Advice I Like: Praise

Posted on September 5, 2025 by way0utwest

Don’t reserve your kindest praise for a person until their eulogy. Tell them while they are alive when it makes a difference to them. Write it in a letter they can keep. – from Excellent Advice for Living

This is something I try to do more. Not the letters, though that’s not a bad idea, but I find myself reaching out with short messages or thoughts (text, FB, etc.) to touch base with people. Friends, sometimes people I see often, sometimes people I see rarely.

In either case, as I age, I realize life is getting shorter and I ought to try and ensure I communicate more with people I care about.

I I’ve been posting New Words on Fridays from a book I was reading, however, a friend thought they were a little depressing. They should be as they are obscure sorrows. I like them because they make me think.

To counter-balance those, I’m adding in thoughts on advice, mostly from Kevin Kelley’s book. You can read all these posts under the advice tag.

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Concerns over AI Chat Privacy

Posted on September 3, 2025 by way0utwest

One of the major concerns for using GenAI tools is who is reading the data you submit as a prompt, and will this data be used in future training of the model? In other words, could someone using a future model access the data I put in a GenAI chat?

It’s a valid concern, and not just because of the vendors. There is a lawsuit over the use of data by OpenAI, and a court has ordered all chats to be retained, including deleted ones. Since this is a lawsuit, there is always a chance that some of the data retained gets entered into a court document or even that it might be read aloud in court and captured in a transcript.

This is a thorny data privacy issue that collides with the need for courts to maintain evidence for legal proceedings. I honestly don’t know what the answer here is, but I think this should be handled similarly to how code and other IP/proprietary items are handled as evidence. The challenge here is that there can be a lot of evidence, and I am not sure many legal organizations are really set up to handle and manage this much data.

I’m also not sure who I think should pay for this. If two parties engage in a lawsuit, but the data is actually held in custody by a third party. Do we need to have some nominal charge rate for keeping data that some need to prove their case? Is there a need to force companies like OpenAI and others to hold data in chats for a certain period of time? Something like the 7 or 10 years that a lot of governments require for tax records?

Our legal systems are outdated and ill-equipped to handle many ways in which the digital world differs from the analogue one. On one hand, I wish that lawmakers would work with advocates and technologists to update laws to make them more relevant, or perhaps, only applicable to digital data.

On the other, I worry about adding new laws that create overhead, perhaps stifle innovation, or will be out of date as soon as they are passed.

In 2025, we all should know that anything we send across the internet to another person or service could potentially be disclosed and abused. If that really bothers you, then beware of all free services and be cautious of the paid ones. Read the EULAs and decide if you can accept the risk.

Because once you send it, your data is out of your control.

Steve Jones

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

Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

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Using Customer Docker Compose File Names

Posted on September 3, 2025 by way0utwest

As I use containers more and more to run various things, I decided I not only wanted to set up docker compose files, I wanted to name them something other than docker-compose.yml. While I often have these running in separate folders with separate batch files to start them, I wanted to have the name mean more.

This post shows how to do this.

Creating the File

Obviously the name is the only change. All the other items in your file need to match. For me, I created a new file with YML in it, which looks like the image below. I then saved this as SQL2025.yml, which is the version of SQL Server this container runs.

2025-08_0184

There’s nothing magic here, so I ran this:

docker compose up –d sql2025.yml

That didn’t work. I got docker errors, so I had to search and got a Google AI summary (which I don’t like) that noted there is a –f parameter. I tried this.

docker compose up –d –f sql2025.yml

That didn’t work either. I clicked through on Google to the docs, and I see the –f. However, I noticed that the –f comes before the command.

I then changed this to

docker compose –f sql2025.yml up –d

and things ran. Of course, I needed to alter my “stop” command below, as you can see.

2025-08_0185

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BBQ in Dallas (and a little database talk)

Posted on September 2, 2025 by way0utwest

Who wants to get some great BBQ in Dallas next month? Last time I was there, I went to Terry Black’s BBQ. It was amazing.

bbq

In just a couple of weeks the PASS Data Community Summit goes on Tour in Dallas, with 2 days of learning on Monday and Tuesday. The next day is the Redgate Software Summit, where we discuss lots of important and pertinent topics with myself, fellow advocates, and industry experts. We also have a separate track for Redgate software demos, tutorials, and presentations.

Come join me at one or both events, and tell your co-workers. It will be a fun few days in Dallas. I don’t know if I’ll get to Terry Black’s, but I’ll be looking for some pit BBQ.

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