Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Looking for More Storage

    I got a new cell phone. Not big news, but it’s primarily because I need want more storage. It’s a little indulgence, but it doesn’t change my budget much, so I decided to just upgrade.

    A couple years ago I moved to Google Fi. If you haven’t heard of it, Google decided to become a cell phone service provider. I think this was because of their Pixel devices, or maybe because Larry/Sergy just wanted to. Who knows.

    In any case, they offered a few phones with their service. The attractive thing for me was that they charged $10/GB of data, prorating usage and capping costs at $60. That’s a good move, especially as I sometimes go over 6GB in a month of heavy travel. At home, I rarely break 3GB, which means I may pay $30 or less for data. I think my lowest has been a $22.50 bill for 2.25GB.

    The other attractive thing was that they partnered with various providers to give no charge roaming around the world, using your existing plan. Not everywhere, but everywhere I go. This was a huge change from Verizon, which was a $10/day charge outside the US. That adds up quickly as I often have 5-10 day trips overseas. I’d gotten used to not using my phone, but that’s annoying, especially when trying to get directions.

    In any case, they offered only a few devices as their phones used a multiple carrier roaming tech to hop across multiple carries. They use Sprint and TMobile in the US, and fortunately, they cover the ranch. At the time, I wanted a headphone jack and the Pixel XL was the best choice. Unfortunately it only had 32GB models for sale.

    After a year and a half of that, I feel cramped. I’m constantly managing storage with all the pictures I take of family. Recently Google put the Pixel 3 and LG phones on sale, plus they offered a service credit. Since I still want to headphone jack, I settled on a 64GB LG G7, which will end up costing me about 5 months of extra charges for the device after credits and sale.

    Plus I can add a micro SD card to the device. Since I’m thinking to get a 128GB card, I guess that’s 6 more months of payments Winking smile

  • Learn More than Technology

    I’ve been lucky and successful in life in many ways. Certainly I’ve worked hard, may long days and nights, but plenty of others have as well. In fact, there are plenty of people I know that have worked more hours, but been less successful. Conversely, I know some that have worked much less and been more successful. It’s hard to know what the best way is for each of us to examine how to move forward in life, but it’s also not really helpful to compare yourself with others as a measurement. What I’d note you should do is decide if you think you’re becoming more or less successful and find your own path.

    This could mean very different things to different people, and that’s fine. I don’t want to live other people’s lives. I want to live my own, learning from positive and negative things that happen to others, but following the path that best suits my wife and me. I include my wife because we’re a partnership. We decided to spend our lives together, and that means we work with each other, sharing success and sacrifice, making joint decisions. It’s worked out well for us, and I am looking forward to the next few decades of continuing on that path.

    I got inspired to write this by Troy Hunt’s 10 Personal Finance Lessons for Technology Professionals, which is better written than what I’d do if i wrote it. My wife and I haven’t been as focused as Troy has, but we’ve gone through a similar set of thoughts and execution in our careers. We were less money focused, and we don’t live on the Gold Coast, but we’re pretty happy with where we are. We’ve made a few real estate investments, along with some traditional ones, and I think we’ve been fairly successful.

    What inspired me, however, isn’t the advice about how to make money as much as the need to understand what money means to you and the implications of your choices. I do think money is necessary, at least some to live in the US. I also think money can make life better, but you have to learn to enjoy life first. Money should help you with things you enjoy, not make you buy things you think you (or others) will enjoy. However, to ensure you can make the choices you want to, learning a bit about money is useful.

    Most of us don’t get good financial literacy, and more importantly, we don’t think about what money really means. It’s a representation of time, and your time is the most valuable asset you have. I don’t advocate that everyone try to be rich, or retire at 40, or save every penny/pence/shilling/lira/yen and live like a pauper.

    Enjoy your life as you live it and learn to appreciate the small things that touch your days. Along the way, learn a bit about money so you can make choices. Develop a hobby outside of work, and enjoy the moments with friends and family. Life is short. Try to actively live to enjoy it.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.5MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Pro SQL Server Linux–Moving to Linux

    As part of my learning goals for 2018, I wanted to work through various books. This is part of my series on Pro SQL Server on Linux from Bob Ward.

