there's your simple/cheap/offsite data recovery. We all focus on critical data when a business depends on it - what about the personal stuff... Paul and I always talk about database backups and this post is not really targeting enterprise systems or even business critical systems... Really, there's NOTHING THAT SHOULD EVER REPLACE A GOOD DISASTER RECOVERY STRATEGY...

Having said that though, I have an interesting story (with a data-saved/happy ending)!

I was on a plane flying back from SQL Connections (I was actually flying from Tampa after having visited family in St. Pete) and well, disaster struck again (yes, this has NOT been a good year for hard drives for me as this was my 3rd and MOST catastrophic disaster so far...).

Anyway, Paul and I were "discussing" what I STILL think is a bug in a SQL function (ok, I'll get to that in a later post) and I had been feverishly completing a multi-page blog post AND some index examples/metadata queries, etc. when my laptop slipped off of my crappy airplane table (I was in an exit row so I had a table that came out of an arm chair and folded - it was very wobbly) and crashed to the floor (and, the irony of being in an exit row... had I been in a regular seat there wouldn't have been room for the laptop to have fallen to the ground :).

To my surprise, I picked it up and still saw the screen I was working on. I typed in another line... and then got a little dialog that said "windows hard error" or something... I don't even remember now. The only thing I could do is power it off. My laptop was dead. Very dead. I [expect] that I had had a major head crash when my laptop hit the floor because it's likely the disks were still spinning. However, I still did not know this at the time.

I rebooted and received "Error 2100 - Hard drive initialization error"... so, when we landed in Denver, I was off to one of the small stores to buy an eyeglasses kit (I needed a screwdriver :) and then I went to find a spot to do some laptop surgery. The good news is that I've had so many disasters over the years that almost none really freak me out anymore (this is probably the 10th drive I've had personally fail) and, I always carry at least one spare laptop... But after the terrible time I had March in India, I actually had 2 spare laptops on this trip (yes, airline security hates me even more now - oh, and Paul travels with 2... so, we go through security with 5 laptops... we get some interesting looks!).

Anyway, I took the take the drive out, loaded it into my secondary drive bay (if you travel a lot - having this second bay that can hold a primary/secondary drive is INVALUABLE as these secondary drive bay usually use the same setup (Serial ATA in my case) as the boot drive). So, if your boot drive doesn't boot, you *might* be able to still read and/or save data by using the secondary drive. So, on a second machine, I gave it a try to see if it would spin. No dice. I even tried my third machine (my primary was XP, my secondary is XP and my backup/backup is Vista... I thought... well, maybe?) Ah, I thought wrong. My drive would never spin again. So, on my flight from Denver to Seattle, I was not overly pleased (this is an understatement to be honest - just ask Paul) because I was at least a couple of days from having done a backup AND I was even more frustrated about having lost the detailed indexing post I was working on - and even losing the code that was on screen just THAT day.

We finally got home (which seemed like a much-longer-than-normal trip ;) and I got online thinking/hoping - is there ANYTHING I can do... And, I stumbled on a reference to a possibly out of date BIOS version and the needed update which also happens to generate this SAME error. And, being hopeful (and opportunistically forgetting the drop/crash/thump which led me to this problem), I *attempted* the BIOS update and well, it didn't recognize that a drive was attached. OK, that was my last hope. Hours lost. Let's move over to my backup laptop and shift everything I do have backed up over........ which I did and I was up and running that morning. Yes, I had lost a few things and yes I was pretty frustrated but, I wasn't totally down. It wasn't as bad as it could have been without any backups...... but, I was still annoyed.

Then, I thought... is there any other option(s)? It's been at least 10 years since I sent a drive into a drive recovery place. So, I thought this needed some research. I wanted to see what it might take to (and/or IF I could) recover data. About 10 years ago, I had a single drive of a RAID 0 array fail and the disk recovery place couldn't recover any of it (well, I think they could get 128kb out it and it was going to be 800 bucks). But, that was 10 years agao. Have things changed??! Hmmm... what could they do?

Anyway, I got in touch with Drive Solutions, Inc. and they gave me the rundown of what it would take to get data back. I wasn't sure if it was really going to be worth it (especially for the costs) but I still wanted to go through the process (for multiple reasons - some of it was for the data but some of it was for this post - and to remind people of what's possible (myself included)) given that we talk about the importance of backups and the UNLIKELY potential for data recovery off of damaged disks...

The long story short (ah, too late :) is that they can do amazing things these days (NO GUARANTEES THOUGH!!!) and they can completely rebuild the drives in a clean room - replacing drive heads, etc. Once complete, IF they get anything back, they'll give you a directory structure of what they've recovered and different options for getting it back to you (DVDs of just critical directories (there's a cost for each DVD after the first one or two) OR you can purchase a new comparable drive and they'll copy it over). The whole process took about a week (and this was for expedited service - which was also an extra charge). However, and amazingly, they recovered everything (well, I've only done a bit of spelunking but so far, so good)...

