I stopped being grumpy ... for 15 mins

Needless to say this is not SQL related in any way - but I did stop being grumpy for 15 mins recently!

The cause of this miraculous event was a RaceMaster experience at Brands Hatch.

Now, my son and I like watching motor racing.  As well as watching it on TV, we've been to Rockingham and Brands Hatch several times to watch a variety of types of cars (although nearly always including a mini) going round and round for hours, without a care in the world.
Last weekend we quite happily stood in the rain at Druid's hairpin watching classic F1 cars from the 70's come slithering past while deafening us with engine roar.

This time was different though - this time, I got to drive.  And I'm not talking drive your own car round the track a few times, then go home.
This was 10 laps in a 420bhp BMW M3 with an instructor in the passenger seat giving you advice on cornering and track positioning, before getting to go out in a single seater for another 10 or so laps.

Add to this another 13 drivers on the track, rain, a manual gear box with a right hand shift stick (just to make it even more tricky!), a full complement of track marshalls with relevant flags to wave, a safety car with flashing lights that came out when one guy span off (my son was quite excited to see the safety car race past - then disappointed when I flashed past 20 seconds later as he realised it wasn't me who had crashed!) - and it was an incredible 15 minutes!

Next stop, Monaco!

I have to say - if you have the opportunity, I would highly recommend it - check out their latest packages here: http://www.msvdrivinggifts.com/. I'll definitely be doing it again - maybe see you there!

By the way, that was last week - don't worry, I'm grumpy again now.

Assign shortcut key to "change connection" in SQL MMS

Fed up having to click the "Change Connection Icon" every time you want to change your connection in management studio, and wish there was a shortcut key you could press?  Then worry no more (and try get out more often)!

SQL 2008 Management Tools install fails claiming Express Tools already installed

Quite a few users have had problems installing the SQL 2008 management tools - with an error message saying:

The SQL Server 2005 Express Tools are installed.  To continue, remove the SQL Server 2005 Express Tools.

After lots of playing around, uninstalling/reinstalling, it seems the issue is related to Red Gate tools, such as SQL Prompt and SQL Compare.

First try and uninstall any Red Gate tools you have installed and see if that fixes the issue.

If it still fails after uninstalling them, you may have to search the registry for any orphaned keys relating to the Red Gate tools

It looks like these Red Gate keys go under SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\ShellSEM - so if you still have these keys after uninstalling SQL Prompt, manually deleting these should fix the problem.