Voice of the DBA

Tag: T-SQL Tuesday

  • T-SQL Tuesday #134–Taking a Break

    I’m a day late for T-SQL Tuesday this month, literally because I was taking a break. Yesterday I took a holiday to go snowboarding with a friend. The weekend was a break from life, as I twisted my back Thursday night and spent most of the time since Friday in bed, healing over the weekend.

    This month, the invitation is from James McGillivray, and the topic is “Give Me a Break”, which might be appropriate as we have left 2020 behind, but not the pandemic. While I had a break, I’ll give you a few things that help me unwind.

    My Breaks from Work

    I’ve been stuck at some somewhat, but not completely, during the pandemic. The lockdowns in Colorado were shorter, and easier, so I haven’t had the challenges of others. Plus, I live on a horse ranch, so I’m not as restricted as many others.

    I am used to traveling, however, and despite the space we have, I felt somewhat trapped last year. I haven’t been used to spending more than 3-4 weeks in my office without a trip, so there was a different adjustment from many others. Some of my breaks:

    • horseback riding with my wife. We can ride off the property and through some nearby fields for a 2-3 mile trip
    • guitar – I spent more time learning some songs and sitting outside. I’ve even taken some breaks during the day when I need them.
    • language – I picked up Duolingo, and started relearning Japanese with my oldest. He studies on his own, but we text to practice.
    • cooking – my household went from

    Vacation

    For vacations, I have been trying to do more of this over the years, and more with my wife. My children are adults, so my wife has joined me for a number of trips in the last few years, some dedicated to vacation, some just extending work trips.

    The bucket list vacation for me is a big tour of Japan. I’ve never been, and for no good reason.

    Last year we were planning on Machu Piccu in the summer, which got cancelled. That’s still on the list, as is some sort of trip to Africa, likely Kenya/Tanzania. Hiking Mt. Kilmanjaro is on my list.

    As for the best vacation, it has to be with family. We’ve had a number, but I think our 12-13 day camping trip up through Yellowstone National Park and Glacier National Park was epic.

  • T-SQL Tuesday #133–What I Learned From Presenting

    tsqltuesdayThis month Lisa Griffin Bohm is the host and thanks to her from hosting. She was one of the last people I pressured lightly to host. She came up with a very creative invite. She is asking us to share something technical that we learned, that wasn’t related to the actual presentation.

    While I’ve presented many times on various topics, and seen many more talks, I often go for a specific reason. At work it might be because I need to go, but at events, I usually pick a session based on the topic or presenter. Since most do a good job talking about their topic, I had to really think about this one.

    A Couple Choices

    I’ve got two that came to mind as I pondered what wasn’t related to the topic. One is small, with minor impact to my work. The other had a much larger impact to me.

    The first is a story where I was researching for a talk on Always Encrypted in 2016, I ran into an issue I hadn’t expected. This was Microsoft’s first big change to encryption options since 2005, and I was excited about it. I knew about the restrictions with data types, collation, etc, but they seemed to be acceptable to me.

    As I was building demos and working on how to show certificate movement, I created certificates in various ways, I created some in text files using the common PFX format. Little did I know that SQL Server can’t read these. Instead, you need to convert them to PVK, which isn’t well known. Many people use the .cer or .pfx, but for whatever reason, SQL Server doesn’t support those.

    The second story was while rehearsing for a talk at Build. Once again, I was speaking, but delivering only a small piece of a multi-person talk with a few Microsoft employees. Donovan Brown was one of them, and as we worked on timing, transitions, and tailored my section to fit, we had time to chat a bit. This was in the mid days of Visual Studio Team Services, which become Azure DevOps a short time later.

    As I was talking about some of the challenges I’d had in TFS, Donovan showed me a Java app he was maintaining as a side project, which was being built, tested, and released from VSTS. I was surprised, as Microsoft was still mostly focused on their own technology. He showed me some of the any language, any platform, any framework philosophy that was being used to make Azure DevOps a complete platform, not a Microsoft one. I was surprised, and I’ve continued to be as I watch new capabilities and features appear, few of which are tied to Microsoft products.

    That greatly impacted my career, and continues to do so today as I work with more and more customers that use non-Microsoft technologies.

  • T-SQL Tuesday #132 Pandemic Coping

    tsqltuesdayThis year, 2020, has been crazy. What started as a normal year for me, including a sabbatical, turned into a crazy, shutdown, lockdown, stuck at home pandemic around the world.

    My world changed a lot, as I cancelled a trip at the beginning of March, and all subsequent ones. Coaching volleyball stopped, and most events were cancelled, big changes for me.

