Today, it’s the day before a holiday in Sweden. That means that most people either don’t work at all or work only half the day.

But… you’ve guessed it. As a consultant, those rules don’t apply. We don’t work half days, which I think is a good thing, but what I don’t think is good is being left all alone in the office. I am struggling to keep the tempo up.

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This week I found out that I good friend of mine is dying in cancer.

He has battled one form of cancer during the spring and summer - and actually won over it. So in late august I spoke to him and there were no signs of the cancer. A real miracle if you ask me, because he wasn’t given any good chances.

But all of a sudden, a week ago, the cancer came back - this time in the brain and in a place where nothing can be done.

Cancer really is a terrible decease - it seems to be able to hunt you down even after you think that you have beaten it. In a way it becomes more than a decease, it’s almost as something with a mind of it’s own. I didn’t think I could feel hatred for a decease but I do. I am angry...

Today, and most of all yesterday, was the first snowstorm of the winter in the Stockholm area.

Every year, I’m saying every year, we miss this. First, the trains are stopped by falling leaves, and then, what do you know, snow? Here in Sweden? How can it happen?

People couldn’t get home, all buses in the Stockholm area stopped, etc. But then again, we knew about this storm for about two weeks.

Maybe if the buses had winter tires on, or all other vehicles for that matter, it wouldn’t be such an issue.

Anyway, this catches us each year, and I am not expecting any co-workers until 10 o’clock today.

Read a great article about performance in ASP.NET applications.

However what really caught my eye was the sidebar about performance myths. Read it here.

Some of those were new to me and some old, which but I have so many times tried to explain to customers (such the one about different speed on VB.NET and C#-code). So nice to have a place to point to…

Today Avega, the company who I work for, has fixed some problems so we finally can use the fat Outlook client! YEES!

Fat client rules!

Just another great utility that everybody has at their disposal…

Quite often you will need the columns from a Query Analyser result for further handling, to put as header in Excel or to use in another query. The sad part is that they are not easily captured, if you get the result as a grid you can’t reach them and if you get the result as text they are separated with spaces to the length of the content of each column.

So this is my street/no fuss solution - it might be faster ways of doing this will SQL but this is one way.

1. Execute the SQL-statement you want the columns for and return the result as text
2. Select and copy the header row
3. Paste the header row into a Notepad-document
4. Search for space (“ “) and replace with two commas (,,)
5. When done do another search for two...

I have spent the main part of the last two days compiling SQL-statements with Excel, and it’s actually quite good at it.

With the string functions (concatenate, substring, find and the usual suspects) you can create SQL-statements for a large number of rows quite simply.

I have a large number of strings that need to be manipulated (done with replace) and then all these string needs to be sent to a stored procedure. This stored procedure call is created by concatenating the string from the manipulated column with the SQL-statement to make the call.

When all of this is done it’s just a matter of filling the columns. Works like charm.

Then I needed about 2 hours to muster the strength to run the script, but that’s another story

While I am on the subject I might as well reveal how the Swedish Brass Band Championships will go down.

This year it will be tighter, there is a two new band in Sweden - both will very impressive line up and good potential.

Windcorp - was around last year and did very well indeed. An impressive second place after only a few months of playing together. Very impressive.

Stockholm BrassBand - this is the newest band and also one with the most respectful line-up. The band is made up mostly of professionals in the Stockholm orchestras.

But, I am sorry, they will never have a chance to beat the current champions, Gothenburg . I have played with them for a year and a half an know what they are made of. They mean serious business, also they have signed Nicholas Childs to do rehearsals for a...

The Nationals (British Nationals that is) of this year has been battled out this weekend. And since the test piece was “easier” than usually a surprising result were to be expected.

However this did not happen, but it was good to see Grimethorpe (for all you non-brass-people, that is the band that starred in Brassed Off) take a big title. They have only won entertainment stuff for a while and is such a great band so they deserved it.

Black Dyke missed out on a double (Open + Nationals) but still is always up there. Impressive.

When will Buy as You View Cory (third) ever win something? They haven’t done that in a while, to my knowledge. Maybe time to turn away from the old style playing that they are into (with fast, uncontrolled vibrato as one of the main feature).

More to read on this can be found Read More

Saw a movie yesterday that I must recommend; Lucky Number Slevin (http://www.slevin-movie.com/).

It’s in the same spirit as The usual suspects and I really enjoyed it. Great performances by some great actors also. Lucy Lui was awsome and the guy (Josh Hartnett) playing the lead character did a great job too.

So if You havn’t seen it … Do it now! It is well worth the time and money.