Voice of the DBA

Tag: syndicated

  • Daily Coping 26 Oct 2022

    Today’s coping tip is to recognize that you have a choice in what to prioritize

    A good one for me, especially as I’m a little stressed and overloaded with work. Prep for travel, the Summit, and a few customer things. Around a busy life schedule, I feel slightly overwhelmed.

    But I control a lot of this. I have the deadlines and the demands, and I can’t abandon them, but I can put one foot in front of the other and make progress. Tackle a task and prioritize them.

    That tends to be based on the various deadlines for me, and I’ll start with a few things due this week.

    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.

  • The SQL Server Central Casino Party #SeattleSummitMoments

    Redgate started a new marketing thing and I like it. They’re asking for memories of attending the Summit in Seattle. I’ve been lucky enough to go to many of them, so I have a lot, but I wanted to take a moment and think about this one.

    If you have a memory, share it with #SeattleSummitMoments.

    PASS used to give a referral fee for getting people to register with the Summit. At SQL Server Central, we published the code and marketed to the community and usually we’d get a few hundred people to use our code. This meant we often had US$4-5k of income coming from the event.

    We didn’t need it, and our plan every year was to throw an opening night party and spend all the money. We’d contract with a party company to run a casino and then I’d buy prizes with the extra money. The casino party cost around $2500-3000 or so and then we’d buy $2-3k in prizes.

    Here’s a shot (courtesy of Pat Wright) of me setting up one year.

    SSC-RedGateParty-2

    People had a great time, and we usually packed the room.

    SSC-RedGateParty-20

    We’d have more people wanting to come than used our code, so we started charging admission. I’d have to guess how many people might come and then we’d purchase another few hundred dollars of prizes and hope we made the money back. Usually we didn’t lose too much money.

    Amazing memories and I wish we were still doing something like this.

    SSC-RedGateParty-36

  • Daily Coping 25 Oct 2022

    Today’s coping tip is to share a helpful quote, picture, or video with a friend.

    I usually enjoy sharing quotes with friends on their birthdays. Those of you who know me on Facebook usually get one.

    However, I’m sharing one today that I think is helpful to me, both in my career in technology, in coaching, and in my endeavors:

    “What do you do with a mistake: recognize it, admit it, learn from it, forget it.” – Dean Smith

    It’s a very DevOps way to view the world, and I like this one.

    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 24 Oct 2022

    Today’s coping tip is to find joy in tackling something that you have put off.

    I on not a bad procrastinator, but I do put plenty of things off. Usually this is because I try to always have work done for the next week, which means I am looking forward two or three weeks all the time.

    That usually gives me a bit of time to procrastinate if I don’t feel like working on a task.

    This is often the way I tackle ranch tasks, as we often can look forward and plan out fixing or improving something. Recently, I took time to handle a few things that I’ve been delaying.

    First, I changed oil in the UTVs on the ranch. We use these things regularly, and I tend to handle the maintenance. However, I don’t love changing oil. It’s easy and not that time consuming, but it’s dirty and annoying, and I avoid it. I took time to just deal with a couple vehicles this past weekend.

    The second thing is that I put an electric winch on a door during the pandemic. It’s worked OK, but it hasn’t been completely stable. It twists a little under high wind loads, and I end up going out to tight and re-align it at times. I had purchased a couple brackets, but needed a few new bolts and then time to mount those under the winch. I took time to just knock this out as well.

    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.