Voice of the DBA

Tag: syndicated

  • HP is the 2019 Laptop Winner

    This is for me, not necessarily for you, but I decided to go with the HP Spectre again. I saw an email from Best Buy over the Thanksgiving weekend, and surprisingly, the HP was listed on sale. US$300 off the normal $1799 price. I checked HP and they had the laptop at $1399, but that was a 512GB SSD instead of 1TB.

    I thought about it for a few days and Sunday, after a little gym time, I decided to just get one. I was lad I did as the item showed sold out when I got come and wanted to check the Windows edition. Apparently more were on sale Monday, but I was glad I just grabbed on.

    It’s a nice machine, and I like the power cord being angled on the rear corner. Much easier (for me) than the side. I also like the power button being on the other corner, as I often accidentally hit the other power button when picking up the machine.

    Contenders

    The big contenders for me were the  Dell XPS, the Lenovo X1 Carbon, and the Yoga 940. These were all the small size and weight, with similar specs. I read a number of reviews, and tried to weigh the importance of differences for me.

    The Dell is really nice, but I bemoan the lack of a USB-3 port. I often use this for a pointer when presenting. While I can certainly have a dongle or adapter, I felt like I’d just prefer a normal USB port. It’s also nice for a quick phone charge if I need it.

    The X1 is a very light machine, and the pointer is very attractive. I’ve missed not having one over the years, as I first thought this was a great idea in the 90s, in the era before trackpads. Ultimately, this was a more expensive machine, and I’m not sure it was worth it. The config I wanted, even on Cyber Monday, would have been $400-500 more (I only lightly repriced it). At Redgate, we try to spend wisely, and I decided to do that.

    Initial Impressions

    The HP is a nice machine. It’s well built, and it reminds me of the previous model I had (actually 2 generations back), but this one seems to have a better trackpad and a nice, solid feel. That previous one has lasted well, and I’m looking forward to this one.

    20191202_114525_HDR

    In using it for a few hours to start installing things, it worked well. I found the keyboard to be smooth and comfortable, and the trackpad certainly works better than the old one. I found the old one to have lots of inadvertent touches, but this one didn’t give me trouble.

    It’s slightly smaller than the older one, with angled rear corners. All inall, a beautiful machine.

    20191202_114505

    The size is similar, but feels much smaller and lighter. Overall, I’m pleased.

    20191202_114516

    I’ll be spending a lot of time on this one in the next week as I prepare for SQL Saturday #910, so I’m sure I’ll tease out any issues soon. So far, I’m pleased, and hoping it performs and lasts as long as the previous one.

  • Resetting an Azure SQL Database Admin Password

    This is likely something that most people know, but it was a bit confusing for me. This post is really here to remind me and help cement this in my mind.

    I went to connect to a QA database that I don’t use very often, and for some reason, I couldn’t remember the password. I tried a number of them, but none worked. Not the best situation to find yourself in.

    I then decided to just reset the password and went to the database Overview. This is what I saw:

    2019-11-26 17_53_06-Sandbox (dkranchapps_Sandbox) - Microsoft Azure

    I could have sworn there was a “Reset” option here. I even tried searching a few places and there were people that mentioned there being a reset. Why wasn’t I seeing one?

    Because I was in the wrong place. Reading closer a post on the Tech Community, I see that I need to be in the SQL Server server blade, not the database.

    Once I realized that, I clicked over to that spot in the portal. Looking at my SQL Server, and I see the Reset.

    2019-11-26 17_56_42-dkranchstaging - Microsoft Azure

    Slightly confusing, and certainly something I hope I remember from here, but if a new developer is working with databases, they might not realize this.

  • A Quick Look at Travel

    I was experimenting with visualizations the other day, and started playing with SandDance, a tool from Microsoft that you can use in Power BI or Azure Data Studio. I’ll write more, but I loaded up a quick look at the last couple years of travel for me. Here are airlines v destinations:

    2019-11-25 16_02_17-SandDance_ unitedactivity.csv - Sample Data - Azure Data Studio

    Since I live in Denver, obviously that should be my top destination, but a few others are surprising. I go to London quite a bit, but LAX was surprising to me. It shouldn’t be, as I’ve flown through there quite a few times to get to London.

    I’ll write more about this later, but I thought this was an interesting visualization.

  • Take the 2020 State of Database DevOps survey

    It’s still 2019, but we’re looking forward to 2020 and wonder how your world has changed since our survey last year. There are a number of questions and this will probably take 20 minutes to complete, but you have a couple incentives:

    • Completed surveys donate $1 to UNICEF
    • You could win a 64GB iPod Air

    You can take the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/FWCVCBJ

    Feel free to pass this along to your friends as well.