Limerick Contest 2012

My company is very creative. We have writers, designers, video, audio, artists, programmers, etc. There are often contests that let folks participate in cross culture from their day job. Cooking contests, video contests, etc. Its quite enjoyable. I myself have created several wood creations that are on display that have garnered compliments.

This month, and this week, being St. Patrick's Day, they are again holding a Limerick Contest. I started with one word. Reindexing. Mainly because its one of the words I have reused over and over to describe what I do. Always reindexing. Mainly as a joke, and as a bridge to those that may not actually know what I do on a day to day basis.

So the limerick started with that word. Actually it ended with that word. Which made it interesting to come up with rhymes. Many versions were attempted, and some of those were shared with individuals and the public, prior to the final draft. Here it is without further adieu.

What's a DBA? It's perplexing...

He sure seems busy, it's quite vexing!

He mumbles bizarre phrases.

Stuff like Server Side Traces,

Kill, Schema, Cursors, Reindexing!

So You Want To Be a DBA?

I recently was contacted by SSWUG.org to write a few articles. Its with trepidation that I accepted this challenge. There will be 6 articles in a 6 month period with various topics.

The first of these topics was what i thought it meant to be a DBA, and advice I could give others about this job, its tasks, and what motivates me to do it.

I sat down a couple times to write this article. I had a couple failed starts, like most writing inspires from time to time. However, as I thought about it, and about what inspires me, I was reminded of the tale I have been telling folks for years now. That I feel as if I am in charge of keeping a light on in a room in my company. That's the simplest explanation I have repeated over the years. Not a lot of glory, but its a necessity. As I thought about this, I expanded this tale into a couple of sentences and then a few paragraphs. This became the intro to my article.

I was worried about the word count. When one is given an arbitrary number of something to create, it always seems to worry me. 750 words seemed like a huge amount of words. The end article ended up having 3600 words to contain all the spewing about the subject I could muster. After a lot of editing, and tweeking, the count stood fairly high. They were all important words. They conveyed the meaning I wished to convey. So I went with it.

The article basically tells the tale I mentioned above, embellishing a bit to paint the picture in your mind. It then breaks down the tasks into 2 main tasks. Learn about your Data and Love your Data. Within each of these, you can further break down more individual tasks.

The article was broken up into 3 parts and will run 1 each week for 3 weeks. I hope that you enjoy it. Enjoy my perspective. Enjoy my tale and my verbiage. Enjoy the information that I hope to help you learn. Enjoy my article.

Here's my article

Meme Monday

Tom LaRock started a Meme Monday challenge.

Write an 11 word or less blog post.

Today’s meme is “Write a SQL blog post in 11 words or less”

I wrote Multiple...

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It's Monday! Again!

Fine!?!

Let's get through this quickly and efficiently!!

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Hello Monday. I wonder what jobs failed over this last weekend?

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Good morning SQL Monitor. What did you see happen this weekend??

swwug 2011

I have been invited back to present for the SWWUG vConference in April. I will be flying down to Tucson on March 8th and recording my 4 sessions. These are not the exact titles, but from the top of my head.

Documentation. You know you love it.

Data file sizes.

Profiler / Traces

DBA Tasks

At this point, Documentation has been completed, and actually practiced as a presentation already. The others are nearing completion. I had set a goal to have them completed by this last weekend, and failed to accomplish that goal. I have a bit more work to do on some of them. But most are already well planned and created. Just need to be fluffed up at this point.

One of the tools that I used to help me was a mindmap software where I simple was able to link ideas together and list them all out. I used a couple different versions of the software, and a few different computers, including my Galaxy Tab, to simple brainstorm with myself and come up with the skeleton for each presentation. I believe that I will actually use this document in the the Documentation presentation, as an example of how to simply start documenting. Its been a work in progress, and the mindmap software allows me to simply keep adding ideas to the map and utilize those when the time comes to flesh out the presentation.

I'm nervous and excited, as always, as the date approaches. I love the creative process, I love actually presenting, I love teaching and talking and always hope that i can do a descent job and help folks. However, its still a nerve wracking process. Once its all done, I always appreciate the effort put into it, the experience as much as I do that its over. Its a funny process to look forward to something that scares you, kinda like a rollercoaster. I keep getting back in line for another ride, but am scared while in line and on the ride, yet I always return to the line and ride.

SQL Saturday 66

This started out as a simple review of the SQL Saturday 66 in Colorado Springs. Then it needed some back story. Then it simply became a novel. So, enjoy, or jump out now. Your choice.

Sometime last year, I decided that I would try to get to some regional SQL Saturday events. It didn't know exactly how I would accomplish this, for there were a couple obstacles standing in my way. The first was time.

