Goals for 2022

Posted on January 14, 2022 by way0utwest

I set goals at the beginning of last year, and I’m doing the something similar this year.

Last year I didn’t do well in my goals. I definitely had the resolution failure, where I ended up being more excited in Q1 than Q2 or Q3 and felt rushed to do more in Q4. This year, I want to re-examine how I do things a bit more.

There are a few areas I want to build some competence in for future work, but I’m less worried about the ambitious aspect of improving myself for another job. I don’t want another job, at least not another full-time job I need for the income. I’m mid 50s, looking to retirement, and I want Redgate to be my last employer.

Therefore, my goals are a mix of a few things that matter for Redgate and a couple personal ones that pique my interest.

I also know that life and work will change, and my interests will rise and fall. As a result, I’m going to leave space to adjust and add goals in June. Therefore, I’m tackling less, but in these areas:

  • Work-Related
  • Fun and Personal
  • Community

I do want these to be measurable, so I need specific goals I can check off as done or not, rather than a subjective measure.

Work-Related

Two big items here: DevOps and certification. I started the certification goal last year and did nothing until someone at work asked me to take a test for Partner status.

Certification first. I need to do these items:

I can measure those by pass or fail.

I also need to expand my demo work a bit and include some other databases. As Redgate evolves, what I really want is a good DevOps demo that includes at least 3 different database platforms and allows me to demo things from our various offerings. I’d like to be able to demo something and have it go live during a talk or class. As a result, I’m aiming to build a DevOps flow, from a git repo to multiple database platforms to publishing something that can be viewed live. That likely means some sort of website that reads from a DB and displays information on a page. I need to include these things by year end:

  • repository with multiple folders for platforms
  • test platforms (likely containers) for 3 data stores
  • CI processes (3 ) that build from my repo.
  • A live website that reads from the dbs (3 pages or 3 sites), updating from real time deployments.

Those would be good measurements. I also need to complete two books. The feedback book from last year and Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, which is used inside Redgate.

Fun and Personal

I had hoped the Advent of Code would capture my attention for more time, but as the puzzles get harder, and life outside of work is busy, this isn’t enough of a priority. I’ve been watching our Redgate developers work the 2021 puzzles at night, posting thoughts and struggles after work. Clearly I’m not enough of a developer to do this outside of work.

I am looking to combine some of the things I do already outside of work with those career related items. I have a Google Sheet for stats that I share, and a PowerBI Desktop report. I need to get the data in a database and make it available for others. I want to play with some of the Azure stuff, so I’m looking to set up more of a “DevOps” style flow with functions and apps that takes data from my sheet and puts it into an Azure database. Then I can more easily publish this into PowerBI for a live report.

The measurement here would be that I can update an XLS or db and have a Power BI report or a new XLS automatically generated.

Community

I am a supporter of the community where I can. I am hoping to see more events and do more speaking in 2022. I know that depends on how the pandemic goes, but I’m aiming to tackle these things:

  • Support the Colorado groups by speaking twice and helping get one event set up
  • Speak at 3 other user groups outside of Colorado
  • Support SQL Saturdays – Help get 10 events run in 2022
  • Volunteer more with Habitat – I want to get out to at least 4 build days.
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Daily Coping 14 Jan 2022

Posted on January 14, 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 learn something new and share it with others.

That’s most of my job, learning things and helping others. I’m going to continue today, though today I am going to share something different.

From the Feedback book I’m reading, there was a very interesting chapter on how we sort our feedback (think of the Harry Potter Sorting Hat). Do we sort towards evaluation or coaching? It seems most people tend to lean one way or the other. Not always, but it’s a tendency. When someone says something to us, or about us, this is a kind if feedback. “You might do it like this instead” or “That outfit is a little casual”.

Do we take this as evaluation (judgment)? Or coaching, meaning they think we might not be aware of something. It could be meant either way, but the way we receive it impacts us. I know I tend towards evaluation, but an exercise in the book said to think about the item both ways before reacting.

No matter what you decide to do, the exercise is interesting and helps temper my internal feelings.

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Daily Coping 13 Jan 2022

Posted on January 13, 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 take 5 minutes to sit still and just breathe.

This is a hard one for me. You’d think it was easy to just take a break and stop working, but I have lots to work on, and I feel like I could tackle something else. I usually reserve breaks for the gym, so just sitting here is hard. I get antsy.

If I was taking a 5 minute break, I’d want to hang on the inversion table and just think. At least then I’d be gett

I know I need a break, especially when I’m busy. Easy to get caught sitting at a desk too long in this business. I decided to give this a try and pick a time that works for me. Since my schedule varies a lot, depending on work meetings or life, I didn’t want a specified time on my calendar. Instead, I decided to try this each time I get up for coffee. Set a timer, roll my chair to the window and sit and breathe.

It was quite hard the first time or two, but got a little easier. I’m giving this a week to see how it goes.

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A Little Current Date Arithmetic in Powershell–#SQLNewBlogger

Posted on January 12, 2022 by way0utwest

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

I saw a fun post on Twitter recently asking days until retirement. I wrote this code:

DECLARE @YearsToRetire INT = 11;

SELECT DATEDIFF (DAY, GETDATE (), (DATEADD (YEAR, @YearsToRetire, GETDATE ())));

I thought that wasn’t bad, but then I wondered, how would I do this in PowerShell? I knew there had to be a way, so I googled and ran into this article. That showed me Get-Date and the AddYears() method. So I tried this:

2022-01-05 10_26_03-C__Users_Steve

That didn’t work well. I ended up storing the date in a variable and then things worked. However, I was bothered. I can pipe and combine things, why didn’t this work?

Then I thought about something. I ought to enclose the Get-Date inside something. I tried parens, like this:

(Get-Date).AddYears(11)

That worked great. As I get more familiar with PoSh, I can figure more things out myself, and quicker.

2022-01-05 10_28_06-C__Users_Steve

SQLNewBlogger

Once I figured out the way to do this, I spent about 5 minutes on this post. Actually 6 minutes with this part added.

I took something I figure out and wrote this up quickly. I even added a great line at the end, that I figured it out and my work with the language is paying dividends.

A great little type of post that would highlight your blog.

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