SQL Musings

You are building an online brand

Steve Jones — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 10:49:20 GMT

With everything you do online. At least according to this blog post at ZDNet, which somewhat validates my presentation: The Modern Resume - Building Your Brand Online.

There's not a lot in the blog, other than mentioning there are some new tools that give you the ability to leverage your social profile with business cards, the Facebook vanity URLs, and more, but also new privacy controls on your Facebook account.

There are pretty good controls already on LinkedIn, and I think they're good, though I would like to see a little more granularity for sharing with co-workers/friends and a separate level for recruiters or potential interviewers.

I mention it in the talk, but it's worth repeating. Anything you post online is a part of your profile. None of them will make or break your reputation or your brand, but they add up. You don't want a lot of items that present you in a poor light. You want more things that make you look good, or at least professional for your career.

Manage your brand. It's always been something you should do, and that continues in the digital world. I'm not sure if it's more or less important, but I think you can better manage your impressions in the digital world.

It's all in the details

Steve Jones — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:25:44 GMT

I'm one of the judges for the Exceptional DBA contest, which ends July 10, 2009. You can still enter if you want, but I have a few notes about my experience so far. I was a judge last year and saw similar issues with the entries.

Unlike some contests, this is a contest to show off your skills, one with a somewhat significant prize, and I'd argue, on par with you looking for a new job. You want to put your best foot forward, and show that you are the person that should be picked. The judges aren't randomly selecting 5 finalists, but looking for an individual that demonstrates exceptional qualities.

If you take that attitude, and at least I do, then you would want to provide details and ensure your entry reads well. That means the basics, good spelling and grammar. I understand that some people don't necessarily want to write an essay, which is OK, but the more details you give, the more you stand out.

However, if you say you have good communication skills, then you can't write "My daily toughest is all serves under my responsibility run nearest 99,999" and have me take your entry seriously.

A resume is a balance in showcasing your accomplishments and skills in a very small amount of space. You want to highlight things, but if you give too many general comments, like "managing backup and recovery" you risk looking like someone that either

a) can't communicate well

b) didn't do anything and is writing fluff

A better statement, with not too many more characters would be "implemented a custom script for backups and tested restores monthly". It better states a skill, with details. It does have to be true, and I will specifically ask people about what is on resumes when I interview them, so it needs to be true. We want to hear what you have done with SQL Server, and how you have gotten the most out of it based on your skills.

In a contest like this one, however, there is no interview to judge you by. Only the words you write are available for the other judges and me to read and decide if you are exceptional.

Brevity does not help that cause.

HP Mini Netbook - An External Monitor

Steve Jones — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:54:37 GMT

When I bought the HP Mini 1030R netbook, I had every intention of using it for presentations, taking it on short trips, and having a lightweight machine for those times that I didn't need to carry around my larger Toshiba. The size difference is amazing, with my laptop feeling like a luggable next to the netbook. I'm looking forward to just taking the netbook with me to SQLSaturday #17.

I mentioned in another blog that I had issues the first night getting the netbook to recognize the USB display adapter that I'd purchased. It just would never see it, and it wouldn't turn on. Every time I connected the device, it would search for a new driver, despite my having run the install. Then when I tried to point it at the install folder, there were no drivers found. Apparently, Tritton Technologies, in the infinite lack of wisdom, hides the drivers inside their CAB files.

Note: Developers, don't do that. You can have an install routine, but leave the drivers in the file system.

When I got home, I had every intention of digging into the SEE2 USB adapter to determine if it would work, or if I needed to return it and the netbook.

My first step today was to re-run the install, and remove the drivers that were installed. Having a clean system helps, so I did that and rebooted the Mini. Then I went back to the SEE2 support page and downloaded new drivers. They listed a separate See2 driver file, which is a different file from the one I downloaded earlier. They both should have worked, and I had a later driver, but when in doubt...go backwards.

This setup program had a few more setup items. These drivers aren't WQHL certified, but many aren't and the instructions say to continue anyway when XP gives you the stop/continue dialog. I got that 3 times with this driver, and continued each time before it wanted to reboot my machine.

Typically external devices in Windows 2000 and XP have asked you to install the drivers first, then connect the device. I did that, connecting it after I'd rebooted, and got the same "find the driver" dialog from Windows. This was annoying, so I went and downloaded the user manual. One didn't come with the device, and since I had no CD drive, I hadn't viewed it.

The PDF file says to connect the device first, and then install the drivers. That's contrary to the poster and the explicit sticker that's on the device itself saying to PLEASE install the drivers before connecting this, but I thought, what the heck. So I uninstalled, rebooted, connected the device, and ran setup.

