Daily Coping 16 Sep 2022

Posted on September 16, 2022 by way0utwest

Today’s coping tip is to make time to aim to be good enough, rather than perfect.

I find that many of us that work in technology want a solution to be great. Often perfect. Computers are so good at following instructions that we expect them to work as we intend all the time. We aim for this perfect in our code and we find “good enough” to be a low bar.

However, good enough means to me that it is good enough for most situations. It’s not leaving something unfinished or undone, but finishing something that works well. I often tackle chores in this manner, usually because of time crunches.

Recently I was traveling a bit. I was gone from home for 15 days in August, and during those stretches, it rained quite a bit. The grass grew near the house, and I came home from a trip with a few commitments and kept delaying cutting it, thinking it would just take a few minutes and I’d get to it. With another 8 day vacation, I ran out of time and left town.

I came home to grass that was really high, but I had other priorities. I needed to fix our gate, as my wife is using the front pasture and we need to keep horses in. Another busy weekend, and I got to the grass Sunday afternoon. I cut it and then needed to rake up the excessive clippings. As I did, I realized that there were a few stretches that had gotten weighed down and as I rake them, they stood up a bit. Not a clean lawn.

However, it was good enough for the weekend. I still needed to edge with the weed trimmer, so I left them, finished edging and walked away. I can go back later this week and recut the lawn, even though most won’t need it.

Good enough for today.

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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Daily Coping 15 Sep 2022

Posted on September 15, 2022 by way0utwest

Today’s coping tip is to make time to do something you really enjoy.

I do enjoy life, and I’m lucky that I have the chance to do a lot of things that I enjoy. One of those is watching and coaching volleyball. Technology helps here in a few ways, which lets me cope with a busy life.

These were on two days, but both were enjoyable times for me. First, thanks to cheap bandwidth and streaming technology, I was able to watch my daughter play volleyball in New York. My wife and I got up early and spent an hour watching her play last Saturday before we got on with our day.

Second, I left work a touch early to go watch high school volleyball, seeing a kid that I will coach this coming season play for her school. It’s a fun, enjoyable time, and one of the few times I can cheer for this kid without looking for ways to improve.

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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Register at a Stem Cell Donor to Help the #sqlfamily

Posted on September 14, 2022 by way0utwest

A friend and member of the #sqlfamily is battling cancer, specifically acute myeloid leukemia. Hugo Kornelius is someone I’ve enjoyed learning from and sharing meals with all over the world. I’m saddened that I won’t see him in the immediate future, but I am hopeful we will get together in 2023. He wrote about his story on his blog, but there is something tanglible that you can do.

Register as a stem cell blood donor.

I registered in the US and a kit is on the way. I hate donating blood, but if I can help Hugo or someone else, I’m willing.

This is a small way of helping others, and it’s a good thing to do for the world. When medical issues strike, it is often beyond our control. These can be difficult, and very scary times. I had a friend that had a AML diagnosis as well, though his was in his late 20s. A tough him for him, but he went through treatment and into remission.

Someone might have saved his life with their donation, My, or your, donation might do the same for someone else.

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To Which Experts Should You Listen?

Posted on September 14, 2022 by way0utwest

When I was getting my career going in Denver, Microsoft used to host lunch sessions every few weeks in their office. There were some Microsoft employees presenting and some community members. I learned a lot from both groups. At local user groups, more often than not, a community speaker was present, but there were plenty of people that worked for different vendor companies that delivered talks. I saw many of these people are knowledgeable in their area, and they taught me things I used in my job.

At some point, it started to seem that presenters that worked for companies weren’t experts, and maybe more importantly, they weren’t worth listening to because they were “selling something.” In fact, a large community conference, and some small ones, banned “vendor” talks and the use of tools in presentations. Sometimes even free ones, if someone was promoting the software as the focus in their talk.

That hasn’t applied to Microsoft, even when they are “selling” something, free or not.

I understand some of the concerns. I’ve seen some extremely poor presentations from sales and marketing staff, who often don’t really understand the technology or why it would be used in one situation over another. There is no shortage of complaints about the poor experience from the attendees who didn’t learn anything useful. That’s fair.

There was a post about this topic from a writer. While I think lots of larger technology conferences do end up with speakers that vendors sponsor, they have plenty of speakers aren’t sponsored, and not all sessions are sales pitches. The SQL community might be slightly different as we have lots of community speakers, more than I ever imagined we’d have. I love that so many people have chosen to get up in front of groups and share their knowledge.

Technical experts abound, and many of them work for vendors. In fact, often the people who give high-quality technical talks get hired by various vendors. I’m one of those, and it’s always a challenge to find a way to talk about a problem and potential solutions without selling a product. I must present well because I rarely get complaints, and I find there are a lot of other technical experts that do a great job as well. I hope that you give most people a chance and if they end up making a sales presentation, then let the organizers know. They can always address issues in the future.

Steve Jones

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

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