Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • One week to SQL Intersection

    You still have time to grab the boss and convince him to invest in you. Show what you’ve learned in the last year. Tell him or her how some training you’ve taken, perhaps at a SQL Saturday, helped you at work. Make a good case to attend, and perhaps I’ll get to see you next week at SQL Intersection.

    It should be a good show, with Windows 8.1 changes, the release of SQL Server 2014 and Visual Studio 2013 recently, and lots of amazing speakers. I still can’t believe that I’ve been accepted to go sometimes because there are some great presentations to see.

    I’ve got three, Continuous Integration, High Performance Encryption, and Filestream, but I don’t know how many people I’ll actually present to when Paul Randal, Kimberly Tripp, Jonathan Kehayias, Brent Ozar, Bob Ward, Kevin Kline, Aaron Bertrand, Grant Fritchey, Andy Kelly, and more are going to be speaking at the same time. That’s without talking about all the great sessions to see in the other tracks.

    It’s spring time, the weather will be great, and I’m looking forward to a few days in Orlando. If you get the chance to come, I’d love to shake your hand.

  • Don’t Be an Arse

    In deference to my British employers, I’ll use their word.

    It constantly strikes me how rude, stupid, and unfriendly people can be on the Internet. I’ve been trying to avoid even reading comments on many places, including Facebook because I’m struck by how people behave. I haven’t completely succeeded and things still strike me at times.

    Like today, I saw this tweet.

    phil_a

    I read part of the article and then scrolled down to see the comments. This was what I saw:

    dbadetect2

    I get that you might not like the format. Personally I didn’t love it and didn’t read the entire article. However I also recognize that this was a story and designed to present information in a new style. Even the opening leads one, or at least me, to understand this is a story, not a quick technical article.

    dbadetect

    I suspect that bad behavior is often because of the anonymous nature of comments. Or maybe it’s because the writers are so far removed from others they feel no social contract to mind their manners. Perhaps it’s the ease with which one can toss off their first thought and condemn the rest of us to suffer through it.

    If you don’t like something, that’s fine. You get to pick and choose which pieces you want to read and which ones you like. However it’s also easy to just click away to something else and not leave a comment. I’ll paraphrase a few lyricists here (Jay-Z and Salt n Pepa),

    If you don’t like the writing, you can click back, close the tab, or turn away from the computer.

    Disclosure: I work for Red Gate, and we do want to sell software. That’s how we pay the bills and keep Simple Talk and SQLServerCentral running. We also are a part of the community. We want to teach you. We want you to get better at your jobs, and yes, we want to entertain you.

    Please let us know what you like and don’t like, but there’s no nefarious purpose to trick you. If you like our tools, or those of our competitors, and they are worth the price, we hope you buy them.

  • Great Companies – Spotify

    I don’t know anyone at Spotify, nor have I worked there. However when I see descriptions and explanations like this one of how they organize and build their culture, it makes me think they’re doing it right.

    Autonomy is important, and it helps motivate people. I need to do more writing here, but for now, check out this video. About 13 minutes long, but interesting.

  • Three Days to the first Nevada SQL Saturday

    It’s three days to the first SQL Saturday in Nevada, taking place this Saturday in Las Vegas. I’m looking forward to going, meeting new people, and seeing lots of friends. The speaker lineup is amazing and you can see them all for FREE.

    Just register and make your way to Las Vegas this Saturday. Looking forward to seeing some of you this weekend.