Daily Coping 13 Jan 2021

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

Five minutes. It’s quick. Not a big impact in my day. Yet, I find stopping everything for 5 minutes and relaxing to be very, very hard.

It’s silly, especially as this is often a part of the beginning and/or end of yoga classes in a group. However, if I’m doing yoga by myself, or even with a video, I struggle. I seem to always stop and look forward, look at the next thing I need to do.

However, I tried this. I set a timer, and I sat on the front porch, just enjoying a sunny day, doing nothing. No distractions, no computer, no phone.

It was very nice and relaxing.

It was also very hard. My mind kept wandering and I kept thinking of something I could do in this 5 minutes.

I’m not sure I could do this every day, but I am going to try and make it a point to stop and no tackle some different chore or task away from work, but just sit for a few minutes a couple times a week.

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Reassess Your Configuration

Posted on January 12, 2021 by way0utwest

It’s the start of a new year, and while it might feel like COVID-19 has us stuck back in March 2020, I hope that will start to fade as we move into the new year. Certainly our employers want to move forward, and I suspect that there is some hope that organizations will start to thrive in 2021.

I saw a post from Kenneth Fisher recently that talked about an end of year, new year checklist. It’s a basic set of things that you might do as a type of review and cleanup of some of the instances and databases that you manage. Checking things like end of year processes and performing some review of potential items that might no longer be needed.

In the past, I didn’t do this type of work at the end of the year, or even that often, but when there were slow times, I did have a list of things to periodically review. We had canned queries and reports to help us evaluate resources. Many were automated to ensure the data about systems was available if I had time.

One area that I was check once or twice a year was the configuration, trying to determine if any hardware had changed, the workload had altered, or there were proactive configuration changes we could make. This might include removing unused security logins or turning off services that weren’t being used.

Certainly I was always cognizant of the load that managing lots of databases can have on a DBA. Every additional database is a potential customer that can call or file a ticket. I couldn’t often remove any, but I did find ways to remove unused objects and archive data at times. Reducing resource usage often pays itself back over time, especially when the need for more storage arises, which was more of a battle than it needed to be.

I might add one thing to Ken’s list. I would ensure that you should check on cloud resources that might not be used. One thing I see too often is that cloud resources are easy to spin up and leave up, even if they become unused. Finding a few of these might earn you some points with the people paying the bills.

Steve Jones

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Daily Coping 12 Jan 2021

Posted on January 12, 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 look for the good in others and notice their strengths.

This can be challenging when you disagree with someone, but it is helpful to stop and think about others, even when you agree with them. The world has been polarized in many ways during the pandemic, so it is helpful to stop and change your view.

I have been trying to do this with one of the kids I coach. Often I might have an impression of the kids’ effort level, desire, even how well they listen. At the same time, I have empathy that this moment isn’t always representative of them.

For one kid, they haven’t always seemed to be focused, and haven’t had much effort after the holidays. I remind myself to stop and appreciate that this person still shows up, they do have some strengths, and I need to praise and appreciate those. I can try to get them to work on others, but pausing to appreciate the good helps me stay balanced in how I view them.

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The Responsibility for Bugs

Posted on January 11, 2021 by way0utwest

Most software has bugs. Actually, maybe all software has bugs, but often we can live with some of them. Over time, vendors regularly issue patches to fix things, and despite these issues, many of us continue to use software productively, if not happily. We live with some workarounds or issues, and continue to get work done, entertain ourselves, and the world keeps moving forward.

Recently a software developer issued a full refund to customers that had been running into issues with their software, in this case a game. Apparently this is more of a platform issue, as the early reviewers saw the game on a PC, and many of the complaints are on dedicated consoles. The developer of the game has promised patches to fix the main issues, but if customers want a refund, they can get one.

I’ve had issues with plenty of software in the past, as vendors release a new version that might not have been tested as well as it should. I’ve also seen plenty of scale issues, where software is tested or architected for a certain scale, but customers use it at larger scales. My work with large enterprises, showed the latter to be the case more often than I’d like.

In the case of the game, the public outcry can cause lots of changes, mostly because the goodwill and reputation of the vendor are at stake. However, in many enterprise software sales, there isn’t a public disclosure of issues that prevent other customers from learning of issues. Part of this is a lack of detailed public reviews of software, and part of this is that users don’t often share specific issues outside of their organization.

I wish more vendors were held accountable for bugs, and with responsibility to patch and mitigate them. However, I also see that software is used in so many different ways, with many configurations, that it can be hard to comprehensively test everything. I also know that there are bugs that very few customers hit, and the cost to deal with these can be high.

Ultimately, I think I’d like to have more transparency required about which bugs customers hit and in which environments. I’d also like to have some requirement that some percentage of bugs must be fixed within a timeframe or customers entitled to some compensation. I know this might lead to many simple bugs fixed, but perhaps it would also pressure software vendors to improve their quality a little more than they do today.

Steve Jones

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