Goal Progress for June 2022

Posted on July 1, 2022 by way0utwest

I set goals at the beginning of the year, and I’m tracking my progress in these updates during 2022.

Ugh, June was no bueno for life goals.

In May, I was away from home for 18 days. In June, I was home for 12 days.

Most by choice, a mix of work and personal trips, but across 7 trips, it was a disruption to my schedule and I find it hard to cope and focus on anything extra during those times.

I’m lowering the grade because most things haven’t changed. Essentially I read a little and got a few more SQL Saturdays scheduled.

Grade: C

Here are the goals:

Work

  • DP-900 – Passed
  • DP-300
    – Stated studying, practice tests around 80% correct, need to schedule
  • Demo with SQL Server – 20% – dev db set up, started on pipeline
  • Demo with PostgreSQL – 20% – Dev db set up
  • Demo with MySQL – 0%
  • Feedback book – 100% – HIGHLY Recommended
  • Good Strategy/Bad Strategy – 48%

Personal

I made a slight alteration here. I didn’t try to hook up to Google Sheets, but instead pasted in some data and started to try and get this moving.

  • Link Google Sheets to Power BI – 0%
  • Create Report – 40%  – I have a report working for some of my metrics.
  • Create Dashboard – 20%  – A basic dashboard up, but need to decide on what to show here.
  • Get people using it – 0%

Community

  • Support the Colorado groups by speaking twice and helping get one event set up
    – 40%
    • CO Springs event set up
    • Meeting with Denver SQL about an event
  • Speak at 3 other user groups outside of Colorado – 66%
    • Spoke at DBA Fundamentals group
    • Spoke at Toronto SSUG
  • Support SQL Saturdays – Help get 10 events run in 2022
    • I think we’re there. With the events coming online, there are 6 scheduled in H2, 3 that have run, and 3 more that are awaiting some detail to confirm. It looks like we’ll finish the year with 12, 10 of them in person.
  • Volunteer 4 days with Habitat – 0 days
    • Not happy about this. Now with a surgery, this will be delayed for a few months.
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Daily Coping 1 Jul 2022

Posted on July 1, 2022 by way0utwest

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral 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.

Today’s tip is to be kind to you. Do something that brings you joy.

Following on yesterday’s tip, I’m going to do something for me. In fact, I’m going to sit around on the porch (assuming it isn’t raining), have a drink, and strum my guitar in the evening. Just create some music and watch the world.

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The Useful Cloud Tags

Posted on July 1, 2022 by way0utwest

One of the things I’ve seen in working with cloud based resources is that you get a lot of them in your account quickly. A database might end up with a server, an IP address, a network, security groups, and more. A few clicks of the mouse in the Azure Portal can create a new Resource Group that doesn’t just have the one thing you need, but 3, 4, or more other items.

In addition to the quantity, there are also the problems of namespaces in cloud resources. Some of the items you provision are publicly named in a domain, such as database.windows.net. In these cases, the resources need to be unique among all cloud customers. Just like domain names, this means that you might have collisions with your favorite name. While I might like jones.com, there are a few other people that would likewise prefer this. The rest of us might have to choose jones2.com, stevejonesincolorado.com, or some other variation. In large organizations, you might end up with LA34532345454.database.windows.net for an Azure SQL Database.

That means that the names of the systems don’t make sense to anyone, and many of the people that need to use or manage them will not even know which resource belongs to which system. This has been true for servers in many organizations for a long time, even with their own domains. Often there is some document, perhaps stored on the root of the machine or in an online share, that provides more information for people accessing the system.

The cloud makes keeping track of systems harder, and there is a greater need to classify, categorize, and tag resources. Most of the cloud providers have built extensive tagging systems that help users add metadata to various resources and search/filter by these tags.

Today I’m wondering which tags are useful in the cloud? How do you decide which tags, or type of tags, to apply? You might choose to apply an application name, a business department or owner, or some other type of information that helps you keep track of which resources are needed and how to deal with them. Is there some guideline on the type of key-value pairs you use for tags?

I also would you want to easily have tags for on-premises SQL Server instances? We do have extended properties, but those are cumbersome. Would you want some sort of easy system query that retrieved all tags. Perhaps something like @@InstanceTags or @@DatabaseTags that retrieved all the data you’d stored in extended properties.

We are only seeing more and more resources that need to be managed, patched, and deployed. Tagging is one of the ways that helps our organizations keep track of resources, especially if we provision them and we move on to our dream job somewhere else. Let me know how you handle things today.

Steve Jones

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

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Updates from Coping Tips

Posted on July 1, 2022 by way0utwest

I’ve written a lot of coping tips now. Over two years worth (Mon-Fri) since the pandemic began. It’s become an interesting thing to do on a regular basis, making me re-evaluate life and think about how I live and interact with others.

A few times I’ve planned something, and then had to follow through. This is an update on a few items.

An Exercise Goal

I set an exercise goal on 18 Apr to ride. My plan was to try and do more biking as I prepared for ankle surgery and then recover with some biking. In that time, I traveled a lot. I didn’t often have access to a stationary bike, or have time to rent one/find one on the road. I also still wanted to make sure I was weight lifting and practicing yoga.

I started a challenge, giving myself 2+ months to ride 463km.

I finished at 117km, out of the challenge of 419.5km. I was thinking I might get 3-4 days a week, around my other exercise, but I didn’t. Too many travel days, too much yoga, and really I rode the bike 10-15km before lifting. I think there might have been 3-4 dedicated bike days, but not enough.

A learning experience for me. I don’t love biking enough, and now rehab is more focused on hiking than biking.

Kindness

I wrote about helping my wife with her work.  Essentially a glorified videographer and gofer, which worked out well. Since then, she’s asked me a couple times to do this again, and when my daughter returned from university, she’s used her in this role.

This effort from me has become something she values, and repeats with other people.

Another Culture

My tip on learning about another culture was related to a trip to Belgium. My wife joined me and then we toured around Brussels and Bruge, with a few days in Antwerp where I worked and she toured.

We asked people on the trip about some of the interests I’d learned about. A chocolatier spent 30 minutes with us educating us on chocolate and food. Another person gave us (too) many recommendations on good places to go eat.

We also asked people about the art, and stopped to take photos and read (or lookup online) about art that we saw in various places.

Glad we had read a little, but more, my wife and I decided we really love Belgium and look forward to going back.

Values

I wrote about values. I continue to remember those, especially as the world and my community struggle. I’ve had friends go through tragedies, the last month in the US (for some of us) has been very trying and upsetting. I have other people concerned about how our community and the annual Summit are going.

In all this, I am striving to be positive and push forward, not lash out and complain. I am trying to understand and be compassionate for those that feel differently or are struggling.

I am trying to persevere and keep my world moving forward.

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