Nothing on My Laptop

Posted on March 15, 2021 by way0utwest

I heard this quote at the recent Redgate Summit: “If I drop my laptop in water, I can get everything back.” The context of the quote is that all your work, your IP, your code, etc. is saved in some common or duplicate location. Everything essentially has a backup.

I learned the lesson early in my career that keeping one copy around of things was bad. On an old Apple II, I formatted the wrong disk numerous times, necessitating me recreating homework multiple times on a very tight schedule. Over the years, I often made sure I had some backup service, but things really changed for me about ten years ago.

I had a laptop die on me while on the road. I had copies of things in different places, and a backup service, but I had to buy a new machine and get things set up quickly. It was a pain, but I started to adopt the DevOps idea of improving my system and learning what worked. Today’s cloud services, as well as package managers (Chocolatey) helped me. A few years ago my laptop blue screened and I had to reformat the drive and rebuild everything for a presentation the next day.

It took my about 3 hours, thanks to code, documents, and more stored and available in different services. These days, I think I was up and running on a new laptop in tens of minutes, and had most of my bits available in Explorer or inside an application in a little over an hour.

These are great habits to ensure I can continue to work, and good for home where I don’t want to lose photos or other digital assets.  These are also good ideas for shared work inside an organization, whether on workstations or servers. Don’t operate without a way to rebuild systems, including configuration and data, if something fails. Cultivate cattle, not pets, as the DevOps people say.

Steve Jones

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Daily Coping 15 Mar 2021

Posted on March 15, 2021 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 eat mindfully. Appreciate the taste, texture, and smell of your food.

I enjoy food, though I often like comfort, simple food. I’m not much of a “foodie” and fancy meals don’t do a lot for me. I say this, having been at a couple very expensive meals with Brent Ozar.

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Recently a friend sent us some seafood from the East Coast. Mostly some crab soup, crab cakes, and dip. I’m not a big crab fan, but my wife is. I cooked the meal, and then tried to sit down and enjoy the taste of the food. I gave it a chance, and tried to appreciate it. Some things I liked, some I didn’t much care about, so I let me wife have my extra.

I’m also learning to cook for 2, since all the kids are gone. I’ve been trying some new recipes, but also slowing down my eating with my wife, trying to taste the food, and enjoy (or not) it. Even when it’s something simple, like eggs and vegetables in the morning, I am taking more time to eat and appreciate the meal.

A far cry from the many “grab something at my desk” days for lunch.

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A Year of COVID-19

Posted on March 12, 2021 by way0utwest

At this time last year, I was supposed to be in England. I coached the weekend of Mar 7-9, and was supposed to leave the evening of the 9th for a trip to the Redgate office and then a short vacation with my wife. A little over a week before, with Grant and a few friends in Germany, my wife said we should cancel the trip and not take chances on traveling.

On Mar 11, the next weekend of youth volleyball cancelled in Denver and the city locked down. We had held a practice on Mar 10, and that was the last time I got to work with that group of kids as a team.

In the last year, I’ve tried to help myself and others with my coping tips, and I can’t believe it’s been almost a year. I am proud of how Redgate responded, with meetings in mid March about how we could help others. While we needed to continue to build and sell software, our CEO also said this was a time for us to think about giving back more to others. From our cookbook to the kids coding club, I’ve been pleased by what Redgate has done.

At the same time, I’ve also realized that my life changed in many ways. I haven’t been on an airplane in over a year. I’ve had more family time, but also this was a year of change, with my oldest moving away to teach in another country and my daughter going back to university, leaving my wife and I alone. We’ve had fits and starts in what we can and can’t do in Denver, especially with our hobby of coaching youth sports.

I’ve been able to still go to the gym, but with a mask, something I think I’ll wear in situations for a long time, but something I don’t really enjoy. I had COVID last year, and while I came through unscathed, the illness lingered long enough to worry me. It certainly made me appreciate my health more.

I’ve had more hours of video meetings in the last year than I might have had in my entire career at Redgate before that. And I’ve worked remotely for 12 years before the pandemic. I’ve rearranged my office 3 times, acquired some new hardware, including a new chair, and yet I still don’t quite feel settled after a year.

I’ve given more remote presentations in the last year than ever before. I’ve typically not enjoyed them, preferring to be live in front of an audience. While I’ve gotten more comfortable, and even started to prefer to record things in advance, I still miss people.

I’m hopeful the vaccine will start returning the world to normalcy, though I wonder if that will be this year or next. I also wonder how much we’ll be changed in the future in how we work and gather. I’m hoping for a return to events, celebrations, and entertainment as we had in the past, continuing to embrace some of the good of the last year with flexibility and the freedom to work in different places and at difference times. A bit of a mixed message there, but I do think there have been some good in the last year, with many companies realizing they don’t need someone to dress up formally and go to an office every day.

It’s been a hard year, and I never would have imagined that I’d still be doing coping tips and at home every day at this point in time. Hopefully that will start to change soon.

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Imposter or Student

Posted on March 12, 2021 by way0utwest

If you’re moving forward in your career, you’re a bit of an imposter. Actually, according to David Perell, everyone is an impostor. Many of the very successful people in technology built things that they knew nothing about. They learned technology, business, sales, and more on their way to success.

I posted a note about the video above, and someone suggested that we are students instead. The negative connotation of an impostor, someone that deliberately fakes their knowledge is something that bothers many. I get that, and I do understand the desire to disclose what you know and what you don’t.

We need to be lifelong students in the technology business, and maybe even in many other fields. The platforms on which we work, the tools we use, they do change. More importantly, the underlying technology we use might suddenly change as our employers shift directions or management moves in a new direction.

While it’s useful to adopt the mindset of being a student, there are plenty of times when we are asked to work with something we don’t understand. Others may assume we know something and look to us to lead the way or solve problems. While we may protest or let them know that we are learning, we are still expected to produce some results.

When I coach kids, we often tell them to “fake it until they make it.” They are learning new skills and sometimes don’t do well, but it is important to project an air of confidence, to believe that you will soon learn the skill. That mental projection of your future is important, and it instills confidence. I wouldn’t underestimate the importance of believing in yourself, even when you lack some ability.

When you tackle something new, do you consider yourself an impostor or student? Either way, I hope you dive into the tasks with enthusiasm and confidence.

Steve Jones

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

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