The second was money. Those were the big ones.

Time was hard to come by, as it seemed that I didn't really have a lot of time to do professional development since it consistently seemed to be impacted by work. Ironic that I was unable to learn about skills that would help me in work, because I really needed to be at work instead...

Money was a difficult resource to acquire and use for this type of venture. Its benefit is obvious. Its a great education and networking opportunity to attend any SQL Saturday event. Yet it was always difficult to come up with the slush money to fly myself and get a hotel, car and anything else needed in order to go to somewhere else for a couple days.

Let's keep it simple, and keep it to those two obstacles. Time and money.

If I was one of the lucky ones, those that work at a company that has a vested interest in attending an event such as this, I'd be lucky to be sent, with expenses covered. This is an obvious win win for company and employee. I, however, am not one of those few lucky ones.

There are also those that are in the consulting gig that see their attendance at these events as a business expense to drum up potential business for their own company and skills. This is a noble gamble to bet on yourself, all the while giving back to the community as you do. This is a win win as well. I am not one of these either.

I'm just a working stiff, like many of the other DBAs and Database Developers out there that attend these events. However, something changed in my life a couple months ago. A job change changed everything. I now have more discretionary time that allows me to attend an event like our beloved SQL Saturdays. So, the time element was relaxed and I decided to simply throw the money part out the window. After discussing it with my CFO, she and I decided that we'd spend the money to fly me to a location and spend a couple nights. I can keep it cheap, and doing so would allow me to learn, grow and experience professional development on a budget.

So, I looked at the events coming up, and thru my hat into the Colorado Springs SQL Saturday event. It's close by, and I know some of the folks from the area. I am also the Regional Mentor, so it would be good for me to meet more of the local SQL people and get some face time with them as well as their leaders in the community. From my house to their home is about a 10 hour drive, and with the gas prices as they are, it would be 6's to fly or drive as far as cost went. However, there is a significant cost to spend 10 hours driving, instead of 2 hours flying. So a choice was made to fly to Colorado Springs. A couple nights in a hotel would be $50 or so, maybe $100 each. This isn't too bad of a cost. But its still a cost. I had a few opportunities to cheapen my hotel cost with a few options that presented themselves to me. One was to rent a cabin with Chris Shaw (twitter|blog) and split the cost. Another was to split a room with some local community people. Another was to stay with a good friend that lives in the area. Since this last option was going to give me some good time to catch up with a good friend, i chose it and made arrangements to spend the night at his place. In order to get there with enough time to hang out, I decided that I needed to fly out a bit earlier (1:50pm) instead of the later time (8:00pm).

This decision meant that I needed to ask for a bit of time off on Friday to leave early. This means I need to talk to my boss. In the past, when events of this nature occurred, this didn't always work out well. When work seems more important than anything else, a SQL event falls way short. I was worried to ask, but needed to, and did. As I informed my boss, he started asking me questions. The conversation went something like this.

Me: I need to take off a bit early on Friday to fly to a SQL Saturday event.

Boss: What is this event?

Me: Its put on by individuals for individuals, part of the SQL Community, all over the nation.

Boss: This sounds like a Professional Development event

Me: Yeah... (waiting for the hammer to fall, some excuse why it would be difficult to attend)

Boss: This sounds like something tht we should be paying for.

Me: (shocked) Yeah.

This is the simple version, but they decided to not only allow me to take off a bit early on Friday, but they were intending on paying for the flight and hotel. I was shocked and amazed. Time and money. Solved. Woohoo!!

Off we go to SQL Saturday in Colorado Springs.

Luckily, as the dates approached, my friend Randy Knight (twitter|blog) also decided to attend. This meant that we could travel together and split some of the costs. We headed up to the airport Friday afternoon, and after a moment of slowness as we passed an unfortunate accident, we were again on our way, albeit a bit late.

Once at the airport we cruised thru security, leaving only a single bottle of Strawberry Jam behind that apparently is insidious enough in nature as to not be allowed into the airport proper for fear of use as a weapon of some sort. This bottle was an intended gift for the wife of my buddy, as a thank you for allowing me to spend the night at her house. It was also a bottle canned by my wife at the LDS Cannery, which made it something special from us to them. It was not meant to be though...

The plane ride was uneventful, dumping us into a different version of winter than we had at home, but similar enough to not be terribly different. As I left the airport, and watched as Randy grabbed his rental car and departed, I waited for my ride to appear. Even though it was clear and sunny, I was soon cold, having forgotten it was winter here too. I stand outside for a bit, until i start communicating with my buddy. The text messages and voice conversation soon took an odd turn as questions were posed but unable to be answered to anyones satisfaction. It turned out that my ride was in Denver at the airport as I was standing outside the airport in Colorado Springs. Funny. Even funny to us at the time. A bummer. But funny nonetheless. What a mix up. With all the communication tools that we have and at our disposal, neither one of us seemed able to clearly indicate which airport I was arriving at for this event. Funny. Sad kinda funny, but funny nonetheless.

