Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Back From Vacation and Ready To Go

    It’s been a good holiday for me. I had a week’s vacation with just my wife, a nice holiday with kids, and a relaxing week where I’m trying to get a few things done. I’ve been away from my home office for two weeks, and it often takes a few days to get used to focusing again at the computer, but I’m getting there. It doesn’t help that the office, err, house is full of people with my kids away from school.

    The year is coming to a close, and it’s a slow week, as I noted yesterday. However, I’m refreshed and recharged. Getting away on an adventure, without a computer to spent time on was great. I did no work and just enjoyed the time away. That’s how a vacation should go, and it’s the type of trip I need to take more often.

    Now it’s time to move forward again. As I wrote about in my goals post, I’m planning on spending some time thinking how to achieve my learning goals in 2018. Today is that day, with an hour set aside to do a little research for resources and attempting to build some sort of calendar with milestones that will help me move forward. Those are the personal items for my career, tangential to my work.

    The other part of today is really digging into where I want SQLServerCentral to go next year. We need to be mobile friendly moving forward (thanks for the push, Google) and that means some code changes. I want to be more involved here, along with upgrade plans to get us onto more modern platforms. The old SQL2008/WS2003 system works, but it’s not ideal, and we can’t take advantage of newer technologies and opportunities that Microsoft has released. My thought is to add new content and new sections to the site, including some better quiz/test/assessment ways for people to check their skills and work towards their own goals. If you have ideas, let me know.

    It’s been a great year at SQLServerCentral, and I hope you feel the same way. Now, on to 2018 and let’s see where we can go.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.4MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • The Slow Week

    This is usually a very slow week for most organizations. Staff is on vacation, customers aren’t demanding much, and it’s entirely possible if you’re in the office today that you’re a bit grumpy as Monday was Christmas and many of us haven’t had quite enough of a holiday this year. With many employees in the same situation, and another holiday coming next week, it’s likely that everything in your shop is moving a bit slow. Certainly there are no shortage of people that might be on vacation this week. Usually it’s a ski week for me, but not this year.

    Some of you might be just as motivated to get things done this week as any other. In fact, with less people around, you might even be more productive and perhaps are taking advantage of the time. Others of you might be trying to mosey along through your workday, enjoying a relaxed pace of work.

    I find that this is a good week in the office for me to catch up on some work that might not get a priority the rest of the year. Perhaps there are some processes that I’ve been wanting to automate, but never found the time. Perhaps my automation isn’t quite as robust or resilient as I’d like. These are the times when I can actually make a few changes and try to improve a system for the next year. If I finish early, then I’ll often use this as a chance to learn something or tackle some POC that’s on my list.

    That hasn’t always been the case. My first exposure to SQL Server was with a system that went live on Dec 31 at midnight. In the week leading up to the launch, I was working with various other employees and contractors to get a plan in place for the cutover, including new equipment installed and all the various networking and security changes that were required. It was a busy week for me, and one that sticks in my mind. Despite all the prep work and testing, after turning the new system on we found that it couldn’t handle the load. Rollback wasn’t an option, so my 5pm-2am shift didn’t go as planned. I worked through the next day and into the early evening before being relieved.

    If you have a slower week, consider taking advantage of the time to do something interesting at work and have some fun in a way that might benefit you and your employer down the road with a new script, a stronger skill, or even a better way to handle some task. There are still a few days this week that you can use to try something.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.0MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Making Choices

    I wrote about shutting down some travel for the foreseeable future. Its been a long couple of years for me. If you look at my speaking schedule, I’ve presented at an average of 20+ events for the last few years. This year was a few less, but I’ve had more travel outside of that. By the end of the year, I’ll have spent 9 weeks outside of the US. While some of that is vacation, it’s a lot of time away from home. In addition to the events, I’ve had other travel for work that doesn’t appear there, as well as some vacation time for volleyball (my daughter competes) and family time.

    Lately I’ve been seeing all the tweets and posts about SQL Bits 2018. I won’t be going, which is sad for me. I love the event, it’s my favorite and my wife would love to go with me sometime, maybe in 2018. As I see speakers submitting and the excitement building, it feels like I should just send in a session, but I realize I need to stick with my decision.

    Making choices is hard. For a couple years I’ve been saying  I need to travel a bit less, but I haven’t done a good job of slowing down my travel. I find that I’ve done that with other work demands in the past (and personal ones), and I see plenty of other people doing the same thing. This fall I made the commitment that I’d limit travel next year, and I talked to my manager as well. We agreed on a plan, and she’s holding me to the plan, even when I get a bit excited about new events.

    My current job allows me some flexibility in how I work, but in past jobs I’ve had similar ways that I could change my job, if I made the effort do so. Your employer will ask a lot of you, and often keep asking. I’ve certainly had some bosses that were unreasonable and demanded too much, but most were willing to work with me. It took me a number of years to learn to push back and say no, as well as learn to make choices among different situations. I find if I don’t make choices, I’ll tend to over commit and under deliver, while being disappointed in myself that I couldn’t make it all work. Or I become a little burned out, spending too much time trying to keep all the balls in the air and running myself ragged.

    Balance is important, not only between work and life, but also within work. I find that the more I make choices and stick with them, the better adjusted I am in all of my life. I’m a little sad that I won’t speak at as many events next year, but I’ll pick and choose a few, and hopefully get some things done at work that I’ve been putting off. I’m also hoping that life will seem less chaotic and busy in general, with a little more time to relax and smell the sawdust.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.3MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • It’s Time for SQL in the City

    Today is SQL in the City 2017. Once again we’re streaming the event online, live from Cambridge in the UK. I’ve flown over, along with Grant Fritchey and Kathi Kellenberger to entertain you for the day. We’ll be broadcasting at 11am in the UK for five hours before we take a short break and return for a 1pm EST start of the second broadcast. You can still register and we hope you’ll tune in for a few a session or two, or all of them if you can convince the boss to give you a training day. You won’t know unless you ask.

    I’m excited to show off a few things today, as I’m sure Kathi and Grant are as well. Our developers have been hard at work throughout the year, improving our software and adding new features, while fixing a few bugs. It feels like the pace of change is steadying out, with most products releasing changes every two weeks, but we’re adding a lot more exciting and interesting changes. It seems that the products are maturing well, in ways that I didn’t expect.

    I’ve been especially excited by the changes in SQL Clone this year. We’ve really  grown this product up, with the team being reponsive to customer requests. It’s exciting to be the one to present some of the changes to you, as well as try to introduce others to the product. This is one of those products that I wish would have been available 15 years ago as I would have saved lots of storage costs as well as gained a tremendous amount of flexibility.

    SQL Prompt and SQL Monitor have also had great years, and I’ve been impressed with their growth. Unfortunately I didn’t get the short straw and had to leave those products to my colleagues. I guess I can’t have all the fun. Maybe I’ll try to photobomb my way into one of those sessions.

    Presenting at events is exciting, and I’m looking forward to the day. It’s long, but it will still be a fun time. These streaming events are also a neat experience, as we’ve got a bit of a TV studio feel, with multiple cameras, displays, tape on the floor, and more. For someone that is used to sitting at a  desk and working at my pace, I get a little excited by the efforts put into the broadcast from our IT staff. We have various schedules and checklists, and I’ve spent the last couple days rehearsing the talks.

    I still like live events, and hope we’ll do a few in the future, but for now, sit back, relax, and enjoy SQL in the City from the comfort of your office.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.7MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.