I have a talk this Thursday at the Denver SQL Server Users Group. I’ll be talking about Continuous Integration for databases, looking at ways you can automate database builds and perform some automated testing as you move forward in your development.
If you’re in Denver, come out and do some networking. I’m happy to do either talk, or even something else if people want.
I’m booking vacation. I know I recommend balance, and tell people to take vacation, and that I’m bad at it. My wife is right there with me. I’m not sure who’s worse, but we both struggle to make time away from work. It’s good and bad. We enjoy our careers, but we do need time away.
My boss told me a few months ago that I had 30 days on the books. I can carry 5 and sell 5, so I needed to take some time off this fall. I did manage to book 4 or 5 days, but I heard from her last week that I still needed to take at least 16 more.
So….
Today I went through the calendar, looked at commitments, and decided to take some time off. No full weeks, since my schedule makes that hard. Long periods away from work end up compressing my work into before/after days, which I don’t like. I also have DBW commitments that are hard to move since they impact others.
However I have a list of 17 days to take off in 1 and 2 day increments.
Yesterday I wrote a piece on the networking event that Andy Warren and I host on the Monday before the Summit conference each year. It’s a great event, and I hope more of you can come next year. Our event is really a microcosm of something amazing in the SQL Server community. I haven’t seen it in other technologies I’ve been a part of, and I’m proud that we, as a community, have done something amazing.
The hashtag on Twitter for many events is #sqlfamily. It seems as though the various community members, some speakers, some authors, some watchers, all treat this professional group as a family. We greet each other warmly, we hug, we help each other solve problems or find jobs. And we argue and disagree. We act like a family, a large group of people bonded together.
If you choose to join and participate, it seems that someone will be willing to help you, cheer you up, laugh with you, and be your friend. It’s an amazing group of people, and I have a question for you this Friday.
That’s my recommendation for networking and becoming more involved in the community. At your next user group, SQL Saturday, or other event, make an effort to talk to 3 people. Introduce yourself and ask them what they do with SQL Server. It’s that simple to network with people and you never know what will come of a new relationship. Most will be casual “hi, how are you” relationships and some will be “I don’t want to talk to them anymore”, but I bet you get a few closer relationships where you enjoy seeing and talking to the individual.
You might find a new good friend, a contact that you can call for help, or a colleague that calls to offer you a new job.
Steve Jones
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Probably the most often asked question on SSC is about full transaction logs, and often full disks. It happened again recently. I don’t have an exact count of threads, but rough searches show this to have 70,000+ results, when most other searches I run show many, many fewer results in the forums.
I talked about this recently in my backup talk on the SQL in the City tour stops. Back up your logs.
