Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Recharge and Relax

    My boss informed me a couple months ago that I had 30 days of vacation stored up and needed to take some. I mentioned this to my wife and she scolded me for not taking enough time off the last couple of years. Laughter ensued when I reminded her that she struggles to find even one day off every two week as she grows her horse training business. At least I take weekends off.

    Most of the time.

    I scheduled a few days in August and September, and enjoyed the time off, but I put off any more scheduling until I got another note from my boss two weeks ago saying I needed to schedule at least 16 days off before the end of the year. I’ve got a busy schedule, with 3 more trips between now and the end of 2013, along with a few other work commitments, so it’s hard to actually find that many days in my schedule. I somehow managed, and while it’s all in one and two day segments, I did schedule 17 days before the end of 2013.

    I do know vacation is important. Life is short, and even though I really enjoy my job, I do need to get away and spend time living the rest of my life. It’s entirely too easy to get caught up working too many hours in the technology business, voluntarily or involuntarily. We need to make sure we take advantage of our time off and get away from the stress of our careers. I encourage each of you to make sure you are taking your vacation each year and getting time away from work.

    This starts tomorrow, with two days off this week, and continues through November and December. As a result, I’ll be gone quite a bit through the end of the year. I’ve got a few guest writers and some re-runs, and I hope that people still enjoy the newsletter each day. If not, let me know, and we’ll make better plans for next year.

    Steve Jones

    As a side note, I’ve had 4 friends pass away in the last 3 years. All were under 50 years of age. Life is truly short.

    Video and Audio versions

    Today’s podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

    Follow Steve Jones on Twitter to find links and database related items and announcements.
    Steve Jones Windows Media Video ( 16.9MB) feed

    MP4 iPod Video ( 19.8MB) feed

    MP3 Audio ( 4.1MB) feed

    Feeds are available at iTunes and Mevio

    To submit an article, rant or editorial,
    log in to the Contribution Center

  • Solving Problems at Midnight

    I couldn’t sleep last night. I was tossing and turning, struggling to rest, and it seemed I was waking up every 20 minutes.

    My demo broke. I have a talk that I’m giving at the Denver SQL Server User Group on Thursday, as practice for the same talk next week at SQL Intersection. After returning from my travels, I fired up my virtual machine on Monday and went through the talk. I’ve given a version of this as recently as 3 weeks ago, but I like to refresh myself. When I got to the third demo, I couldn’t get it to work.

    I tried a bunch of things, but the test I was sure would fail, wouldn’t. This is a significant part of my demo, and it shows how data volumes affect things. I reset the snapshot. I dropped and rebuilt the database and process. I even took a 3 hour break, going for a walk, picking up kids, and hitting a yoga class. When I returned at night, while my kids were doing their homework, I couldn’t get mine to work. I even faked the test, and caused a failure, but that wouldn’t work with an audience.

    I gave up around 9:30 and went to bed shortly thereafter. At least, I tried to, tossing and turning. My mind was all over the map, thinking about work, some projects at home, kids’ school, etc. At 2am, it hit me. All of a sudden I realized why the test wouldn’t fail. The join that was supposed to be slow, wasn’t, because it was missing some data. I was generating a large volume of data in two of the three tables, but in the third, I hadn’t linked it to my version control system. That’s why it failed.

    I don’t always have such great inspiration at night, but I have found that sometimes walking away from an issue and taking a break can help. I’ve even walked to a colleague’s desk and helped them with their own issue, and all of a sudden I realize how to solve my problem. I’ve learned to learn to be productive in other ways when I’m stuck on a particular problem, letting my subconscious mind analyze things in the background.

    This morning I linked my table and the test started failing. I have rarely been so happy to see red errors on my monitor.

  • Minor Problems

    When I speak to people about blogging to increase the visibility of their brand, one of the questions I often hear from them is “what do I write about?” My advice is to take the every day occurrences, the things that come up in the course of your job, and write about them. It doesn’t matter if everyone else has written about backing up SQL Server databases, or writing a query to find duplicate rows; it matters if you have written about it. A potential employer often your blog as due diligence on your skills, including the way you communicate information to others through your writing.

    However most of us also encounter these seemingly trivial, minor problems that plague our environments. We find creative solutions to the problems, solutions that others might not think of. They don’t seem to be worth sharing. I hear so many SQL Server professionals belittle their work, thinking that anyone could build the same solution. That might be true, but for every problem you solve, there are probably others working with SQL Server that would benefit from hearing about your work.

    New people come into the SQL Server community all the time. There will be people that connect to SQL Server with Management Studio for the first time and back up a database. This week someone is writing their first T-SQL query and executing it. The trivial, simple solutions that you develop for common problems might just help one of these beginners learn something, and solve a problem their first week as an accidental DBA.

    Write about the common things you do. Share the solutions you develop. Pay it forward, since most of us have gotten help already from someone else in the community doing the same thing.

    Steve Jones

     

  • Grow Your Family

    Yesterday I wrote a piece on the networking event that Andy Warren and I host on the Monday before the Summit conference each year. It’s a great event, and I hope more of you can come next year. Our event is really a microcosm of something amazing in the SQL Server community. I haven’t seen it in other technologies I’ve been a part of, and I’m proud that we, as a community, have done something amazing.

    The hashtag on Twitter for many events is #sqlfamily. It seems as though the various community members, some speakers, some authors, some watchers, all treat this professional group as a family. We greet each other warmly, we hug, we help each other solve problems or find jobs. And we argue and disagree. We act like a family, a large group of people bonded together.

    If you choose to join and participate, it seems that someone will be willing to help you, cheer you up, laugh with you, and be your friend. It’s an amazing group of people, and I have a question for you this Friday.

    Will you join the #sqlfamily and meet 3 new people at your next event?

    That’s my recommendation for networking and becoming more involved in the community. At your next user group, SQL Saturday, or other event, make an effort to talk to 3 people. Introduce yourself and ask them what they do with SQL Server. It’s that simple to network with people and you never know what will come of a new relationship. Most will be casual “hi, how are you” relationships and some will be “I don’t want to talk to them anymore”, but I bet you get a few closer relationships where you enjoy seeing and talking to the individual.

    You might find a new good friend, a contact that you can call for help, or a colleague that calls to offer you a new job.

    Steve Jones

    Video and Audio versions

    Today’s podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.

    Follow Steve Jones on Twitter to find links and database related items and announcements.
    Steve Jones Windows Media Video ( 15.9MB) feed

    MP4 iPod Video ( 18.7MB) feed

    MP3 Audio ( 3.9MB) feed

    Feeds are available at iTunes and Mevio

    To submit an article, rant or editorial,
    log in to the Contribution Center