Daily Coping 19 Oct 2022

Posted on October 19, 2022 by way0utwest

Today’s coping tip is to take time to reflect on what you have accomplished recently.

What have I done recently? Lots of stuff, but a couple things come out in my mind.

First, SQL Saturday is moving forward. I was at SQL Saturday Boston 2022 recently and I’m heading to SQL Saturday Toronto 2022 this weekend. I didn’t put on these events, but I have been helping the organizers in the background with encouragement, support, and some fundraising. I’m proud of what I’ve done to help and I’m thrilled with the efforts of the various organizers.

Second, I pushed and got the volleyball club where I work to set up some open gyms. I run these each week and I wanted to get them set up as I have a few kids on my team that aren’t participating in high school volleyball, so I wanted to give them a place to play.

I wasn’t sure how this would go, and if I’d have more than a couple of kids show up. I  was prepared to end up teaching a private lesson for a few kids. Instead, 18 kids showed up and I lightly organized them into 4 teams to play. A bunch of them were happy, and asked if we could do it twice a week. Not sure I can do that, but I’m glad that things worked out.

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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Windows 11 Complaints

Posted on October 19, 2022 by way0utwest

I upgraded my primary laptop to Windows 11. A few people had said they liked it, I know that I needed to keep up at some point, and in the later stages of a pandemic, I thought this was the safest bet. I have a desktop I use regularly, and didn’t want anything risky there, and I have an older laptop, but it’s a 2015 era device, so I wasn’t sure that was a good idea. This was a 2019 laptop, so fairly new.

In most cases, Windows is Windows. The task bar centers icons, and the start menu comes up in the middle, not the side. Not big changes.

However.

A few things I’ve noticed, which I find rather disturbing.

Slow

Windows 11 is slower, and often has interrupts or pauses that I didn’t have before. If I press the Windows key, the Start menu is slow to appear, and even then, loses some of the keyboard buffer. So if I type Windows+n+o+t+e, expecting notepad, I find the Start menu and “ote” or “te” in the window.

Incredibly annoying.

It also appears more checking online for stuff, and a poorer experience when I’ve changed networks.

This is the most disturbing thing as it appears Microsoft has gone back to bloatware for Windows, assuming hardware gains. Windows 7 and 10 were slimmer, and felt like the OS was more hidden, understanding that it is a platform on which the software we need runs. The OS isn’t important for UI/UX most of the time.

Get it out of the way.

Task Manager

Second thing is that Task Manager isn’t available from the status bar. I don’t know who thought this was ergonomically a problem, but when your Start menu doesn’t start, not being able to get Task Manager is a problem.

In addition, I find at times the System Interrupts are using 100% of the CPU and outside of getting Task Manager up, nothing else works.

Ugh.

Too Much AI or MS Preference

One of the more annoying things I’ve found is that if I look for some apps, Microsoft stuff gets in the way. For example, I will sometimes need to stat OpenLiveWriter. For some reason it sometimes disappears from my task bar where I pin it. If I try to start it, with the Windows key (pause) then type “open”, Excel is the first thing that appears. No other apps, but Excel.

#$%##@#$#^%^

Stop with the guessing here.

I see similar things if I type “SQL” as the list of matching apps, SSMS + Redgate stuff, is hidden and I get the one, almost always wrong, guess.

Overall

I don’t see anything great about Windows 11 so far. Tbey’ve moved things, made minor additions, and likely made it easier for some users, but not for someone used to Windows that lives in the keyboard. Even finding some of the older things, like User Account names, is harder in W11.

I wish I hadn’t upgraded. I dread the day I need to move away from Windows 10 on other machines.

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Daily Coping 18 Oct 2022

Posted on October 18, 2022 by way0utwest

Today’s coping tip is to share an important goal with someone you trust.

I’m not sharing an important goal here. Honestly, some of the things that are important to me make me more vulnerable and I really don’t want to hear criticism, comments, or even cheering. Until I move forward more, both mentally and in actuality, those things aren’t helpful for me.

Instead, I’m sharing something that I want to accomplish with a close friend and my wife. Those are the two people that I trust to listen, just listen. I don’t need them to push me or encourage me. Just to share something that will help me think things through for myself.

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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An Update to Skipping the Leading Digit in T-SQL–#SQLNewBlogger

Posted on October 17, 2022 by way0utwest

There was an interesting question in a forum, which I wrote about before. How do you skip the leading digit in a numeric value. I had looked at a UNION, but someone had a better suggestion, so I’m adding to the post.

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

Another Predicate

In the previous post, I used a <> and then a > and < with a UNION. Howver, someone noted that NOT BETWEEN is an option. I could rewrite the query this way:

SELECT *
 FROM dbo.Room AS r
 WHERE room NOT BETWEEN  200 AND 299

This gives me the same result:

2022-10-05 14_32_43-SQLQuery6.sql - ARISTOTLE.sandbox (ARISTOTLE_Steve (61))_ - Microsoft SQL Server

This also results in a seek.

2022-10-05 14_33_30-SQLQuery6.sql - ARISTOTLE.sandbox (ARISTOTLE_Steve (61))_ - Microsoft SQL Server

The BETWEEN or NOT BETWEN is sargable, meaning we can use an index to find those values that fall into this ordering and exclude them.

Worth remembering BETWEEN when writing queries for ranges.

SQL New Blogger

An update to my post, showing a better way, showing I am happy to take advice from others, and I can improve code. This is a skill that employers need, especially when teams need to become more consistent with coding when working together. Showing you can adapt and grow is a good skill.

You could write a simple blog like this that shows how you might change some code you wrote in the past. I bet it takes less than 30 minutes.

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