I end up calling Randy back to retrieve me, as he had a head start to the speaker dinner from the airport already. Luckily he was able to return to get me, leaving the nearly empty freeway to return to the airport with plenty of time to allow the rest of Colorado Springs residents to embrace the Friday afternoon rush hour traffic, allowing us to gain a more full experience of the clogged freeway. This irony was repeatedly brought to my attention by my new chauffeur as we were stuck driving behind residents on their way home from work. We took off, driving north to the speaker dinner. We initially went to Randy's hotel to check in, and I even checked on a price for a room there that night, in case I wasn't able to hook up with my friend for the evening. I then checked on the hotel that I was going to stay at the next night, to see what the price would be for the first night, again, in case. After this, I went to Mr. Biggs to assist with the preparations for the event in any way that I could. It was great to meet some of the speakers and organizers. I already knew Marc Beacom (twitter|blog) from past SQL Community events, and it was great to catch up with him. He was the only person that I already knew IRL though. The others, some friends, others acquaintances, were mostly known to me via twitter already. I got to give Chris Shaw (twitter|blog) a big bear hug to great him as we had become friends over twitter, facebook, Im and email for the past couple years. I have always felt like he was a brother. Funny how our community becomes family. SQL Community -> #SQLFamily.

Soon it was the speaker dinner and time to shmooze, cavort, meet, discuss, talk, enjoy and share. It was also the first meal of the day for me, as I had barely eaten anything for breakfast and completely missed lunch because of the time suck that flying can be. Luckily I survived on some snacks from my bag while on the plane, as well as those incredible Biscotti cookies. Dinner was great and we had a great time talking to new people. One of which, Jeremy Lowell (twitter|blog), was nice enough to allow me, a stranger, to get into his vehicle and deliver to the house of my friend for the evening. Jeremy was headed home anyway, which turns out was about 5 minutes from my end location. So it turned out that it was a win win for us. We talked about SQL, but soon turned the conversation to other random topics that we found out we had in common. Its always amazing to meet people in these events that are just as human as you with the same concerns, ambitions, interests and whatnots. We had a great time talking for an hour. A friendship began.

Once at my buddies house, I was honored to meet the kids. Gifts were given, minus the Strawberry jam which now lives in a trash in SLC airport. Soon we were simply talking, telling stories, and having a great time. We both do woodworking and it was great to see his work space. Later in the evening I was even able to help feed the horses, which made me feel like I was channeling Mike Rowe as I attempted to perform a task I was unaware of how to perform. Standing in the cold Colorado night, helping feed the animals in the snow was invigorating. Fun to do once. Once back in the warmth of the home, it was time to get to bed, so that we could get up early the next morning and make the 1 hour commute down south to the SQL event. Off to bed we went. Me, grateful for the time spent, the stories told, the experiences had and the roof over my head and bed offered within their home. Thanks.

The next morning had us up early to make the commute. After stopping at a gas station along the way, and after purchasing the first cup of joe ever, I was able to make a small effort at paying back my gracious host for the previous nights lodging. We had a great time talking about many many things and I truly enjoyed the time we had to spend together as the sun chased us. Soon we arrived at our destination and got on our game faces. It may seem otherwise on occasion, but we are all geeks at heart and want to simply sit in front of a computer, shunning human contact in all its forms. Attending an event such as a SQL Saturday seems against our nature, but it is such an important part of our Professional Development that we suck it up and go and put on our game faces, getting ready to talk and interact with each other.

Luckily Chris Shaw and the other organizers thought of this and planned to have many networking events that forced and allowed us to interact with each other, getting to know each other. The first event gathered us together in disciplines, into two circles. One inner circle faced an outer circle, one to one. We were to take 2 minutes with each person in the circle and perform some SQL Speed Dating, answering 2 questions. It was a simple exercise and allowed me to introduce myself to 13 people as well as get to know them. It was fun. Soon the sessions were underway. SQL Lurn was ON! Between each session, a networking event occurred. The first I chose to participate in was Lazer Tag. What a rush. This is always such a fun activity and we all seemed to have a blast shooting each other. There was lunch, which allowed us a chance to eat and talk with each other, performing our own networking discussions while cramming pizza into our gullets. More sessions and more networking occured. Lurnin and Networkin. Over and over. It was great, well organized, and well participated in by all.

