Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • Planning 2022

    It is already looking like a more normal year for me in 2022. I was just accepted for DataGrillen 2022, which posted the schedule this week. As I added that to my list of events, I noticed that I already have a few things up there:

    • March 2-4 – Visual Studio Live, Las Vegas
    • March 9-12 – SQL Bits, London
    • May 14 – SQL Saturday Jacksonville, Jacksonville, USA
    • May 23-25 – Technorama, Antwerp
    • Jun 2-3 – DataGrillen, Germany somewhere

    I’ve also got trips planned to these places for volleyball as a coach, so it will be a busy H1 for me:

    • Las Vegas
    • Chicago
    • Reno

    I know more things will come, and I’m looking to submit to a few new events. There are also a few people planning SQL Saturdays, so I’m hoping that there will be more live events in 2022.

    I know the world feels shaky, but I’m confident. I get my booster tomorrow, and many people feel as like as I do. The goal of vaccination is to get back to doing the things we love, and I’m looking forward to doing so.

  • Daily Coping 22 Dec 2021

    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 ask for help and let someone else discover the job of giving.

    This. Is. Hard.

    It’s hard for me to ask people for help. Instead, I tend to tackle and only engage in things I can do myself. Probably some childhood events made me this way, and I understand it’s both good and bad.

    I actually decided to do this recently. I needed to drop off a car for service. I could have just dropped it off, walked somewhere to work/eat lunch, and then returned over. It’s inconvenient, and I might be stuck somewhere. I also might have to move if the place is busy.

    Instead, I asked my son to follow me down and then bring me back. I had to do the reverse the next day, but needed to go relatively early before some meetings. He was happy to help, and likely it was harder for me than him.

  • Daily 21 Dec 2021

    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 thanks, list the kind things others have done for you.

    I am very thankful for my life, especially with where I am today. I tend to do many things for myself, but here are a few things people have done for me in the last week:

    • cooked for me
    • brought me something I forgot
    • bought me a drink
    • thanked me for doing my job
    • sent a kind note after I finished something
    • praised a piece of work
    • did a favor I asked
    • thanked me for cooking

    There are more, but I am finding myself taking note more often when someone does something kind, rather than dismissing or accepting it as something I’d do.

    Instead, I’m learning to feel gratitude for little things.

  • Saving PowerShell Results to the Clipboard–#SQLNewBlogger

    Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

    Working with results and manipulating them is always something I struggle with a bit in PowerShell. I’ve slowly been learning how to limit results to what I want and then save those out.

    Recently, I was reading Learn dbatools in a Month of Lunches, and I learned something new. I can save results to the clipboard easily. Here’s an example:

    Let’s say I want to get backups status. I’d run something like this, using the Get-DbaDbBackupHistory cmdlet:

    2021-12-07 09_44_04-C__Users_Steve

    I see results, but I might want to put this into a report or email that I send to others. I can certainly highlight this in the cmdline and copy it, but there’s an easier way.

    I can pipe this to clip, and then I don’t see the results.

    2021-12-07 09_44_08-C__Users_Steve

    Then I can CTRL+V and paste this into notepad (or anywhere).

    2021-12-07 09_44_12-_Untitled - Notepad

    Super handy way to take information from the PoSh cmdline and ensure I get everything. Miss-highlighting when not paying attention has caused me problems before, especially when the results scroll off the screen. Highlighting a lot of information is hard, so using clip is a good trick.

    SQLNewBlogger

    This was a quick trick I learned while doing something else, so I decided to write a quick post. This took me about 5 minutes to put together.

    You could do the same thing, showing how you’d use this in your job.