Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • SQLSaturday Bequeathed to PASS

    I guess you could look at this one of two ways. Either PASS acquired SQL Saturday, or we (Andy, Brian, and I) bequeathed it to PASS. The truth is it’s a bit of both. We were looking to get some help in keeping the SQLSaturday events going, while also freeing up the time required to make them happen.

    This was mostly Andy’s baby, from start to finish, with support from Brian and I, so the credit really goes to Andy. He came up with the idea, did most of the work with various people around the country to get the events setup and running, and he attended more than anyone. I think most of the event organizers would agree that Andy’s mentoring was invaluable in getting the SQL Saturday franchises up and running.

    This was a non-profit venture, which really didn’t make any money for the SQL Share (formerly End to End Training and JumpstartTV) company. It was a nice marketing move, it was great for the community, and I think a fantastic idea for keeping the SQL Server community vibrant. It was also a little bit of a time sink. That wasn’t great for something that wasn’t generating any revenue in this economy.

    This is a perfect venture for PASS to be involved in. It fits their mission, and I’m looking forward to seeing even more events in the future under the PASS/SQL Saturday brand.

    I had the privilege of going to 3 or 4 events over the last few years, and I’m looking to try to get to a few more this year. I’ll still be supporting the events, and speaking when I can.

  • The Laptop is Back

    I finally got my laptop today. I had to drive to the local Shell gas station to get it, but I was happy to since UPS helped me out. I had called yesterday and complained and the local office called to let me know it was coming. At 6:40pm, I had to leave for karate, frustrated that it hadn’t arrived.

    I know my local driver pretty well, and we’ve become friends. I’ve even been to his house for a party, so I had assumed he was off the last few days. Instead he called a little after 7. His route had run long and when he drove by, our gate was closed, so he left me a message that he wouldn’t send the package back (this was the third attempt), but to call him.

    So I sent him a text this morning, worried that he might be driving and not wanting to call. He called back and said today was his day off, but he had called the other driver and she would be swinging by the local gas station on her way out to other deliveries. I said I could go by, so I drove up there and met her. She got me the package, and it was great to finally get the laptop back.

    Kudos to UPS for the extra effort, and that’s where business is more than just work. It’s a relationship and I appreciate the help I got. I owe Kent a few beers.

    I got it back, and had to spend 5 minutes walking around to find my AC adapter. I haven’t used it since Dec 2 when I sent this laptop back. I powered it up and got the wonderful Vista setup screen.

    Thanks Toshiba, for wiping my drive. I had copied off the data, but now I have a project in front of me that I wasn’t wanting. I ran through and left it at the “Checking Windows performance” screen since it looked like it would take awhile and I wanted to run.

    I’ll go check it now and see if it actually works. And if I still have my 320GB drive and extra 2GB of memory or if they’ve removed that as well.

  • Looking back at 2009 Goals

    I set goals at the start of 2009 for the year. They were:

  • Continue with 400 posts a month
  • Blog Daily
  • Speak at each Denver area user group
  • Speak at one SQLSaturday
  • Comment on blog posts that I think are interesting.
  • Update my blog roll to show who I think is interesting.
  • Grow the SSC audience to 1.4mm members by the end of the year.
  • Give all new articles a first review within 7 days.
  • Not miss sending any newsletters. I think I missed 3 this year.
  • Build something useful with .NET/SQL Server.

    I set a way for measuring my goals, and then had a couple updates during the year, Q1 and Q2. So how did I do? Here’s the evaluation:

    400 posts a month

    This got a little hard after the ASK SQLServerCentral site launched and I split time there. To be fair I asked more questions there than answered, but it still distracted me and ate up time. I ended up with 4628 as of Dec 19, which is closer than I thought I’d get.

    Blog Daily

    I think I blogged almost every day, or at least published something once a day. I ended up writing two or three many days and scheduling them, though I also published multiple ones some days. For the year I had 377 posts, plus one coming for tomorrow. Not bad.

    Speak at each Denver area User Group

    Complete, actually I spoke once at each group in the first quarter of 2009. That was a good goal for me. It got me out there, and while I only attended one meeting of Boulder and Co Springs, I got to 3 or 4 Denver area meetings.

    Speak at one SQLSaturday

    The idea was to support SQLSaturday and also get me out into the community. I ended up speaking at Pensacola and Baton Rouge. I cancelled SQL Connections, but managed 2 other remote deliveries, which was a pretty good number. Overall I exceeded this goal and was proud of it.

