Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Thinking Time

    My Thinking Time

    I have a friend that is responsible for working with clients, helping them to design solutions for their businesses, write statements of work, and develop proof of concepts. This friend also finds 4-5 meetings a day on their calendar, usually lasting from thirty to sixty minutes. That’s not an uncommon workday for many people in technology, which always amazes me.

    There was a time when I managed multiple DBAs and worked to remove them from meetings whenever possible. It was hard, with the workers always feeling like they wanted to know what was going on, and managers always wanting staff available for detailed updates if needed. Too often I felt that staff time in meetings, and performing updates, was wasted. Managers should take quick updates to meetings, and handle the coordination as much as possible.

    Andy Warren (LinkedIn | Blog | @sqlandy) always talks about how important thinking time is, and over the years I’ve learned that’s important. The work that we do is knowledge based. By definition that requires thought, creativity, and most importantly, time. We need to have concentrated time to think, and to work out how we want to attack the problems we face, without the pressure of producing some specific solution.

    I know it’s easy to view thinking time as an opportunity to waste time, and some people surely will waste the time. However for those of you that work hard, and that are trying to solve issues, it’s important to get some thinking time, time when you’re not actually writing code and step back to view the problem from another angle. I’d encourage you to take some time to just think over the holiday season, when there usually is less work going on, and see if it can help you produce higher quality results.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Back and Refreshed

    It’s my first day back at work, other than a few minutes answering a couple posts on Saturday afternoon and a double check of the newsletter on Sunday. I had 6 work days off in a row, probably a record for me going back a decade at least. It’s rare that I’ve taken 5, and even then I’ve often worked through email.

    This time I didn’t.

    All my email comes to the iPhone, and to my laptop, and I could see the “unread” counter rising throughout the week. I didn’t check, however, trusting that important items would be handled by the rest of the publishing group at Red Gate and that most other things SQLServerCentral related could wait a week. Even on Saturday, I just flipped through a few “fun threads” just to see what was happening and ended up answering a few posts that appeared on the front page and looked interesting. Mostly for fun, and procrastinating the need to dig some holes in the yard.

    It was a refreshing week, and while I was happy to come home after 6 days in the mountains, I was also glad to have a few more days off this past weekend, and get a few things done around the house. Nice, refreshing, and a great break.

    Now if I can just schedule a few more, shorter, breaks before the end of the year.

  • Snack Attack

    One of my favorite snacks

    This editorial was originally published on Jan 11, 2007 and is being re-run as Steve is on vacation.

    OK, I’ve done a bunch of editorials on security this week. It’s been in the news, it’s a new year, everyone’s making resolutions to implement better security, some bugs were found, so security has been a topic. Actually it was last week when I found these links and started sketching topics, but that’s another story.

    So today I wanted to take a break from the serious stuff. I found this link awhile back, Snacksby, which is an interesting idea. It’s an idea that a friend actually pitched something similar to me years ago, but she never got it going. So with that idea, this week’s poll is:

    What’s Your Favorite Snack while working?

    I know, I know, not a great poll question for the IT crowd, but maybe something will strike your fancy. Maybe you’ll discover a new snack from a response from someone else. Maybe I’ll get to be a spokesman.

    The only thing that I’ve usually craved when I’m working, and it’s pretty rare, is a Dairy Queen Blizzard, preferable something with peanut butter in it. There used to be one a block over when I worked in Virginia as a developer. The team would walk over a few times a week when the weather was warm for a break.

    Since then I usually have water and diet coke at my side, but that’s about it. Still once in awhile I swing by for an afternoon snack and quick sugar rush.

  • Power Tools at Work

    This editorial was originally published on Jan 17, 2007. It is being republished as Steve is on vacation. 

    Now this could be fun. Just imagine your boss comes to your cube with an electric drill, a sledgehammer, and a circular saw. Oh, and don’t forget the safety glasses. You’ve got work to do.

    That’s what is happening in some IT shops as old data drives need to be destroyed with no hope of the data being recovered. I saw this article on data demolition and thought that might actually be a fun afternoon at work. Destroy some old data drives, ending their usefulness like the fax machine in “Office Space” 🙂

    Data security is becoming a bigger issue all the time in the corporate world. And as more companies store more and more data on disk, the issues with disposal must be dealt with by more and more IT groups.

    I guess you could hire a firm and get this before and after picture:

    Now this might be fun.

     

    but I’d think that defeats the purpose somehow. It’s the physical access outside your company that can be the problem. Going to a vendor specializing in destruction could be a problem since it gives criminals a single source (or a smaller source) or vendors they can bribe to get critical data. Better off letting different people in your company destroy the data at random intervals. That way no one can predict where and when the data will be destroyed.

    Plus it would be fun 🙂