“I don’t know why the customer had to leave that review on CitySearch,” said the owner of my favorite hair salon. “If she’d just come back and talked to me, I would’ve been more than happy to work things out.”

It’s easier than ever to go scorched-earth, isn’t it? Sometimes the proprietor is a jerk and deserves it. But whatever happened to telling a business owner what’s wrong to his or her face without the entire universe looking on? Wouldn’t you want someone to extend the same courtesy to you?

I went to a meeting last week at a company that monitors social media mentions. We learned something interesting – most large companies aren’t going to react to negative chatter until it reaches a certain critical mass. Their brand budgets are leviathan. They can afford to have 10 or 20 nasty Tweets swirling around.

Can your local, independent small business afford the same? They can probably give you more time and attention than the national chain. Why not take advantage of that and meet them face to face?

1. People I love

2. People I like

3. People who are influential public figures

4. People who I know and don’t dislike

5. People who I vaguely know (some online “buddies”, et al)

6. People who I don’t know at all

This goes from the top down in order of most likely to affect change in my behavior to least.

If you are my husband and you don’t like my hair, I will change it. If you are an anonymous person on Twitter and don’t like my hair, be prepared for me to make fun of you.

If you want to see change in a significant number of people, move from 6 to 3, at the very least (and the emphasis lies on influential, not just public. Influential people earn their cred through talent and hard work). 6 to 2 is way better.

Truth be told, you don’t really matter to me if you’re a 6. If you somehow positively attach yourself to my friends and loved ones? Then you might matter.

Nobody has an all-access pass to everyone.

1. Not a big fan of Mommy Culture. Can’t force myself to make cupcakes, read Cookie magazine.

2. I hate Disneyland with a passion. I can’t even pretend to like it for the sake of the children.

3. My name is Stacy. Not Taylor’s Mommy.

4. The freedom to sleep in until 10 on weekends. Which I do.

5. The freedom to quietly read for hours. Which I do.

6. I so cannot tolerate screaming. This should actually be reason #1.

7. We don’t really celebrate Christmas. I know, burn us at the stake right now. We’re heretics. We don’t march along the One True Path. No Norman Rockwell moments in our house.

8. My temper, his uh… never mind. My husband is perfect. Which is probably why my sister-in-law is perfect, as are her children. But hell, my temper. Bad problem. Bad.

9. Childbirth. Jesus Horatio Christ, no thank you.

10. I don’t want a kid to be as mopey as I am. We’d be the most emo household ever.

And one reason why I would want a child:

1. To inflict my values on the world. See #7. My kid would so be the wet blanket on your kids’ Santa-believin’ joy. Is that a chance you want to take, Next Generation?

Let’s say you use SQL Express to do your local development and then you want to upload the tables to a full-on SQL Server database.

Create the production table in SQL Server Management Studio

1. In Express, right-click on the table and choose Script Table As > CREATE to > New Query Editor Window
2. Copy the query.
3. Click New Query in SSMS
4. Paste the query
5. Make sure the USE statement at the top is using the correct schema
6. You now have a new table
7. Make sure the IsIdentity feature in your ID is set to No

Here’s how I transfer the data:

1. Right-click on your table and do Srcipt Table As > SELECT To > New Query Editor Window
2. Choose Query > Results To> Results to Text
3. Choose Query > Query Options > Results > Text and under Output Format choose Tab Delimited
4. Click the Execute button
5. Copy all the text and paste it into Notepad
6. Save the file as results.txt
7. Open results.txt in Microsoft Outlook (make sure All Files are selected for Files of Type)
8. Choose Delimited and Tab when it asks how you want to slice and dice the text file
9. Now you have a nice Excel sheet that can be imported into SSMS via your Import and Export Data whoopty. Make sure you clean it up (replace the word NULL with empty cells, for example)

Is there an easier way to do this? Leave a comment!