Category Archives: Random Musings
Sunday Funday
The usual installment of Sunday Funday will be brought to you by the letter F for fun. I encourage you to go have fun today. It is beautiful and sunny here in Florida. I went to a baseball game on Saturday with my daughter watching the number one ranked Florida Gators beat the Vanderbilt Commodores in Southeastern Conference play to continue their winning streak to 16 games.
Today, I am on a boat in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico fishing with my Mom and Dad and my family, so go enjoy your day today. Get out of the house and have a great day! Enjoy!
Off Topic Excitement, Technology Refresh!
Today is a big day harkening back to the first Star Wars action figure I received as a child. This is huge, I am stoked! My iPad 3 will be arriving today! Previously, I bought a droid tablet because, well let’s be honest here, it was cheap, only $200. Why bother with an iPad if I can get the same function for less money, right? Well I should have known that the reason I love my third iteration of iPhone is because they build a great product that works reliably.
The droid tablet, the Dell Streak, was to put it frankly, a piece of crap. It was awkward and unusable. If I left it off of the charger over night it would drain the battery and it did not recover well from full draining usually requiring me to find a paper clip to jam into the rest button. Eventually I attached the paper clip to the power cord as I was frequently pressing the reset button when I was unable to revive the streak from its REM sleep. After several months, I was able to download the Honeycomb flavor of the droid OS which made the screens a little more usable, but apps like twitter and Facebook were not as smooth and free-flowing as on my iPhone. It all worked out in the end as Amazon bought my tablet for $150 in their buy back program, largely because I held on to the box. At this point, it looks like a good idea to start doing that for all my toys in order to soften the upgrade costs. Ahh, technology refresh is now more affordable!
Enjoy!
My SQL Saturday #110 Recap
Now that SQL Saturday #110 in Tampa has come and gone and I have had a few days to reflect, I thought it would be a good time to briefly outline the event from my perspective. Below is the schedule of my sessions, if you like check out the slide decks and you too can experience my day.
- STOP! Consolidate and Listen! by Jorge Segarra (Blog | Twitter)
- SQL 2012 DMVs & Extended Events by Gareth Swanepoel (Blog | Twitter)
- TempDB Performance Troubleshooting and Optimizing by Eddie Wuerch (Twitter)
- The Dirty Business of Auditing by Brian Kelley (Blog | Twitter)
- Introduction to Execution Plans by Nathan Heaivilin
- Transaction Log Deep Dive by Kevin Boles (Twitter)
- Revenge: The SQL! by Rob Volk (Blog | Twitter)
Enjoy!
SQL Server, Oh How I Love Thee!
Oh SQL Server How I Love Thee, Let Me Count The Ways!
Over the years I’ve had commitment issues with SQL Server as I was a Progress RDBMS Consultant as well as being a developer and a systems administrator. In the past, SQL Server was just one of my many duties and essentially I was an accidental DBA. However, I did consider myself a Progress DBA for the five years that I specialized in Progress 4GL. But during that time, I still administered SQL Server 6.5 and 7 databases, I just didn’t feel that it would be where my career path would go. I fancied myself a database developer who could also administer servers and perform other duties as assigned. That was my life calling, or so I thought.
Over the last couple of years, I’ve grown to love SQL Server more and more so much so that during the last year I proposed to SQL Server committing myself totally. Obviously, I still have numerous other administrative duties with my windows servers, SharePoint servers, OpenText ECM servers and VMWare infrastructure, however I have dedicated myself to the SQL Server community and my career to being the best SQL Server DBA that I can be. Are you willing to commit to SQL Server?
Enjoy!
Yesterday Was A Big, Big Day
Unless you are living under a rock, everyone knows that there were two big launches yesterday in the technology world. Both were important to me. The first was the virtual launch of SQL Server 2012, formerly known as Denali. The second was the launch of the Apple iPad3 or the New iPad as their website is calling it. They also launched a few other minor things but I find it interesting that Apple scheduled their launch after the SQL Server launch was announced. Was this intentional? I’m sure.
I tip my hat to Microsoft for this virtual launch platform was pretty nifty. However it did lack the free t-shirt and pen raid I usually make on the Expo Hall floor because frankly who doesn’t love free SWAG! I still have to set up a new virtual environment so I can begin playing with the SQL Server 2012 RTM, which was also available for download.