I ended the day with my session in the last slot. I had participated in Lazer Tag just prior to my session in one of the networking events, which got my blood pumping and ready to stand in front of a group of SQL peeps and discuss Documentation. I believe that the session went well, and we had good discussions. Many speakers attending my session, which was always a bit nerve wracking initially, but enables me as a speaker to engage the audience even better than typically, as these are now friends and family that can be pulled into the discussions easily.

After the sessions, we had one more networking event. We all had to make a trek across the family fun center to the sand box, and retrieve an easter egg. Inside each egg, for each member of the event, a prize awaited them. The organizers had gotten many items to give away and each person received something. It was well received and I believe everyone went away feeling a bit more special at having received a thoughtful gift for simply attending. It was a nice touch.

And just like that, as quickly as it started, it was over. It was such a full day, with so many interesting topics, great knowledge, great networking, that it blew by so quickly. I for one barely noticed that I had been on my feet for many hours, had done a great many different things as well as learned and gotten excited about SQL stuff. It was exactly what was needed. Many thanks go out to the organizers. Great job!!

After the event folks retired to the bar to continue networking. I don't drink, so tend to not spend a ton of time at the bar, but did take the chance to relax a bit, talk a bit, and continue to network and build those relationships started previously. Discussions about the event ensued, Regional Mentor duties were performed with various members of the community, help given to those folks looking to setup new chapters and needing some ideas to get them going, and friendships were continued. It was a great time.

Randy and myself departed, after many handshakes, fist bumps and a few hugs. We took off to go get some dinner and relax before our 4:30 am start time the next day for the 6:00 am flight. Dinner was quick, once we finally found a place, got a seat and got our food. Having forgotten that this was a Saturday night and that many other people also wanted to eat dinner, we were slightly delayed in our own goals. Dinner did occur, bellies were filled and more discussions were had about SQL and other topics. Finally, bed awaited, its siren song calling me to slumber at 8pm, finally falling asleep sometime around 9pm. Rare for me to retire so early, yet needed to make the flight the next morning.

The next morning came quite a bit earlier than I could have expected. Its always funny to drive around in the dark, knowing its morning, yet being deceived into still believing its night. An odd juxtaposition. We arrived at the airport without a problem, albeit at the ungodly hour of nearly 5am. We got thru security easily, except for the TSA groping that occurred. Ironically I tend to travel in a tshirt and sweats, releaving myself of a belt, buttons or anything that would pose a threat to the metal detectors. However, this was the reason the TSA groper choose to use to get close and personal with my persona, the baggy sweats. Funny.

After arriving home a couple hours earlier than I would normally wake up on a Sunday, it was all over. I was home. Early and tired and spent. I laid down and rested for most of the day, getting ready to start my normal work week. Good times, good friends, good knowledge. Forging existing relationships and building new ones. Making the SQL Community into my SQL Family. Thats what I see occurs in these events.

Long live SQL Saturday!!!

#TSQL2sDay: Resolutions

For this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, Jen McCown asks:

So tell us: what techie resolutions have you been pondering, and why? Are you heading for a certification? An award? Are you looking to pick up CLR because that guy at the Summit said it’s “bitchin’”? Go crazy…

What is T-SQL Tuesday? Let's read from the master's blog ( Adam Machanic (Blog| Twitter) ) the following :

Each month a blog will host the party, and about a week before the second Tuesday of the month a theme will be posted. Any blogger that wishes to participate is invited to write a post on the chosen topic. The event is called "T-SQL Tuesday", but any post that is related to both SQL Server and the theme is fair game. So feel free to post about SSIS, SSRS, Java integration, or whatever other technologies you're working with in conjunction with SQL Server. Even if your post includes no T-SQL we still want to see it.

I thought that the idea of doing these T-SQL Tuesday blog events was a grand idea, and couldn't wait for my first opportunity to contribute. You may notice that its been going on without my contributions for quite some time. I am finally contributing.

Last year, around this same time, there was a rash of resolution blog posts making the rounds. I thought long and hard on what I wanted to accomplish, and posted these here in a blog entry. My goals then, as in previous years, surrounded 10 distinct items. I would like to continue with these this year, albeit with modifications.

1. Local User Group
2. Produce presentations. 4-6 presentations for the year
3. Speak
4. Perform Regional Mentor Duties
5. Blog
6. Articles
7. MVP
8. Read
9. Topics
10. #InboxZero

1. Contributing the the local User Groups is paramount. Be it thru UG meetings, simply being part of peoples lives that are members, SQL Saturday events, Code Camps, and so on. There are many opportunities to contribute, and this last year I did so in some of these ways listed above. I strive to continue to do so this year. I will be branching out a bit, as money permits, to attend regionally local SQL Saturday events as well.

