Alright, alright, I haven’t posted in a long time (7 months or so).  In my defense I have had some things going on.  But someone has been bugging encouraging me to get back to it. I argued that I have better ROI spending time with them, when I was politely informed that I don’t really need the full 6 hours of sleep I attempt every night.  So I’m typing this up at 11:30 pm while the rest of my family is asleep so please read quietly so as to not disturb anyone.

Now that I’m typing and you’re reading quietly, on to the reintroduction: here I am, over here to, also mentioned here and here.

As to why no activity lately, to be honest I have had a lot to say and I have a whole list of ideas for blog posts however as soon as I start to write one, my perfectionism comes into play and I never have time to create what I think would be a perfect post, so I don’t.  I look up at what I don’t know and decide I don’t know enough, instead of looking down or around at what I do know to talk about.  This is the beginning of the effort to change and just put some thoughts out there (for better of worse . 

For those keeping score at home I’m still at Magenic and while a couple good friends have left, we’re hiring.  In fact in the Chicago office we have had 3 people start in the last 2 weeks (including here)! So if you are looking, hit me up and we’ll see what can be done.

Other than that, I’m still doing all things SQL Server from SSIS to Service Broker to CDC to Replication to CLR to encryption to SSRS to data modeling and of course VSDBPro.  Basically the entire stack and oh by the way, still loving it!

For review this post had 3 purposes:

1. Begin Momentum
2. Remind everyone I’m still around
3. Fulfill my promise to Ted

Mission Accomplished!

When I was in school for my masters degree, one of my teachers informed the class of a principal of the project factor triangle (I’m sure they had a snazzy name for it, but I can’t remember what it is).  This was pretty much done as a side note afterthought, but it’s stuck with me.  Only since I’ve been consulting the last year has this really hit home.

The premise is that you have a triangle and each side has a label:

1. Money
2. Time
3. Quality

In a project as you reduce or increase 2 of those factors it will automatically increase or decrease another one.  For example if you want a project delivered at a high quality (increase the quality line) within a short amount of time (decrease the time line), than it will cost a lot of money (to keep it a triangle than the money line has to increase).  Or if you want don’t want to spend a lot of money and still want it in a short amount of time, than the quality is going to decrease. 

The basic premise is you only get to choose 2 of these factors, the third is chosen as a result of the two you pick.  So when you are planning your projects make sure you pick the 2 that are most important to you.

Well I broke down and purchased some new hardware for my home machine.  Last month I had posted my configuration and some of the problems I've had.  Well this summer we experienced many power outages and since I had gone cheap and didn't have the computer plugged into a UPS, my motherboard started having issues and so did one my hard drives .  So I've order some new hardware:

• ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Edition AM2 NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard – Retail
• MSI NX8600GTS-T2D256E-OC GeForce 8600GTS 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card – Retail
• Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive – OEM
• COOLMAX CUG-700B ATX 12V( V.2.2) 700W Power Supply – Retail
• CyberPower Intelligent LCD Series CP1500AVRLCD 1500VA 900W UPS – Retail

Hopefully after I get these this week, I'll be back up and running by the weekend and the issues I was experiencing go away.