Years ago, the wife and I made an executive decision: we do not travel up north for the holidays. We hate the cold, which is one of the main reasons we moved to Florida in the first place. That, plus holiday travel up north is always absolute chaos. Packed airports, delayed flights, weather playing roulette with your plans. No thank you.

Instead, our tradition has become taking a short trip after the holidays are over, when the crowds thin out and everyone collectively exhales. This year, that meant a quick hop from Florida down to Turks and Caicos. Short flight, beautiful island, stunning water, and some of the nicest people you'll ever meet.

That said, it's always interesting how traveling reminds you of the little conveniences you take for granted at home.

For example, there is no Uber on the island. At all. If you want to go out to dinner, you call a taxi. With a phone. Like it's 1998. With Uber, you can see your car on a map, know it's six minutes away, finish paying the check, and casually stroll outside like a civilized modern human. With taxis, every driver hands you a business card and says, "Call me if you need another ride." So you do. And he's 30 minutes away because he's currently on the other side of the island giving someone else his business card. It was... an adjustment.

Also, no fast food chains. No McDonald's, no Burger King, none of that. Now, we don't eat fast food all the time, but on vacation sometimes you just want something quick and familiar. Apparently, on Turks and Caicos, you'll sit down, relax, and enjoy a proper meal whether you planned to or not.

Still, it was a great four day getaway. I hope the videos I queued up over the past week kept everyone busy.

Some of you may have noticed a brief hiccup on the site yesterday. The short version is this: the internet at my office went down. I do have a dual internet setup with Comcast Business and Quantum Fiber feeding into a dual router so that if one goes down, the other takes over. In theory, this is supposed to prevent outages. In practice, Quantum Fiber went down, part of the system switched correctly, and another part stubbornly stayed glued to the dead connection. Even a remote reboot didn't fix it because the issue lived at the router level. So now I've got to figure out how to remotely reboot that router when I'm on the road. I bought one of those remote power switch thingies. I just have to figure out how to configure it. These problems are extremely rare, but they always seem to show up on travel days. Funny how that works.

I'm glad to be back. I enjoy short vacations, but it's always nice coming home, especially when home is the Sunshine State. The wife and I were talking about this last night and realized that instead of flying to Caribbean islands, we could easily just pick a different town in Florida and never run out of beautiful places to visit. Beaches, small towns, weird roadside attractions, all of it.

The older I get, the more I'm starting to feel like a Hobbit. I enjoy adventures, but I really love being home.

This weekend, I'm planning to record more videos and finally start releasing some of that SQL Server content I've been talking about forever. And as always, if you've got requests, post them in the forums or drop them below.

Glad to be back.

LLAP
RR