2. Presentations are a good way of documenting what you know, and sharing it with others. Its a good way to learn a subject more fully than you currently know it. I have had good success with SSWUG presentations, an will continue to pursue this avenue, as well as others that come my way. I love to learn, and love to share that knowledge with others. Presentations are an obvious outlet for this activity.

3. I had this goal more specific last year, indicating speaking at SSWUG. I have removed that specificness this year, and simply want to speak more, including SSWUG, SQL Saturday events, and the like. I would simply like to stretch those speaking and presenting muscles more and more.

4. As a volunteer with PASS, its important to define an avenue for your work, then contribute as much as you can to this. I am a Regional Mentor for the Southwest region, and I, along with my colleague Andrew Karcher need to support these Chapters and ensure that whatever they need, they can be provided with. This is a fun job, although I often do not busy myself as much as I feel I should with these duties. There are some side projects in the works as well that are fairly exciting.

5. Writing in a blog can be an interesting endeavor. I will often go days, weeks, dare I say, even months without posting something here. This is not to say that I do not find value in blogging, but simply that I often find value in only posting what I believe is necessary to share, or im simply to busy to do so. So, as in previous years, I vow to post more here, to glean more information from my day to day tasks that are worthy of this forum. Not to simply post to post, or get quantity. I'm going for quality. And in come cases, I need to prod myself to generate that quality, more often.

6. This last year, I did not write as many articles as I was happy with for myself. I vow to set this as a goal again, and produce, as mentioned, more content that is valuable not only to myself, but to others.

7. Nothing will change for this goal, as its a passive goal. All the other tasks will occur on their own, and this is simply there as a carrot.

8. Again, this goal fell short last year, and will remain on my list for the year coming up. I have extended this from simply reading books, to include other mediums as well, and have imported books to my android phone and other devices, with the intent of having them more readily available, and actually carving out time away from the TV to read more.

9. This year, with this new job, I am trying to be more open to topics that were previously shut off to me for various reasons. One of these is PowerShell, and I have actually started using this more already, and hope to do so more this year. Another topic that has come my way is simply general documentation. I have spent a lot of time in my last job documenting many many things for DB systems. I will implement this skill in my current gig to document everything that is missing documentation, which right now is everything.

10. I love that this goal has made it to my list, and will forever remain. This is the ever present goal of cleaning up my email, managing my email, and imply organizing myself, accomplishing my tasks at the same time. With a new job comes new vigor to keep the inbox down to zero. Home has suffered for far too long, and will be high on my list to sort thru these emails and get them processed as well.

Well, there you have it. 10 items that I have found that are important to me, that I have continued to promote as my resolutions through a few years, with modifications as time marched on.

I hope to accomplish these in the coming years. Or at least, to stretch myself to become closer to attaining whatever task or goal each one indicates. Its good to have goals, ans we in our family just recently discussed this, coming up with spiritual as well as personal goals for each member of the family.

I challenge you to read thru my list, see if any of these things ring true for you, or impress you to set your own similar goals. Come back often and reference this, and ensure that you are accomplishing them as the year marches on.

Trackback to original blog : http://www.midnightdba.com/Jen/2011/01/tsql-tuesday-014/

SSWUG presentations October 2010 - LIVE!!

I actaully am sitting in the Bits on the Wire studios at this very moment, gearing up to present 3 sessinos. I will be speaking about GoldenGate SQL Server Replication Configuration, Database Switch preparedness, Profile and Trace.

I am always honored to be selected to present in this virtual conference and love to do it. It kicks me in the butt to get some topics prepared, and then to get them polished to the point that they may make sense to others. I simcerely hope that my knowledge can be shared with others thru these presentations and help others out there that are struggling with similar items that I work with daily.

I sit here writing notes on paper, to ensure that I actually cover everything I want too. Its tough to get all the information distilled, then ensure that its actually covered.

Just wanted to say some of these things to the blog and document it. So, when i am at home sometime, preparing a presentation, i can recall these excited moments just prior to going live.

Replication : Love to Hate it!

We use native replication very infrequently at work, but still have a couple boxes using it. During one of our last releases (schema changing) we had an issue with replication distribution agent restarting. It seemed to have mixed up the order of new fields and data being sent to the subscriber, and we would get errors about extra fields or missing fields in the sp_MS proc thats autogenerated.
We edited the proc to add and remove fields as needed. Once we worked our way past all the data flowing and errors that kept coming, all seemed to be working well.

Yesterday, we encountered the same error again, with the same published article and the same proc. It was odd. We went back to the same troubleshooting we had previously tried by editing the proc depending on the errors we saw. However, it simply was not working. Without thinking out of the box, we tried to do the same things as before, but without success. One of the other DBA's suggested we add all the fields but with null defaults. When you think about it, it makes sense. For some reason the data being replicated kept switching from 15 fields to 16 fields. Each time it had 16, and only 15 were being sent to the proc, it errored. By setting the 15th and 16th columns in the proc to nullable, and letting them be used or not, seemed to fix the issue this particular article was having.

