This post is my attempt to start back up with my “Lessons From Disasters” series I promised I would start awhile back. I’m intrigued by disaster preparedness and I have an interest in learning from history. We’ll take a look at some real disasters and find the things that we can learn as IT professionals in them. We’ll explore fields that deal with disasters and learn how to apply their training principles to our day jobs and we’ll hopefully search out some examples of “everything done right” to serve as examples to go after. I’m going to work on having one of these posts out a week  – on Thursday.

Splinted to Death, Really?

Yeah. I still remember the EMT course I was in when I first head the concept – it made sense immediately. In fact it is beat into your head in the Emergency Medical Services (EMS)  trough trainings and refresher courses in the form of the ABCs (well now the CABs) and the proper order of patient assessment. Most of the training and education standards in EMS come from data – really rich data collected and analyzed by states and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (the folks who maintain EMS standards in the US) They see what works and what doesn’t. They analyze the documentation done in the pre-hospital setting and then track the progress of patients in the system. One of the things they note is that folks in EMS had splinted patients to death. It still happens but less with the focus on proper assessment.

I keep using this phrase, what do I mean? Imagine this scene – you are on an ambulance crew and you arrive to the site of a car accident. You see that there is one patient and they are walking around screaming, “My arm! My arm! Help!!! Please, help, my arm!!!” you look down to the arm they are holding and instantly realize it isn’t setup the way it’s supposed to be. Obvious deformities, clearly broken – probably in multiple places. Every move the patient makes sends them into bone chilling, nausea inducing, scream worthy pain. It needs to be stabilized. The patient was up and walking – a great indication they have a pulse. They were able to scream  – a good indication they can breathe (contrary to what a panic attack patient believes as they tell you over and over again “I can’t breathe” while they hyperventilate at 50 respirations/minute.) You are there to help and you can almost imagine their pain, so it makes sense to start splinting that arm and treating the symptoms… Have that patient lie down on the stretcher and get to work on the splinting. It’s going to be a tricky one to stabilize just right and it hurts every time you touch it, so be careful. Eventually, you’ll have a well splinted arm on this patient who has really calmed down as a result.

But you forgot to check vitals… You forgot to listen to lung sounds… The patient is calm because the patient is on the downward slope of shock – decompensated shock. Their body gave up trying to make up for the issues affecting circulation or cellular respiration. They are just about out of it, you can’t even feel a pulse at the wrists anymore because the blood pressure can’t get it there, you can barely feel it around the neck… You focused on that obvious, ugly, painful arm and ignored everything important. You missed the internal bleeding in the chest crushing against a lung. You missed a cruddy blood pressure and a rapid weak heartbeat. You missed they were already trending towards bad on the “good/bad scale”… Now maybe you noticed all this in time after the fact and maybe you didn’t. Maybe the patient survives another couple weeks and then dies of organ failure, maybe they walk away fine, maybe they don’t leave the emergency room alive. You’ve splinted your patient to death.

But We’re IT Professionals

Right. Right. I was getting carried away. We “splint” our database environments to “death” all the time! With no NHTSA governing how we are trained and how we operate, with no databases tracking outcomes, we probably do it a lot more than you see in EMS with human patients. I know I’ve blogged quite a lot about troubleshooting and many of these points even sound like a SQL Server Central article I wrote a few years back but I’m still bumping into this phenomenon. So this does apply to us and I think the EMS training and tips for dealing with the risk applies to us, too.

The Solution

The same solution in EMS actually works here:

