Skip to content





Author Archives Cary Millsap

Performance as a Service

I’ve mentioned already that, for the second time in ten years, I’m starting a business. It’s a lot easier nowadays than it was back in 1999. I know; it’s supposed to be easier the second time you do something, but what I mean is different from that. It…

Posted 07 July 2008 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

Multitasking: Productivity Killer

A couple of years ago, I read Joel Spolsky’s article “Human Task Switches Considered Harmful,” and it resonated mightily. The key take-away from that article is this: Never let people work on more than one thing at once. Amen. The nice thing about Joel…

Posted 01 July 2008 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

Why Guess? When You Can Know

The comment from plαdys on my post about flash drives and databases is a great entry into exactly the right conversation to be having. He wrote:What about Data Warehouse type databases? Lots of full table scans, less use of cache (not sure if that’s t…

Posted 09 June 2008 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

Flash Drives and Databases

I learned today about “Sun to embed flash storage in nearly all its servers.” This is supposed to be good news for database professionals all over because, flash storage “…consumes one-fifth the power and is a hundred times faster [than rotating disk…

Posted 04 June 2008 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

The Magic of VMs

Something that Faan said in a comment to one of my posts stimulated a memory I’d like to share. In that post, I mentioned that I’d kind of interested in trying Microsoft Outlook 2007, but I’m too chicken to do it, because I don’t have enough faith tha…

Posted 04 June 2008 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

Syncing…, Part 2

I’ve learned a lot about syncing my iPhone from the comments I received on my prior post about syncing. Here’s a summary:Plaxo is cool, but it just doesn’t do what I need. It doesn’t put appointments into my iPhone stand-alone Calendar application. ……

Posted 04 June 2008 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

Syncing iCal feeds with my iPhone: Not

Here’s something I need to do, but I don’t know how: sync an iCal feed with the calendar application on my iPhone, without a Mac, and without upgrading Outlook 2003 to Outlook 2007. Here’s the whole story.First, I travel. Sometimes, a lot. And I have …

Posted 27 May 2008 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

Karen Morton

Today I’ve added Karen Morton’s blog to my Blog list. I met her a few years back at a course I helped teach in Tennessee. She generously describes that the course changed her life, and she has since changed mine.Recently, Karen helped me found Method R…

Posted 22 May 2008 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

May 28 seminar, Minneapolis

Today I’m making preparations for another public event: this one is a one-day Performance Seminar I’ll conduct in the Minneapolis area for Speak-Tech on May 28. In the morning, I’ll do a “Why you can’t see your real performance problems” session, and i…

Posted 16 May 2008 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

Dilbert on “Measure Twice, Cut Once”

Speaking of “measure once, cut twice,” here is a good Dilbert strip to get you in the mood:

Posted 15 May 2008 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °