iceland is desolate, which makes it pristine and beautiful. in the first day, i have seen some amazing landscapes and geological structures from waterfalls to ancient lava fields. prior to the trip, we were informed that iceland is statistically 2 degrees warmer than nyc due to the gulf stream. i am so happy i packed a jacket. it is cold, say 40 – 50 degrees, but the wind, oh, the wind.

anyways, we drive a lot. we landed in keflavik, near reykjavik (i’m going to have to learn how to spell this word instead of looking it up each time). as soon as we did, we jumped in the rental car and drove.
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i have a rare opportunity to do whatever i want for a week. i left huron and i start deloitte in a week on december 15th. the plan is to be a tourist in nyc. i have lived here 3 years and i have yet to step into the NY main library branch at bryant park, check out a sample sale, ride the staten island ferry, visit the bronx, explore harlem, check out some of the other lesser known museums, and other odds and ends.
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last night at the casino, i turned the match coupons into a whopping 50 cents at the blackjack table. then i turned the 50 cents into 1.50 at the slot machines. even with the little extra winnings, i felt like luck was on our side. we were heading back to nyc the next day, Sunday, and it didn’t cost a pretty penny either! we have decided that Panama doesn’t like us. as we were making our way to the airport, the sun broke through the clouds. so, the only time we saw sun was when we were leaving.
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Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
“relax,” said the [panamanian],
We are programmed to receive.
You can checkout any time you like,
But you can never leave!
- Eagles: Hotel California
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another check off the list. today we embarked on an adventure through the panama canal to understand what happens when a ship passes through the locks. surprisingly there was quite a crowd on the boat. even a finnish guide was present to translate for the finnish people. the way i picked up on it is by hearing her say kiitos (thank you in finnish) when the panama canal pilot disembarked off our ship onto another ship in the middle of the rough ocean.
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yesterday was tough. lost the camera, the guidebook, and rain. the one promising hope was flying to bocas del toro where the weather report called for sun. well, that hope was crushed when the cab driver told us if we were going anywhere to not go to bocas del toro. it was flooded due to an overflowing river. now, i just had to laugh.
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i don’t think i could have planned this trip to happen at a better time.  right in the midst of resigning from Huron and joining deloitte, i travel to panama.  right when the shit hits the fan on one of my projects, i travel to panama.  the short layover in miami was spent on the phone and emailing colleagues who were in the trenches of the project trying to figure out what needed to be done.
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While working in SQL Server 2005 Studio, the studio will pause for a second or two.  The studio is being helpful by writing autosaving information.  Since the files are stored on the company’s network, this feature becomes super annoying when i’m working from home.  the second becomes a few very long seconds.  so i searched high and low for a way to turn it off.  it isn’t in the options; it’s in the registry.  Edit the following registry key and set the Value of the AutoRecovery to 0(zero) to turn it off.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Shell\General\AutoRecover

when i travel aboard, besides the language, culture, currency, history, etc, there are little things that are so different or you don’t see in america that make the feeling of being outside of the country more poignant and fun or funny depending on what it is.

in regard to my latest trip to finland, estonia, latvia, and lithuania, i maintained a list of little things that were different or things you never see in america. without a bunch more blah blah, here is the list.
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In SQL Server, if you try len(FieldName) to return the number of characters in a field and the field is a type of Text or nText, you get an error:

Argument data type text is invalid for argument 1 of len function

The answer to this is the Datalength() function which will return the length of any expression. This can be used on all data types including text, ntext, image and varbinary.

It returns the actual number of bytes in the field.