Setup completed, but things still didn't work. So I checked device manager and the main device was registered under display adapters with a good driver, but under the USB section there was a yellow icon next to the USBVGA item. So I clicked "update driver" and then instead of looking at the download folder from Tritton, I went to System32/Drivers/ and let it find the driver on it's own.

It did, and all of a sudden I could enable the second monitor in my display settings. I extended the desktop, and sure enough it turned on. I started my presentation with the Powerpoint Viewer I'd downloaded, and it appeared on the external monitor, leaving me my main screen for other things.

Like Twitter.

SSC Site Issues

Steve Jones — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:16:00 GMT

It was kind of amazing to see SQLServerCentral have issues over the last few days. We’re still not sure what happened, but the load went crazy over the last few days, substantially slowing email sends and causing performance problems.

There are definitely some database, issues, and we are looking to provision a larger database server in the short term. That’s not a great fix, but we’re a business like any other and hardware is often quicker and easier to deal with than code in the very short term. As we dug in, we realized the same database server we’ve had for over 2 years, with more than double the load, just can’t keep up. I’m not sure if anything else has changed code-wise recently, but the quick fix is a new server. Since we have a hosted server with Rackspace, this is actually a fairly easy and relatively inexpensive fix.

Beyond that, we have some code to examine. As with most businesses, we had developers built the site, without a real DBA working alongside them. It wasn’t a great solution, but it also is the realization of how resources sometimes get deployed. I think our developers did some neat things in one sense, not so good in another. There is a boatload of nHibernate code in there, and some of those pages appear to be amazing POS constructs. If nothing else, I think I would be terrified of ever using nHibernate in any project just based on my experiences here.

As things seemed to fail today, we made the decision to move the forum database to our backup server. We’ve kept a second one handy for DR purposes, and since the code is fairly separate, it seemed like an easy fix to reduce the load.

Brad McGehee expressed concerns, which seem to be well founded. I’m having issues working in the forums, so I think there are still things broken.

In one sense this is the opposite problem that we had for years. Early on, Andy, Brian, and I coded quite a few things on the site, often in a half-a**ed way, since we weren’t programmers. We did have lots of RI and normalized data, but the front end code wasn’t anything to showcase. Now it seems we’re in the reverse situation. There is a lot of nice front end code, well documented and structured, but the database is a bit of a mess.

Where we go from here I’m not sure, but I expect that the next couple of weeks will involve some root cause analysis as well as some refactoring of code. I’d prefer to throw out the nHibernate design and build a simpler structure that is easier to tune, as well as maintain, but I’m not sure that will happen.

However I will try to continue to update you with information about how we will proceed.

A Laptop is nice

Steve Jones — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:17:41 GMT

It's almost 9, I've been working for over an hour, and only one foot has left the bed. It touched the floor when I reached over to grab the laptop. Since then I've been working through email, posts, even editing a few submissions to the site.

I miss my coffee, so I guess I'll get up, but it is nice to be productive without even moving. Compare that to driving to an office. I would need to shower, dress, and even a close office would likely be 10 minutes away, so I'd be 30-40 minutes into the day before accomplishing anything.

Not that offices aren't good, and they offer some advantages, but for people that work with their minds, that do computer work, telecommuting can be much, much more productive.

The Criminals are Always Ahead

Steve Jones — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:55:17 GMT

A new scheme to get ATM PIN numbers using automated systems and VOIP is in play. It's described here and the important thing for everyone to know is that you can't trust a phone call anymore. Unless you make the call, don't do donations or make changes just because someone calls you. It's gotten to the point where I won't respond to bill collectors anymore on the phone because I have no idea if they are real. They have to tell me what is wrong and then I have to check and call them back or call the company that originated things. I can see this causing issues in our legal system as more people adopt this attitude.

The thing is that criminals will always be one step ahead, and trying new things. As nice as technology has become, you can't necessarily trust that it's working on your behalf unless you initiate the call or click. Look at how sophisticated some SPAM emails have gotten.

And even then, you need to be sure you're dialing the correct number or entering the correct web address. Lots of people out there have registered misspelled domains, just to catch people that aren't paying enough attention.

I Need a Logo

Steve Jones — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:33:29 GMT

I've been doing the Voice of the DBA podcasts for over a year now, and I really enjoy them. I've heard from many of you that you like them as well, so I'll continue doing them for the time being. At least as long as I get paid or can fit it into the schedule.

