Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • Healthy Work Habits

    The stand up desk experiment from Buck Woody

    Many of us work with computers extensively, day after day. It’s easy to fall into the habits of working in a particular way, and we’ve seen recommendations from health professionals about the dangers of our environment. I’ve written in the past about your heath being an investment you ought to make, and there are numerous places where you can learn how to better structure a healthy work environment. You might even want to try a new type of desk, asBuck Woody has done.

    However it’s not just the desk you work at that might be a problem. There’s an article that talks about the dangers of mobile devices, and the potential problems of working while on the go, in bed, etc. As we use these devices more and more, it’s possible that we are inducing other repetitive motion injuries, similar to carpal tunnel syndrome. If you are a heavy user or a tablet, smartphone, or other device away from your desk, I would recommend you read the article and think about how you use your device.

    I am fortunate in that I work at home, on my own schedule, and can adjust my work as needed to avoid injury. I don’t work on any one thing for a long time, end up taking frequent break, especially this month with a new puppy, and often move my work environment to different locations for short periods of time. You’re as likely to find me working in bed as at my desk, and I can often spend an hour at the kitchen counter or the couch as well during the day. There’s also that running thing I do every day, usually at lunch.

    Working in IT is a great job, IMHO. We have a good work situation, one that doesn’t tax us physically and one we can probably easily do until we retire. However it’s easy to be complacent, and induce our own health issues by not taking care of ourselves. Look over your environment, make changes to keep it healthy, and pay attention to the way you treat yourself. You’ll be glad you did so in a decade or two.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • No Cloud for Stack Exchange

    Stack Exchange administrators love computers

    One very large and successful site in the technology world is the Stack Exchange collection of sites. They’ve grown and scales with relatively few people, and they have chosen to host thier own systems as opposed to moving to the cloud? Why? One of the administrators talks about it in this blog post. The short answer: they love computers.

    That’s pretty cool from my perspective. They have a passion for their jobs, they like the different aspects of it, and they aren’t going to change that to save a few dollars or make their jobs easier. They don’t want to avoid responsibility for parts of their jobs, they want to embrace all of their jobs, as something they enjoy doing.

    That’s very cool, and it makes sense for a small company. However I’d hope that even at larger companies there were people that enjoyed their job. I know some DBAs love hardware, and enjoy digging into the specs and enjoying going over the configuration of every new server they procure. Me? I’d like to have three drops downs, with options for CPU, RAM, and disk, and be done with it, letting the people that do love hardware pick the actual configuration. Hopefully all of us love our jobs working with data.

    Life is short, and while there will always be things we don’t enjoy about our jobs, there should be plenty of things we do. If there aren’t, I’d hope we’d all be looking for some other job that we do enjoy.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Back to Vegas

    Back to Vegas for SQL Server Connections in 2012

    I enjoy Las Vegas and am glad to be heading back to present at the Spring SQL Server Connections conference in March. If you wear a number of hats at your job, and deal with a variety of platforms in the Microsoft technology stack, this is a great event to attend. There are nine conferences taking place at the same time, in the same place, and you get the chance to see sessions from Mark Minasi on Windows, Scott Hillier on Sharepoint, Miguel Castro on Visual Studio, and more along with your SQL Server sessions.

    I know you can’t attend every session, and you can’t see all the content that week, but the sessions are recorded and attendees can get DVDs of the content. I love that, and it means I can pop in and out of sessions, checking out the content and topics, and mark those in a program that I want to watch later. It also means that I can focus on the important parts of the conference: meeting people.

    When I’m looking to learn, I try to make time to talk to the people that can teach me something or answer a question I have. I can always email someone later, but the chance to have a meaningful conversation is worth the time spent at events.

    I like going to Las Vegas, but not for the reasons that many people go. I don’t gamble, having bet exactly $0 on my last two trips. I don’t stay out too late, or attend the shows. I go because the weather is great, it’s close to home, and I get the chance to network and bond with people in this amazing SQL Server community.

    Ask your boss for some training money, and come join me this March in Las Vegas.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Jiggly Code

     

    jiggly, jiggly, jiggly

    This discussion is a little funny, an exchange on a Linux board in which Linus Torvalds writes: “This kind of “I broke things, so now I will jiggle things randomly until they unbreak” is not acceptable.”

    I’d hope that most people would not attempt to write code in this method, but I’ve seen many developers do just that. They start trying other solutions until one works, often implementing the solution without understanding how it works. The fact that it works, even in a limited way, is often good enough for most people.

    I like that the people in the discussion do not get too distracted and instead dive further into understanding the problem. Not enough people dig into the root cause analysis of issues to fully understand the issues. I know time is tight, and I’ve often been too busy to spend much time uncovering every issue. I also think that often subsequent issues, or chronic problems, are often the result of the lack of understanding of the root causes.

    The software we write gets more and more complex. We incorporate new technologies like virtualization, and some of us will even work with distributed applications that might make use of calls to other systems through messaging or even with communications with cloud databases. Learning to trace the data flows, troubleshoot communications,and thoroughly understand the mechanics of how our applications interact becomes more and more important. Especially as our applications seem to reach wider and wider client bases, with high expectations that things “just work”.

    Many people in our SQL Server community preach a continuous improvement of one’s skills and the goal of writing better and better code over time. It takes some effort, but we all ought to be putting forth that effort to improve regularly, at whatever rate we can sustain in our lives. As long as it’s some effort to get better each month.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts