Voice of the DBA

Tag: syndicated

  • Goal Progress for Dec 2022

    I set goals at the beginning of the year, and I’m tracking my progress in these updates during 2022.

    December is usually quiet, though this year I spent the first 12 days of the month out of town. That meant that I wasn’t getting much done, either at work, in my life, or on my goals. I did a little reading, but mostly it was work and holiday.

    I’m going to do the grade for the month and then look at how I feel about the year.

    Grades:

    • December – B+
    • 2022 overall –  B

    I made some good progress in December and managed to get a bunch done on my report, finished a book, and started on my demos again. Not amazing, but really good.

    For the year, I think I’ll give myself a B as I managed to read all the books, do some demo work, and get my Power BI skills growing. I also did a bunch of community stuff, though not quite as I saw it happening at the beginning of the year. Still, a good year overall.

    Here are the goals and updates for the month.

    Work

    Mostly reading this month, as I was traveling. I did reset my environment for a DevOps demo and got projects set up for SQL Server and PostgreSQL in the same repo.

    Personal

    Sent my dashboard to a few others to use. Not the entire team, but I got 4/10 using it to see what they think, which is a good start. With my assistant, we’re at 50%

    • Link Google Sheets to Power BI – 100%
    • Create Report – 75%
    • Create Dashboard – 60% – Added a main page
    • Get people using it – 50%
    • Coaching Certification – 100%

    Community

    • Support the Colorado groups by speaking twice and helping getting two events set up
      – 66%
      • CO Springs event set up and executed
      • Denver SQL Server SQL Saturday executed
    • Speak at 3 other community events (was user groups) outside of Colorado – 100%
      • Spoke at DBA Fundamentals group
      • Spoke at Toronto SSUG
      • Spoke at SQL Saturdays in Jacksonville, New Jersey, LA, Denver
        • Boston, Toronto in Oct
    • Support SQL Saturdays – Help get 10 events run in 2022 – 100%
      • We have had 15 run this year and 3 more scheduled
      • In Nov, we had 5 events complete – Sao Paulo, Oregon, Bangladesh
      • Seven events scheduled for 2023
    • Volunteer 4 days with Habitat – 0 days
      • Not happy about this still. I had hoped to go Sept 15, but they cancelled the build that day. Need to find another day, but it’s hard. They aren’t doing every Wed/Thur/fri, and travel is getting in the way.

  • Daily Coping 30 Dec 2022

    Today’s coping tip is to give thanks. List the kind things others have done for you.

    I know that my life is great, but it’s because of a lot of help I get from others. I do a lot, but I can’t do it alone.

    I thank my wife for supporting me and comforting me.

    I thank my kids for the same, and for helping out around the house, which lets me tackle other things. Not the least of which is helping their Mom so I don’t have to do as much on the ranch.

    I think Andy, my former business partner for the friendship, counsel, and reminders of things that I should think about, but sometimes don’t. He helps keep me balanced and thoughtful about the world.

    I think my bosses at Redate this year, Tom and Annabel, for the support and help at work. Cecilia was wonderful in supporting me at events, and lots of others taught me things and helped me through the year. They helped me cope and thrive during a busy year.

    I thank all the SQL Saturday organizers for their efforts during a tough year of restarting the brand. I think the speakers and helpers for volunteering and the attendees for coming. It was a year that exceeded expectations (blog). These people helped me with inspiration and confidence this was a good idea.

    I thank my friends for the time, conversations, lunches, dinners, drinks, and wonderful times spent together, which fulfilled a lot of social needs.

    I want to thank the kids on my volleyball team, both for the 2022 season and those I’ve started to work with for 2023. They give me hope for the future, they extend my family by being a set of surrogate daughters when my own is away from home most of the time (and not a child anymore), and they inspire me to work harder with their efforts.

    There are plenty of other people to thank, but these are the top of my list.

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQL Server Central 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.

  • Daily Coping 29 Dec 2022

    Today’s coping tip is to ask for help and let someone else discover the joy of giving.

    I do most of the cooking in the house, but I thought with family around, I’d get some help. I usually don’t mind preparing, but a few times I asked others to help out and handle some tasks or prepare a portion of the meal. Little things, as I like cooking, but I also thought others would enjoy the chance to contribute.

    Hard for me, but it was still fun to let others help. I’ll try to do this more often.

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQL Server Central 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.

  • Solar Projection v Estimates

    We got a solar system in 2022 to try and fix some of our power costs and hedge against the future. We were fairly confident it would work well, but weren’t 100% sure. So far, it has reduced our power bill quite a bit, though it’s a bit hard to tell right now if this is actually saving much money.

    However, the performance is above what was estimated. I’ve built a Power BI Report that tracks the actual production v the estimates. So fat, almost every month has beaten estimates and our power production is well above what we expected.

    Given the fact that power prices have increased in CO and I expect more increases to come, this is nice.

    I can’t embed the report here, but this is an image of the report:

    Power BI report of production v estimates

    I need to add some more costing here, but our current bill is often around $22/month, of which $13.50 is a connection charge. Usually we are paying around $8-12 of demand charges for peak usage from 4-8pm. Hard to get the family to slow down here, and there isn’t much solar during this time.

    This is, however, much better than last Nov/Dec, when we had $220 bills. Even with the loan payment, I think we’re paying less than in the past.