Things I did today

Today, I had the hankering for a danish and some pumpernickel bread. I found a German bakery , and since I haven't left farther than a 10 mile radius of my place, I decided to head to south Durham to grab something there. It had been a long time since I'd been on I-40 and I-440, and boy was it busy at 11am on a Saturday. I grabbed my order of a cheese danish, pumpernickel bread and some local pickles, and drove back to Raleigh to enjoy them. The danish was excellent! I've had plenty of danishes before with a drizzle of frosting and some smooshed layers over a thin to medium thin layer of filling. I would often eat the part of the danish without the filling first, because it was just squished and dense bread. This, though, this was lovely! Instead of lines of icing, it was almost like a lightly laquered sweet bread with airy, flaky layers. The cheese filling was thick and delicious! I would post a picture, but it disappeared too fast. I'll certainly head back there som

Oh man, if the oven hadn't beeped, I would have picked the right answer for the last question and therefore scored 100% on this test! The question wanted the Error State Number, and I, in a rush to get dinner out of the oven, picked Error Number instead of Error State! I guess that means I get another chance to earn 100%!

I was speaking with a friend who is currently going through the coaching program for Gallup's Strength Finder. She encouraged me to take it. However, I admit once I found out that it was $50, I looked for similar free tests instead. Apparently, the High5 is similar, and one site has it for free, along with a preliminary report but the full report is $30, so I'll stick with the preliminary report. Shockingly, these are my top 5 strengths: Analyst Deliverer Time Keeper Thinker Strategist A bit about each one: Analyst Analysts are energized by getting to look for simplicity and clarity through a large amount of data. Analyst are frustrated when someone asks them to follow their heart rather than logic and proven facts. Deliverer Deliverers follow through on their commitments and they enjoy seeing how it builds more trust and respect among others. They feel horrible if promises get broken - both on the receiving and on the giving side. Time Keeper Nothing exci

Well, at least I am consistent! And, apparently, I get tired when it's late and I don't ever use INTERSECT or EXCEPT I miss those questions as if I'm looking for hidden meanings, then just give up and move on. Today I made bean soup, mostly because I was bored and wanted to use my Instant Pot and had a lot of dried beans. I froze three containers and tossed the last one in the fridge to eat from for the next few days. It made for a tasty dinner!

I felt good about my chances for this one. I knew I at least passed, but it'll be interesting to see if I got 100%. Let me just review the one question I was waffling back and forth on, between RANK and DENSE RANK - I never remember which one is 122255 and 122233. I think the second one is the dense version. Ok, that's what I picked. Now I'll head back to the Question List and Score the Test! Uh oh. The application is throwing an error every second or so, and I can't select them fast enough to get back to the Score Test button. I considered trying to diagnose, but was concerned that I'd run out of memory while it continued to create more error messages. Maybe if I close the application, and reenter. Ooh, no, it isn't even letting me close the application. Heck I can't even see what it's called in the Task Manager to kill it! I guess I'll have to restart my computer. Ok, back to the application. What did it save for my last attempt? Oh

My first Certification Style test! Forty-four questions in 120 minutes. Clearly I didn't need 120 minutes. I didn't even need 20 minutes, but there were several questions where I knew I missed it last time and couldn't recall if I selected A but should have done B, or the other way around. Ah well, I'll just try again tomorrow. There was only one question where I didn't know what the answer was at all because I hadn't read the XML chapter yet, and the question asked about what query options were used to support XML docs. The other three I should have known, but clearly wasn't thinking. At least I didn't do the "Forgot to select multiple answers on the "choose multiple" questions" this time!

Another pass! I still missed a few, though. The exhibit had Modified Date in the Before picture as normal datetime, and the After was a date... but not in the format that the Date type would expect, and by using CAST instead of CONVERT, it doesn't allow for an optional style. I forgot what PARSE does, so I picked CONVERT. PARSE is for converting datetime or datetime2 datatypes between cultural formats. Oh, I was irritated at this one! I hadn't learned when the results set gets sent from the cursor, and I peeked in the book, which unhelpfully said "To deallocate a cursor, use DEALLOCATE. When closing a cursor, use CLOSE." Thanks, book. That really clears it up. I went back and forth between the two, and clearly picked the wrong one. Oh well! Maybe tomorrow I'll do even better.