Voice of the DBA

Tag: work

  • A day of rest

    Not quite a day of rest, likely some chores in advance of another busy weekend at the ranch.

    I’m taking today off for a few reasons. Originally I had planned it as my kids were out of school and we had booked a trip to the Denver Mint. That’s exciting enough, and I was glad this was scheduled.

    However as this week has grown closer, I’ve been stressed. Life is busy, one of the busiest times my wife and I have had in a long time with work, kids, various sports, scouts, etc. It’s a little overwhelming, and we still have a number of chores that we need to get done before winter. We’re also having a few people over this weekend, so I’m slightly worried about cleaning up as well.

    So I need a day off.

    I’ll be building some fence in the morning, and then taking the kids to the Mint, and perhaps a movie before the Friday night speaker’s dinner.

  • Six Trips

    Six trips left to close out this year. Most are very short, so that’s good, but still, it’s a bunch of packing and prepping to do.

    Here’s my list:

    Sept 25 – SQL Saturday #52, Denver Tech Center, OK, so not a real trip, but still I’ll essentially be gone for a day and a half from home with a late Fri night, all day Sat, getting home late Sat night. On the plus side, I get to hang with Jack Corbett from Orlando while his wife talks horses with my wife.

    Oct 1-3 – SQL Saturday #53, Kansas City, speaking here, and getting to a Royals game for the first time ever. *cool*

    Oct 19 – Boulder SQL Server User’s Group – It’s a day trip, but over an hour from my house to the group, so I’ll count it.

    Nov – Nov 2 – 5 am – SQL Connections and Dev Connections and the Las Vegas SQL Server User’s Group. SQLServerCentral is sponsoring a track and Jason Brimhall convinced me to make good on my promise of speaking to his group Thur night.

    Nov 7 – 8 – Heading to Seattle to take care of some admin stuff and hang out with Brent Ozar for a day.

    Nov 19 – Nov 21 – NYC. SQL Saturday #59. A last minute decision, but I want to support these groups and this will cement my Premier status for United for next year 😉

    I’ve got a couple ski trips with the family planned as well (Thanksgiving and Christmas), so it looks like a busy fall for me.

  • Sunday Morning Work

    Up early, the only one in the house, so I made coffee, sat down to check on SSC and the news of the world, and got caught up answering questions.

    A few interesting threads caught my eye:

    Went back and forth on a few threads, making the day get started in an enjoyable day. I just enjoy the SQL stuff.

  • Way Behind

    One of the things I have to do every month is process payments for the authors. It’s my job to get a list of payments over to accounting at Red Gate, and actually make the Paypal payments myself. Red Gate had some issues making payments in the US, so it’s fallen on my to handle it. Not a big deal, and I have a reminder to process payments the first week of the month, usually the 2nd.

    However this month I’m late. The reminder popped up Friday, July 2, but I was busy trying to get things scheduled to get out of town for vacation and didn’t get to it. Since I didn’t return from vacation until today, I’m way behind on getting payments out.

    That was my top priority today, and I’m hoping that Accounting will get my email tomorrow and hopefully get payments out quickly next week.

    This is one of those scheduled items that is important, and it always bothers me when I’m late. My apologies to authors.