Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Enjoy Your Life

    A sad weekend, and shocking news Sunday morning. I was out running errands when I checked email and found out a friend had been killed in a plane crash on Saturday afternoon. He was a Boy Scout and Girl Scout leader, someone who I have gotten to know quite well, our kids have played together, and we’ve camped at various events together, sharing lots of cooking duties and conversations. He was one of the people I know very well from Scouts. My heart goes out to his family, who were present at the airfield when the plane crashed. I couldn’t imagine being there to see my spouse die.

    I was in a bit of a daze yesterday morning, and tired to work through the day, helping them to enjoy an Easter holiday, but it was hard. Tia and I talked about it quite a bit, and were both grateful and thankful for all we have.

    A few days earlier, I had watched this short piece from a man that survived the Hudson River crash last year. It’s worth 5 minutes of your life, and it resonates with me, more so than it did last week.

    Three things I learned while my plane crashed

     

    My wife and I have talked bout dying a few times, and being prepared. I have lived a great life, and I’m comfortable with experiencing and achieving so much in my 43 years on Earth. I don’t want to die, and I’d like to see my kids grow up and have families, but I think I’ve had a great life so far with few regrets.

    I’d like to do more things in my life, and I’d like to go places and experience new things. I invest for the future, in different parts of my life, but I seek to enjoy myself as much as I can each day. I strive for a balance.

    My editorial today talked about my loss, and tried to remind people that life is short. We should look for that balance, and enjoy our lives as much as we can. As mentioned in the video, don’t try to be right as often as you try to be happy. If you want to improve a part of your life, whether that’s family, career, or something else, start taking the steps to make that improvement. It might take time, but today is the first day of the rest of your life, and it’s a good time to start going in the direction you want to go.

  • What Don’t I Know?

    Apparently a lot, at least according to the blooper reel today Smile

     

  • Happy Easter 2011

    Happy Easter

    This weekend is the Easter holiday weekend around the world and with today being Good Friday, it’s a vacation day for me.

    The ski slopes are closing this weekend and if the weather is good, I’ll be heading up for one last day of sliding down Copper mountain today. Winter is when I tend to take a lot of vacation and this weekend is the end of that season for me.

    Hopefully everyone is having a quiet day if you are at work, with nothing broken and no deployments scheduled over the holiday. I know that holidays are often the best time for deployments to occur for the business as there are less people working on the systems. When I worked as a production DBA, especially in places where the systems were usually in use 24 hours a day by other employees, holidays were the only time we could schedule extended outages.

    As much as that can be frustrating to IT people that want to get a break on the holidays, I think that the IT business, like some other businesses, require you to trade some holiday work for time off at other parts of the year. My previous careers in the restaurant and hospitality business had me working many holidays, and I know that many people in retail positions also end up working holidays like Easter.

    My advice to find a balance in your life is to negotiate a rotation for IT covereage on holidays and perhaps even ask for two days off if you have to work this one holiday. There are lots of progressive companies that do recognize a hardship for holiday work, but plenty of others that don’t have an IT policy since most workers take the holiday off. People that work on an hourly basis usually get twice their rate for holiday work, why not salaried IT workers?

    Enjoy the weekend and enjoy the blooper reel today.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Saying Thank You

    This plane left without me 😦

    Recently I had problems with one of my flights. That’s nothing new, and as Grant Fritchey noted, I tend to anger the travel gods for some reason and often find myself in situations that make me regret ever leaving the ranch. In this case, I flew to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, which was fairly close to SQL Saturday #63. I attended the event, and drove back early Sunday morning in time to have some coffee before my flight. I walked in, went straight to security with no bags to check and a mobile boarding pass. I scanned my phone 4 or 5 times before the security guard told me to leave.

    Actually he didn’t tell me to leave, and was very polite in asking me to go check with the airline for a new boarding pass. The airline agent informed me that my flight was out of Love field (new service starting that day) and despite my early arrival, I wouldn’t make it to Love field in time.  I was stunned as I had booked a flight like I normally do: pick an outbound flight, then an inbound one. I  have never been presented choices from a different airports for the return flight, but in this case that was what happened.

    I could have gotten upset, especially after spending 5 hours in the DFW airport waiting for another flight. Instead I tried something else. I sent a nice note to Expedia, letting them know that despite my issues, I am pleased with the way that they provide a booking service on the web. I have used their site for years, and it’s been a nice tool for me, allowing me to keep all of my data in one place. Their services have expanded over time and I like their service. I then told them of my issue, and noted that it might have been a bug or a glitch, but in any case, it was an inconvenience for me.

    It was a strange situation for me, and a convergence of a few things. My inattention to detail, new service for an airline, and a large city with multiple airports. I rarely fly to cities with more than one airport to choose from, and was willing to accept some of the blame. However I also know that application developers try to build applications that work, and a little praise is always appreciated.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts