11Nov 2013 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

For the Aspiring DBA

Professional Development
Getting started as a data professional is an incredibly daunting task. If you’re not concerned that you’re going to mess stuff up and cause a system to crash and burn, maybe you’re in the wrong job. The amount of information you have to learn is insanely huge, coupled with the fact that you are straddling application development, system administration and business needs, multiplied by the factor that all the apps, all the code and the very server structure on which you’re building everything is constantly changing. Concerned now? Good. Stay that way. The one piece of advice I want to offer you is that very state of concern. You are in a wonderful and horrifying position. If you’re working in the database administration space, you’re tasked with protecting the data…
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04Nov 2013 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

Speaker of the Month, November 2013

Professional Development
Yeah, I'm a couple of days late. Tough. My blog. My rules. Speaking of rules. Speaker of the Month is chosen by me based on my whims, interests and the direction of the wind on every other Tuesday at 3PM. No whining. I saw a ton of excellent sessions during the month of October. I was at SQL in the City, SQL Saturday Charleston, and the PASS Summit, so I had an embarrassment of riches to choose from. One session stood out. It's on a topic that, frankly, I find incredibly dull. But not this presentation. Without further ado, for November I'm picking Chris Bell (b|t) and his presentation, Indexing Encrypted Data (oh stop yawning, this is good). Chris went to town on the slides. He's clearly very carefully built…
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22Oct 2013 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

SQL in the City, US Tour 2013, Recap

Professional Development, Redgate Software
Red Gate visited three cities this year with our SQL in the City event; Pasadena, Atlanta and Charlotte. I just wanted to give you a quick assessment of how the events went from my point of view. Overall, each and every one of these events was awesome. I can safely say that because each and every one of these events provided something special, the opportunity to network with our peers and with the developers and project managers at Red Gate (who are also our peers, but not usually available to us). I both took part in the networking and stood back and watched it happen. I love seeing a bunch of data pro's sitting (or standing) in a circle exchanging war stories, ideas, questions, thoughts or suggestions. It means you…
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09Oct 2013 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Do Be a Gatekeeper

Professional Development
I read this fascinating blog post called "Don't Be a Gatekeeper" by Julie Zhuo. Please read that first. It really resonated for me in a lot of ways. Everything she said is 100% applicable to our jobs as data professionals. Work to make things more robust. Create processes and structures and an environment where you don't have to be the hero all day every day. Yes, absolutely. But... ah, there's this nagging little voice at the back of my head. Let's ignore it for a moment. Are you a gatekeeper for your developers? Why? Get out of their way. Listen to what Ms. Zhuo has to say. Your development team doesn't need you squatting on their servers preventing them from moving as fast as they can. In fact, they need…
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04Oct 2013 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

Speaker of the Month, October 2013

Professional Development
This month I saw several good speakers talking on a variety of topics. Making this choice was hard. I'm really glad people don't know who I've decided not to pick because I would be singularly unpopular. The rules for speaker of the month are simple. This is an utterly arbitrary and random decision made by me based on criteria that crosses the gamut from careful evaluation of speaker skills, to reading chicken guts, to the random coin toss. In short, I pick, my way, no whining. But, I really, really want you to have a blog (or something like it) that I can point people to. That said, I'm making an exception this month (see arbitrary and random above). I'm doing this because I really enjoyed the session, Stop That,…
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30Sep 2013 by Grant Fritchey 9 Comments

An Experiment Concludes

Misc, Professional Development
[caption id="attachment_2548" align="alignleft" width="300"] That was hard work[/caption] You may or may not have noticed, but every single week day for the month of September, I've put up a blog post. Some were short little blurbs linking to some other person's blog or an article that I decided to comment on. Some were the normal, longer, type of posts that I put up, explaining some bit of technical behavior that has interested me or that I've had questions about. This is the last week day of the month and I'm excited to be able to go back to blogging 1-2 times a week again. There was no small amount of stress ensuring that I had posts scheduled out for each day, coming up with ideas, getting them written up. Whew!…
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06Sep 2013 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Speaker of the Month: September 2013

Professional Development
This is my second post in what I hope will be an ongoing series. You can see the rules for this, such as they are, and the last winner here. I didn't travel this past month, so I'm pulling my speaker of the month from a session that was recorded at 24 Hours Of PASS. I love the topic of database design. I love the topic performance tuning. So, my speaker of the month is Audrey Hammonds (b|t) and her session Design Matters! The Performance Impact of Database Design. I've known Audrey for a few years now, but I'd never sat through one of her sessions. What's wrong with me? I don't know, but I finally did and I'm really happy that I took care of it. I loved how…
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02Aug 2013 by Grant Fritchey 6 Comments

Speaker of the Month, August 2013

Professional Development
I'm trying out a new blog post series, mostly for myself as an exercise. I'm going to pick one speaker each month that I've seen present recently and tell you what I thought of them. Now, don't panic. If you stunk up the place, I won't abuse you... by name. Kidding. This is going to be endlessly positive and supportive. I'll try to find places where you can go to see these speakers in the future, if I can (Lanyrd.com people). If not, maybe they'll notice this post and tell us themselves. For those interested in getting picked, don't bother me. This is arbitrary & random. However, be sure that you have a blog (or equivalent) that I can direct people to or I'll skip over you. If you don't…
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09May 2013 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Book Review: Business in the Trenches

Professional Development
I'm trying to improve. That's at just about everything too. I know I don't know enough or have enough skills to always get things done in an efficient manner, so I'm trying to learn more. One way is by reading, a lot. I've read a number of management and leadership books, many of them reviewed on this web site. I just finished the book Business in the Trenches. I really enjoyed it. It combined two of my passions, self-improvement and history, specifically history of World War I. Now, this is a tech, community and business blog, so I won't go on & on about the Great War (although I could if you wanted). Instead, I simply want to provide you a link to my review of this book. It really is a…
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20Mar 2013 by Grant Fritchey 8 Comments

Laws You Break at Your Peril

Professional Development
Laws of Thermodynamics TANSTAAFL Gods of the Copybook Headings All magic comes with a price Winter Is Coming My adult years started with a pretty thorough education in physics thanks to Uncle Sugar and the Navy Nuclear Power School. The laws of thermodynamics were carved into our brains (along with Baumgart's Law*). Experience has taught me that all these other statements are more or less riffs on the concepts put forward by the fundamentals of the laws of thermodynamics. They're just applications of the same within social spheres. In short, if you have a physical engineering background, you tend to be a realist. But note, I'm not a pessimist. I just recognize a simple thing. No matter how positive my thoughts are, no matter my belief in the righteousness of…
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