Voice of the DBA

Tag: syndicated

  • A New Word: Apolytus

    apolytus– n. the moment you realize you are changing as a person, finally outgrowing your old problems like a reptile shedding its skin, already able to twist back around and chuckle at this weirdly antiquated caricature of yourself that will soon come off completely.

    I don’t know if I am changing that much, though hopefully I’m still maturing a bit. More, I think about my daughter, who graduates college this year. She’s changed so much in the five years since she left home for college, outgrowing the problems and concerns she had as an 18-year old.

    I think I went through that myself, leaving home at 17 for college, coming back 4 years later a completely different person, viewing the world completely differently.

    From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

  • Using Git Prune–#SQLNewBlogger

    As I’ve been working with SQL Saturday and managing changes to events, I’ve accumulated a lot of branches. Even though I’m a solo developer, I decided to use branches, as I expect others to share this load in the future. This post looks at how to start cleaning those up.

    Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers. You can see all posts on Git as well.

    Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

    Finding Old Branches

    When I ran the git branch command, I saw this. There are a lot of old branches in there.

    2024-04-11 10_44_53-cmd

    I decided that I should reduce this number. After all, even removing stale branches means I have a lot of events in flight.

    We use GitHub, and when I go on the site, I see lots of branches, some of which date back to last year. Those events are done, so I decided to delete some branches. In the image below, there are three branches. To the right, there are delete icons on the bottom two as I’ve already pressed the one to delete the remote branch on the top one.

    2024-04-11 10_51_00-Branches · sqlsaturday_sqlsatwebsite — Mozilla Firefox

    Now, how do I delete the local branch? Let’s start by removing it.

    Git Prune

    There is a command to remove references to remote branches that are deleted: git prune. I deleted a few older branches, and then ran git prune for remotes, with the –dry-run option. This tells me what would happen. As you can see, a number of branch references would be deleted.

    2024-04-11 10_51_57-cmd

    Nothing in here I’m worried about or that is active. I’ve deleted these on GitHub, so I’ll re-run the command without dry run. This removes the references.

    Unfortunately, the local branches still exist. We don’t remove these, as it’s possible I have work on a local branch not sent to the remote, so doing this automatically, even if I do it, is dangerous.

    I’ll do another post on removing the local branches.

    Automating the Removal of Remote references

    I might want to remove local references for branches that get deleted on the remote. This is useful if you delete branches on merge. I don’t in this case, as I’m often using the same branch for multiple changes for an event, rather than a new branch for every one.

    One way to do this is to change the config with this: 

    git config remote.origin.prune true

    This will then run the prune on each fetch or full. This helps keep things cleaner, though local branches still exist. However, if I commit to a local branch and push, I’ll get an error that I need to configure the upstream. That helps with me being aware of what’s active or not.

    SQL New Blogger

    Using version control is a core skill for anyone in technology. Even database people. You could write posts on how you use or learn about git (or something else) and showcase your skills.

    This post took me about 15 minutes to write, even with screen shots.

  • Familiar Sights

    Yesterday was a long day in London. I arrived late in the am, and as I was walking from the plane to the border check, I went down the escalator on the entering-the-country side of the terminal. I had this view:

    20240415_121436

    There’s nothing special here, but through the glass there are the outbound escalators that I’ve taken up and a Caffe Nero coffee shop. That’s a place I used to stop often on my way out of the UK early in my time at Redgate.

    I used to always stay at a hotel near the airport, first the Renaissance Hotel with Brad McGehee and later at the Hilton or DoubleTree with Grant. I’d often have an early flight, which meant getting up and trying to catch the Hoppa bus or get a cab. The hotels usually didn’t have breakfast ready then, so I’d stress over the transport, which could be funny, get to the airport and through security and then stop here for a cup of coffee and a chocolate croissant.

    Hectic, but very impressionable trips on me. So many memories of sitting near a gate, eating and looking forward to coming home. I didn’t travel much those early days outside of a few UK trips, and it was a relief to be going home.

    The last 5-6 years, with a direct flight to Denver and more airline status, I get a late flight, enjoy the lounge, and skip Nero, but I always reflect on my memories there as I think of the early days, paying with coins or bills, or swiping my American credit card and having to sign, something so few European travelers did.

    Hotel Confusion

    I spent the night in the Hilton at T4, which is one of two hotels I use now. There is a Garden Inn at T2 as well, which I often pick when leaving since I can walk to the terminal. Yesterday, arriving tired in the morning, I was on autopilot and walked to the Garden Inn. They said they didn’t have a reservation for me.

    Doh! I hadn’t even checked, assuming I was there, but when I looked in the app, I realized I was at the T4 Hilton, which is a nicer hotel, just a bit of a trek. I walked back, found a train and was at the Hilton 30-45 minutes later. Not a long time, but also not quick for a tired traveler.

    A nap, some work, and a workout made me feel more human, but still a long day. Plus I had a 730p call in Denver, which was 230a in London. It’s been a long 24 hours.

    However, I had a quiet dinner in the hotel and snapped this picture after.

    20240415_220258

    This large atrium has a lot of memories for me. I’ve been here often, including quite a few times with my wife. We’ve eaten in this spot, grabbing dinner after a trip in the EU somewhere, having a quiet night before a morning flight. While this hotel is a walk and train to T2, in the morning, it’s an early morning and stressful, so an early night here is often on our agenda.

    This hotel also has a special place in my mind as the gym is on the ground level (this is the first floor), but it’s on the side of the hotel with no windows. It’s a dark, quiet spot, and it’s where I once got up at 430a to run.

    I had a long running streak (day 1000 here) where I ran at least a mile every day. I did this for 1564 days, over 4 years. During that time I had a few trips to the UK and back, with the return trips back being hard. Depending on weather and equipment, I’ve had 20+ hour trips. Most of the time I’d get home and manage a jog at home, though one time at 1130p at night. Rather than chance things, I got up one time in this hotel, the only person on a treadmill at 435a trying to get a mile done before heading to the airport.

    That sticks with me.

  • A New Word: the Wends

    the wends– n. the frustration that you’re not enjoying an experience as much as you should, which prompts you to try plugging in various through combinations to trigger anything more intense than roaring static, as if your heart had been inadvertently demagnetized by a surge of expectations.

    That is quite a definition. I don’t know if I experience the wends often, or not to that extent, but I do sometimes look at an experience that everyone around me seems to be enjoying. Or many people I know are enjoying.

    And I’m not. Or not much.

    Sometimes this is music, where lots of people like something I don’t. Maybe it’s a place or experience.

    Maybe it’s me.

    I try to step back and think about what other people see, or why they like it. Maybe that is the wends.

    From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows