While Kimberly was selecting underwater photos for our new website, she came across this one from our dive trip to the remote NE of Indonesia in January 2012. After several people tried to do an underwater hand-stand, I gave one of our buddies my camera and showed them how it’s done in the middle of [...]
Paul S. Randal
In Recovery...
Time to take a stand
Posted on: March 30, 2013 12:59 pm
Photos from the Mojave Desert
Posted on: April 20, 2012 7:18 am
(Sitting in the back of the class while Kimberly's teaching and I'm cranking through my massive backlog of blog posts.) Inside a lave tube with light streaming through ceiling holes and through the dust. After SQL Connections at the start of April in Las Vegas we drove across to San Diego for a friend's birthday [...]
Underwater photos from Indonesia – nudibranchs
Posted on: February 6, 2012 3:37 pm
(A pair of Much-Desired Flabellinas mating.) We spent most of January in Indonesia and as part of the trip we spent 11 days on the fabulous Paradise Dancer live-aboard dive boat diving in the most bio-diverse waters in the world. The reefs were really healthy and there was an overwhelming abundance of life under the [...]
Photos from first part of Indonesia trip
Posted on: January 8, 2012 5:28 pm
We decided to escape the wintery weather in Seattle this year by coming to Indonesia for January (our third trip here), including a long dive trip in the remote Raja Ampat region near Papua. Before heading out there we spent a few days in Bali and yesterday we hooked up with our good friend [...]
Photos from Belize dive trip
Posted on: December 13, 2011 4:45 pm
(2-foot wide Octopus during a night dive off Turneffe Caye, Belize) Kimberly and I headed to Belize in November for our first dive trip in well over a year (we're not letting that happen again!) and spent a week on the Belize Aggressor III liveaboard dive boat. Doing liveaboards is the only way to dive [...]
Photos: Illinois Railway Museum
Posted on: August 11, 2011 5:03 pm
Back in May when we were out in Chicago teaching one of our classes we had a spare day so we drove an hour west into the Illinois countryside to the absolutely excellent Illinois Railway Museum. I've always been a big train fan, stemming from the days back in the early '80s when I [...]
Photos: Japanese Garden at Seattle Arboretum
Posted on: July 18, 2011 1:25 pm
Earlier today I took my Mum and Dad to walk around the beautiful Japanese Garden at the Washington Park Arboretum (part of the University of Washington Botanic Gardens) and I took along my camera to play around with leaves and light. Below are a selection of photos, all taken with a Canon 5D Mark II plus a Canon [...]
Photos of the USS Silversides WWII submarine
Posted on: May 30, 2011 11:23 am
I think this is a fitting blog post for Memorial Day here in the US. Last weekend we had some spare time in Michigan between client visits in Grand Rapids and Houston so we drove over to Muskegon on the east shore of Lake Michigan and visited the Great Lakes Naval Memorial and Museum. It's [...]
Photos from Munich trip in April
Posted on: May 10, 2011 2:39 pm
Back in April Kimberly and I flew to Munich to present a 2.5 day SQL Server track at the 2011 Microsoft-internal conference for the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) Premier Field Engineers. We had a great time presenting and after recovering from nasty colds we went wandering about in Munich city center the day before we flew [...]
Bald eagles in Alaska (4th and final part)
Posted on: November 26, 2010 9:36 am
This is the last (and longest) post of my bald eagle shots from last week in Haines, Alaska. I'm calling this one "the many faces of bald eagles". When you spend a lot of time watching them close up, you realize just how varied their expressions can be and there's a temptation to anthropomorphize them. [...]
Bald eagles in Alaska (part 3)
Posted on: November 24, 2010 2:56 pm
Two more blog posts to go – this one has my favorite flight shots from the week. All photos were taken in RAW at 5184×3456 with my Canon 7D, additional details given with each photo. The photos shown here are as taken, no zooming or cropping, with slight black/white setting in Lightroom. Click on all [...]
Bald eagles in Alaska (part 2)
Posted on: November 18, 2010 10:17 pm
Today we got really up-close-and-personal with the bald eagles up here in Haines, AK. It was a toasty 22F out on the river delta but the light was stunning, coming directly from behind us over the mountains, but without being too glaring. Click on all photos for 1024×768 enlargements. This was taken with my [...]
Bald eagles in Alaska (part 1)
Posted on: November 17, 2010 4:58 pm
This week Kimberly and I are in Haines, AK honing our photography skills using the numerous bald eagles as subjects. We're up here with photo-pro and friend Jon Cornforth, getting excellent advice. This week we've been taking the best photos of our lives thanks to Jon's tips and tricks! A bunch of you at [...]
