Daily Coping 26 Feb 2021

Posted on February 26, 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 be gentle with someone who you feel inclined to criticize.

A friend got snagged by an Internet scammer and lost a bit of money. Not a ton, but enough to get angry and feel bad. I had felt this was a suspicious purchase, but I didn’t make myself known early enough. I was mad, too.

However, I just sympathized, apologized for not sayings something earlier, and listened to them get upset.

An easy time to chastise them, but better to be supportive.

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ConFoo–The Future of Database Development in Containers

Posted on February 25, 2021 by way0utwest

I delivered a talk at the ConFoo conference. I’ve never been to this live, and when I submitted last year, I was hoping this would somehow be a live event in Montreal. It didn’t happen, but I joined the virtual event and gave my presentation.

The deck is here: FutureDBDevelopment_confoo.zip

No real questions, but lots of interest, which is great.

If you didn’t stay near the end, I talked a bit about the Spawn.cc project and the journey the research group has taken to learn about Kubernetes and file systems. It’s been fascinating to watch the project evolve. The API used to change almost weekly as it was improved and enhanced.

A few resources:

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UX Matters

Posted on February 25, 2021 by way0utwest

When I was early in my career, VB v4 was popular, and easy. So many basic apps were built by not only software developers, but people in other departments with an interest in programming. Through VB v6, I found so many apps being built, often with complex and un-intuitive interfaces.

I was reminded of these apps when I saw a story about a mistake made by Citibank. Apparently an employee was supposed to send interest payments of US$7.8mm to creditors, however, the employee paid $500mm to Revlon, the entire amount of the loan. A mistake, and one for which Citibank is likely liable.

Apparently there was a UI (user interface) issue. If you read the article, you’ll see a bad user interface, and one that is confusing. If you use this application regularly, it not be a big deal, but staff changes, and having useful UI matters. As I get older, and use more and more software applications, I really see the value in UI being well designed.

Most of us data professionals tend to work with our tools, some of which are well designed, some not, but often we’re in a code editor, so we might not care as much. Writing code is code, though many of us do appreciate add-ins or extras that make it easy to organize our code.

I do think for administrators, or anyone that is looking at the status for their systems, good UI helps. Even if you deal with just data and text, having things displayed in an easy to understand format is important. This is also certainly true for most end users of software.

I’m not a UI/UX (user experience) person, but I know people that I can all for questions or hire for their experience. Over time, I’ve learned that paying attention to the UI/UX can make the difference between customers really enjoying what you’ve done and them feeling that you haven’t really finished your product. I’m sure that Citibank, and many other large orgs, might be re-thinking the emphasis, or lack thereof, they place on this part of software development after hearing about this story.

Steve Jones

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

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Daily Coping 25 Feb 2021

Posted on February 25, 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 focus on what’s good, even if today is tough.

Most days haven’t been too tough lately. Colorado is opening up a bit more, I’m able to get out of the house and off the property a touch more. While I don’t see too many more people, a little freedom is nice. Or at least, the illusion of freedom. About the only thing that’s changed is a few more restaurant visits.

However, I did tweak my back recently. I was trying to do some work outside, strained a bit, and got some lower back pain. It took me a day to get to the doctor, and I was in some pain during the afternoon and night.

Easy to get upset or angry or have one of any other negative emotions. I stopped and told myself that I was still mostly healthy, this was my fault, it was a minor inconvenience, and things would be better soon.

I went inside, lay down, played some guitar and read, finding a way to enjoy the day.

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