Category: Professional Development

Redgate Software has a policy wherein every 5 years, employees receive a 6-week paid sabbatical. Well, I'm up to year 11 (I skipped a year my first time), so it's that time for me. First, thank you Redgate. I've loved working for you for 11 years. I'm looking forward to just as many more. Second, I've already written and scheduled a bunch of blog posts, so you'll still be seeing activity here. Third, I'm supposed to completely disconnect, but I won't. I'll be checking email, posts & messages, but I'll be slow on the response. Apologies if I don't get back to you quickly. See you in 7 weeks (I tacked on some vacation time. HA!).

For two years and three months, since April 2020, I've posted a tweet saying "Good Morning!" on every workday. I think I missed one. I was late for a couple. The messages were meant to be helpful. I used the word kind a lot. A lot. I tried to avoid lectures, and still did it sometimes. I tried to always be uplifting and positive, yet was still a downer occasionally. I've received many thanks for the tweets, in public and private. I cherish every one. Thank you! I also received quite a few "how dare you" and "you're not qualified" messages. For those, my answers are simple. I dare fine. You're right, I'm not qualified, doing it anyway. However, I'm drawing all that to a close. See, I'm going on…

Two years ago at the start of the pandemic, I wasn't feeling great about things. I saw that quite a few others weren't all that thrilled about how things were going either. So, to help my own mood, and to try to be a service to others, I started tweeting a little "Good Morning!" post every work day. I filled them with happy thoughts, tips I'd read on handling depression, suggestions I learned on health, anything that would help people, just a teeny amount, at the start of the day. Now, I'm not some licensed therapist or anything like that. I just wanted to do something to help others where I know I needed help. That's it. Two years later and I've written a bunch of tweets. Based on feedback…

I sincerely hope this isn't the first time you're hearing about the Pass Data Community Summit that's coming up in just a few weeks on November 8-12, 2021. But, just in case you haven't heard, let me tell you about a few things I'm personally excited about. Networking! There is a ton of stuff getting worked on to make this an interactive event. Even though this will be an online event (and a free one), we're doing everything we can think of to get you a community experience. We're providing mechanisms for all sorts of different networking. You'll be able to give a few virtual hugs to those you've missed. Learning! Check out the list of sessions. Everything from straight up, good, old fashioned query tuning in SQL Server, to…

With all the stuff going on around the world over the last year, maintaining some degree of mental stability can be quite a challenge. Speaking only for myself, while my family and I have been fine through all this, the changes to my situation, while mostly benign, have still had their challenges. Again, speaking only for myself, I've found those challenges do lead to negativity on my part. Further, that negativity can bleed into my communication with others, hurting that communication. I have seen others suffering from this as well. Whatever stresses they're going through clearly leads to negativity in their communications. Now, when we're looking at this situation, I'm negative, someone else is negative, we're going to communicate really poorly. So, how to address this? Well, there are a…

We are all going through some tough times. It's tougher for some more than others. Now is the time when you have to work on being resilient, and it ain't easy. However, there are things you can do to develop resilience. Like most things, it's actually a skill that can be learned. Let's start with a little disclaimer up front. I'm no expert on this topic. However, I do have a few bonafides and I'll share them so you know where I'm coming from. If you don't care, skip to the next section. My Training and Experience In Resiliency Without going into personal details, like everyone, one of my teachers has simply been life. At 57, I've done a few things and been a few places. I've gone through tough,…

Simply put, we are not always going to agree. Please, take this as someone who was nicknamed "The Scary DBA" for reasons comic and tragic. I've screwed up a bunch of stuff in my career. Yes, some of it was through ignorance of technology. However, most of it was through badly managed interpersonal relationships. I was not always kind. I was not always empathetic. I caused problems on teams sometimes that were just unnecessary. If I had just thought things through, a little, and practiced more kindness, I'd have had a much nicer time of it and influenced people in a more positive way. Now, I read this post by Jennifer Jones. I wanted to get angry at people for not treating her well. But all I could think about…