AFK

Technically I haven't been AFK, just trying to keep up with the torrent of work, blogs, tweets, woodworking, household stuff, family stuff, medical condition, work, etc., etc. None of it excuses, but hey, I'm using them all, so they all add up to one big excuse!

So what's been going on? Well, let’s go through the various views of life, you’ll get an idea why I haven’t blogged anything recently for lack of time, gumption, wherewithal, whatever. :)

A few weeks ago, my daughter announced that she and her boyfriend got engaged to be married, and was moving out. That was on a Tuesday evening. On Wednesday afternoon next, she apparently decided there was nothing to be gained by waiting, so she and her fiancé went to the town hall and got married. There you have it, in one fell swoop I lost my daughter and gained a son-in-law. That’s big stuff, and took quite the while to get used to.

If having my twenty year old daughter get married wasn’t proof enough, I’ve also self-proven I’m getting on in years, as my progressive bifocals came in this week, and I’m spending time trying to learn to get used to these. Last time I was at the eye doctor, four years ago, my vision had finally gotten down to 20/20. Now, I find I have astigmatism in my left eye, and macular degeneration in my right, along with my diabetes creating multiple micro-aneurisms in my eyes. Woof.

At work, among other things, I've written an application (in Excel, of all things) for the Quality Department to use in completing audits, so anyone of us can take a tablet notebook out on the production floor, check off red, yellow and green radio buttons for each category of procedure we're auditing, then hit the big Submit button and the app then creates an email, saves the report sheet, reports the result score in a yearly tracking sheet all automatically. This should save, over the course of a fiscal year, at least a couple dozen hours of time for all five of us doing audits.

In my community volunteering, I am a member of the local Men’s singing group, and we have been getting ready for the annual town Christmas concert, what they call around here the “traditional start of the holiday season in Eufaula.” That takes up a good bit of time, but it’s a really enjoyable endeavor, so there. My parents will be coming in that weekend, too, so maybe we can take in the Annual Christmas Tour of Homes, at some of the local manses, all decked out for the holidays. Should be a fun weekend.

On the woodworking front, I have gotten back into the shop after a weeks long hiatus, completing the second fluted pilaster of the bureau in potentia that I have been building for the past couple of years. Good things take time :) I will post pictures soon, promise.

In SQL Server news, I have been asked by Blythe Morrow (Twitter | LinkedIn), Community Programs Coordinator at Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) to be the next leader for PASS’s Application Development Virtual Chapter, taking over for Jeremiah Peschka (Twitter | LinkedIn | Blog), who is moving on to PASS’s Board of Directors. Those are some HUGE shoes to fill, Jeremiah is a Microsoft MVP, blogger extrodinaire, and all around expert, and I am going to pale in comparison. Like I told Blythe in a tweet, though, I love a challenge. We are targeting January for that to come about.

So, yeah, I’ve been busy. I should probably say that I am also getting together what it takes to move my blog over to Wordpress, under my own URL, which, if I can get my hosting service to answer an email or call, will happen soon. I need to get blogging up to par to be able to better serve the SQL Community, especially as I am going to be a much more visible contributor in other fronts.