Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Hardware Ups and Downs

    I replaced the SSD in my desktop the other day and was pleased to not have a red bar when I booted it up and looked in Explorer. I went from a 128GB SSD (with 2GB free) to a 256GB SSD for about $130. Not a bad price, and since I have 2TB on other drives that are less than half full, this was a nice upgrade.

    However.

    The front fan was rubbing something when it ran, ticking just loudly enough to be annoying. I knew this would be an issue, so I shut down the desktop last night as I walked out the door to take my daughter to volleyball practice. This morning the machine wouldn’t boot.

    Nada. Nothing. Press the power and nothing happens. This occurred a few weeks ago when I shut down after some install instead of a warm boot. I waited, fiddled with the power cable, and things restarted. This time I see a blue LED on the back that shows there is power to the case, but nothing boots.

    Events like this are very frustrating to me. As much as I appreciate cool hardware, most of the time I’m working on something else and I just want the machine to work.

    At this point I’m unsure of whether I have a motherboard failing, a short somewhere, a bad power supply or something else. It’s very strange and I don’t have the time, or energy, to debug it today. Likely I’ve got a dead desktop for a week right now. This is a first world problem, and more annoying than anything as I can work on my laptop. It’s just less efficient for me since I get a lot done with three large monitors.

    At least I managed to get another machine working. As a birthday present for my wife, I ordered 8GB of RAM and a 500GB SSD for her Toshiba laptop. She had 4GB and a slow, 5400rpm HDD that caused her laptop to really drag. It’s an i3, and I could hear her cursing it regularly. For $270, I replaced both and now it runs much quicker for her.

    It wasn’t completely smooth. The memory went right in, but the attempts to reboot the machine from a CD that contained the Acronis software failed. Toshiba has made the BIOS difficult to get to, and very frustrating. Fortunately I used the same software I’d used with my own laptop SSD replacement and that worked well.

    All in all, a mixed day and likely I’ll be playing with hardware when I return from my trip next week. Hopefully I’ll get some idea of what to do and perhaps what to order, before I leave.

  • Too Large a Workload?

    I often hear the technical staff in many organizations complaining about the amount of work they are tasked with managing. Plenty of technology professionals view their jobs are stressful, and I’ve had no shortage of people say they would never recommend their job, or even this industry, to others as a career choice.

    That’s unsurprising to me, which is a little sad. I’ve felt that we face a dilemma in this industry. Our skills are easy to acquire, with any of us able to learn new skills and gaining knowledge as quickly as we are able. Often, our ability to learn is limited only by the time and effort we put into understanding a skill, not any external factor.

    However that also means that our employers seem to expect that we can learn without training, quickly, on our own, and that we can instantly be experts that make computer systems do our bidding. When we can’t respond quickly enough, or as quickly as we did for the last request, our managers feel that we’re just being lazy this week.

    Perhaps we do respond quickly, and get tasked with even more work. This might not be the case for most of you, or even many of you. I’m sure plenty of you are in situations where your managers understand the complexity of your jobs, but I wanted to ask about your situation:

    Do you have too large a workload at your current job?

    By this I mean, do you feel you’re not able to get enough work done in a reasonable work week and you feel pressure to work longer hours. Are your managers asking you to do more than you think they should? Or do they appreciate that, like many endeavors, working with technology takes time.

    Certainly I think many of us could work more efficiently by automating tasks, but depending on the variety and complexity of tasks, as well as the amount of time you can invest in completing future work quicker, you might be stuck in situations that just require more hours. If that’s the case, I hope your workload isn’t too large, but let us know.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.3MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.

  • I May Not Shake Your Hands

    I’m traveling next week to the SQL Konferenz in Germany, and then on to Red Gate in the UK.

    However, I may pull a Wil Wheaton at the event and the office and not shake hands. I haven’t had issues with this in the past, with lots of handshakes, hugs, and even a few cheek kisses at times. This time, though it’s me, not you.

    I’ve been fighting a virus of some sort for a little over a week. I don’t have bad symptoms, mostly annoying chest tightness, sore throat, and a slightly runny nose. My son has bronchitis, but I don’t have a lot of his symptoms, and I don’t think antibiotics will help. No fever, so I think I have to wait things out.

    I may be miserable, but certainly not sick enough to cancel anything. I’ll be loading up on medicines to mask symptoms and ease travel, but I may not engage a lot with some of you.

    I also may limit questions, but I’ll bring a pad and if I can’t answer in person, I’ll be sure to blog or post answers later. My typing isn’t affected, so you’ll likely get a better answer anyway.

  • Changing File Associations in Windows 8

    A quick post, and a good reminder of something that can be a pain. I had to do a quick search for the solution, and wanted to write about it in the hopes it will help me remember the issue.

    Opening the wrong program

    I was working with some XML files. I had a list of them and double clicked one.

    associate_a

    When I did, I got this:

    associate_b\

    Not a big deal, but slow, and what’s more, I then got to close this:

    associate_c

    I love Plan Explorer and it’s a great tool, but not for XML files containing data unrelated to execution plans. However, I do need to update my version, which will happen shortly.

    What I really want to have happen is the XML file to open in notepad. I could right click it, and I have been, but about one out of every three times I go back to look at a file, I double click it out of habit.

    The solution

    I need to change the file extension association. I ran a quick search and used the link referenced at the bottom. That led me to the Control Panel. I knew it was in there somewhere, but rather than hunt around, I googled.

    associate_d

    I’ve scrolled down to the spot under Programs | Default Programs | Set Associations. I picked .xml and then to the right I clicked "change program". I chose notepad, and the next time I double clicked the file, I got it open quickly and easily.

    associate_e

     

    Ref

    Windows 8 Tip: Change File Associations –http://winsupersite.com/article/windows8/windows-8-tip-change-file-associations-144102