Now onto Apple, with the popularity of the iPad and iPhone, you would think that they would scale out their infrastructure to be able to accommodate the deluge of traffic to their store and website. With enough money to buy this country, they could have a better solution to these woes. I had to actually wait a couple of hours before I could buy my new iPad. Oh, the horror.
Enjoy!
Almost Forgot
Ooops! I almost forgot to blog today! I couldn’t hold back my excitement in creating two new SQL Server clusters, the first ones that I have built from scratch. After my week of SQLskills awesomeness, I was ready to head back to my servers, well not really but since my employer would only pay for one week then I didn’t have much choice. That’s not to say that I’m not appreciative, because I am! Thanks guys! I’m also hopeful that I can continue the Immersion Event series in the next budget year!
My blogs will probably be short this week unless I run into major issues that I can blog about. Should I wish for that or wish for regular blogs? That’s a real dilemma! Enjoy!
Daily Commute
On the third day of my commute into Tampa for SQLskills.com Immersion training this week and I realized how much worse the traffic was down into Tampa from when I last did it fourteen years ago.
It is only 60 miles from my house to the training near the airport, and that used to be a pleasant commute as long as there were no accidents, but now it is a white knuckle stop and go death grip full of road rage. If you do this on a daily basis, then my hats off to you.
This is why I enjoy living in a small town; for the peaceful serenity of relaxing living sans traffic. Rural America provides a great living and a good place to raise my children thus far. I enjoy the sense of community and slow pace as it greatly reduces my stress level. The only downside is that high tech firms have not caught onto this wonderful lifestyle, they need to! Enjoy!
How to beat The Claw!
This article, How to beat The Claw | Unplugged – Yahoo! Games, is an interesting read and it brings back some great memories. My kids consider me the Claw champion, so much so that when I do not win them a prize from one of these machines they consider complaining to the manager that the machine is rigged.
Little do they know that it is! I was consistently able to beat the machines in my area and then all of a sudden, nothing! Nada! Zilch!
Adjustments were made to prevent the SQLGator from winning. I’m sure that I am not the only one as evidenced by this article.
It reminds me of the time in high school when our McDonalds had a fish bowl on the counter with a shot glass in the middle. If you could get a nickel in the shot glass, then you received a free small drink. Also, a dime would earn you a small fry and a quarter got you a sandwich of your choice. Being entrepreneurial young men, we had a similar fish tank in the garage and we practiced for a few hours practicing the technique guaranteed to win most of the time. During lunch everyday during my junior year we went to McDonalds with a dollar’s worth of change (cause hey sometimes we were slightly off in our calculations) and proceeded to win a small drink, a small fry and a burger of our choice. Then we could save our money for dates!
This promotion was not working out as well as they had planned. New rules! Only one prize per visit, no problem; we will take the sandwich please. A couple of months go by, and the fish tank is gone from the counter. At that point I knew what it was like to go to Vegas and get caught counting cards! Thanks for the memories McDonalds!
Enjoy!
Create Snapshot?
I’ve been working with VMWare snapshots, SQL Server snapshots and occasionally restore points in Windows. With all of these options in our work life, I think we really need to be able to snapshot in real life. Who wouldn’t enjoy reverting to a snapshot in real life?
You could say things to your boss, after you create a snapshot of course, and based on his reaction revert to snapshot or delete the snapshot. Or, maybe you want to see how that pans out before you delete the old snapshot as it may take you to a place where you need to revert.
Now that I have mentioned it here on this blog, I am sure someone in Hollywood is working on the screenplay reminiscent of Adam Sandler‘s Click. I’m fine with that as long as they do not get Louie Anderson to play me. I would be ok with Leonardo DiCaprio and 10% of the backend, not his backend mind you.
Enjoy!
Dear Recruiter
Dear Recruiter:
I appreciate that you need to find someone to fill a position in order to make a living. I understand that and have used your services in the past. What I do not understand is why you continue to contact me about positions for technologies that I stopped using over ten years ago. I know its hard to find good talent, but please read my resume before you call and e-mail me multiple times. That is all!
Enjoy!
SQL Swampland 