Talefolk™ - The Great Beast

"Why does the beast slumber so?"

"Legend has it that to be conscious and awake is searing pain for it.  The only relief it finds is in sleep."

"What is the cause of its anguish?"

"Some say the beast suffers agony for a great sin committed long ago.  Other say the beast cannot tolerate the chaos in the world.  It is possible that the beast just suffered a head wound in a past struggle."

"And we have to go wake it up..."

"The beast is not evil.  He will not hurt you if you do not threaten it.  That is why it is better to go in alone.  Too many people could be intimidating."

Talefolk™ - Wrinkle Reader

"You are not yet old," the old man said hoarsely, "but I can see the lines on your face."

"This is the line that taught you that if you did not finish something, it would still be there waiting for you later."

"This line is where you learned that no amount of effort can make life perfect."

"Here is where you learned that you were no better than a drunk on the street, and no worse than the richest nobleman."

"Ah, yes," he said satisfactorily. "It is faint but it is here.  The line that shows you are learning to forgive, and to be forgiven."

Talkfolk™ - Addictive Personalities

"It was then I realized that having an addictive personality was not necessarily a bad thing," she opined. "It's like a powerful current of water: if we can channel it we can accomplish things that 'normal' people only wish they could do.  All this time I thought there was something wrong with me, but not everyone has the ability to dive as deep as we can.  We just have to be really careful what we jump into (and be quick to pull out/seek help when we've jumped into something dark)!"

Talefolk™ - Happiness

"A lot of spiritual gurus will tell you that true happiness is found within and is not based on external cirsumstances," she said.  "But personally I think that a lot of our happiness is based on the choices made by those around us: our children, our neighbors, our bosses, our government leaders.  So it's pretty important to be doing all we can to influence and persuade those people to care, to be honest, and be socially responsible."

SQL Database Table Rowcounts

How to get the rowcount of all tables in a SQL Server 2000 database:

select distinct convert(varchar(30),object_name(a.id)) [Table Name], a.rows
from sysindexes a inner join sysobjects b on a.id = b.id

Thanks to:
venkattechnicalblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/list-out-all-tables-and-row-count-in.html

Talkfolk™ - The Mountain

When he finally arrived at the foot of the mountain, he found a large village of people.  They welcomed him warmly.  He discovered that most of them had come just as he had, after careful searching and long journeying.  When he spoke of his intention to climb the mountain, everyone understood and was encouraging.  Some even said they wanted to go along with him, but at the agreed upon hour they didn't show up.  As he got to know them better, some of them shared their experiences of trying to climb the mountain. Some laughed, and some cried, but there was always pain and regret behind it.