Welcome to stevienova.com. Since 2004, I have enjoyed blogging about programming, business intelligence, SharePoint, Microsoft, Google, Apple and everything to do with technology. Thoughts on life, the world or my new favorite brew, may also be shared. I currently work at Trek Bicycle Corporation, managing both the BI team and .NET software dev groups. The opinions on this blog are solely my own.
I live in Sun Prairie, WI with my girlfriend and our 2 year old daughter. Besides my love for family and technology, I am passionate about music. I play the piano, guitar and I also sing. Everyday I learn something new, and I hope to share it with you.
The other day, someone requested that a report in SSRS be sorted differently by default. While that might make sense if everyone wants it that way, more than likely you might have people that want a report sorted differently by default. How to do it? There are probably a few ways, but this is what…
With the release of SQL Server 2012, I am looking more into Master Data Services (MDS) and Data Quality Services (DQS). A brief overview of DQS. You install DQS with SQL, and you have to configure it. The server configuration is a cmd line process that runs to create some databases on your server (DQS_MAIN,…
First, I want to give an update on what’s up recently. First off, work is busy as ever. SQL 2012 RTM’d, so that is cool on the Business Intelligence side, and on the Dev side, working on moving a desktop app to the cloud, Azure specifically. Many things going on, as well as keeping on…
I have been using Windows 8 for a while now, here and there, the developer preview, on the tablet I got at build. Pretty cool, rough around the edges. I was really waiting for the next iteration. Last week the Windows 8 Consumer Preview was released. My computer at work was getting “crufty” so I…
I have blogged before about we use Yammer. Some interesting data can be gleaned from the usage of Yammer. One thing though is that the data and usage stats are limited in the Yammer area, but you can get all the data and take a look at things. I ran into Yamanalysis and decided to…
I am pretty into tech and gadgets, all kinds, mobile too. I have an iPhone (I’ve had all since 2G), Android (had a few, Dell Streak, Atrix 4g, now a Samsung Galaxy 4G), and Windows Phone (Samsung Focus WP7). People ask me about the differences between apps and devices and OS’s. Big thing with WP7…
In the past couple of months, weeks, whatever (time flies) I have been doing some pretty cool things on the computer, in a wide range of areas. Just want to get them down on paper (you know what I mean)… 1. Yammer – working hard on growing Yammer community, external networks, just getting engagement and…
Emergency Broadcast: Last week, I stumbled across a “legacy” system. Small system, few tables, few stored procs, few web pages that let users manage it. The main table had about 40k rows in it, nothing huge. This system gets used sparingly. Reports of the main page of the system taking 5+ minutes to load, or…
With the recent hack on Zappos.com where usernames and “cryptographically encoded” (not encrypted?) passwords were taken, it’s time to take warning. Other sites have gotten hacked in the past years as well, and there are ones you don’t even know about. It is kind of scary. I, like many have been guilty of using same…
This last week I have been using Waze on my iPhone. What is Waze? Well, it is a free “social” GPS turn by turn app. Since iOS doesn’t have built in turn by turn, it is left up to the market to fill the gap. There are the big players out there TomTom, etc but…