Mood

I've spent a fair bit more than 8 hours today troubleshooting why one magic row out of 1.6 million others would just crash a SELECT * query in DB2. My best guess is that one of those 480 columns contains something like 0x00, and the driver can't handle it. But I still can't prove/disprove it.

Question for the #sqlfamily hivemind. With #sqlserver MDS being deprecated, what's your favorite way to manage master data? Client prefers on-prem, and/or Microsoft ecosystem. Pretty much all master data solutions I've seen have been home-grown web apps, but client doesn't want to go that way. :)

I'm gonna need a Tylenol.

Bear stress

In an unexpected turn of events, my digital scales suddenly think my weight is too low.

I love the pacing of this video. Like having an exquisite chocolate truffle with an espresso.

This is the playbook, folks. If you're not paying attention now and doing something about it, then you're going to have to sit down the rest of your life because democracy is being taken away. Do not be quiet in this moment.

BREAKING: Disney+ is to replace the two-season run of Andor with a recut version that runs for only five minutes, and is just Mon Mothma apologising profusely to Darth Vader for any inconvenience, and letting him have whatever he wants.

Whenever I’m looking at hotels, the first 80 photos are of their mind-numbing conference rooms and banquet halls, followed by wedding arrangements and/or the restaurant or bar. Now, why wouldn’t y’all want to show me the rooms?

If you're like me and view Apple's new UI for macOS Tahoe and iOS 26 as something of a backwards step, then selecting "reduce transparency" makes things a *little* more bearable.

This is a big deal in Sweden right now: an HR software vendor with hundreds of public sector clients has been breached by an extortion actor. The leaked info includes PII of people with protected (i.e. hidden) identities.

Unexpected squirrel made a surprise inspection of my local bakery. Did not appear to find any deficiencies, and promptly left the premises.

Live the kind of life where seconds after you die people aren’t pulling up dozens of exact quotes showing what a shitty person you are

Mood

Had a great time preaching the gospel of T-SQL window functions to a great crowd of data professionals at #DATAScotland today. The crowning finish of my day was a wonderful dinner with @arcticdba.se, @valeriejunk.bsky.social and @sqlclause.no.

Life is short. Don't make it shorter with bad decisions or unnecessary racing to get something done that might have horrible consequences. If you're late, you're late. Drive, walk, train, etc. at a reasonable pace. 20/20

‘Booty’ and ‘butt’ are synonyms. ‘Call’ and ‘dial’ are synonyms. But, a ‘booty call’ and a ‘butt dial’ are VERY different things.

I didn’t see myself traveling to a country where I’d have to use my VPN to use my Bluesky DMs. Lol, UK.

Blog alert! This time on reasons why the community thinks in-person events still matter! #DataSaturday #SqlSaturday #Meetup #AzureDataTechGroups

If you need a little distraction from the news about dictators and their sycophants, or cruise missiles and drone strikes hitting civilian targets: Here's a really cool site where you can visually trace out how far you can travel by train in Europe.

Just a reminder to check for your name in this list of books that OpenAI trained from. If your name is there, they probably owe you several thousand dollars. OpenAI cried that if everyone eligible author files, the company will go bankrupt, so I'm alerting every author I have ever spoken to.

At 23, Thomas Jefferson went to Philadelphia to be inoculated for smallpox when Virginia wouldn't allow vaccinations. He later vaccinated 200 family members and neighbors. None of them got smallpox. Fancy that

Quick ad-hoc poll: Would you attend a conference session on NULL values?

Me at work on a Monday morning.

Did you know that in Japan, talking on public transport is frowned upon? Being a country with little space for privacy, people have grown very respectful of each other.

AI is coming for your job.

Speaker dinner for Data Saturday Gothenburg happening on a rock, way, way out in the ocean. In glorious sunset light.

For the memes

Mood

If you can brute-force a key by guessing 10000 codes, it's not exactly "encrypted". And saying that not even X can read encrypted messages, while _technically_ correct, is wildly misleading. It will take a tiny fraction of a second to "crack" this type of encryption.

Ah, yes, the reason I moderate event submissions to @callfordataspeakers.com is that there's always that one person who will check the "IMPORTANT" checkbox without reading a single word of it.

Of the many writers to predict AI, only Douglas Adams got the tone right

Did some Oslo things while in Oslo.

Test your DR strategy, y’all. Here’s a 12-minute video about how King’s College didn’t.

I've long known that #SQLServer supports "if exists" when dropping objects. DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dbo.test; It even supports multiple tables, like DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dbo.test1, dbo.test2; But did you know that it applies to DROP COLUMN, too? ALTER TABLE dbo.test DROP COLUMN IF EXISTS col1;

We have just opened a call for speakers for Data Point Prague 2026 sessionize.com/data-point-p...

Watching one of the world's absolute highest-rated chess players stream a chess game. I can't help but lean forward thinking "Oh, I would totally move the knight to f6." As if I could survive even three moves against this type of player.

Only in software can anyone deliver a product with an on-off switch, and if the user turns the switch off, the vendor will simply turn it on again after a while. Because software vendor knows what's best for us regular people.

There’s a new disturbing trend emerging in both Ukraine and Gaza: An attack will first strike a civilian target, then wait 10-15 minutes until first responders and journalists arrive, and then ”double-tap” it with another strike. This has happened so many times now that it’s not a coincidence.

Today is Ukraine's independence day. 🇺🇦 Слава Україні! ❤️

When your boss looks at your work like ”I see what you did there. Very clever.” And you have no idea what’s so clever about it, but you play along anyway.

Pretty disturbing. And hilarious.

Great talk about social engineering

Not sure about hot baths tbh

Playing chess, step 1.

The ground under the Swedish mining town of Kiruna has for a long time been sinking because of all the mining tunnels, so there's a decades-long work in progress to literally move the entire town. For your viewing pleasure, here's a slow-tv live broadcast of an full-size wooden church being moved.

I always say if you’re cringing at your old work, it just means you’re getting better

In Alaska, genocide became “diplomacy.” War crimes became “peace talks.” Child-killers became “partners.” Putin didn’t just get legitimacy in Alaska. He got proof the West has abandoned truth itself. Our editorial: euromaidanpress.com/2025/08/16/e...