Summer travels part 1: Alaska (Denali, Seward, Homer)
Posted on: October 1, 2010 6:27 am
It's been six weeks or so since I posted anything technical here – my summer vacation from being online, and your summer vacation from having to digest my ramblings! It's also been a loooong time since I wrote a detailed Where In The World Are Paul and Kimberly tagged blog post, usually deferring to Facebook [...]
Offline for four weeks…
Posted on: August 12, 2010 10:23 am
Hey folks, Just a quick note to let you know that Kimberly and I will be offline from this weekend for four weeks. We're going on vacation – taking the kids up to Alaska to explore for two weeks and then Kimberly and I are taking an ex-Russian ice-breaker with Heritage Expeditions over to the [...]
Cool underwater videos of diving in the Cayman Islands – wrecks, octopus, turtles and more!
Posted on: June 6, 2010 11:27 am
A couple of weeks ago, Kimberly and I spent a week on the *excellent* live-aboard dive boat Cayman Aggressor IV, diving off Grand Cayman, Little Cayman, and Cayman Brac in the Caribbean (diving is our #1 hobby and passion). The diving was absolutely fabulous, and we’d both strongly recommend the boat and location. The crew [...]
Video of didgeridoo player at Ayers Rock
Posted on: October 29, 2009 2:34 pm
For the last few weeks we were in Australia, teaching classes with our sister company SQLskills.com.au. After we were done with work we headed out to Uluru (formerly known as Ayers Rock) in the remote outback of the Northern Territories for a long weekend. We'll both be posting a bunch of photos from the trip, [...]
Photos from Warsaw trip in September
Posted on: October 15, 2009 1:27 pm
I've finally gotten around to tidying up and posting a bunch of photos from the second half of our trip to Europe trip in September. Warsaw's an excellent place (although we were repeatedly told that Krakow is better – we'll see when we go next time) with a lot of cool history to soak up. [...]
Penguins, cockatoos, and other sights in Melbourne
Posted on: October 14, 2009 5:59 am
Fall really is crazy travel season for us – a week after returning from our trip to Ireland and Poland and now we're in Australia for a few weeks. This evening we went for a bird-watching walk around Albert Park with our good friend, partner, and fellow MVP Greg Linwood, who's our host while we're [...]
Photos: Dublin 2009
Posted on: October 8, 2009 12:27 pm
On the last day of our week in Dublin we headed into the city centre to check out some of the sights. One of the things I always like to do in a city is find a cathedral as that's usually one of the oldest buildings and encompasses a lot of interesting history. Dublin has [...]
Birds, beasts, sunsets, and scenery on the Olympic Pensinsula
Posted on: September 15, 2009 2:10 pm
At the start of September we took a trip out to Kalaloch and Cape Flattery. I've been there quite a few times but it was the first time for Kimberly. As usual we took loads of photos and I've put three albums up on Facebook. Here's a small selection from each album. Birds and beasts [...]
Birds, beasts, and boats in rural Texas
Posted on: August 24, 2009 4:50 pm
This week we're back down in Houston with a client and had a spare day so we decided to do the loop from Houston down to the Bolivar Peninsula and around through Galveston. You can see some photos from our previous trip here a couple of months ago in the post Bird watching on the [...]
Cleveland river tour
Posted on: August 9, 2009 5:11 pm
This week we're in Cleveland teaching on-site for a private client. We came a day early to recover from the journey and see some of Cleveland's sights – neither of us having been here before. Kimberly's foot is still very sore and so we decided to do something where she could sit still and not [...]
Photos: Lavender farms and coastal scenery around Sequim, WA
Posted on: July 25, 2009 11:33 am
It's been a while since I did a Where In The World Are Paul and Kimberly blog post, so here's one from a trip we did at home yesterday. We took the Bainbridge Island ferry across Puget Sound and toured the area around Sequim, WA to see the lavender farms and coastal scenery. Here's an [...]
Dragonflies and other creatures
Posted on: June 24, 2009 4:11 pm
This afternoon we headed down to Lake Storey in Galesburg, IL to chill out and get some sun. While the kid's were splashing about in the lake and Kimberly was soaking up rays, I went on an hour long nature ramble along the lakeside. I saw lots of cool stuff – herons, turtles, frogs, dragonflies, [...]
Bird watching on the Gulf Coast of Texas
Posted on: June 14, 2009 11:00 am
On Friday we had a planned spare day in Houston after spending the week onsite with a client. It was the 3-year anniversary of our meeting for the first time at TechEd US 2006 so we decided to go on a road trip! We headed down to the Gulf Coast and along the Bolivar Pensinsula, [...]
Photos: awesome statues in the Bangkok Imperial Palace
Posted on: May 1, 2009 8:43 am
In one of our visits to Bangkok this year, we toured the Imperial Palace. I uploaded a bunch of photos to Facebook of statues that caught my eye. Check them out at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2023831&id=1293146061&l=e17b5abc80. Here's an example for you.