One thing I have learned about replication, whichever solution that is used, is that its all a pain in the butt, but it gives you a solution that is super handy, yet difficult.

sqlPerspectives guest blogger

Last week, I got a unique opportunity handed to me by Chris Shaw (blog|twitter). He allowed me to review a section of the Deep Dives MVP book that most of you have heard so much press for recently. This was a great chance for me to read from the experts and comment on their writings and insights. As we all know, we are the community. We are the lifeblood of this great SQL Family of folks trying to help others as well as ourselves. We are writing, we are mentoring, we are training, we are working with SQL Server. My first thought was who am I to actually comment on something like this, but that is the Evil TJay that is always trying to beat me down, and bruise my ego. Luckily the Good TJay won out that day, and I agreed to read and comment on a section.

I took this as seriously as my first book report way back in the day. I read it all, and reread it, and as I wrote my comments, read it again. I really wanted to be accurate, through in my perspective, even a story or two from my own experience. In an effort to become a better writer myself, this is exactly the type of thing that I relish. So, thanks go to Chris for allowing me to comment. Thanks to Jeremey Lowell as well for assisting with this small endeavor. People I have never met, giving me the opportunity to grow, what a great community we exist in.

Anyway, without any more flowery language and metaphors, I present the tweet I saw this morning, with the link to the guest blog I produced. I hope that someone enjoys it as much as I did preparing for it, and executing it.

TWEET

DataRealized Blog: @tjaybelt is the sqlPerspectives guest blogger this week! http://bit.ly/9v0Qyf #SQLServer #SQL #SQLBlog #microsoft

I hope to do more, grow more, learn more. You are all part of this experience of mine, and hopefully I am part of yours on occasion.

Whose Blog Is It Anyway?

You must read this post from Tim Ford to understand the next series of random words you will read. I will attempt to accept this challenge in each of my blogs, my work blog, my personal blog, as well as my hobby blog. It will be an interesting challenge, and I hope you enjoy reading it.

It is a Monday, not unlike any other Monday I have suffered thus far. However, the issues that will arise today will make this Monday top the charts for oddities.

The day started out like most days with a team meeting. Since there were no issues from the weekend, we simply discussed what was coming this week. As these discussions were occurring, we all noticed that we had received an emergency ticket from Customer Service. One of our applications were returning an error none of the CS representatives had seen before. The details I will not explain here, but the oddity in the message baffled us all. The error message stated something to the effect that a value could not be retrieved from a table, but the table name it referred to was 'Live Nude Cats'. Obviously this needed to be researched a bit more, as something very odd is occurring in our code. I recall a similar event a year ago; an offending error message occurred not with a cat, but with the reference to a pony. This representative became very upset as the result of scanning a particularly troublesome error message, but as soon as he looks down he’s going to be very sad about the pony pictured at the bottom of the error message. Why would one of the developers put in a picture like that, on an error message. What the heck was occurring in the development group? We have all stuck bogus code, names, even pictures into our applications on a lark. But these things should have been pulled out way before the end product made it to the client. For shame.

I march down to the bullpen, where the developers hang out, and find them split down the middle, yelling at each other. This is also not atypical of this group. Today's topic was Star Wars, and I have no idea what the subject was, but as soon as I heard one of them scream out 'Just ask George “Let’s Have Padme Die Of A Broken Heart Instead Of Anakin Crushing Her To Death” Lucas', I lost it. I screamed at the top of my lungs to get all their attention. Nothing seemed to phase them. They continued on their tirade of injustices perceived by fictional characters in a story that seems to have struck a chord with so many to cause them to vehemently argue one side or another. I like the movies, I enjoyed being entertained, I enjoyed showing them to my children, but that is not the point here. Having encountered this fanaticism before from this group, I realized that the only way I could gain any attention whatsoever was by simply using some magical tool, library, or bong. I was fresh out of library, but happened to have a bong that was also some magical tool.

I used the magical device to cause a trance to overcome the developers, lulling them into a sense of purpose beyond the realm of Star Wars, and back to a more humble reality. Back the the faulty error message that someone had slipped into our application. After explaining what had occurred, getting some help from the developers as to where we could possibly look to solve the issue (although none of them fessed up to inserting the bogus code and picture into the product), I realized that this was now my task. I would be spending the rest of the day on this issue, creating tickets, discovering what needed to be fixed and so on. Oh well, its just a Monday. I’ve started, so I’ll finish!

