Canadian Vacation - A Great Beginning

Arrived yesterday after 13.5 hours of flying from Auckland to Vancouver. I managed to score a row to myself and so was able to actually stretch* out for the night. When I arrived in Vancouver yesterday mid day, I was actually reasonably well rested. :)

My awesome sister Nicole was waiting for me when I emerged from customs and collecting my bag, bearing gifts of a chocolate dip donut and a salted caramel mocha. Both were appreciated (and consumed) on the ride back to her house. There's no picture of the first donut as the frosting had attached to the side of the bag. I'll try to snap another chocolate dip when I get a chance so that I can complete the set.

After dropping my stuff off, we went for a walk to the mall near her place to get a SIM card for my phone and to just stretch out my legs from the journey. The trail across the road from her house had that sign you see below. Apparently the bear was breaking into the rubbish shed at her building. I've gotten used to there being no large mammal predators(other than humans) ... I'm not in middle-earth any more! 

*as much as you can stretch out when you're limited to three seats on a plane.

SQL PASS Summit 2012

Only 4 more sleeps until I get on the first plane that will ultimately bring me 12,000 km away to Seattle for the PASS Summit. I'm really looking forward to it. My first two passes through the schedule have seen me squeal with delight as I see so many topics of interest.

In my day job, I don't have a specific focus. I'm not a DBA or a developer or a BI person or a "data scientist" (I hate that title) or any of the usual labels. They all seem to apply depending on the time of day. As a result, I'm just as interested in the half day session on query performance tuning as I am on the advanced PowerPivot and PowerView things. And don't get me started on the SSIS stuff. There are so many things I want to absorb ALL THE INFORMATION on.

I'm sure that if I was able to clone 2 more of me, I could almost go to all the sessions I would like to.

I'll try to post some summaries here of the things that I pick up as I go.