    At the same time, my daughter came home from college and spent the rest of the semester with us and my oldest switched from teaching in person to being at home and finding a place he could virtually teach.

    This month, Taiob Ali asks us how we are dealing with these changes.

    Coping

    At first, I was coping fine with things fine. I live on a large ranch, my wife works from home, and I’ve been doing so for nearly 20 years. I have an office and am used to working here regularly. We are healthy and financially secure, and mostly it was a pain dealing with the changes in the world.

    As part of the Redgate Community Circleww, we started to think about how to help others, and came up with different ideas. One of mine was to publish some coping tips. At first, I was trying to help others, but over time, I found these to be invaluable to me.

    I get these from Action for Happiness for the most part, though I add some myself. I work through these in my life, often a few days in advance, and then write about them. I was thinking to stop these after June, but many people responded they liked them, and I’ve continued ever since then, which seems like a long time.

    I’ve also found these help me. During August, I struggled with the length of the changes, and the fact that looking forward another 6 months, I couldn’t see an end to the pandemic. The weight of the length of this weighs on me.

    Physical Health

    I’m in my 50s and exercise regularly, usually doing yoga or going to the gym 20+ days a month. My diet is OK, probably better than average America, but not great. Still, while my routine was interrupted in March, with less stuff than I’d like:

    2020-11-09 13_34_53-MapMyRun

    I got better in April and was in a good routine through June.

    2020-11-09 13_35_13-MapMyRun

    Mostly life was good until the end of October.

    I had a trip planned to visit family, but cancelled. My wife got sick, then I did, then my daughter. A week later one of my sons got sick. We had been diagnosed with COVID, and it was both scary and hard. The symptoms weren’t that bad, but all of my energy was sapped. I spent most of two weeks in bed or with very light chores around the house.

    2020-11-09 13_37_35-MapMyRun

    Since then, I feel better, but there are still some gaps in my health. I have no worry of dying, but I am worried about long term physical ability.

    Wear a mask, try not to get it, and if you don’t believe in masks or the disease, you’re a moron. Don’t leave me a comment on what you believe as a non-epidemiologist or non medical professional. Pardon my language, but fuck off.

    Mental Health

    I’ve struggled. Despite working at home for a couple decades, I’m used to changing my environment, going to see others, traveling, and more. Seeing my children depressed from school changes, not seeing the kids I coach, not getting to the gym, not going to restaurants and movies, it got to me.

    The longing for a change of environment, and not seeing the same four walls of my office weigh on me. The struggles I see on the news, especially from so many people losing jobs, businesses, and more are hard. I have a lot of empathy and realize I am incredibly blessed.

    I’ve made an effort to chat with others. To reach out at times, and ask for support from my wife and a few close friends.

    My mental health as suffered, even as I try to cope. I continue to work on this regularly, talking more, and trying to find the good things in my life as much as I can.

    Professional Growth

    I had hoped to do more learning, expecting that this pandemic would be less than six months. On one hand, I greatly underestimated the struggles of being at home all the time. On the other, I got some things done.

    I’ve had different goals this year, and I have spent some time learning more about Power BI, DAX, and visualization. I’ve read more business/non-fiction books this year than in the past. I’m making progress on goals. Not as much as I’d like, but some.

  • T-SQL Tuesday #131–An Analogy

    tsqltuesdayThis month the T-SQL Tuesday invitation is from Rob Volk, the last of the crew that I pushed to host last year at a SQL Saturday. I managed to get four people to agree to host, and all did so. Rob is the fourth this year, and I’m grateful for him and the others for doing this.

    In any case, this month’s invitation asks us to explain what we do. The title is data analogies, which makes sense as most of us participating work with data and so we likely all get asked what we do and we talk about databases. I’ve often said I worked with computers, then I work with databases if someone asks more. Few people want more depth.

    However, while I do work with data, that’s not really the main part of my job. It’s more an adjunct responsibility that I enjoy.

    A Newspaper

    When I started SQLServerCentral with my partners and worked for myself, I had no shortage of people asking me what I did. At Boy Scouts, Volleyball practices, scholarship committees, and more, I was regularly asked what I did for a living. I tried a number of ways to explain the site, but eventually settled on this.

    “I run a newspaper.”

    I really do. I have a daily publishing newsletter that contains information for subscribers. Ads, sometimes funnies or puzzles, and articles they want to read. I have a daily deadline of getting things ready, but fortunately, I don’t have a lot that is time sensitive. It’s hard enough to keep up with a schedule without worrying about article A publishing tomorrow and article B needing to go out the next day.