February Is Here

Back in the USA, and snowed under with work, which delayed these posts here.

The last post was written the day after my father rather suddenly died, the day after I returned from seeing him, and I'll admit to not feeling on top of the world. However, I have to thank all of you who took the time and trouble to comment on it, here, on FB, on Ravelry, and in person. I wasn't trying to be pretentious or anything - I just wrote it as a commentary to myself on how I felt and it seemed right to share it with friends. I just discovered that I had a few more friends than I realised!

The next next few days were spent working during the day and trying to organise events in England and Ireland. I took off with family for England on the 25th, spent a couple of frantic days trying to help organise things and going to my father's funeral in Brighton on the 27th, and then flew to Shannon for his interment in the family plot in Limerick. Sunday saw us all flying back to England for a few more days before returning to Philadelphia.

So, a busy fortnight, which meant that I appear to have missed all the snow and ice that the New Jersey are has experienced over the last month. In fact I think I've actually seen it snow here just twice this year, a record only beaten by prisoners and the blind!

Food
The next recipes will be in the next posts. I have to tell you, though, that England and Ireland are not the culinary deserts that you've been led to believe! We had some excellent food in both countries, and a menu item written on a blackboard in an Italian restaurant, Al Duomo (just outside the Indian Gate to the Royal Pavillion in Brighton), conjured up a meal in my mind for the evening as we sat there enjoying antipasto and hot chocolate, sheltering from a wet and blustery day.


Tech
There are many pieces of advice that one can offer, but educating oneself is always important. So, coming up in April is SSWUG's DBTechCon, a technical conference that is both reasonably priced and convenient. The downside is that you don't get to do much networking, but everyone knows that if you get two goodies there's always a third piece that suffers!

Why do I recommend looking at this conference? Well, first off it's a virtual conference, so you don't have to go anywhere to get there.

Secondly, it's so virtual that you don't even have to be on time - the whole thing is available for 45 days after it starts, so you can see all the presentations in all the tracks without having to resort to getting your own Time-Tuner!

In fact, the lack of that third measure of a conference - networking - is ameliorated by the fact that if you actually are on time to watch a presentation you can chat to the presenter in real-time, and get questions answered for the benefit of all!

Enough of the advertising! Go off to the SSWUG site and check it out! I have a tip or two for SQL Server developers for the next post.

TTFN