Voice of the DBA

Tag: work

My 2016 by the Numbers
This is it, the last work day of the year. I wrote about my look back from the data side of the world, but I also wanted to take a look back at my personal 2016 from the work perspective. This is a chance to examine the way my career’s gone this year and make plans for next year.

Travel

I traveled a lot this year. I had sixteen trips in 2016 for work. That’s less than some years, but it was a harder year for me. With five personal trips out of town, that means I had over 80 nights in hotels or other accommodations, which is quite a bit for me. Some people like that, but the time away from home wears me down.

I also had some long trips. Three of these trips were over two weeks, which is a long time for me. I did get some holiday time on some of these trips, and a couple with me wife, which makes things a little easier.

I have already made plans to reduce this in 2017. I hope.
- 16 business trips
- 80+ hotel nights
- 5 personal trips
- 42 flights
- 4 trains between cities
- 1 car trip to an event
- 2 car rentals driving on the left side of the road
New Countries

On the plus side, I went to two new countries this year for work: Norway and Denmark. Those were great experiences, and I have to really thank the organizers of those events (SQL Nexus and SQL Saturday – Oslo). They made the trips enjoyable and memorable. I’m not sure if I’ll get back, but I would certainly like to.

The hard part of adding in the other countries is that I need to plan these trips with business trips, so they get extended. I may get to one new country in 2017, and my fingers are crossed that things will work out.
- 4 countries in which I delivered talks during 2016
- 9 US States in which I presented
- 17 cities where I stood in front of an audience.
Conferences

In the past I’ve typically spoken at a few user groups, SQL Saturdays, the PASS Summit, IT/Dev Connections, SQL in the City, and SQL Bits. This year I added a few new ones. I was lucky enough to get selected for a couple VS Live events, SQL Nexus, the London Database Professionals Meetup, and MeasureUp, a developer event in Austin.

The highlight for me was //build//, where I was on stage with Donovan Brown from Microsoft talking database devops to hundreds of people. I haven’t spoken at a large Microsoft event before, so this was quite a honor for me.

Caveat, I was selected to speak at Ignite a few years ago, but had to cancel with a knee surgery. Still, I’m quite honored to have been chosen twice.
- 7 expensive conferences
- 7 SQL Saturdays
- 4 user group presentations
Learning

This was an interesting year for me. Each year I try to make an effort to learn some new technologies and new skills. At the beginning of 2016, I was continuing on with learning Python. In 2015 I started attending (remotely) the San Diego TIG meetings with the Python track and got interested. I found this was an interesting way to force some learning on myself. I even worked through part of the Advent of Code with Python (as well as T-SQL and PoSh) to practice some programming skills.

However, I fell off throughout the year. I started brushing up C# skills since I needed some small applications for Always Encrypted, but again fell off. I started a mobile project and let that go. It seems as though life seems to get in the way of any long term learning, and I made the mistake of not setting aside specific times each week for learning. I relied on my curiosity and interest in technology to drive learning, but this wasn’t as concentrated or focused as I would have liked.

I did make time for some pre-cons at a few events and made a point of attending a number of sessions at every event, taking notes and even working through some sample applications. A list of the major talks I remember attending and learning in.
- Encryption – I’ve always dabbled, but I spent time watching a number of sessions from other presenters and building projects with SQL Server’s encrpytion capabilities.
- Azure Machine Learning – worked through a few sample and experimental projects on my own.
- Microsoft Bot Framework – build a sample bot
- Extended Events – drove me to complete a Pluralsight course
- SSIS Frameworks – need to use this
- VSTS DevOps – I’ve started using VSTS almost every week
- PowerShell – I’ve begun using PoSh more and more to handle some tasks and practice my skills. I especially like dbatools.
- C# – On and off practice in addition to Pluralsight courses and a few sessions.
- Python – I really like Python. I worked my way through part of an ML book, but I’d like to do more with this language. I started with v
In 2017 I need a better learning plan.

SQL Server

This was a fascinating year of SQL Server work for me. I began working with a large number of parts of the platform. I spent time working with all of these items:
- Extended Events
- Row Level Security
- Dynamic Data Masking
- Always Encrypted
- TDE
- SQL Audit
- T-SQL (new language constructs as well as practicing old skills)
- XML
- JSON
- Stretch DB
- Always On
- In-Memory
There are probably other areas that I tackled, but it’s hard to remember across the year. In each of these areas, I spent a number of concentrated hours experimenting, learning, and getting some piece of technology working. I’d hope to continue this in 2017, especially as I expect another new version to appear with some enhancements that I’m interested in using.