And, here's the coolest part, I was working on some SQL files at the exact time of the disaster and well, I went to the \Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\SQL Server Management Studio\Backup Files\ directory and found a directory of Solution1. In it were 3 files with similarly ugly names (~AutoRecover.~vsC.sql, ~AutoRecover.~vsC.sql~RF93d469.TMP, etc...) and the AutoRecover file was 2KB (the others were 0KB). Anyway, I opened up the file and viola! I actually recovered the .sql script I was working on at the time I dropped my laptop (well, I still blame this on Paul cause he made me lean over to talk to him and this ultimately pushed my laptop off the crappy airline table ;) ;) ;) :).

Needless to say, I am pretty amazed at what they can do now... but, I'm certainly not going to rely on that AND, it wasn't cheap!!!

So... what did I learn??!

1) First and foremost, data recovery is NEVER GUARANTEED. (yes, ok, we all knew that. However, I think we just need to say it out loud a few times :).
2) Even if they can recover some of the data, data recovery is not lightning fast. Even with the more expensive expedited service it takes time to ship (overnight), get the drive into a clean room, rebuild it from parts of an exactly matching (including BIOS/firmware) drive, test it, copy it to another drive, ship it back (overnight). Maybe you can find a place that's local, that would help but, it's still time...
3) It's expensive... expect about $10-15 per GB. And, I guess that some will think that's a crazy amount... Again, I had multiple motivating factors - one of which was also related to some pictures I had taken over the weekend with family in FL, some was for data, some was even better to understand this overall process... I expect that got about 10 hours back plus some photos and, I'm pretty impressed with the overall process (in general).

More than anything, I'm going to get even better at daily full system backups when I'm on the road (scheduled/overnight to an external drive) and I might even copy critical stuff to something like Windows Live Skydrive (or something like that). And, while on a plane, I might keep a small/simple USB stick handy if I do something that I really don't want to lose while on a long plane ride. I think new technologies like "mesh" and "cloud" are really interesting and definitely the direction to better performance AND *possibly* minimizing data loss but you're always at risk if there's only one copy. All of this might seem crazy but well...... I've been called worse ;-)).

So, just to wrap things up, I'll be doing a bit of final tweaking on my indexing blog post + my indexing demo scripts from Connections + my metadata script that I was working on at the time of the laptop disaster (which is also why it's been a while since my last post) and I'll be leveraging some of my favorite tools (Beyond Compare) to determine all of the differences between my recovered data/directories and the system I rebuilt from a backup (especially now that it has also changed over the course of this week since I moved over to my backup laptop). And, I've now ordered a new harddrive for my primary laptop. Sadly, I'm getting good at laptop rebuilding.

Thanks for reading,
kt

PS - When did you last backup your home/personal/less-critical system... is it really less-critical?

Actually, I can't even begin to tell you how great it is that Paul loves blogging so much... he does an amazing job filling in everyone (even our family :)) with our travels through his "personal" posts on his blog (and, he always researches the sites/details as well). And, so, with our mostly business event to China over the past couple of weeks, Paul posted a few links on our side travels (which consisted of about 2.5 total days over our 2 week trip). I have to admit that we were originally going to try and stay for Chinese New Year (New Year's Day is Feb 7) and spend even more time tatting about but ended up cutting the trip short for more work (isn't that always the case :). But, having said that, we made every moment count by squeezing in as much site seeing as possible (we had 1 spare day in Shanghai and 1.5 spare days in Beijing). It really was an amazing trip and we hope to get back to China someday and spend even more time there.

So, if you're interested in hearing a bit more about the trip - and don't already read Paul's blog (which is surprising because he really blogs a lot and he's had some great/technical and deep posts on all sorts of stuff!!!), check out these posts on our travels:

In Shanghai the first week: http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/2008/01/21/PersonalFirstTripOfTheYearChina.aspx
In Beijing the second week: http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/2008/01/27/PersonalAndOnToBeijingAndTheGreatWall.aspx and http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/2008/02/03/PersonalFinalDayInBeijingSightseeingLotsOfPhotos.aspx

I hope your year is going well and Xie Xie (thank you!) to all of the folks that made our trip in China really special! I hope that everyone has a Happy Chinese New Year (and can travel safely through the holidays - especially given the terrible weather conditions that are happening all over China right now).

Kimberly

Donald Wayne Tripp
Donald Wayne Tripp was born on August 6, 1944 in Fort Madison, Iowa. After fighting a long and courageous battle with cancer, Don passed away peacefully on November 28, 2007 at home in Redmond, Washington, with his daughter and son-in-law by his side.
 
Don is survived by his daughter, Kimberly L. Tripp; his son-in-law, Paul S. Randal; his grandchildren Kiera and Katelyn Randal; his Mother, Doris McDonnell; his brothers Jon McDonnell and Wayne Tripp; his sisters Linda Fussell and Bonnie Bostick; his brother-in-law, Ted Fussell; his sister-in-law Valerie Tripp; his nephew and many nieces; and his wife of 22 years, Ursula Tripp. He will be greatly missed by these and many other relatives and friends.
 
