Author Archives: Michael E Kelley

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About Michael E Kelley

Software geek, speaker, humorist, consultant, writer and futurist.

Why Education Needs To Change

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This is just one reason why education must change.

We need to seriously look at how to improve education in the United States in order to offer a World Class education.  Here are some futuristic ideas.

1.  Decide to concentrate on quality not quantity.  Instead of smaller class sizes which means more teachers, let’s concentrate on better teachers.

2.  Collect and catalog all the best videos of teachers.  We need to focus on the best of the best videos and teachers that motivate.

3.  Allow vouchers to be used.  Parents will pick the best schools which will encourage all schools to get better via supply and demand.

4.  Meet in classes for group or team projects as well as testing.  Students will want to socialize and test scores can be verified.

5.  Encourage service for student grants.  Do military or community service in exchange for student grants or loans.

Let’s make some positive change.  Here is more information.

http://www.futuresearch.com/futureblog/2010/09/01/why-education-must-change/

October Caption Contest Entry

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My submitted entry has the person saying,

“Would it help if I went to work for Bain Capital?”

Before We Had Cold Activated Beer Cans

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Courtesy of

http://getsecondlunch.com/2012/10/01/before-_______-we-had-________/

Reverse Engineer Create Table Schema for Sybase or SQL Server

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QUESTION:  Is there any way to fetch the create table schema including the textual representation of actual Sybase datatypes (instead of the number)?

ANSWER: Yes

Pretty In ………… Yellow?

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Joanne and Richard were expecting a baby soon.  They knew this was going to be their last baby.  Even though they secretly wanted a boy, they did not want to know the sex of the newborn.

Consequently they decorated the baby’s room completely in a neutral color …  yes you guessed it… yellow.

Well this frustrated the grandparents to no end.  They had heard myths about yellow being a depressing color or making babies angry.

When the baby was born and to the parent’s delight, it was a boy they named Jason.

No more than one hour went by after the birth when the grandparents rushed out and bought everything baby-related they could find.  In the color blue.

Steak Lovers Stand Your Ground

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Stacy has been making sure she and her husband, Jim, eat healthy.  For Jim’s birthday, Stacy decided to take Jim out to dinner for the best steak in town.

Inside the restaurant, Jim and Stacy immediately noticed all the deer and antelope heads mounted on the walls.

When it was the couple’s turn, the hostess asked Stacy where she wanted to sit.  She replied, “Somewhere where we won’t be stared at.”

 

 

Sybase Query Analyzer – showplan

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QUESTION:

I’m querying Sybase database from C# code. Is there any good query analyzer to understand the exact queries being generated like the Query Analyzer for Sql Server?

ANSWER:

You can set some Sybase variables to see the Query Plan such as the following:

set showplan  on
set statistics io on
set statistics time on
exec my_proc (my_arg1, my_arg2, ...)
go

I have put this into a shell script to pass the command line arguments including stored procedure name and parameters.

isql  -Uxxx   -Pyyy   <<-_EOF_
set showplan  on
set statistics io on
set statistics time on
exec $*
go
_EOF_

You use this to see if there are any table scans which should be avoided at all costs.

Good SQL, good night.

Sweat Equity

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My wife spends the evening slaving over a hot stove to prepare a special chicken dish for a company potluck.

At the potluck, Jeff says, “This chicken dish is really good.  What is in it?”

I respond, “Sweat.”

To which Jeff responds, “Yummm.  Sweat.”

 

Airplanes Can Be Fun

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Remember that flight where the kid behind you would never stop crying or kicked your seat?

Well here is an airplane story of a different color.

Tommy was well-behaved during the entire plane flight.  His parents kept him quiet with a handheld game player and a soda.  Passengers admired Tommy’s behavior.

But when it was time to leave, Tommy started shouting.

“I DON’T WANNA GO.  I GET FREE SODA HERE.  MY MOMMY MAKES ME DRINK GREEN STUFF AT HOME.”

Sybase Error Codes

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Problem: Need to distinguish between Sybase RDBMS related exceptions and user data exceptions .

 

Solution:  Since Sybase uses error numbers less than 2000, you can choose to use numbers larger than 3000. You can control the returned error code by using the raiserror function. Yes that is not a misspelling.

Note: Sybase with many of its functions, tried to save keystrokes by eliminating duplicate characters. Here Sybase did not allow double “e”s but left the double “r”s in. Oh well.

For more info see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7482383/distinguish-sybase-expections-types

Good SQL.  Good night.