Recently I was giving a presentation on branding and someone noted that I didn't include the Voice of the DBA as a brand on the slides. I have SQLServerCentral, Red Gate, JumpstartTV, etc., but not the podcasts.

That got me thinking since that is a brand of mine. Quite a few people know the podcast, even when they might not remember my name. So.....

I need a logo!

I know there are some artists out there among the DBAs, and some of you might want to have fun with this. I'm looking for something relatively small, like the SSC logo, that I can use on a site, as a favicon, etc.

I'm not sure what a budget I'll have, or even what I can pay, but I'm willing to invest something in this brand. Please feel free to send samples to me at SQLServerCentral with sjones as the email address (reverse them, add the @). I'm a believer in copyright, I won't use your sample without payment, so no worries there.

I'll pick the most interesting ones, or I might get feedback from people, but the winner will get something from me in addition to payment.

Booked for SQLSaturday #17 - Baton Rouge

Steve Jones — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:59:24 GMT

I finally made the call today to reserve my room in Baton Rouge for SQLSaturday #17 in Baton Rouge, LA. I'm flying into New Orleans since it's non-stop from Denver, and then driving up to Baton Rouge. Any time I lose in the drive is probably made up in having to change planes somewhere to fly direct. Plus there's the added benefit that I've never been to New Orleans, so I'll get to drive around the city a bit and see what I can see while I'm there.

I'm giving my Modern Resume presentation again, and looking forward to it. I made a few changes for Richmond, and I have a few more to make. I also have some new information and some new ideas to incorporate as well.

Now if I can just get my netbook working....

Shrinking the Log

Steve Jones — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:47:00 GMT

It seems that I see more and more posts about people trying to shrink their transaction logs. It's getting to be close to the time when I need a cut-and-paste snippet stored in a file I can pull out for my standard "it is recommended that you do not shrink the data or log files" post response.

The vast majority of the people that want to shrink their logs do so because they're running out of disk space and they realize that their log file is 25x the size of their data file. I'll see a 500MB data file and a 12GB log file all too often because they've set up full backups (good move) and not log backups (bad move). I won't go through all the scenarios or the advice that should be given, mostly because I think I've typed it all a few times in the last few weeks.

The more interesting question is how do we try and prevent this from happening?

The default recovery model is full, which means log backups are needed. Should SQL set up backups by default? I am starting to lean towards this being a default as a part of creating a database. Something should ask for, or perhaps set up, a backup scheme that makes sense. The backup folder should be set at installation, and a warning popped up if it's on the same drive letter as the data files. Then a standard nightly full, every 4 hour log backup should be set up. Those are some guesses I'd made, and they could be changed to something that might be better suited to most databases.

And we'd need an option to disable this default for those people that have automated processes in place to handle backups.

That, of course, isn't so easy to set up for Microsoft. You need Agent running, you are now making it hard to create a database, etc. Maybe a pop-up at the end of a database creation? Maybe a standard "to do" or reminder that comes up in SSMS whenever a database has 2 full backups wtih no log backups?

There are any number of ways to handle this, but I think that the educational aspect of the need is the biggest problem. It seems that without some heavy education, or some IN-YOUR-FACE dialog, maybe in Visual Studio, the issue isn't reaching enough Accidental DBAs and developers.

Behind on Blogging

Steve Jones — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:26:42 GMT

One of the things I recommend to people that are looking to get into blogging is that they write 10 posts before they publish one. That way they can see if they like writing, but also have a pipeline of content to publish. They can schedule these out, 1 a week, or 1 every 2 weeks, and then continue writing each week. This way they'll never run out of content, even if they don't have time to blog one week.

I set a goal of blogging every day at SQLServerCentral, and so far I've done a good job of blogging this year, only missing a couple days, even only a couple vacation ones!

However last week, being on vacation, I hadn't scheduled any posts, though I managed to do a few anyway. In leading up to vacation, I'd neglected to push forward, and as a result, I only had one post scheduled for this week.

So I've been working from notes, trying to turn a few of the ideas and notes I've had into posts for the rest of this week. I've gotten two scheduled, but I need to knock out 2 a day for a week or so to get caught up.

Richmond SQL Server Users Group

Steve Jones — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:49:07 GMT

Actually a combination meeting of the Richmond .NET and SQL groups, put together for me. They normally meet on consecutive weeks, but the SQL group moved theirs to match my trip and the .NET meeting.

About 40 people showed up, plus my Mom and daughter, so this was a pretty busy room. My Mom had never seen me speak, so it was a treat for her. This was Kendall's fourth time seeing this presentation, so she's had enough. Likely I won't inflict any more of these on her if I can avoid it.

