It’s been another long stretch where I haven’t blogged, and that lies with a lack of discipline on my part. There’s also a part of me that hasn’t known what to write about, maybe that’s because I have been having a bit of an identity crisis lately. But I suppose
I think the last two years have finally caught up with me and is behind my current feelings of frustration. Well to be honest the last four years really. When my wife and I left Denver to move to our cabin in Northern Wisconsin four years ago, it was because
This year has been, well….intense. I’ve been extremely busy, and extremely overworked. It wasn’t until I got a chance to go to Yellowstone and unplug for a few days that I realized just how hard this year has been. I’m thankful that the end of the year is here, which
The last year has been wild and it seemes everything changed. I was hopeful 2021 would get off to a better start than 2020, but alas, that doesn’t seem to the case. So many things have changed in the last year, it’s almost impossible to keep track of them all.
Today, I’m not thankful that it’s Friday, although I am happy about it. Today I am thankful for the wisdom of Grant Fritchey (b/ t). No Grant didn’t help me with any kind of problem, at least directly. Hell, I have never even met the man in person. No, I’m
I started of setting up an SQL Availablity Group but quickly ran into problems caused by windows firewall. After getting the environment setup, I performed a failover test, verified everything was working okay. After failing back over to the original primary, I added a database to the availability group via
As a DBA, working from home is not a new concept nor a new experience, I do it a lot. However, this shift to working from home due to the office being closed for Covid-19 is a little different. First off, I’m enjoying getting my commute time back and saving
I don’t know why I am slow to take up new tools, but I am. I recently, like back in December, began working with DBATools. In case you’re not familiar, DBATools is a PowerShell module assembled by the community over at DBATools.io. This module, oh this wonderful module, makes some
“The Only Thing That Is Constant Is Change ” – Heraclitus The rate of change is always about the same, as fast as possible, but the directions have shifted back on themselves. Twenty years ago, when I was starting out in IT, the focus was to move off the centralized
When it comes to working with other people it is always best to remember that others are not always on the same page. In fact, when dealing with others that work alongside you, it is imperative to remember they are most likely to see and evaluate issues and opportunities differently
It’s been a couple of years since I have been able to attend a SQL Saturday. I was grateful I was able to make it this year. This year however was a first for me, it was my first SQL Saturday in Minnesota and the first time I went to
Recently, I was working with a gentleman in our IT department and we were discussing adding redundancy to a couple of SQL Servers that were used for web apps. Turns out, VMware’s disk consolidation can, and will, take a server offline. That tends to make customers unhappy, and rightly so.
It’s Thanksgiving Day and before we know it, Christmas and the New Year will be upon us. 2018 hasn’t worked out as I planned. In fact, 2018 has been a difficult year for me personally. The first half of the year Jan – April was rough for a number of
I came across an article on SQL Server Central written by Claudio Silva (b/t) discussing that you can’t do arithmetic operations on DateTime2 like you can with DateTime. For example: Old Way OrderDate < GETDATE() -1 You need to do something like this: OrderDate < DATEADD(dd, -1, @vOrderDate)
Steve Jones (t|b) wrote a blog post talking about the death of the title Database Administrator. Mind you, he was talking about the title of DBA, not the actual job of being a DBA. Semantics, right? If you look across the inter-webs, the death of the DBA has been a
The 101st addition to the SQL monthly blog party is being hosted by Jens Vestergaard (blog/twitter). For the topic this month, Jens has asked which tools are essential to our daily job. Or rather, which tools do I depend on as a DBA. Interesting Topic I would love to say
This month’s blog topic for TSQL Tuesday is learning goals in 2018 and is being hosted by Mala Mahadevan (blog/twitter). Mala has challenged the SQL community to list out specific learning plans for the upcoming year. It’s an awesome topic for this time of year, especially as we’re slowing a
I think I’m actually going to make this TSQL Tuesday, it’s the first for me in a while. I kind of have a valid excuse, I left my job at the hospital in Denver and took a job in Duluth, MN. So currently I’m in the middle of a cross
It’s hard to believe this is my last week in Denver. Come Monday I am moving to northern Wisconsin. I’m jumping in the truck alone to head for the Great Lake region with my wife following in December. Which, for me at the moment, maybe the hardest part of this
I feel accomplished a bit this year, I’ve made it to two SQLSaturdays in the same calendar year. This SQLSaturday was put on by the Denver SQL Users group and was hosted at the University of Denver. There were a number of sessions I wanted to attend, and they all
Every so often, you come across game-changing information and most of the time, this type of information costs money. So it is EXTREMELY rare to come across this type of information for free. With that being said, I wanted to give a shout-out, and HUGE Thank You, to Brent Ozar
Earlier in the year, I set out with aspirations of doing a better job blogging and keeping up with training. At least on a personal level. I admit I slid a touch on my weekly blogging goal. In my defense, however, work has been focused on relocating a data center
SQL Saturday Colorado Springs (SQLSat #584) It’s been a while since I’ve attended a SQL Saturday. I think the last one was in 2013 in OKC, to be exact. I had blogged about that one too, but I think I lost that post with the old website. At any rate,
Procedure vs Technique One of the things I do when I workout, or drive alone, is to listen to podcasts. One of the podcasts I subscribe to is the Art of Charm, which describes itself as providing social skills training for Top Performers. In short, they talk about all kinds
It’s amazing how time seems to fly, especially between blog posts. I’ve known I needed to post a blog for a while; I’ve even thought of a few different topics. Alas, the execution has not been good on my part. One of those things I hope to do a better
I have had a long career in the IT area and I have met all kinds of people during that time. My interest in computers grew out of a hobby and gaming. By constantly fixing, upgrading, and maintaining my gaming rig, I learned quite a bit about computers in general.