    It’s not until Chapter 10 that we get back to Linux specifics. Most of the chapters in the middle are general SQL Server items that are good to know, but not are useful for experienced SQL Serve professionals. They’re worth skimming as you might learn some things you didn’t about the features.

    In Chapter 10, the focus is migrating to Linux. Bob presents a number of options, including one I hadn’t heard of: the DEA. This is the Database Experimentation Assistant, and I hadn’t heard of it. I don’t do a lot of migrations as I start and stop on SQL Server, but this allows you to do some A/B testing of upgrades. I’m sure it’s not perfect, but that’s something that is definitely needed.

    Most of the chapter is about versions, from Oracle, or from PostgreSQL. The Oracle parts walks through the migration, while the PostgreSQL part tries to show where features in SQL Server exist or don’t in PostgreSQL. In a number of places, Bob found projects that provide some functionality in PostgreSQL that is in SQL Server, but didn’t test things.

    The last chapter of the book deals with containers, and that was one of the more interesting things for me to read. I’ve been on a bit of a container kick, digging in more and more, so I was curious to see how Bob described and talked about the technology. I think he did a good job, but I still think a couple courses I’ve watched on Pluralsight from Nigel Poulton really covered this well, so perhaps I glossed over this a bit.

    I liked that Bob includes lots of code and links to help you get started, so if you read this book, spend time on containers. They’re the future, and for now, Linux containers rule.

    Overall Review

    I learned a few things about SQL Server from the book, but far too much of it was basics and beginning SQL Server stuff, not Linux stuff. It was a good refresher, and I’m not disappointed in the time I spent, but I was hoping for more stories and more Linux.

    The lesson really is that SQL Server is SQL Server, with few differences on the platform. As Bob mentions, you shouldn’t care about the platform and just pick what works.

    The basics of SQL Server did make this hard to read, and as a result, I started strong at the end of December and hit a lull for almost two weeks where I wasn’t motivated to skim through basic T-SQL, security, etc. I realized around the 20th that I was running out of time and crammed a bit in.

    If you don’t have a lot of experience with SQL Server, this is good. If you know SQL Server, but want to know Linux differences, I might recommend digging into some of the more specific Linux blogs, or the SQLServerCentral Stairway series.

  • Forgiveness

    We are frail, fragile creatures. I think this is one of the main reasons I push for and try to work in an agile, DevOps style of development. I know that I make mistakes, as do others. My goal is often to ensure our system, our process, our way of working can transcend those mistakes and we can still be effective. We can use automation and regular examination of what works and what doesn’t to ensure our system works well and isn’t overly dependent on one person.

    Part of dealing with mistakes and failures is learning from them. Not only do we need to learn ourselves, and avoid repeating mistakes, but we also need to learn to forgive others. I thought about this as I was reading Derik Hammer’s post on Active Forgiveness. In his post, he covers the situations where we acknowledge mistakes without a punishment. Instead, we forgive the act and go to work on finding ways to prevent the same situation from happening in the future.

    I think this is one of those concepts and practices that are very difficult for most leaders, and maybe more followers. We don’t want to excuse the behavior, and we certainly don’t want to tolerate this in the future. What we want is for this person, and others, to learn from the mistake and work to prevent it in the future. What often happens is that we blame the person, we’re glad we’re not the person, and we may not learn a lesson because we think that we wouldn’t make the same mistake.

    Throughout my career I’ve seen the same mistakes occur over and over. Sometimes the same person makes a mistake again, but often different people make the same mistake because there wasn’t a product retrospective where everyone learned for the future. Having a blameless meeting where discussions take place, mistakes aren’t minimized, and everyone learns is hard, but it is important if we are going to improve our teams performance over time.

    I’d encourage you to try to find ways to learn from failures and grow. Forgive others actively, but don’t minimize the mistake. Hopefully you can also help your management learn to do this.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.1MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.