My Goals and Theme Word for 2010

I was tagged by Lori Edwards (Blog – Twitter). I am now to produce a set of goals and a theme word.

Before moving forward, I feel I need to take this time to look back at last year’s goal list here. I can tell that a new goal needs to look back at the goal list more often. I do not recall the last time that I referenced this post. It may be the way that I deal with goals. I commit them to paper and memory, then just attempt to direct my life in that direction. Sometimes, they fall into place without my help, as I am already oriented that way. Others fall on the wayside, as they were not in the right direction or maybe not the right definition of task. Still others, I simply forgot to do, meaning I had not fully committed them to paper or memory. If I can orient my direction in the same direction as my goals, and define my goals in such a way that they are accomplishable in that direction, then viola, they tend to accomplish themselves without reference to their original documentation. However, I believe that it’s necessary to revisit them from time to time, to ensure the definition is up to snuff, the direction is proper, and both are meshing well. I will add this to my list this year.

Last Years Goals

Lets start off with a summary of what I documented last year as my goals or resolutions.

1. I want to do more with my local user group.
2. Produce presentations. 4-6 presentations for the year
3. Speak at SSWUG.
4. Perform Regional Mentor Duties.
5. Blog
6. Articles
7. MVP
8. Read
9. Topics
10. #InboxZero

Now, let’s dissect them a bit, explaining where I feel I fell in their accomplishment, or not.

1. I want to do more with my local user group.

I struggled with this this past year, as I was unable to produce interesting content myself, and unable to tap into many others for presentations themselves. We had a couple meetings that were a success. Others were not. Changes are afoot for this goal that will truly help out the local user group.

2. Produce presentations. 4-6 presentations for the year

I actually produced 8 presentations for SSWUG this last year. 2 of which were preexisting presentations. So, inadvertently, I accomplished this goal without actually thinking about it. I was headed in the right direction, and this simply took care of itself as I went there.

3. Speak at SSWUG.

I had the honor and privilege of speaking at both SSWUG conferences this last year. It was a blast, and I learned a lot myself. I hope to continue to be able to do so in the future.

4. Perform Regional Mentor Duties.

I actually stepped up a bit more on these duties this year, and really tried to spend more of my free time performing tasks to assist in this task. It felt good to give, felt good to produce. I will continue to feed from this trough.

5. Blog

I wrote a bit on my career blog, wrote more on my hobby blog, and started apersonal blog for things that didn't fit into either of the other two categories. For my career blog, I had 1 month with a single blog post. 1 month with 2 blog posts, and the rest with 3 or more, and some months as many as 7 posts. Not tons, but I felt good about them. For Christmas, I wrote an incredible amount on the personal blog, ending with this summary. I have had great comments on my ability to write, enough that keeps me going. At first, I thought that blogging meant writing about SQL topics. But I have learned this year that writing is just that, writing. I need to practice more, and get better. I feel that something is looming just out of reach of my awareness that will require this skill in my future. I will continue to strive to perfect this talent and hopefully be ready for the challenge, when and if it comes. In the mean time, I head down the dusty road that many have traversed previously, and simply write.

6. Articles

I did not write as many articles as I had hoped for. With preparations for SSWUG presentations taking up quite a bit of time, and rest time afterwards for other hobbies, I didn't write a ton. I have dedicated myself to writing, and found that I needed to write about many other things, other than SQL. I wrote a couple short stories, produced quite a bit of blogs, and have a couple articles sitting in unfinished states. So writing has occurred, I have just not delivered in the fashion I had anticipated, it’s evolved a bit.

7. MVP

I was nominated again this last year. Again, it was an honor to be nominated. Other than continuing on my course of actions, I cannot actually do anything towards this goal. I maintain my course thru life, and with the other goals I do accomplish, maybe this one will be picked up along the way. Maybe not.

8. Read

I have done this task, not as planned, but differently. I had added a lot of blogs from others, and tried to keep up. I would get distracted and frustrated at my ability to keep up. Sometime ago, I cleared out all my unread blogs, starting at #InboxZero. This was very hard to do, and took me a couple weeks to actually pull the trigger. Once done, a bit of time has passed, and I now am looking down the barrel at over 300 unread blogs already. This teaches me that I may never be able to keep up, so this task needs to be modified in its perceived accomplishment.

9. Topics

I am much more proficient with GoldenGate replication than last year. This is a technology that is specific to my company, and I have practiced with it quite a bit and become much more skilled at it. It was not what I meant when I wrote this particular goal, but along the road of life last year, this one was picked up and accomplished.

