This will be the first posting of a new category on my blog regard Kapow Software a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) tool. Before I begin to discuss my usage experiences and technical information regarding Kapow Katalyst, I figure it would be good to give a little background about it. Kapow Katalyst is a Web Data Aggregation Tool; these tools are used to capture data from websites for analytic’s purposes. Where Kapow excels is it allows you to complete your ETL process from a single execution aka a Robot.

When I interviewed with Coyote a discussion came up of passion and I said my passion at work was turning data into insight for my coworkers. During my presentation about myself to our Executive team and my coworkers I realized what my true passion is… it’s to help people. Every job I’ve had involved helping people and at Coyote it’s no different I’m just using my technical skills to help our coworkers and our customers; outside work I love to volunteer with the Jaycees because we help people and make an impact with the work we do around the world.

It’s true when they say no news is good news, my Windows Home Server has been just chugging along currently were approaching 180 days without rebooting, which is quite impressive to even to me. Actually now that think about it I made a major change to my setup back in March. I purchased a Dell PowerEdge 700 for 25 dollars on eBay which a real server instead of an old desktop I had lying around.

Here’s another fun solution for you business intelligence people out there. Suppose you wanted to pull data that was updated in the last 15mins based on when a row was last. I’m sure there are many ways to accomplish this but I like to use the DATEADD() function in Microsoft SQL Server 2008. Below is the query using the AdventureWorks2008R2 database enjoy. SELECT I.ProductID, I.LocationID, I.Bin, I.Shelf, I.Quantity, P.ProductNumber, P.Name, I.

On September 8th my campaign to serve the Illinois Jaycees members as their 2013 Membership Development Vice President came to end with me being elected. It’s true competing for the time of our members has gotten tougher each year our chapter, region, and state boards have gotten stretched too thin, burned out quickly, not adequately trained and weaker. As a result our members have suffered. Next year I want to focus on shaping the future of our organization.

August 20th was my last day at Sears Holdings. I once heard somewhere the average person my age spends three years at a job before leaving and move on. Well I sent 12 years there of course I held four different roles there during that time. I decided to leave Sears Holdings because the opportunity presented to me to join Coyote Logistics and learn & develop new systems was too great to pass up.

Every wonder why some people have amazing looking Facebook profiles or 1000s of followers? In this 30 minute session we will discuss how to use facebook, google+, twitter the simple and easy way to communicate with your friends, family, and followers. This course is led me Richard Lewis a veteran user of social media sites and Chairman of the US Jaycees National Technology Advisory Committee. Come out next month on August 7th at 7:00PM.

So I’m about a month late or maybe three in writing my recap on the event so here goes. It was awesomeness !!!! 2012 marked my second SQL Saturday that I’ve attended and have to say it just keeps getting better. This year I was able to volunteer with registration which is an awesome way to meet all the attendees well at least most of them. Also I hooped into five awesome sessions “A Complete BI Solution in About an Hour!

Another #Meme 15 topic brought you by MVP Jason Strate (Blog | twitter). This month topic “What are ten blogs that you think other SQL Server professionals should be following but might not be?” Coming up with a list of just 10 is harder than I thought narrowing it down to ten is just way to hard but i was able to do. The list I put together covers everyone from the newbie to SQL to the all-round DBA.

Introduction I downloaded Windows 8 when it was released to Developers back last year and installed it on a virtual workstation with a 2 gigs of ram running from my Windows Home Server. I thought it was shaky and slow. So I decided to abandon it. Until recently when the Consumer Preview release came out and I decided to give it another try. Getting windows 8 up running was actually quite simple.