Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Your User Manual

    Many of us have spent time looking through manuals or the documentation for some software or product. I know I’m on the MS docs site regularly for work, and there is no shortage of times I’ve used various manuals to help me fix something around the house. We usually use a manual when we want to learn how something is supposed to work, or how to get it to do what we want.

    I saw a post on a personal user manual that I thought was a good idea for some people, maybe many people. This isn’t a manual for how you should live your life or work, but rather, how others might interact with you. This manual describes how you work, what motivates you, stimulates you, what pleases you, and even the environment in which are most productive.

    Whether or not this is something you might give to co-workers (or your boss), it likely is a good exercise for you to undertake personally. I do think this might be something you give out, but only if you have a lot of confidence it will be taken seriously and well received. Just going through the process, however, might help you better understand yourself, and you might learn something about what matters to you. Sometimes the things we think we like or want aren’t really the things that actually make us happier or more productive. I know I enjoy traveling, but too much creates a lot of stress. I like speaking in front of an audience but within certain boundaries. I like running, but my joints and bones will tell me that I really can’t have that in my life anymore.

    I’m going to make a quick, outline of my manual here. I like independent work, creative work, and the chance to decide how to do things. I like to work with deadlines, but without micromanagement. I want to be at home much of the time but go to an office and other places to interact with people periodically and regularly. I like working asynchronously most of the time, but synchronous brainstorming sessions are valuable. I like feedback to be written overall and with some thought and reasoning behind it, not a like/dislike/emotional response to my behavior.

    I think I could better flesh out different ideas with more detail and organize things better, but I enjoyed taking five minutes and thinking about my first reactions. Now I need to go back and revise this draft with a little more insight and consideration.

    Let me know today what you would think your user manual should say.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • Daily Coping 15 Apr 2022

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

    Today’s tip is to make sleep a priority and go to bed at a good time.

    I don’t always do this, and sometimes I find myself waking up and spending too much time at night reading rather than trying to go to sleep.

    I’ve cut down alcohol consumption quite a bit this year, and it has definitely helped my sleep. This week is a short week for me. I worked on chores last Saturday, coached all Sunday, and then had a busy 4 day week before traveling to Chicago Thur afternoon. Today I’m coaching, and we likely won’t get done until late.

    To prepare for this weekend, I made sleep a priority this week. Sunday I was tired, as was my wife, and we both fell asleep around 9-930p. A bit early for us.

    Monday I had yoga at night and made it a priority to call it a night by 10. Tuesday I did the same thing, but Wednesday we had an evening practice until 9, so by the time we closed down and drove home it was 10. That was closer to a 1045 night.

    Not bad, but not great. However, it was helpful to make sleep a higher priority and try to end my day earlier.

  • Daily Coping 14 Apr 2022

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

    Today’s tip is to give your body a boost by laughing or making someone laugh.

    I was in Las Vegas a few weeks ago and went to a comedy show. My wife and I enjoy comedy and thought it would be a good night out with friends.

    It was bad. Not the worst show, but probably top 2 or 3 bad ones. I can’t believe the headliner was on a marquee outside the MGM.

    I didn’t laugh that night, but I decided to do something different when I made this tip. Instead of music or the radio when I ran errands, I decided to put on my Pandora comedy station. I have one built from Ricky Gervais, Greg Giraldo, and Dave Chappelle. I even kept it going with headphones while in the store.

    I laughed in the car out loud, and smiled in the store.

  • When to Use Zero

    I’m not great at building charts and graphs. I can build a basic chart, but I often depend on the tooling I use to size, scale, etc. appropriately for whatever I’m graphing. That, or I just use a basic graph that starts from zero and has some sort of linear scale. Or I just present a table of numbers.

    There are plenty of misleading charts, especially used by the media that want to show some particular aspect of data that suits the story they are reporting. Many of these misleading charts often don’t start at zero, and they end up scaling in a way that can confuse people.

    You wouldn’t think it was hard to decide whether or not to scale a graph of data from zero or not, but it can be complicated, as this post shows. There is a flowchart to help you decide when to include zero, or even when to have an inset chart that better explains the data. As many of us know, it can be easy to misinterpret data, especially when someone else is deciding what to show.

    In this case, the post talks about some examples of when the data doesn’t graph well because the scale is too large and the range of data too small. Or when the scale distorts the relative size of two values in a graph. In all of the examples, it makes perfect sense why you do or do not include zero on your axis, but I don’t know that I know when I should or shouldn’t do this.

    Part of the problem for me is that people often glance at visualizations and charts without spending enough time to really study them. That’s part of the idea of a visual, in that we can get information quickly from a picture, as opposed to a chart of numbers. However, it is still easy to look at a broken scale or inset chart and not spend the time to comprehend that one value isn’t twice another, but instead realize the chart is zoomed in because the scale changed. There isn’t a perfect way to present information, but there are ways that might work better.

    To me, a lot of misunderstanding gets cleared up when we discuss the chart and the data in a group. Often one person will realize when others are not reading the scale when drawing their conclusions and remind others that Canada isn’t twice as large as Brazil. That works if people speak up and if others listen. That isn’t always the case, especially when the boss is making a mistake. The other issue is that many of us might look at a chart by ourselves. and we are unlikely to tell ourselves we are misreading the values.

    There isn’t a good way to ensure people read a scale and factor that into any decision they make regarding the chart. I do always like to include some data with a visual, that way I can see raw numbers on the same report, or by drilling in. The combination works well for me, but I’m a geeky, numbers person. I like seeing data, which is why I like working with databases.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.