10. #InboxZero

All year long, as I imagine the future will most likely continue, I struggled with this task. This was not an accomplishable task in one or even many sittings. This is an ongoing task. Once burned into my brain, its become a hobby I attempt to accomplish on a small scale for a small period of time. The thing I have noticed is that others are doing the same thing and blog or tweet about it. If I was an influence on them, great. They are an influence on me, as we all attempt to perform this repetitive task, and incorporate it into our daily toolboxes of skills.

My goals for the coming year? Similar to last years, with some modifications.

1. Do more with Local User Group.

I have been a leader of this group for quite some time, and have been approached by another member to let him take it over. It may be a good time to step aside, let others perform tasks, and simply help out, instead of run the show. This is the direction I am leaning towards now. Give it some new blood.

2. Produce presentations.

Last year, I came up with a random number. This time, I want to leave it open, and simply keep it in the back of my head to produce as many pieces of presentation content as I can. I hope that its many.

3. Speak.

I am dropping off the goal to speak at SSWUG, and simply making it Speak. I want to simply find good venues where I can share my skills and knowledge with others, and become better at presenting. SSWUG is definitely in there, as well as local user groups. I may have the chance to speak outside of those two locations, and hope that I can.

4. Perform Regional Mentor Duties.

During the SQLPASS summit, I was inspired by our fearless community liaison Blythe Morrow (twitter) to do more. In fact, it was kind of a threat that I took seriously that she was going to pile on more work for this volunteer effort. I welcomed it, and began working. I intend to do more here as time permits.

5. Blog (write)

I am modifying this one to include writing. That’s the goal of my blogging, to practice writing, and hone that skill. Someday, maybe I could write a book? In the meantime, I will write as much as I can about as much as I can. I have been inspired by a lot of SQL folks, as well as others. I have always been an avid reader, more so in my youth. I grew up reading Piers Anthony, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, C. S. Lewis, Robert Ludlum, John Saul, David Eddings, Margaret Weiss, Tracy Hickman, Orson Scott Card, to mention a few. I love to read lyrical prose, in all its forms. Paint me a picture with your words, and I can almost enter your extended reality and see it as you see it. I want to get better at this skill. The SQL folks that have inspired me are Steve Jones (blog|blog|blog|twitter), Grant Fritchey (blog|twitter), Paul Randal (blog|twitter), Brad McGehee (blog|twitter), to name a few.

6. Articles

This goal will be dropped, and added into the above goal of simply writing. Writing an article should be as important a task as writing a blog post, documenting a process for my employer, penning a witty tweet. It’s all words, and my goal is to have the same result with them all. Paint a picture of a reality that I see, so that you can exist in that realm for a period of time of your choosing.

7. MVP

I'm dropping this task from the actual list this year. My direction is such that if this occurs, great. If not, I am not to be detoured from continuing on this path.

8. Read

This one will receive a modification. I will continue to read, as life permits, but not feel like I have to read it all. I will continue to seek out those posts that have relevance to my skills and interests. I will seek out those posts from folks that simply inspire me to be better. I will try out other posts that are suggested and can be added to my toolbox. But I will not feel the crushing guilt of not reading everything that everyone writes as soon as its revealed. I simply cannot read that much.

9. Topics

As the year progresses, I hope to add to this with actual topics. Let’s say 2-3 new items need to be picked up, learned, and somehow incorporated into my life. More on this as time marches along this year.

10. #InboxZero

As this is an ongoing task, and has become part of my habits, I will not continue to have this as a separate task. I believe then that it has been accomplished in a sense, as it has become part of me, and no longer needs to be listed out separately.

The last statement I made is indicative of how I perceive goals or resolutions. They should be added to your list such that they become part of your life, and no longer need to exist in a list that you can check off. They become part of who you are. This frees up your task list to accept new and exciting items yet in your life to be accomplished, while continuing to accomplish the newly incorporated habits from last year’s list.

Themeword

So, thats all fine and dandy with the goals and explanations and wild wordage to explain my quirks, but what about a themeword? That one is a bit harder. As I write this, I have had quite a few words floating around my grey matter (which is a great short story by Stephen King, you should read it someday). Let me list them out here.

• NoDrama
• Relax
• Prioritize
• ReadMore
• Play
• WorkEfficiently

Somehow, I don't think that I can apply a single themeword to my next year. Along with the goals i have listed, along with the general direction I want to head, there are many themewords that I will be working on during the year. I take life as the opportunity to better ourselves, learn as much as we can, serve our fellow man, and ultimately perfect myself as much as I can. Others will help along the way, but I gotta do the brunt of the work, as I have been doing since this realization hit me at some time in my younger years. Unfortunately there will never be a time that I can retire from these tasks. So, its business as usual, working on perfecting myself, and enjoying life along the way with all its quirks.

Tagging

I wish to tag the following folks.

Pat Wright (blog|twitter)

Joe Webb (blog|twitter)