First, set up lock codes on your phones, iPads, and laptops.  Those of us who are security-conscious tend to play pranks on those of us who aren’t.  (Ask Tom LaRock about the year he found a shirtless fireman on his desktop wallpaper and couldn’t get it back off – we play for keeps.)

Second, install the Firefox plugin HTTPS Everywhere.  This forces popular web sites like FaceBook, Live, and Twitter to use HTTPS instead of HTTP, thereby encrypting your web surfing instead of SSL.

Third, when you’ve done the above two, check out Firesheep.  It’s a Firefox extension that listens to unencrypted HTTP traffic on your WiFi network and lets you instantly log in as any sucker who isn’t using HTTPS.  This works great at hotels and conferences where lots of your friends (or enemies, whatever) are surfing during keynote addresses.

Consider yourself warned.

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Upcoming free webcasts: SQL and SSDs: A Valentine's Day Love Story and Anatomy of the SQL Server Log File.

Brent Ozar

Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.

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SQL Server Links

• Windows Azure Platform Launch Update – The blog notes that “a number of new features in Windows Azure will be made available for the first time” – but it’s at PDC, not the Professional Association for SQL Server Summit. This should be your clue that cloud-based SQL Server isn’t targeted at DBAs, folks – it’s targeted at developers.
• Don’t be a DBA – Be a Data Professional – Buck Woody explains that your real job isn’t tied to the exact version/edition/brand you’re using – it’s tied to the value you provide.
• SQL University: Diving into Authorization – Do you understand the differences between GRANT, REVOKE and DENY? K. Brian Kelley dives in for SQL University.
• SQL Server with NetApp SAN – Collection of best practices documents from NetApp.
• Checklist for installing SQL Server 2005 as a clustered instance – Your first cluster is painful – get help from Cindy Gross’s simplified checklist.
• How People Abuse Their SQL Server Transaction Log – Things NOT to Do – A laundry list of SQL Server abuses.
• Merrill Aldrich : Using Historical Perf Counter Data For Storage Planning – Dives into some of the cool metrics you can get from the Quest Spotlight repositories.
• Suggested Max Memory Settings for SQL Server 2005/2008 – I like hard-coding the maximum memory size for SQL Server whenever it’s not being shared with multiple applications. Glenn shows you some guidelines for the right numbers.
• SQL University: Authentication and Authorization – K. Brian Kelly talks about his specialty – making sure your data stays yours.
• Amazon EC2 – Now an Even Better Value – Amazon’s prices are lower now for SQL Server in the cloud.
• SSMS Tools Pack 1.7 is out! New feature: SQL Snippets – Great free tool.
• Deterministic Functions – Steve Jones talks about how to determine whether something’s deterministic – it affects caching of execution plans, too.
• Developing Data-tier Applications Using Visual Studio 2010 – Video showing off what’s coming for DBAs long term.
• Templates for New Query Window – Buck Woody shows how to force yourself into commenting your code better.
• High Availability Improvements in SharePoint 2010 – Woohoo! It’ll support SQL Server database mirroring out of the box.
• Introducing Amazon RDS – The Amazon Relational Database Service – MySQL in the cloud, cheap.

#SQLPASS Links

• Starting the Travel Tips Meme – Great tips from Kevin Kline for the upcoming PASS summit.
• What Should PASS Strive To Be? – Jack Corbett’s thoughts on #SQLPASS’s directions.
• A Rendezvous With Destiny: PASS 2009 (#sqlpass) – If you’re going to the PASS Summit, you need to watch Jimmy May speak.

Tech Links

• Losing Net Neutrality: The Worst Case Scenario [Net Neutrality] – If you don’t understand the talk around “net neutrality”, this post will illustrate how the net will look like if we don’t have net neutrality.
• VCE-101 Thin Provisioning Part 1 – The Basics – Thin provisioning involves creating storage arrays without actually having as much storage as you think. Doing it right requires some awareness at the OS level.
• ScreenFlow 2.0: top Mac screen recording app gets even better – This is the tool I use for my podcasts and screencasts.
• Motorola DROID review – Engadget’s review of the highly awaited Android headset. Comes out with more cons than I’d have expected.
• Free Public Careers CVs – This is going to change the way geeks get hired.
• Announcing Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0 – Free turn-by-turn navigation for Android phones. Interesting because Google is basically competing against the iPhone on price now – rather than paying for turn-by-turn nav, you can get an Android phone and get that for free.
• Dunbar’s Number isn’t just a number, it’s the law – Humans can’t handle having more than 150 friends.
• Now Available: The Virtual Storage Console vSphere Plug-in – If you manage VMware and you have a NetApp SAN, this lets you get better insight into your virtual server storage from inside VMware tools.

The Junk Drawer

• Newspaper circulation chart over the last 20 years – What a cliff. Scroll down.
• I Got Nowhere To Go – Tom LaRock questions why people are starting up all kinds of new sites that do the same thing as ones that are already popular & successful.
• Best Buy drops the price on the Netflix-streaming, Blu-ray playing Insignia Blu-ray player – $100 for a Blu-ray player is one heck of a breakthrough price.
• Book Review: Twitter Wit – Tom LaRock reviews a book with tweets.
• The Power of Being Personal on Your Blog – Wanna know why you should be personal? Ask a blogger who’s already been wildly successful.
• Which Religion Should I Follow? – Flowchart to pick your Jeebus.
• Caffeine & Edibles : Baconnaise – Man, if only there was some way I could get both bacon and mayo on my sandwich faster….ah-ha!

These bookmarks are automatically imported from my bookmarks at Delicious.com. If you’d like to get up-to-the-minute updates on what I’m bookmarking, you can subscribe to my bookmark RSS feed.

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Upcoming free webcasts: SQL and SSDs: A Valentine's Day Love Story and Anatomy of the SQL Server Log File.

Brent Ozar

Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.

Website - Twitter - Facebook - More Posts