It’s actually nice to be back to work. It’s been a great holiday season for me, lots of family time and un-wired time, but I’m ready to get back to my routine and learning some SQL. There was a severe lack of studying over the last week, however with relatives in town, that’s the way it goes.
Time to get back on my MCM prep schedule.
I think that one of the most valuable skills that someone in technology can have is the ability to communicate with others. It doesn’t matter whether you write code, rack servers, or sit in meetings with business people, it is important that you find a way to express clearly what you want, need, or would expect from someone else. If you can’t, you will find that you often struggle to get anything accomplished in an efficient manner.
It’s possible that you can get by with verbal communications in many instances, but it seems that so much gets done by written communications of some sort. Especially these days where it seems that so much of the interaction between people takes place through email, IM, or even Twitter. We are constantly using some form of written text to convey information between each other.
However it seems that many people don’t place a premium on building better writing skills. When I talk to many people at SQL Saturdays, most of them are hesitant to try something like blogging. The most common complaint: I hate writing.
But we have to do it constantly at work and working on your writing skills will not only help you to communicate better, but it will also help you learn to better organize your own thoughts. You will have a better understanding of the logical thought process, which might even help you build better code.
Steve Jones
(originally published at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Editorial/72122/
Before I went on vacation, I mentioned I was downloading some of the MCM videos from Technet.I had grabbed 4 or 5 before I left, dropping the MP3s on my iPhone, and I listened to a few of them on the drive to Steamboat Springs.
That worked out so well, while I was on vacation, I tweeted that I was downloading more MP3s for the ride home, but Aaron Nelson (blog | @sqlvariant) sent me a script he was working on to automatically download them. I finally got around to trying it when I returned to get the video formats of the videos (some are demos) and after a little mucking around with paths, I got it to work.
It’s a great script that runs from Windows Powershell, and you can get it from Aaron’s blog. Even if you don’t want to take the MCM test, watch the videos. Lots to learn in there.
The last 5 or 6 years, on this day, my family has gotten together with friends for an evening of games and fun at Dave and Busters before returning home for some movies or Rock Band until the wee hours of the morning. Tonight I expect to do the same, with some relatives in from out of town, making this one of our biggest parties ever.
This is the last day of 2010, and most of us are starting to look forward to the new year. Next week will have us back to our jobs, and back to the proverbial “grind” as we are working with SQL Server. Hopefully this isn’t a busy weekend for you, and the last chance for a bit of a holiday before the new year.
As such, I decided to make this a fun Friday poll, and ask for recommendations from you:
What movies from 2010 would you recommend for the technologist this weekend?
I haven’t seen a lot of movies in 2010, between a busy family life and travel for work, but I would like to relax and enjoy a couple this weekend. I just watched Sherlock Holmes over the Christmas break for the first time and enjoyed it. I think that one of the more enjoyable technological films of 2010 for me was Inception, which I saw a couple times while my wife paid to see it 5 times in the theater.
As we close out this year, hopefully with a quiet day for most of you, share with us a suggestion for how we might enjoy ourselves away from work this weekend.
Steve Jones