Focus

This was a year where my focus changed from DBA to more of a developer look at the world. While I certainly worked on non-SQL technologies, my focus with Redgate has been more of a developer, DevOps, CI/CD look at the world and trying to help customers and community solve those issues.

I find this to be more interesting, but also most challenging. One of the things I learned as a developer is that there are always cool new things to experiment with and it can be hard to actually focus on the technology you primarily use and continue to improve the way in which you use the tools. There is a distraction from all of the possibilities and options available to you.

As an example, I started to work with one of the dbatools cmdlets and saw a note that Visual Studio Code supports PoSh. I’ve usually worked with the ISE, but launched VS Code and looked for a PoSh extension. I found a few and spent time looking at reviews and comments.

Then I picked one, installed it, restarted, and then tried to code. Struggled to run the PoSh inside of VS Code, so Googled for this. Spent more time trying to get this working. I ended up learning a couple things, but really I wasted close to an hour playing with VS Code, trying to make it work for me, when I had a perfectly good tool (ISE) that works. As much as I like lightweight editors, I can’t spend a bunch of time trying new ones when I have some that work.

I want to try and focus more on specific items next year, make improvements and grow deeper in a few areas rather than trying to grow too widely.

Overall

I found 2016 to be a hard year. My travels were tiring and difficult with family life. I had a few personal issues that made the year hard, among them my second son graduating from high school. I stressed about trying to spend lots of time with him (and my 3rd child) before he leaves home. On the plus side, despite the stress, I was able to watch him complete his Eagle Scout rank for Boy Scouts, which made me quite proud.

Work was a mix, both with more demands in some ways, less in others. Higher engagement with some parts of Redgate, lower with others. Certainly a year of change. However, I have a great company, and I really enjoy working there. They even got me to dress up:

The crazy election(s) of 2016 in the US and UK, the number of talented celebrities I will mourn, those where downsides. The Broncos winning the Super Bowl, lots of skiing, and some long vacations with family where highlights. I also managed a 199 day run streak and over 400 miles for the year as part of my cousin’s Zuckerburg challenge to run a mile a day.

I’m glad 2016 is ending, and I look forward to 2017 and enjoying a better year.
December 30, 2016
Working on the Road
I spend a decent amount of time on the road, traveling to events. Last year I think I spent 50 nights in hotels for work. That’s a fair amount, and it can be challenging to get everything I need to accomplish done in those situations. I’ve gotten good at ensuring my laptops are setup, I have cloud copies of information, or VPN access to files. While I miss my multiple monitors at home, I can work on the laptop for a week without too many issues.

However there’s one thing I often do before trips: I prep. I get most of my tasks scheduled; I pre-build and prepare newsletters. In short, I try to minimize the work I need to do on a deadline when I’m traveling.

This week I have a slightly crazy week.
- UPDATE Monday, I was supposed to be in Fort Collins, CO, with the State Knowledge Bowl competition for my son. However he had other work to do and decided to focus on his classes, so I went skiing 😉
- Tuesday, Fort Collins, CO – morning work in the hotel, afternoon Knowledge Bowl competition, evening, a bit more work.
- Wednesday, home office – Daily work and routine
- Thursday, Spokane, WA – Hotel working
- Friday, Spokane, WA – holiday, volleyball tournament for my daughter.
There’s a level of craziness, with changing locations and working sporadically this week. Tuesday should be a holiday, but I’ll have to work around things. I’ll actually try to do some work on Monday around the competition to minimize the disruptions. I have some meetings I couldn’t easily move, so I elected to just work around Tuesday.

Wednesday will really be my only normal work day, though I have an evening flight to Spokane, so I will feel some pressure here.

Thursday is a travel day for my daughter. I’ll be in the hotel working while she wanders around Spokane with her team.

Friday is a tournament, afternoon wave, so if I haven’t finished everything I need, I’ll be working a bit in the am here.

Not my kind of week, but I have these happen at times.
March 15, 2016
The Jarvis–Standing Desk Update

I started using a standing desk a few years back. While visiting the Redgate Software office, I saw one of my coworkers standing and using boxes of books to lift their keyboard and mouse. I tried that.

My first desk from 2012.

It worked OK, and I found myself adding and removing books to experiment with the process. I first moved upstairs, swapping the desk in the basement for the one upstairs. I added flooring to make things easier on my legs.

Things were fine for a few years, and then last year, I upgraded the platform to a piece of furniture. This was really to give me stability, a place for coffee ( probably the most important) and just a bit more space. That worked OK.