Early morning bird-watching in India
Posted on: April 23, 2009 7:32 am
In this trip to India (teaching for MS again) we're in and out, with no time for sight-seeing, but there's always time for bird-watching! I got up early this morning and got some photos of some excellent birds. I've included a couple here, and the rest you can check out in the album on Facebook [...]
Photos: amazing wall paintings from the Imperial Palace in Bangkok
Posted on: March 27, 2009 10:25 am
In February this year we stopped off in Bangkok on the way to and from teaching in Hyderabad. On one of the days we did some sight-seeing, including the Imperial Palace in Bangkok. I took a bunch of photos of the wall paintings in the outer courtyard and I've posted an album up on Facebook (easier than a big, [...]
Photos from India
Posted on: March 4, 2009 1:56 pm
In January I finally got to visit India for the first time. I've always wanted to go as my great-grandfather was in charge (I believe) of the British Royal Artillery armoury at Dum Dum, West Bengal (where the dum-dum bullet was invented) at the end of 19th century. This was Kimberly's 4th trip, but the first that [...]
Diving in the Caribbean
Posted on: February 16, 2009 11:00 am
The first of the long-promised photo posts (with lots of Wikipedia links) – click on photos for larger versions. Over the holidays Kimberly and I went to St. Lucia in the Caribbean for a well-earned and highly-anticipated break – sun, relaxation, and scuba diving for a few weeks. St. Lucia is almost at the far [...]
Vienna: churches and horses
Posted on: November 4, 2008 10:02 pm
As you'll have read last week, we were in Vienna all week teaching. This was Kimberly's first visit to the city (and country), I was in Vienna for a couple of weeks back in the late 1990s. We both had a lot of work to do over the weekend before heading to Barcelona for TechEd EMEA [...]
Photos and stories from our Scotland trip
Posted on: October 4, 2008 12:54 am
I finally got to take Kimberly to Scotland in September and show her some of the country where I was brought up. After spending 10 days teaching in England, Dublin, and Edinburgh, we had another 10 days left of vacation. After spending a day sight-seeing in Edinburgh we headed over to my home town of [...]
When Moray Eels get a little close for comfort…
Posted on: August 11, 2008 8:59 pm
While we were on vacation at the start of July we spent a week on the live-aboard Kona Aggressor II catching up on some scuba-diving. Two of the night-dives were to a site where Manta Rays congregate (up to 16 of them at a time) and feed off plankton attracted to dive lights. The basic [...]
The Euclidian Geometry of Eggs
Posted on: June 26, 2008 10:14 pm
One problem (the only one!) of going on vacation with Kimberly is that can be hard to banish SQL Server completely from conversation. Over breakfast this morning we were discussing the pros and cons of advising someone to use sp_attach_single_file_db as a way to shrink an out-of-control transaction log – with careful guidance it can be [...]
Backups, trains, birds, and painfully contrived movie plots
Posted on: May 30, 2008 12:34 am
Totally off-topic blog post this time. I haven’t blogged in a week as we’ve been in Chicago and Illinois for the memorial for Kimberly’s Father (see here). Everything went really well at the memorial and then the ashes scattering in Lake Michigan – perfect sailing weather! The only fly in the ointment came back to [...]
Chilling out in the Land of Fire and Ice
Posted on: March 30, 2008 12:05 pm
Hot on the heels of a frenzied few weeks of teaching for Microsoft and we’re off again – this time to Iceland! I’ve been wanting to come here for as long as I can remember but Kimberly’s already been here 3 times before. We’re teaching some seminars in conjunction with Miracle Iceland next week but [...]
Personal: Final day in Beijing sightseeing (lots of photos)
Posted on: February 3, 2008 4:50 am
Now we’re back at home and working very strange hours as we deal with jet-lag. The flight back from Beijing to Vancouver was a great flight but with weird seats in business class – individual pods instead of actual seats. Nice to be able do lie down flat but not very wide – not the [...]
Personal: And on to Beijing and the Great Wall…
Posted on: January 27, 2008 9:36 am
Start of the second week in China. We flew up from Shanghai to Beijing yesterday, and just in time it seems. As we flew out of Shanghai it was being enveloped in a snowstorm. Beijing’s much colder than Shanghai though – being further north and inland quite a way compared to Shanghai. As I said [...]
Personal: First trip of the year – China!
Posted on: January 21, 2008 9:23 am
Nothing technical in this blog post for a change, just some info about the first trip of the year for us. We’re in China for two weeks, teaching classes at the Microsoft campuses in Shanghai and Beijing. We flew in Sunday afternoon on a direct flight from Vancouver, Canada which was just wonderful. When I [...]
