Voice of the DBA

Tag: work

Annual Email Pruning

Like most of us, I get a lot of email. I get subscribed to various services from different ads, events, etc. throughout the year. That’s fine. I understand how marketing works, and the reason that I get some free services, or some lower cost events is because of the marketing that comes through email newsletters or other information. The reason SQLServerCentral was able to grow and survive was because of marketing, and our email newsletter, which I’m thankful so many of you subscribe to on a daily basis.

I like to think that the SQLServerCentral newsletters are interesting and worth your time to glance at. I don’t expect most of you to read them every day, but I do think that it must be interesting more often than not for your to keep subscribing. I know the Database Weekly ones are, and I hear from more than a few of you if we ever end up forgetting to send one out.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve undertaken an annual tradition of weeding out some of the email advertisements I get. As new mail arrives in my inbox. I make a quick evaluation of whether or not I’ve been reading the other mail from this particular sender and if it’s valuable. If not, I’m unsubscribing.

I do this periodically on Twitter as well, cleaning out my timeline if I find someone posting in there things that aren’t interesting enough for me to continue following them.

Time is one of my most valuable resources. I’m willing to give vendors and people a chance to prove that they add something to my workday, but if they don’t, then I let them go.

BTW: If there are things you’d like to see improved at SQLServerCentral or Database Weekly, let our webmaster know or post a note in the forums.

December 17, 2012
Standing Desk – Flooring

My standing desk experiment has worked out well. I have gotten used to standing there and I’ve slowly found places for my coffee, water, phone, and other things that I use at my desk. I still need to work on the keyboard/mouse stand, but that’s a future project. Today I talk flooring.

When Buck Woody mentioned using a pad on the floor, I chalked some of it up to his sitting for a long time at a desk. I wondered with my three years of running if it would matter to me. In my first month or working in the basement, on the hard cement floor, I was fine. I was wearing shoes, however, since it was cold down there.

When I moved upstairs, I had an area carpet, but then wooden floors. I didn’t think much of it until I worked a couple of days in bare feet during the summer. I could feel my calves and legs aching a bit and they were tired. Even my knees were slightly sore.

I made sure I had shoes on every day, either thick soled Merrill Mocs or running shoes. That worked, but I wondered if that was the best idea. Even with shoes, I might be wearing out my body a bit.

The other day I decided to experiment, and spent $20 on an anti-fatigue mat at Home Depot. Actually $24 and change, but it wasn’t a big investment. I put it on top of the carpet for now to see.

It’s an open mat, with lots of circles in it. This is the type of mat I’d stood on in restaurants while working as a cook or bartender. It’s not conducive to bare feet as it is, but my initial test was to see how it worked with shoes. As you can see, I left the tag on since I’m not sure I want to keep this.

After two days on this, it’s hard to tell if there’s a difference. I’ve got some sore legs already, so I’m not sure. I think I need to move it below a surface and try it on bare feet. If this doesn’t work, I can always use this in the shop, so there’s no great loss.

August 10, 2012
Working at Home Tips for Erin

A friend of mine, Erin Stellato (blog | @erinstellato) is about to change jobs. She’ll go from working in an office to working at home, and I think it’s great. She’s a very smart young lady, and I think this is a terrific opportunity for her to work at SQLskills.

She posted a note that she’d love to see some work at home tips from friends, and I decided to oblige. I’ve been working at home, away from an office, both for myself and for others, for nearly a decade now. My wife has worked for nearly 20 years at home, and we’ve shared an office for most of that time. When my wife started, we had 1 kid. We now have 3, and my youngest has been watching me work at home for most of her life.

These are some random tips, based on how I work. Whether they work for you is debatable, but I think it’s worth getting a few ideas, trying them out, and incorporating them if they make your life better.

Get a Space

The first thing you really need is a separate office. I know many of us work on laptops, and we can work anywhere, but you need a place you can shut the door. There will be times that the kids are home, your spouse is looking for you, or the doorbell rings while you’re in the middle of a call. Have a door.

We’ve had a few arrangements over the years. This is the current one:

I went to a standing desk, which I love. I recommend it, and I think it’s making me healthier. M wife and I have shared the space for years, with both desks being in one room. Before I started working at home, we converted a bedroom to an office, putting two kids together in one room because we knew this was critical.

Do yourself a favor, and get a separate space, preferably away from other distractions in the house. You can always take a laptop to the kitchen, or the living room, but have a set place for yourself.

Kids

Kids are the best, and worst, things in your life. They try you, push your buttons, and frustrate you in ways you could never have imagined. They also bring unbelievable joy. I love my kids, and one of the best things about working at home is that I get to see them constantly throughout the year.

For almost the entire time I’ve been working at home, I’ve taken my kids to and from school. I’ve been here when they were sick, I’ve left early to get them to sporting events. I’ve been able to sit with them after school and help them with homework, while I had my laptop nearby to work on my own work. It’s been an amazing Mr. Mom decade for me and I have tried to make as much time as I could for my kids.

However.

You have to set rules. My wife was on conference calls a lot over that time and we had to make it clear to the kids that they had to be quiet if they were home. They learned early on that when we are working, we are working. If the office door is closed, that means they can’t come in. They can’t disturb us.