However I’ve found myself getting a bit worn out at times. I often work most of the day standing, and there are certainly days my knees or back will ache. I do switch over and sit at the kitchen counter, or on a couch with my laptop, but those aren’t ideal. What I’d really like is a desk that’s a desk. I could also use space for my laptop, as I’ll use two machines at times.

With that in mind, I started looking at motorized desks. I saw Tim Mitchell get one for his home office, and found someone that rated desks. The Jarvis was well rated, and it wasn’t too expensive. An IKEA desk is around $500, so this wasn’t much more.

Fortunately I work for a company that values employees, and they do allow for some work related infrastructure. Redgate agreed to buy my desk, and I ordered it immediately. Of course, it wouldn’t ship and arrive until I was gone, but I came home to find boxes in my office. I began unpacking and assembling.

Well, actually I started clearing a space in the office. I needed room to assemble, while I continued to work during the couple days I put things together.

I’m somewhat handy, but this assembly was easy. There are feet (to the right and left) and then two legs (middle) with a brace (top middle) that connect together. Lots of Allen screws, but no real tools needed.

I got the bamboo top you see above, with grommets in it for wires. I wasn’t sure about the grommets, and haven’t used them a lot, but they are nice for a few things.

Getting things together felt good, and once I installed the lift, I was ready to try things.

Unfortunately, one of my legs didn’t work. The desk lowered, but wouldn’t reset or go back up. A quick call to Ergo Depot got me support, a few things to try, and then a replacement shipped the next day. Once again, I left town, not having a desk to use.

However the leg arrived and was ready for me when I returned. I managed to swap out the leg with minimal hassles, and without taking everything apart. Once back together, the lift mechanism worked great. I started moving things over and getting setup late one night.

I really just duplicated my existing setup, with the exception that I’d ordered a CPU holder to store and lift my desktop with the desk itself. It’s below the desk to the left.

Here we have the current setup, raised:

and lowered:

I did find that I wanted my monitors offset to the right, which took a few days to determine. I’ve moved the monitors up and down a bit, trying to find a good height relative to the desk.

I’m also still torn on whether I want the keyboard at desk height. I can change the height, and I use a few different settings, but I think I may get a keyboard tray that lets me lower the keyboard slightly and also get more desk space to use.

I’ve moved over my mat, which is a bit of a pain when I switch back to the chair. I still have to work out some sort of process to make this easier.

However overall I like the setup. I usually raise the desk if I check things at night, and start the next day standing. If I have webinars or calls, I often lower the desk and sit, and usually after lunch (often yoga or running), I’ll eat at my desk and lower it for the afternoon.

I think I’ve benefitted from not sitting for long periods of time, and plenty of people see my at events, where I often avoid sitting, even in sessions. However I also know I need a balance, and a motorized, standing desk has helped me feel better.

If you can afford it, I’d urge you to get one. However I’d suggest you start with boxes of books, and see what works for you.

February 26, 2016
Adding Minutes in Excel
A short one, but I found myself wasting time recently. I use an Excel sheet to schedule some items out each day. It’s not my choice to do this, but the service I use requires this to not manually set time for each event.

Tl;dr: Add minutes/1440 to the date.

The format looks like this:

I’ve been changing the dates each day to the next day, which involves picking the cell, hitting F2 (or clicking the mouse), moving to the day and editing it to increment. In this case, I’d go to the 10th for the next set of scheduled items.

Manual, time consuming, and when I saw this cartoon, I knew I needed to do something else. It’s a few minutes of my day, and really, it’s 12 hours over 5 years.

But it’s incredibly annoying and tedious. It makes my blood pressure rise, and I delay the work because of it.

I spent 5 minutes considering a few things. I knew I could do any of these, but some would require more work than others, and perhaps not be worth the time.
- Use a macro to change each entry
- Get my source system to generate an Excel sheet in this format
- Write OLE automation to generate a new sheet
In the end, the simple solution was just learn to add time to a base date. If I take the first entry, I can see that I’m really adding minutes (or hours) to this one. So I decided to do that. In this way, I still need to edit the first cell, but then all the rest will work.

However I needed to add minutes to an Excel entry. I wasn’t sure how, but a quick Google search gave me the answer from Superuser. Because of how Excel stores dates, I really need to add minutes divided by 1440 to the date.

So my first date is: 02/09/16 14:05. To get my next entry, which is 02/09/16 14:22, I need to add 17 minutes, but the forumla looks like this:

As you can see, that’s the right time. I now had to spend about 10 minutes setting the formula for each time, which is a matter of calculating the minutes for each new time. It’s not too hard, and my ten minutes spent here won’t pay off in time for a long time, especially after this blog post, but it will reduce my stress quite a bit.

Every day.
February 22, 2016