Equifax and Credit Freeze tips

You probably heard Equifax was breached -more info here: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/09/the-equifax-breach-what-you-should-know/

Go here and enroll: https://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com/enroll/

Once you’ve enrolled (and Equifax has confirmed you’ve enrolled), follow the instructions here to put a freeze with all 4 credit bureaus:

Equifax, Experian, Innovis and Trans Union

You also should probably put a freeze on your child’s credit while you’re at it.

American Panorama

An outstanding series of historical data visualizations and maps over here:

American Panorama is an historical atlas of the United States for the twenty-first century. It combines cutting-edge research with innovative interactive mapping techniques, designed to appeal to anyone with an interest in American history or a love of maps.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is awesome

At the tableau conference – he walked on stage and started talking but there was no sound then he said “just kidding! I was just messing with the sound guy” – such a great speaker and presentation. A part of the slideshow included this amazing video:

Which brought to my mind the movie Pitch Black, in which everywhere light is shined, there are things waiting to destroy you. I’m pretty sure our crippled space program will result in all of our deaths. Well, all of us except Vin Diesel.

Representative of my own spending

Explore more visuals like this one on the web’s largest information design community – Visually.

Migrating SQL Server 2012 to Amazon RDS

I just want to quickly reiterate what this comment suggested for how to quickly and easily migrate a SQL 2012 database to AWS. Of course I had tried to use the built-in Export wizard in Management Studio, however 2012 conveniently leaves out options for exporting constraints and the like, and restoring from a disk backup isn’t possible with Amazon RDS. But this little tool from CodePlex is exactly what I’ve been looking for. It migrated the entire database in a couple of minutes, scripting all the SQL and bcp commands, then executing without a hitch. Note: it’s built for SQL Azure migrations, but you can just enter your Amazon RDS endpoint in the server box, and it still works.