My lovely wife Heather gave me a call and said… “Guess what I have in my hands?”  I had heard that Ken and Jorge received their author copies this week so I was very quick to guess it right

Can’t wait to get home today and check it out… I have all the pdf page proofs for all the chapters but it just isn’t the same LOL

By request I’ll be doing a blog in the next day or so about the whole book writing experience as it was probably one of the most challenging yet rewarding experiences in my career.

(Big thanks to wifey for taking a pic!!)

Enjoy!!

After going through this process I have a whole new respect for anyone who takes on the challenge of writing a book.  It is a long and painful process that will eat up any and all free time that you have but it is probably one of the most rewarding challenges that I’ve taken on and I can’t wait to get my own “AUTHORS COPIES” box in the mail (great post/video BTW Tom)

2 books that are on my “must read” list now that I’m going to have more free time are:

SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting and DBA Survivor

Brent and Tom both have always been great resources to help troubleshoot, bounce ideas off of, and just always willing to lend a hand in anything I’ve sent their way and I’m quite interested to give their books a read and a review.  Tom is the technical editor for my book and although he never really explained what he meant by “punch harder” I think/hope I got the idea LOL.

I’ll admit that I haven’t picked up a book since starting this whole co-authoring a book started back in September/09.  So I thought these two books would be a great place to start getting back into reading because the authors have both helped shape and guide my SQL path greatly over the last year or two.

So here’s to getting back into reading, blogging more often, and just generally getting back in touch with the world LOL

Enjoy!!

January is going to be a VERY busy month for me both personally and professionally so I thought I would write a quick blog post just so people don’t think I’ve fallen off the face of the earth or something LOL   The biggest and challenging task at hand is I need to have the first draft of my final 2 chapters done by February 1st.  While I’m not concerned too much about making this deadline I’m doing my best to make sure I don’t make the same mistakes I made in my first chapter with these final 2 chapters.

The second thing on my “hit list” for January is the EDMPASS meeting on January 27th with Buck Woody.  This will be the first time that I’m going to make the meeting “public” via Live Meeting and also going to work with recording it and making it available after the fact as well.

A couple personal items are next for me as I’m leaving on a jet plane on January 20th to go to Las Vegas to play in a Ball Hockey tournament called “The Sin City Shootout”.  I didn’t take any time off during the holidays as I was covering for alot of people that did so this will be a nice little break and alot of fun if only for 5 days.  From my previous trips to Vegas 5 days is pretty well the max for me cause (for me anyways) Vegas after 5 days is just annoying.

And finally I hope to make a trip somewhere in there for the weekend up to Cold Lake (about 3 hours NE of Edmonton) to see my sister, brother-in-law, niece, and new baby niece Ella.  I’ve seen pictures and videos but I can’t wait to get up there and spend some QT with the new little addition to my sister’s family.

I hope everyone is doing well and sorry for being a bit out of touch (via MSN, Twitter, etc)

Enjoy!!

“Yo Colin I’m really happy for you… I’mma let you finish, but Itzik Ben-Gan had one of the best books (and most difficult names to pronounce) of all time!!”

(sorry had to…) 

Anyways like I said I’m very excited to start this process and am thankful to those involved for allowing me to cut my teeth in published print on this project. 

I would love to get some “pointers” and comments from some of the readers out there who have gone through the process and any and all advice would be VERY much appreciated.

Thanks and Happy Monday!

Enjoy!!