Blog Archives
DBAs, MCMs and MVPs, Oh My!
In the #SQLFamily, there are several great MVPs and MCMs (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional and Microsoft Certified Masters, respectively) that are always available to help a SQL database administrator in need. Personally, I have not seen this kind of family atmosphere or camaraderie in any other area of technology that I have worked within. There is a great sense of pride in this family and a great sense of honor in helping other administrator and even developers. This is simply unheard of in today’s environment.
There is a flip side to this wonderful community and please do not get upset for what I am about to say as this community has been good to me and I appreciate everything they have done for me. With that being said, it can be intimidating for new people coming into our family. For example, on Friday night, I sat next two big names in the SQL Community, Andy Warren (Blog | Twitter) and Kevin Boles (Twitter), at dinner and quite simply I was awestruck. I should have relished at the chance to bask in their SQL knowledge.
How do you talk to guys of that level? I was intimidated, plain and simple. Can I talk to them on twitter, absolutely as I am not intimidated by their #SQLAwesomeness at that level. Maybe it is just me? Anyone else have trouble with this?
Enjoy!
Do You Value Training?
Today is the first day of my SQLskills.com Immersion training, thus I prepared this blog post a few days ago.
If you have been reading my blog, then you should be able to surmise that I love learning. Being in the IT field, I am not sure how you can get by without training because of the speed at which technology changes. Luckily, my current employer also believes in and values training. When they ask me if I want to go to training, I submit three or four different classes. Of course, they do not all get approved, but all they can do is say no. Thus, it is worth the effort on my part and it demonstrates my committment to my career.
Do you value training? Are you taking advantage of the training opportunities provided by your employer?
If the budget is tight, there is no reason why you cannot attend many of the free webinars, code camps, SQL Saturdays, and especially local users groups. If you are not advancing your skills, then maybe technology is not the right field for you. So sign up for training. Go! Do it now!
Enjoy!
I’m So Excited and I Just Can’t Hide It!
The next couple of weeks are going to me huge in my SQL Server career. Next week I will be attending the SQLskills.com Immersion Training for Internals & Performance. There are no words to express my excitement about this training as I don’t think I can truly comprehend how much I will be learning and moving my career into overdrive. As I move towards the MCITP, and quite possibly towards the MCM or Microsoft Certified Master, this training will move me along in my journey into the BIG TIME!
The following week, I will be standing up two new SQL Server 2008 R2 clusters for a huge project that will impact the future of SQL Server in my organization. This is a pivotal project and it is my first time standing up clusters on my own as I have maintained clusters but never built them on my own. For this reason, we have asked our Microsoft Premier Field Engineer to assist and I will be soaking up her knowledge as we build a solid production and acceptance cluster environments. If that project is successful, we will then look to move more of our Oracle systems to SQL Server and my plan for world domination will be set in motion.
And finally on the week after that we will be meeting with Microsoft again to discuss our plans to move to SQL Server 2012 and help management understand the new pricing structure. Hopefully we will be able to move forward and onto the next version of SQL Awesomeness. These next three weeks will be pivotal for my career, time to dominate! Enjoy!
Saturday SQL Schoolhouse
SQL Schoolhouse!
In our second installment of the Saturday SQL Schoolhouse, I wanted to share with you one of the most amazing resources I have ever discovered thanks to the fine folks at SQL Skills: the SQL Server 2008 Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) Readiness Videos. These videos are amazing and contain such SQL superstars as Brent Ozar (blog : twitter), Paul Randal (blog : twitter), and Kimberly L. Tripp (blog : twitter). Enjoy!
SQL Swampland 