    Comment on Blog Posts

    I started out commenting on all blog posts since we really only had 3 or 4  regular bloggers at the beginning of the year. Since then we’ve grown to many more, including a lot of syndicated ones, and I don’t comment on all posts, but I try to read them all and comment where something strikes me.

    Update my blog roll

    I’ve done this 4 or 5 times, but not enough. I updated one more as I was writing this entry, but I didn’t really do this regularly enough. I should have set a monthly reminder and evaluated what I had down there.

    Grow SSC to 1.4mm members

    I failed here. Though to be fair, the rules of the game changed on me. rightly or wrongly, we’ve always required a registration to view most of our content. We had a time when you could read the forums, but not post, but as “payment” for the articles, we’ve wanted a registration. That changed substantially this year as Red Gate decided that we were alienating a number of people and we moved the “read” and “write” gates, as they were called, further back. I think now the read gate is gone, and it’s just the write gate if you want to post. That dramatically slowed down growth, and while we are still getting lots of traffic, we haven’t added a lot of members since September.

    Review New Articles within 7 days

    In hindsight this was partially a badly picked goal. I don’t have a way to determine what’s a “new” article other than memory since it’s not set up as a good workflow. It’s more like a waterfall model, and if I kick something back, it goes back to the top.

    But this was also a year in which writing seemed to explode. With so many people wanting to be MVP, so many people wanting to share, and maybe my expanded efforts in blogging and engaging with the community that I’ve often received 10 articles a week. Some are rewrites, and some are new, but it’s been a huge load and I’ve been behind quite often in editing.

    I think I failed here, not because of the workload, but more because the quality of writing has at times been horrible. I used to have relatively few writers, about 100, and they didn’t need a lot of editing. Now I have over 400, and many of them first timers. That’s OK, but they often scribble something down without proofing it, and I end up sending back more comments than they wrote!

    So I often put off editing for days, hitting it once or twice a week since it would put me in a bad mood. I failed miserably and I’m often not getting to a new article before it’s been in Q for 2 weeks.

    Not Miss Sending Newsletters

    I know I missed 1one I think that was it, though a couple were late. Let me know if that’s not the case.

    Build Something with .NET/SQL Server

    I had a few ideas, mainly redoing my own site, but never executed. This remains an unfulfilled goal.

    I think I was hesitant to tackle the process of relearning how to code in a language. It’s been a long time and while I don’t think the process of writing code would be hard, it’s the constant looking up of what methods to call, what properties exist, all the drudgery of re-learning the basic syntax and working with VS that I dreaded. I’m adding back this for 2010.

    Overall

    I think I did pretty good, and these goals were definitely on my mind. Setting them does drive you towards them if you have any ambition, so I’ll add a few more for next year.

  • Where’s My Laptop

    It’s been almost 4 weeks without my laptop. I mailed it back to Toshiba and they received it on Dec 4. They then worked on it, and I got a few updates before they shipped it back on Dec 13, which was within their 7-10 business day window. I got a great lack of data about what was wrong in the package with a blank tech report. I did get some updates on the web, which listed a replacement system board and graphics board.

    I had it for about 12 hours, having it blue screen while booting up on Dec 16th at night. I even pulled the memory chips out one at a time, replacing them back in to check on those being bad. I also tried to reload the OS, none of which worked. It constantly core dumped before loading Windows.

    So I immediately took it back to the UPS store after calling Toshiba on Dec 17 and shipped it out. The Depot had it on 12/21, and since then I’ve had one note on 12/23 that says "diag – error code 0x0000009C""

    No idea what that means, and I can see the tech having the 24th and 25th off, but today? Nothing?

    Shoddy service, and it’s a huge pain. On the 12th I almost bought a new laptop from Amazon thinking that it would be good to have a spare. Then this past weekend, being unable to write upstairs, I started looking again.

    I remember Glenn Barry talking about his PDC gift, and I checked out the specs. It’s a nice machine and has one thing I think is pretty cool: it will connect with broadband by inserting a SIM. That might be handy, and easier to use the tethering, which still seems immature. I found one for sale on Craigslist and I’m tempted to get it, but I want to be sure the keyboard isn’t too small.

    I also tried out the 11” laptop I got my oldest and that seems like the keyboard might just work, so if I don’t get the Acer tablet, I think I will get a spare 13” or 14” laptop just in case.