We also had to teach them the difference between “want” and “need” as well as what an emergency is. If the computer freezes or the DVR won’t play, that’s not a reason to disturb my wife or me. Some rough days as the kids had a dressing down because they thought that their desire was more important than work for us.

DR Plans

One of the downsides of working at home is that you’re responsible for everything. You’re the IT guy, you’re in charge of facilities, maintenance, procurement, the cafeteria, and more. For the most part, that’s fine. Things work as expected, and life goes on. You work along, with the kitchen nearby and coffee handy.

Until something goes wrong.

I never knew how often power fluctuated at my house until I worked there. For awhile it seemed like I lost power for 5 minutes every day. Not a big deal if you come home from the office and you’re down. A bigger deal when you’re in the middle of something or have a deadline. Even worse when you have a conference call or a webinar.

You will have issues. You’ll run out of coffee. Power will go down. A piece of equipment will die on you. It will happen when you’re not expecting it.

Have some plans in place. For me, I know of 3 places I can go, relatively close, to work if I need to. I have UPSes on all equipment, and we have a generator. I keep extra coffee in the pantry.

Schedule

I’m a routine person. I like a routine, so I try to keep to a schedule. It’s not rigid, but it’s fairly regular. I get up with the kids during the school year and then go to work. I stop when they come home, get them settled, and go back to work. I used to work on Sunday mornings, drinking coffee, and moving slowly as I wrote.

I run at lunch most days, though lunch can vary from 11:30 to 1:30. I have chores when my wife is gone, which usually come after I’ve checked and processed email and before I do something else. I do admin type work in the morning, and writing/editing in the afternoon.

Those things work for me, and I think it’s key to get a routine. You know what work you need to do, and you have deadlines. I’ve never really had an issue finding work. I have an issue stopping, so a routine focuses me, and it helps me stop.

My current routine also includes time to not work, which is usually weekends now. I bend the rule if I’ve had a week where I took time off, like for a school play, or to help my wife, but for the most part, I’ve learned to stop working just because I walk by the office.

Making sure you still have time to exercise, to read, to enjoy the rest of your life. Set a routine, alter it when needed, but let it tell you that enough work is done, and go on with the rest of your life.

Multi-Tasking

This is one area where things work well for me. I can often get a few things done at once. For example, I can drive up to ski on a Wednesday while I’m taking my weekly conference call in the car. That’s multi-tasking.

My job mostly involves thought, and since I can think anywhere, I’ve done things like cutting the grass, or folding laundry while I’m working through an issue. I have watched webinars or videos, or had conference calls as well while I’m cooking, or straightening up the house.

And I don’t sweat it. Get a few things done at the same time if you can. If nothing else, it allows you to focus more on work when you need to, knowing other stuff is out of the way.

Backups

I shouldn’t have to tell IT people this, but you need backups. You never know when crap will die, and there is no one to call. I have a desktop and a laptop linked by both Live Mesh and DropBox. I make sure I have two copies of everything. I have a Windows Home Server as well that backs up machines and has copies of files (like presentations).

Keep a spare machine around. Ask work for a new one, and use your old one for backups. Keep a few spare HHDs around and back up to them. Set reminders for backups or automate them.

Hardware will die. Be prepared.

Smile

Life is good. I get more snowboarding done in one during the week in winter than most of my friends get in two on the weekends. I’ve been there to take my little girl to kindergarten almost every day of her year there. I’ve had lunch with my kids and been on more field trips than almost any parent in their classes. I’ve had dates with my wife during the day, and taken an extra day on vacation, knowing I can work anywhere. I worked on that extra day, but the family didn’t.

Working at home is great. It’s a relief, and it takes you out of so many stressful situations: traffic, unfriendly co-workers, time commuting, sick kids, and more.

Know your work, know your responsibilities, and get them done. After that, enjoy your time at home.

July 23, 2012
The Standing Desk – In the Light

It’s been almost a month since I started the Standing Desk experiment. My first setup was down in the basement, since that was the desk that fit my monitor stand. In the middle I had a week of vacation, where I didn’t do much standing at the desk, though I did have my laptop on the old desk.

This was the setup upstairs

That has now been replaced with this:

I spent a portion of the Fourth of July holiday moving my old desk downstairs, and then bringing the smaller one up stairs, setting up all the monitors again. A cleaned things up and minimized the setup, and learned a few things.

First, put the bigger, nicer monitors on top. I had them reversed in the basement, which wasn’t great. The smaller ones have less stuff on them, which isn’t great when I primarily use the top two for work (browsing, editing, email).

As you can see, the setup isn’t a lot different, but I did move a few of the podcast items off and I have a touch more space.

It’s also better to have the start bar on the top screen for me. I can more easily see the programs running without leaning over. Plus it’s cool to see the programs shoot out from the bottom and maximize.

In the last few weeks I’ve also learned the shoes matter. At first I thought it was because of the basement floor, but I found that the padding helps. I’ll look around for floor mats to help up here and see if that makes a difference.

The books and boxes work, but they aren’t great, and I’d like more of a surface at keyboard level for my coffee, water, etc. Whether I build or buy something is up for debate. I’d like to build something, but it’s time. I’m pressed a bit and if I can find something cheap, I might grab it.

Plus this gives me an excuse to hit the new IKEA store in Denver

July 5, 2012