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Chris Hemedinger 0
The boss makes it to yet another list

I know it's difficult to keep track of all of the lists that feature Jim Goodnight. But I thought it was especially interesting when I saw him on someone's "bucket list". I'm not sure if the list in priority order. Dr. Goodnight falls just below Thomas Friedman, but ahead of

Chris Hemedinger 0
SAS Nerd alert!

Being a nerd, which is to say going too far and caring too much about a subject, is the best way to make friends I know. - Sarah Vowell I recently read A Short Illustrated History of the Nerd and it got me thinking: am I a SAS nerd? Consider:

Chris Hemedinger 0
My mother, the Computer

40 years ago, my mother was a Computer. No, she was not an ENIAC or UNIVAC or any such room-sized piece of hardware. (Although some of my friends might think that this explains a lot about my personality.) This is my mother we're talking about here! Instead, she assisted aerospace

Chris Hemedinger 0
He said we're popular!

In this article about next-generation BI, a Forrester analyst cites a few of SAS' strengths and mentions SAS Enterprise Guide specifically: If SAS needs to work on anything, he continues, it's in reducing its dependence on the SAS programming language, which is a requirement to use some advanced features. "With

Chris Hemedinger 0
Overheard in the SAS discussion forums

There are some interesting conversations going on in the SAS discussion forums. Don't be left out: go have your say, today! Prairie dogs are red-green colorblind. They can't tell the difference between ERRORs and WARNINGs in their SAS logs. But this SAS user can. Read: WARNINGS, NOTES...Why the heck did

Chris Hemedinger 0
Can't judge a book too quickly...

I read TammiKay's blog post too quickly, and thought for a moment that she was giving away copies of European Vacation, Darwin Awards, and Burning Down the House. It turns out that her blog is not as lowbrow as mine, and she's actually giving away valuable business-related books (the titles

Programming Tips
Chris Hemedinger 0
Mmm, dogfood

Here at SAS, we eat our own dogfood*. Actually, that's an understatement -- it's better to say that we feast on it. I've been using SAS 9.2 (released earlier this year) and SAS Enterprise Guide 4.2 (not yet released) for many months (years, actually) to accomplish several tasks, including to

Chris Hemedinger 0
Heimerdinger, get out of my ego-surfing!

Having an unusual name can be a blessing and a curse. Fortunately, the "curse" part is mostly behind me now because I'm not in high school ("Hem-Ding! Dinger! Heme-lemma-ding-dong!" ). To borrow from Tigger, the most wonderful thing about "Chris Hemedinger"s is that I'm the only one. (Ha! I'm sure

Chris Hemedinger 0
SAS Enterprise Guide - Vista-ready!

You've been asking for it, and now it's here. We have just released a revision to SAS Enterprise Guide 4.1 that supports Microsoft Vista. We released SAS Enterprise Guide 4.1 originally in March 2006. Microsoft Vista was on the horizon then, but was not available to the general public until

Chris Hemedinger 0
Scenes from SAS Global Forum 2008

Alan and Brendan (of Inside SAS Global Forum fame) weren't the only folks with a camera in San Antonio. Featured scenes include: out and about in San Antonio, the technical opening session, the demo room, the Inside SAS Global Forum crew, the kickback party, and student ambassador video blogging.

Chris Hemedinger 0
San Antonio is da bomb

Even though it's not a military site these days, apparently the Alamo still sees some action. A colleague and I noticed the helicopters hovering overhead during our lunch break yesterday. Advice to conference attendees: don't leave your pleather conference satchel unattended in a public place, lest the local authorities detonate

Advanced Analytics | Data Visualization
Angela Hall 0
Grabbing the Data Creation Date

The data table creation date is sometimes necessary, say in the footnote of your stored process. Included below is a sample to retrieve this date from the file system. /*Open the dataset*/ %let dsid=%sysfunc(open(sashelp.shoes)); data _null_; /*grab the CRDTE function*/ ddate=%sysfunc(attrn(&dsid;,CRDTE )); /*Format in DDMONYY*/ call symput('ddate', put(ddate, dtdate9.)); run;

Programming Tips
Chris Hemedinger 0
The road to San Antonio

It's only January, and SAS Global Forum 2008 isn't until March, but folks around here have already been preparing for months. For my part, I'm on the hook for two papers: one "invited" (submitted and accepted by the SAS Global Forum committee) and one as a "SAS Presents" (topics that

Chris Hemedinger 0
The boss makes the list

Information Week released its list of 15 Innovators & Influencers Who Will Make A Difference In 2008. From the article: Meet 15 people who will help shape the business technology world in the coming year. They're not the usual suspects -- the names everyone knows. Several are industry and tech