Sabbatical 3 Review

Posted on August 15, 2025 by way0utwest

I’m back. My last day of work was Jun 27 and I came back a few days ago, on Aug 13. Just over six weeks away and I am very grateful to Redgate for allowing me the break from work. This was my third sabbatical, and it was mostly unwired, which was new.

Or as my wife said last week, I was practicing for retirement.

I think I was, as I didn’t have firm plans when I started and tried not to feel pressured to get things done, but I did have a nice mix of being productive and relaxing. Here’s a look back.

Week 1

Week one started with expenses. I know I was off, but I had a lot of expenses in June with travel to multiple places and I needed expenses done. I spent a few hours Monday getting those done and submitted, as well as playing a little guitar and relaxing.

The week had me at the gym, swimming outside for the second time this summer, doing some yoga, and a little yard work, but mostly relaxing. It had been a long May and June, and I took it easy, spent time with my wife, cooked for the kids, and tried to unwind.

This was also almost time for volleyball tryouts, so I was at the gym, running some practice sessions.

Week 2

Week 2 was a bunch of medical appointments. I had a yearly checkup, a dentist, and an ortho appointment that diagnosed golfer’s/tennis elbow. I’ve been bothered for months, but hadn’t done much about it. Not great news, but it did slow me down from doing too much work this week. My wife and spent time running errands around my appointments, we got some supplies for our basement, which was being finished, and I relaxed more. I did some chores around the ranch, but not too many.

Learned how to play “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, although it’s rough. Need more practice.

We also booked some trips this week for the sabbatical, which have us something to look forward to.

I spent some time this week with volleyball tryouts eating up partial days.

Week 3

Despite my elbow, I had to go to work this week on the ranch. I wrote about this earlier, but this was roof replacement week for our riding arena.

A long week.

Week 4

We finished midday on Sunday with the roof and Monday morning my wife and I were off to Cancun. The plan was Monday – Friday, but we were enjoying it and decided to stay until Sunday.

Expensive, indulgent, but we had a good time at Secrets the Vine, adults-only, all inclusive resort. An amazing view from our room and good food and drinks all week (too many).

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I wouldn’t do it again, but despite a good time and enjoying the week with friends, I prefer more movement on vacations, so I’d choose something else. But I’m a weird, type-A, keep moving person.

Week 5

Mostly chores, trying to not aggravate my elbow. I had purchased a few things, like a brush cutter, so I got those things assembled and did some work around the ranch. I also built a tire rack, organizing the spare tires in the shed.

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Some gym time, some chores, and some maintenance. I managed to get a couple sprinklers working that had been broken and spent an afternoon at the gym fixing some chairs for the club.

Week 6

I had a quick trip to Chicago for work, coming off sabbatical for an event at Wrigley Field. I had never been, so I was willing to do this. My wife was supposed to come for a 2 day trip, but she cancelled with our other plans so she could work. As a result, I was in town for about 26 hours, and enjoyed myself. A beautiful view from across the street.

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It was weird to be back at work and sit in the airport and make a bunch of notes from the event. It’s been awhile since I was typing that much.

I turned around 24 hours later to head to Big Sur, CA with my wife and our oldest. We’d agreed to take him on a trip and we spent 5 days there, bleeding into this week.

It was a fun trip, more our style with biking, hiking, and moving around a bit. It’s a beautiful part of the country and the weather was amazing. Here we are a Bixby Bridge.

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Overall

Overall it felt like was retired. I had things to do, but no real time pressure. I didn’t let the 6 week limit drive me, but just moved around day to day. Taking my time on things and not worrying about what got finished and what didn’t.

I could have done more, but it was a very relaxing time and I feel ready to get back to work.

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Advice I Like: Naps

Posted on August 15, 2025 by way0utwest

Learn how to take a 20-minute power nap without embarassment. – from Excellent Advice for Living

I don’t like naps. In fact, I try to avoid them and keep going, even when I’m tired. I’d rather power through things and then go to bed early and get rest.

That being said, there are some times when traveling that I’ve decided to just give in and nap. Turn off distractions, leave my phone out of reach, and just sleep. I’ve even done that a few times during the work week at home when I’m exhausted. Getting 20-30 minutes of rest can be refreshing.

If I sleep. Sometimes I end up laying there and not sleeping and then I feel like I’ve wasted my time.

This is good advice, and I should follow it more often, not just when land multiple time zones away from home.

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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Who is Using Standard Edition?

Posted on August 15, 2025 by way0utwest

For many years, most of the SQL Server installations I managed or deployed to were Standard Edition. Even in large companies that had agreements with Microsoft, since each instance had a cost (even at a discount), we were careful about where we installed Enterprise Edition.

These days with Microsoft wanting to charge everyone for every core, it makes sense to use Standard Edition wherever you can.

One great change for those of us that need to develop for Standard Edition is what Joey calls the most requested feature for SQL Server 2025. We can now install a Standard version of the Developer Edition. This is something many teams have desired since developers tend to use the features available to them, and until now, every Developer Edition has been equivalent to Enterprise Edition (EE). This has resulted in lots of scripts that use EE features, which won’t run on production Standard Edition servers.

I’m wondering how many of you out there are running standard edition? Leave a comment and let us know. I suspect there are plenty of organizations who have simple apps and run Standard to save money. I know I’ve had many employers that wanted to do this, especially for systems that didn’t need large numbers of cores.

I wanted to write about a Standard version of Developer edition as an April Fool’s joke in 2024 but was told not to do it. I suspected this version was coming, and I’m glad that it’s finally announced. As long as we have different features in different editions, we need a developer version of each edition.

Steve Jones

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

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T-SQL Tuesday #189–AI and your Career

Posted on August 13, 2025 by way0utwest

I’m late to the party this month. Taiob Ali has a great invite for a topic that is likely on most people’s minds: AI and your career. I constantly hear people asking about this (well not lately, I’ve been on sabbatical).

I love the T-SQL Tuesday blog party and hope more people participate. Spread the word, ask others to write, and help promote this on socials.

AI and My Career

I’ve been a bit skeptical that AI would really help me. For the last 15-20 months I’ve been using AI in different ways, experimenting with things and seeing where it might be useful. A lot of my use has been in VS Code and Copilot, where I do some coding, and a lot of markdown/HTML management. Across that time I’ve found AI to be more and more useful with reformatting or suggestions completions.

More importantly, I’ve learned to “see” the hints and suggestions quicker and have AI save me time in little ways. None of the items are big, and it hasn’t built me a big piece of code, but I have found it to be very useful in saving minutes. Saving minutes multiple times a day starts to add up in the week and months.

My Outlook

I think AI will help me in my career in two big ways. First, there is the time saving and assistance it gives me that lets me be more productive. I look forward to more agents that can be configured to handle some tasks for me and just get things done. I haven’t been a big Siri/Hey Google person with setting appointments and small tasks, but I can see some of this starting to be more useful over time. I bet I can get some services and agents to do some work for me with natural language that eases my job.

I also think this GenAI tech (and other AI) will help me learn new skills and techniques. I’ve seen some people talking about using an AI to help them learn and I need to do some experimenting here. I tried to get it to build some web apps for me and it didn’t go as smoothly as I’d like, but I’m anxious to see if I can get it to help me learn how to better code in new ways as well as generate code for me.

It’s important to be able to judge if the AI is making good decisions, and that requires knowledge. In some cases, I have that knowledge. In others I don’t, but maybe AI can help me learn.

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