John Paul Cook

CPU benchmarking and time for an upgrade

John Paul Cook — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 21:59:05 GMT

Is your SQL Server running slower than you’d like? Is it your SQL Server configuration or your slightly old hardware? We need to use tools to gather information. My subjective impression is that my 2.2 GHz laptop outperforms my 3.0 GHz overclocked desktop...(read more)

[OT] Best Christmas Gift Imaginable

John Paul Cook — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 22:10:12 GMT

One of my friends in declining health received the best possible Christmas present – a lung transplant! I am sad for the donor’s family who has Christmas without their loved one. I am thankful to all organ donors and their families for giving life and...(read more)

SQL Azure, the cloud, and Comcast

John Paul Cook — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 22:59:16 GMT

Microsoft upped the level of service for my SQL Azure account. I can think of things I’d like to do, but there isn’t any point with Comcast as my ISP. This is the problem with cloud based services – the ISP is the weak link. I can make a PowerPoint slide...(read more)

Making a poster with Microsoft Publisher

John Paul Cook — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 03:05:17 GMT

Sometimes we have no choice but to make a physical poster instead of using a video projector. Over the weekend, I used Microsoft Publisher to make a 48”x36” color poster. I have two tips for you. First, save your final, ready to print file as a pdf. The...(read more)

Superscripts, subscripts, special characters, and Unicode

John Paul Cook — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 02:51:24 GMT

Office applications and SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) handle superscripts and subscripts differently. Office apps such as Word allow you to assign font properties to make a character appear superscripted or subscripted. SSMS doesn’t support font...(read more)

Speaking at Houston TechFest on October 15.

John Paul Cook — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 23:55:02 GMT

I’m speaking at the free Houston TechFest on Saturday, October 15. If you haven’t registered yet, please do so ASAP. My topic is SQL Server Tips and Tricks. If you’re in Houston, check it out. There are many other topics and speakers so there should be...(read more)

Enabling custom spell checking in Word 2011 on a Mac

John Paul Cook — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 01:06:29 GMT

I previously posted how to add a medical dictionary to Word 2010. It’s a simple matter of copying a file and adding it to Word. Although the concept is the same with Word 2011 on a Mac operating system, implementation on a Mac requires some additional...(read more)

Spell checking in Excel

John Paul Cook — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 16:07:23 GMT

Many people have added a custom medical spell checker to Word after reading my blog post found here , which was updated and simplified earlier today. Some people have mistakenly thought that spell checking in Office applications doesn’t work in Excel....(read more)

Fixing PowerPoint 2010 on Windows 7 running on a MacBook

John Paul Cook — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 00:13:32 GMT

If you try typing anything in PowerPoint 2010 running on Windows 7 installed in Boot Camp, PowerPoint may abort. The first time I installed Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro, PowerPoint 2010 worked just fine. But the second time was a disaster. PowerPoint aborted...(read more)

Silently booting Windows 7 on a MacBook

John Paul Cook — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 14:51:23 GMT

After using Boot Camp to install Windows 7 on a MacBook Pro, it is annoying to hear an Apple chime every time the machine is booted. It is easy to remedy. Although the noise is made before booting into an operating system (either Apple’s or Microsoft’s),...(read more)

Searching PowerPoint files

John Paul Cook — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 16:40:26 GMT

PowerPoint’s find feature is limited because it works on only a single file at a time and I need to search groups of files. There is a simple, high value search capability available in Adobe Reader X that I’m using to search PowerPoint files. All I had...(read more)

Windows and Mac not playing nicely with zip files

John Paul Cook — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 22:38:28 GMT

I’m having a terrible time with a new Cisco E4200 router and WMP600N dual band wireless network adapter. Cisco directed me to download a zip file of driver files, but they created it on a Mac. Zip files created on a Mac can sometimes unzip on Windows...(read more)

Adding custom medical spell checking to Word

John Paul Cook — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 18:07:00 GMT

Adding custom spell checking to Word is easy. Office applications use lists of properly spelled words stored in simple Unicode text files will a file type of dic for dictionary. There is a legally free, GPL licensed medical list of words found at http://www.e-medtools.com/openmedspel.html...(read more)

Matte vs. glossy

John Paul Cook — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 01:08:00 GMT

Here's a great article explaining matte vs. glossy: http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-10041-10146&sr=hotnews . Scroll down toward the bottom of the page and look at the two photos. Do a mouseover to see what happens to a glossy...(read more)

SQL Kinect Management Studio

John Paul Cook — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 23:18:00 GMT

SKMS - yes, I made that up. But look here to see that Microsoft has released an SDK to connect Windows machines to Kinect. It's something I've been thinking about for months. I'd like to use Kinect to administer SQL Server. I understand that many people...(read more)