Voice of the DBA

Tag: syndicated

  • Daily Coping 13 Sep 2022

    Today’s coping tip is to focus on the basics today, eat healthy food, drink water, get exercise.

    I’m trying to make all of these a lifestyle change. In January, I worked on all of these, trying to lose weight. Which I’ve written about before. I was down about 25 lbs this year, then a bunch of travel, hormone therapy, and vacation had me up around 10lbs, but I’ve gotten back down to my 22-23lbs down from Jan 1. Not quite the goal, but close.

    I wrote this a few days ago, but my routine for the day was to do the following:

    • up early for work, make some black coffee, eggs, spinach, and turkey bacon
    • take a large water bottle to my desk and drink it by lunch
    • work and have a mid-morning protein smoothie
    • more water and a break at 1130 to go to the gym.
    • lunch, ground turkey in a salad with avocado
    • more water and an afternoon smoothie around 400p
    • break from work and cook dinner around 6-630p. Tonight I did chicken fajitas over cauliflower rice for me.

    That’s my routine most of the time I am at home. Some variation on recipes, but the pattern is pretty close. The gym is sometimes earlier or later, but for the most part, this has worked well for me. Made coping with the transition out of the pandemic better.

    Wish I’d started this earlier in 2020 or 2021.

    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 12 Sep 2022

    Today’s coping tip is to forgive yourself when things go wrong.

    A theme of being better to myself, starting with last Thur and Fri.

    What’s gone wrong for me? I was working on some ranch chores, setting up a new gate opener. Some hard, physical digging, but also some planning and preparation. I also had to buy a few things, and in the process of the work, I mis-aligned one set of brackets and had to replace them. I had trouble with the digging and had to change tactics and re-do some work. I also chopped an underground wire, which I had to replace.

    All of this made the process take longer, and also meant we manually opened and closed the gate for awhile. Getting out of a car in bad weather to do so is really annoying. I was annoyed with myself for inconveniencing myself and others, and making simple mistakes.

    However, I’ve learned that this isn’t my full time job. I will make mistakes. I need to be ready to deal with them without getting upset or beating myself up. I tried to forgive myself and overall that helped, but not completely.

    Something I need to work on more.

    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 Redgate 100

    The Redgate 100 is a list of 100 people that are influential in the database world in a number of categories.I made the list in a few places, which is pretty cool.

    Redgate 100 Social individual influencers (35)

    Disclosure: I do work for Redgate as an advocate, and I helped with some discussion of the list and nominations. I didn’t pick the list, vote, or make decisions.

    This is a marketing effort, as are many of the “best of” awards and notices you see out there. In many case, those are often paid placement, as I’ve been offered the chance to be on those lists if I paid a fee. I always decline, or at least to date I have.

    In this case, Redgate are in the business of database software and tools. We sell them, but we also support a lot of community efforts as well as are constantly researching to better understand what people need and want. Sometimes we build products in those areas, sometimes we just publish research results.

    In any case, I thought this was a pretty neat idea and a great list. You can read about the selection process, which doesn’t tell a lot, other than they took some nominations, calculated some score based on what people do in the community.

    While Kathi, Grant, and I work for Redgate and are on the list, part of the reason why we work for Redgate is that we do a lot in and for the community. I could say the same for Kendra who used to work for us, and if we’d have done this list before we were hired, I think we’d have been on it anyway.

    This doesn’t imply that everyone who is an influential database professional is on the list. With 100 slots, there were decisions and choices, and there are some experts and incredibly valuable community people who didn’t make the list.

    Thanks to all of the people who blog, speak, volunteer, and otherwise help drive the database professional industry forward.

    It’s an honor, and I hope Redgate continues to do this in the future.

  • Daily Coping 9 Sep 2022

    Today’s coping tip is to let go of self-criticism and speak to yourself kindly.

    This tip follows on nicely from yesterday’s tip, just the other side of that one. I wanted to criticize myself recently for not having a bit more content prepped before my vacation. I was gone for 8 days, and while I had content scheduled for the time away, and for a day after I returned, I didn’t have any beyond that, which puts me in a bit of a crunch.

    My career at SQL Server Central is running the site like a newspaper, which means things scheduled out a week or two in advance. Trying to pull content together a day or two before it’s needed is hard. It is also very stressful. I returned from vacation with 2 days of things, but not 4 or more, which meant that I needed to do some editing for articles and some writing for editorials.

    Some weeks editorials flow and I can write 3, 4 or more. Others I struggle to produce one. I returned from vacation with 3 days to write an editorial or two (hopefully more) and relieve the stress.

    I started to chastise myself for not having 1 or 2 more prepared for the next week and then stopped. That wasn’t helpful, and instead I decided to tell myself that I’ll come up with something interesting to say and just set aside some time to start writing.

    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.