When Alison Bolen asked if I would consider hosting my own blog, as a "spin-off" from her informative sascom voices blog, I didn't hesitate. Spin-offs have a rich heritage in our media culture, and I am superpleased to be a Mork and Mindy to her Happy Days. (I would rather not be known as a CSI: Miami to her CSI -- that David Caruso guy annoys the begonias out of me -- shazbot! Did I just lose a few readers with that comment?)

I decided on “SAS dummy” as a title for a couple of reasons:

• An obvious play on the name of the book, SAS for Dummies, which I co-authored with Stephen McDaniel.
• Even though I’m a “SAS insider”, having worked at SAS for about 14 years, I’m still a relative newcomer when compared to many of our long-time customers. There is a lot that I still don’t know, and I learn something new every day.

This is the part of the first-blog-post where I tell you what you can expect from me in this space, how often I’ll post entries, and so on. But I’m not going to fall into that trap – the truth is, I can’t really predict what you’ll see here. If you want to get a feel for the sort of content that interests me, you can review my previous posts in the sascom voices blog.