Don was very charismatic, always quick to lighten the mood with his humor - lately he'd say that "I'm in great shape - besides a little cancer". He was an avid sailor and loved nothing more than being on the water - especially Lake Michigan - where he first sailed "Flutterby", an 18 foot SolCat, and then a variety of sail-boats (and ice-boats in WI) over many years. When not on the water somehow, he loved his local haunts and enjoyed an occasional Meyers-and-tonic with friends.
 
By far his greatest pleasure was introducing friends, family, and even acquaintances to sailing - especially as a Regional Sales Manager for Hunter Yachts - which he gladly took on as his second career after working for Moore Business Forms for almost 30 years. For Moore he received numerous "Achievement Awards" in Sales but he was most rewarded by sales that lead people to the boat of their dreams. He was a graduate of the University of Iowa in 1968, a member of the Army and Air Force Reserves for six years and took his first sky dive in 1962, the year he graduated from Fort Madison High School. He loved adventure and had it not been for a hurricane that washed ashore his 40-foot trimaran in 1978, he would have raced in the (London) Observer's Singlehanded Trans-Atlantic Race in 1980.
 
Over the past few months, Don greatly enjoyed bird watching from the deck of our house. He especially enjoyed torturing the squirrels by spraying “Pam” on the poles of the many bird feeders. Don’t worry; it didn’t really stop them from getting the food – but it did provide for many hours of entertainment as they slid down the pole after lunch or on their way to having lunch.
 
A "Celebration of Life" Memorial Reception is being planned for Memorial Day weekend. Please send email to KimberlyLTripp@hotmail.com for more information.
 
In lieu of flowers, donations should be made to a Cancer charity of your choosing. For example, consider donating to the Cancer Research Foundation at http://www.cancerresearchfdn.org/donate/.

OK, so Paul could be doing worse things while I'm away... but, what was he doing? I guess you'll have to read here and listen here.

Enjoy!
kt

OK, I'm not normally the one to blog a lot of personal stuff but there's definitely a reason for a lot of my silence over the past couple of months....... I was planning a wedding. OK, Paul helped out more than you would expect - he met with the officiant (Annemarie of Annemarie Juhlian), the photographer (John Mitchell of John Mark Photography), the ceremony/reception venue (the Woodmark Hotel), the florist (Nathan of Fena Flowers), the amazing baker (Mike's Amazing Cakes) and Paul did so much more too! So, I can't say it was all me but that's the excuse I'm using (for my lack of blogging :) and I'm sticking to it! It was a crazy amount of work in general and now I can truly understand why people hire wedding coordinators!!

Anyway, the weekend could NOT have gone better. So many of our friends and family were able to make it - even our one remaining Grandmother (Doris McDonnell, my Father's Mother - who is 84) made the journey out here. Which, btw, was no small feat for her... it was a train to my Mother's house to spend the night, then together they took a train to Chicago's grand central station where they then caught a cab to O'Hare to catch a 4 hour flight to Seattle. And, that was a fairly short flight compared to Goksin Bakir's flight(s) from Istanbul, Gunther Beersaerts' flight(s) from Belgium, Olga Londer's flights from London, Paul's entire family from Glasgow, Scotland, the Tripp/Fussell/Bostick clan's flight(s) from Tampa, Carl Franklin's flight(s) from Connecticut and Richard Campbell's drive down from Vancouver (ok, that was short compared to Peter Bennett's drive from Racine, Wisconsin). And, of course, we had many of the usual suspects: Bob Beauchemin, Brian Randell, Clemens Vasters, Euan Garden, Gert Drapers, Gunther Beersaerts, Juval Lowy, Liz Vitt, Matt Nunn, Michele Leroux Bustamante, and last, but not least, Timmie Huckaby. And, those were only a few of the more public geeks :) :). Speaking of public... I'm *very* afraid of the recorder that Carl (of the infamous DNR) had running during the late night hours of the BBQ on Friday night.

Speaking of the BBQ, here's our favorite photo (so far!) from the BBQ on Friday.

Paul already blogged our favorite (so far!) from the wedding. Oh, and why only "so far?"... John took over 40GB of photos from the weekend (the BBQ was on the 27th and the wedding was on the 29th). We cannot wait to see all of what he's done. There are photos that we've seen now that show us that we never even knew he/they (John/Katie/Boon) were there...capturing moments rather than just posed shots. With how fun, professional, timely and creative they were - it's obvious that they all love what they do. In fact, John feels more like a friend than a vendor. It was truly a pleasure having them attend the wedding...and not just for the photos!

So, I thought I'd blog a tad of the personal stuff today and let you know about the best SQL union of which I'm aware <g>... we look forward to all of the exciting things that SQLskills will be doing as we move forward with Paul coming over from the Microsoft mothership as "Managing Director" starting on September 1st. Stay tuned with us as I know good things are still yet to come.

Cheers,
kt