Daily Coping 9 Nov 2022

Posted on November 9, 2022 by way0utwest

Today’s coping tip is to make time for a friend and have a coffee, meal, or just spend time.

It’s been a busy few months for me. Since Sept 1, I’ve been away from home for 5 trips and 30 days. I leave in a couple days for another one. This has made life a little hectic and frantic, as I’m trying to juggle many tasks with limited time.

I made lunch plans with a friend a couple times and we ended up cancelling, each of us getting busy once. We lined up a third date between my trips, and even though I was busy, I decided to keep the plans. I’ve neglected some Denver friends, and I needed to stop that.

My wife questioned whether I had the time, which was fair. I was busy, and this lunch meant I’d be working late that night, but getting some time with a good friend, recharging my mental state, and taking a break were important.

I’m glad I did it.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQL Server Central 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.

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Challenging Yourself

Posted on November 8, 2022 by way0utwest

I saw this posted on Twitter recently: “If you’re always right, you’re not learning. If you’re never failing, you’re not reaching. The objective is to be right. The objective is to succeed. But if you’re always winning, you’re undershooting your potential.” –@JamesClear

I found that to be a very interesting view, especially as I think about moving my career, life, business, or anything else forward. I think about this in terms of the goals I’ve set for myself each year for work, or each season of coaching. In the past, I’ve sometimes tried to pick those items that I think I can accomplish.

After all, it’s nice to check off everything at the end of the quarter/year and note I did everything I planned to do.

However, is that playing it safe? Since I know roughly what my workload is, how busy I expect to be, am I just picking things that aren’t pushing me to do better? Or perhaps more importantly, should I be optimistic, push, and if I fall short, examine reasons why. Life sometimes changes in unexpected ways, and I don’t always have control over what things might come up in my schedule across a year. Heck, I might not anticipate everything that comes up this week, or even today.

When I set my goals, I try to review these monthly and examine what I’ve done. Usually, across a year, I realize that some of my goals feel less important across time, or that they are such a low priority (nice-to-have’s) that other work or life constantly is more important. There also is the case that my mood changes and sometimes I just don’t want to do some things and keep procrastinating.

My life often looks different in May than it did in January. It looks even more different in November, and as I write this, I think back to the decisions I made in January. I can barely remember the why, which is probably another hole in how I challenge myself. I ought to set out a basis at the start to remind myself of the reasons for these goals when I look back periodically when I assess my progress.

I ask others to push themselves, so I ought to do more of that myself. Taking on a challenge is a good thing, and since life is more than work, I am looking forward to finding a better balance of challenging how I look to advance my career, as well as my personal life, and pick a variety of things that are both important to me, but are also in keeping with the spirit of balance. Time with my wife, hobbies, friends, and even myself are important as well. I don’t look to schedule those, but I do want to remember that while I want to challenge myself, I also need to balance that with living and enjoying my life.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

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T-SQL Tuesday #156–Ready for Production

Posted on November 8, 2022 by way0utwest

tsqltuesdayIt’s a busy time for me, but it’s also T-SQL Tuesday blog party day. I’m rushing a bit as I forgot about this (thanks for the reminder, Deb) and had to help on the ranch this morning.

In any case, a moment of Zen.

20221108_082454

Now, for the T-SQL Tuesday post to answer Tom’s invitation.

The Quality Bar

Lots of code gets through to production. I suspect many of us agree that not all of this is production quality. Often we find issues with code that doesn’t perform well or even meet the specs of what we required.

I haven’t had to put much code in production in the last decade, but I do remember doing so, and I remember supporting code. To me, the code quality that defines production is this:

Does it make my phone ring?

If the answer is no, it’s production quality. If it does, then it’s not. That’s how I’ve worked on things in the past, and it’s served me well.

You might argue, Steve, that doesn’t help. How do I know what code will meet that metric? There’s no easy answer there. You need to know the system, the requirements, the clients, and the workload. There is a lot that goes into deciding how to build code and what commands, structures, architecture, etc. is suitable.

A few examples. In SQL Server, we avoid cursors because they are not efficient. However, if I have very rare processes, or sometimes on-offs, a cursor might work fine. If it doesn’t overload the server, runs fast enough, and gets the job done, why not?

Another example is using CTEs to pre-aggregate some totals so that I can write a simpler query for a report with related data that isn’t aggregated. This might not be very efficient, and might create a lot of logical reads. However, if the report isn’t a problem with the server workload, is it production quality? I think it is.

The caveat to this is you also need to know data growth. What is production quality today might not be in a year. Potentially we need to refactor code later. That’s fine for me if the situation changes, but it’s not fine if I can forecast this being a problem and I have a better technique, perhaps with some WINDOW functions and less CTEs. I don’t want to defer work unless I don’t have a choice. If I can write better code today, I should.

This also means I ought to be learning more about how to produce better code from others on a regular basis.

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Deciding to Submit to Conferences–#NewStarNovember

Posted on November 8, 2022 by way0utwest

I wrote about getting started last week, with invitations from others. I think the first time I actually made my own submission was to the Indy Tech Fest in 2007. At the time, Andy Warren and I were in SQL Saturday discussions about how things had gone the year before and we wanted to get some info on other events. John Magnabosco invited us to submit something to their event, so both Andy and I did.

It wasn’t much of a submission, and I think John just accepted what I sent without thinking about it. However, at the same time, SQL Saturday #7 – Orlando was coming up and Andy wanted me to come down. This was their second event, so I also prepared a career based submission based my life and sent that in.

That first talk in Indy was OK, but nothing special. The one in Orlando, however, was very exciting for me. I was nervous, especially as the room filled up. Eventually there was standing room only, with some people sitting down around the sides of the classroom. The session was OK from my perspective, but people really enjoyed it, I had a lot of questions, and some good reviews.

That was in 2008 and it got me a little excited. I gained confidence and I submitted that session to two events in 2009 and got accepted. Then in 2010, I expanded my reach, submitting to more events and getting in 10 talks at 7 events.

Since then, I’ve worked on my abstracts and submissions, getting advice from others and trying different things. I’ve also spent time recording and watching myself, taking feedback, and practicing more to become a better public speaker.

I still get nervous at times, but delivering a good talk and having people give me positive feedback is exciting each time it happens.

Part of a Series of #NewStarNovember posts. If you want to help promote new speakers, consider writing a post as well. Some ideas at the New Stars of Data.

 

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