The group started out with a short housekeeping session and then a short presentation from a recruiter. I liked that, and I actually came up with a few things that I asked him during the talk. Like a poll on who has used recruiters (about 20% had) and how much recruiters check on your profile (they do).

Some stats from my polls:

Author Poll: A few people know Kalen Delaney, not many Kim Tripp, though she's pretty easy to guess since there are only two women. No one really knew the others, aside from Celko, so it was a good illustration that you can keep your privacy. I had moved the poll to the section just before I talk about authoring and speaking, and I think that matched up better.

Blog Poll: Similar results from other events. Only 4 (of 40) technical blogs, so right on par with my 10%. I think this was a little under 80% of people reading blogs regularly. That was a little surprising. I need to add something in there about how many people check Database Weekly for blogs, and plug that a bit.

Social Networking: As expected, more people have profiles. Linked in had the most people, Facebook next, and then 1 person on Plaxo, and 5 or 6 on Twitter. Surprisingly none of them follow me (that I didn't know), though they did follow their local MVPs. A good thing for MVPs to be aware of. There were a few MySpace people, which I picked on again, though one of them has a band, so I said that was a great place to be.

The talk went well, about 75 minutes, with relatively few questions afterwards. Maybe 5 or 6. Some interesting ones that came out of it and I need to address.

What about separating business from social profiles on Facebook? Definitely something I need to address. I know I have business people and social friends on Facebook, and most of my postings there are "friend" related with pictures, etc. I need to experiment a bit here and see how you can separate things out, maybe look at their security more.
Length of resume - I definitely stick with 2 pages, and having key words in there. Someone mentioned that they will ask about them, and recruiters scan for them, so don't include things you don't want to do.
Someone asked about how effective these can be. I had a few stories, as did a few other people.
Once again no one asked about recommendations, which is something I still haven't spent enough time on.

I didn't know many people in the audience, which is new for me. Typically I have met, or know well a dozen of the people. In this case, I only knew my two fellow MVPs, Andy Leonard and Jessica Moss. However the talk went well and I had a lot of hand shaking and congrats afterwards.

This was a good talk, and it gave me a few ideas for things to change when I go to Baton Rouge in August.

HP Mini Netbook – Day 2

Steve Jones — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:52:41 GMT

I arrived in Richmond, VA this morning earlier than expected. I was meeting a few people and things were pushed back, so I had the chance to go by Best Buy and find a USB->VGA adapter. Apparently they don’t have the HP VGA cable, so I got this adapter instead.

I opened the box to find the device, and a CD. That’s interesting because the netbook doesn’t have a CD drive. I’d debated about grabbing an external DVD drive when I was in the store, but my bag is heavy enough. With my laptop, power adapter, extra USB disk drive, and now the netbook it feels like I’m carrying quite a load.

So how to get this working? Luckily I had an idea. I hit the local Starbucks and then connected to the web, downloading drivers from Tritton Technologies. One annoying thing was once I’d gotten to the site, they list a number of models, all of which look alike. I had the device with me, but not the box, and there as no model number printed on the device. A serial number, but that didn’t help. Grrrrr.

I had to go back to the car, look at the box, and then download the driver. I suspected that there was one driver for all models, but I hate trying to uninstall drivers. I’m still a little gunshy after all these years working with Windows.

Once that was done, I wrote a couple blogs, including this blog on the device. Some impressions:

It’s small. Carrying it one handed is nice and easy. It’s much, much smaller than the laptop, and weighs only slightly more than the Kindle. That is nice.
It doesn’t work great in the car. I had the box with me and tried to prop it on my lap to download drivers, but it was too small. Had to come back inside to a slightly bigger space to easily use it.
One the flip side, you can pretty easily hold it up with one hand and use the other to work the mouse.
I use page up/down, home, and end keys extensively. These require the Function key to work (they are on the arrow keys), so that takes a little getting used to.
The keyboard works well for me. I type pretty quickly, and it works well for me.
The CPU is slow. There are times you click something and it seems to take a minute to switch over. Something to be aware of as you install things.
I have Firefox, Twirl, LiveWriter running, seems to work OK, other than some slowness to switch apps.

I’ll have more impressions over the next few weeks as I use this and compare it with my laptop.

HP Netbook 1030NR Setup

Steve Jones — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 02:03:12 GMT

Unpacking the netbook was pretty simple. Open it, grab the large one page poster, and then the netbook. There were basically 3 steps. I'd completed one by removing the netbook. Step two was to snap in the battery, and then step 3 was to connect power. I guess step 4 was to turn it on, which I did.

It has a power brick, which is annoying for a small device, but there's not much you can do since they are trying to keep the device itself so small. Power and wireless on/off are on the front, connections on both sides. They even include a USB snap in cover for that port.

Turning it on starts the Windows XP setup, which I haven't seen in years. Even with a 16GB SSD, it was surprisingly slow. I think that's just XP setup, which was slow. I turned to my laptop, trying to ensure I had things working there while that device booted. I knew it had booted since I had a nice Yanni/New-agey music track playing in the background. I looked over there, and sure enough it was waiting for me to choose the XP setup options (English, etc.). I walked through the setup, including giving it a name. I chose "Tiny" since that's what it is. I'm tired of having names like "desktop", "Steve_Laptop", so I'm following Jerry Pournelle and giving my machines nice names.

After that happened, the machine rebooted, which was noticeably faster, and I was ready to go. I connected to the hotel's wireless network and I was online.

Now time to experiment with some work.

HP Netbook Mini 1030NR

Steve Jones — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:40:32 GMT

It was not what I expected. When I was leaving for a run this morning, I decided to apply an update to Vista and let it reboot, thinking I'd defragment the drive when I returned. It was acting funny and running slow, so this seemed like a good idea to me.

I got back from the run, went to sync my Nike + run and noticed the machine was off, so I pressed power and then sat down to stretch with water thinking this would take some time. After I was done, I went to check email and noticed that the laptop was still stuck on the POST screen, with the progress bar about 2/3 of the way across.

Uh oh.

This had happened last week, just before we left, and it had me worried. I thought the hard drive had failed, but when I powered down, left it for 10 minutes, and powered up, it seemed to work fine. I thought I'd do that here. After 10 tries, I was seriously worried.

My first thought was Holy Sh*t! Here I am, on vacation, 1700 miles from home, I got that from a sign nearby :), and I have a presentation to do tomorrow. I don't even have the presentation on a USB key, because well, I'm an idiot. I do have it up on Live Mesh, so I could get it, but I needed to work on it. I also had some stuff on a USB drive, but I am by no means sure I have most of my stuff from the drive.

So I sat for a few minutes and thought about it. My best bet was probably to go get a netbook. I've been thinking about it, and it would be a good solution for a few days. I should have a service contract with Toshiba (this machine is a Qosmio F45), but they won't likely get anything done before I get home, and I have all the 411 at home, and I'm leaving for Richmond tomorrow, then back here Fri night and flying home Sat.

Luckily I have the amazing T-Mobile G1 phone with 3G and I could look up the local Best Buy. I found one on the S side of Baltimore, about 10 mi away, so I showered and packed up. Just before leaving I tried the laptop again, and success! It booted, so I hooked up my USB drive and copied over all documents, pictures, downloads, and videos to the external drive. At least I have a copy of everything. Then it was off to Best Buy.

My purchases were:

HP Mini Netbook 1030NR with a 10.2" screen and a 16GB SSD. 1GB shared RAM. ($329)
A Geeksquad 8GB flash drive. ($25)
Thermaltake Black Widow eSATA+USB docking station ($54)
WD 320GB SATA Notebook HDD, $89
Acronis True Image 2009 $40

I'd asked the Geek Squad person in the store, since I knew there were ways to clone a disk drive, and he pointed me in this direction. I can use the Black Widow dock with any SATA drive, 3.5" or 2.5" and that will let me hook both drives to my laptop. From there I can boot the Acronis software and then clone my 160GB drive onto the 320GB one. Hopefully with one partition, but in any case, I'll have a working (fingers crossed) laptop.

Since I wasn't confident, and I could use a traveling machine that can be low power for presentations, the HP will come in handy. Once I have the laptop squared away, I think I'll move to Windows 7 and see how that does.

I'm afraid to clone the drive right now since I need to get a few things done, but I'll try it later and see where I come out.

Unwired for Days

Steve Jones — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:09:35 GMT

Today is the first day that I've really had any significant time on the computer over vacation. That probably sounds like it should be the rule, and it does tend to be, but this is the first time in a long time that I've let go of SQLServerCentral for a week and allowed others to be responsible for editorials, scheduling newsletters, everything! Typically I've done some work beforehand to be prepared.

Being busy with my nephews and family has kept me going, and it's been great wandering around the northern DC/southern Maryland area. I've had the chance to catch up with my brother, Mom, and other family. Only with my son being gone to a leadership conference, and my daughter sleeping in, do I have time to write a little bit.

And I've missed it. Not the work, but the writing. Perhaps I'm more done as a technology guy than I realized.