• ABCs – Spend time on the basics necessary for life before moving on. Power on? Services up? Machine pingable? The point is – the ABCs have to be the things that you can’t do without. Minor bleeding will stop on it’s own if you don’t fix the airway. You can restart the app server and reboot the client as many times as you like – if the SQL Server service won’t start you’ll never connect to it.
• Rapid (Primary) Assessment – Once you check for and fix any ABC deficits (Clear airway, adequate ventilation, beating heart and immediately life threatening bleeding), do a rough assessment of the patient. Note anything found and fix anything serious. Anything critical in the error logs? Blocking chains? Nightly job running crazy? Someone change the app’s config file? Can you log in yourself?  The point is - find and treat any remaining threats to life or limb, don’t get caught up buddy taping fingers – do take the time to splint and unstable pelvis that could damage critical arteries. Find and fix the things related to or likely related to the outage. Note the things you find that may not be optimal but aren’t causing this issue. The CIO wants those other things fixed, but they want the server up now.
• Make Transport Decision  – You’ve done the basic checks and you should know by now what priority this patient is. Need a helicopter? Closest hospital or trauma center? Do you need advanced licenses to meet you en route? Are we looking at an extended downtime? Can we try a few more quick things based on the info we have? Should we go live in the DR site because we need more troubleshooting time? Do I call in vendor support? Do I wake up the dev team? The point is – You’ve done some quick checks and quick fixes – what are you going to do next? Chat sports and wash cuts, hand out ice packs or get hauling with a critical patient – do you need more resources? Don’t get lost in this weird limbo state of “I don’t know what is going on and what I’m going to do next” – Move the situation towards resolution. If you need help, no one cares – they just want the system up. If you have to failover – do it and move on.
• Secondary Assessment – So you’re heading to the hospital, you have a bit more time – go back and look in more detail at the findings you noted during the rapid. Fix those broken fingers, clean wounds, look for other hidden injuries.Fix that max memory setting so this issue doesn’t happen again, create the task to take Domain\Staff out of thy sysadmin role, Look for the tertiary issues related to the outage and resolve them. The point is – you want to double check your findings, look for additional issues and continue to make improvements/prepare the hospital to make improvements. Look for other issues, go deeper where you felt “off” about something but didn’t see any obvious and quick issues -Remember – the secondary assessment only begins after the first three steps – you have your system coming back to life, users can start to get in to prod or DR – if not then you are still fixing ABCs and primary items – there are some ambulance calls where the entire call and drive never leaves the ABCs because you are fighting an airway the whole way in.
• Reassess/Monitor Vitals – How are your treatments working? Is the patient’s vital signs trending stable or going downhill? Are connections remaining? Can that first batch of users you let in get their job done? Are processes running and staying running? The point is – you need to monitor your interventions. You want to make sure that things aren’t getting worse again and if they are you need to act.
• Cleanup, Documentation, Etc – The next call doesn’t work if the ambulance isn’t restocked, organized and ready. The EMS system never gets better if the calls aren’t documented. That patient’s medical team misses an important fact about the call if you didn’t document it. Lessons learned meetings (not blamestorm meetings) help us avoid the problem and improve the troubleshooting approach for next time.

Related Posts

• If You See Something, Say Something – If something is wrong and you know it – say something! Don’t assume everyone else already knows.
• Avoid Using Those Troubleshooting Skills – Acquiring troubleshooting skills is an important endeavor for folks. But what if you handled your environments in such a way you needed them less and less?
• Best Practices: Explain and Understand Them! - I hate it when folks say things like “this is best because I feel…” or “I’m not sure why, but just always do this!” No one will follow your best practices if you don’t explain them!
• Are You Planting Asparagus? – Asparagus can’t be picked for the first couple years after you plant it. It still takes preparation and hard work. Are you making decisions with the long term in mind? You’ll be less likely to find a situation where you have to splint your database.

1 – “I Don’t Know” isn’t a phrase you know…

I ask different kinds of questions. Some are questions you’ll find in books or internet searches – like, “how many clustered indexes can you have on a table?” Some are more “describe or explain”  in nature with no absolute right or wrong answer – I want to see you can string some thoughts together and add common sense, logic and knowledge. Some questions I don’t expect you to know! In fact, I learned from a great manager awhile ago to go out of my way to ask a question you won’t know the answer to. I’m looking for, “I don’t know” as a response here. I’m fine with an “I’m not sure, but is it” type of answer. I don’t normally get those responses though. Even a “simple question” -  I would rather hear “I don’t know” to an easy question than some far fetched stab in the dark that was  confusing and off. (ex. “What are fixed server roles?” “well in those old versions of SQL Server the roles didn’t do what people told them to do, so now they went and fixed them, so the roles are right”) If I am recommending someone give you the keys to their prized production environment, I don’t want you to get all “what does this button do?” in it. “I don’t know” is not a bad answer*

2 – You have no defense…

I’m not mean in an interview. I’m not dishonest in an interview. I do like a little disagreement from time to time, however. I want to hear you defend a position. I want to hear you stand up for your answer when it is a case of lots of ways to do the same thing. So I may disagree with you mildly. Or play the opposing view of one of those “religious” wars in SQL circles. I don’t approach it in a rude way, but I want to prod you further along. Defend yourself. When I am hiring someone to join a team I am on or a team I help – I’m not looking at it like I’m a dictator trying to fill cabinet positions. We are dealing with important environments and significant investments. If I decide to do something that burned you at your last employer, I want to know you’ll raise a flag and say “Actually, the last time I saw this here is what happened… Here is why I don’t think we should do this and have you considered this instead?” not “Okay! Go for it, Mike!” Even in positions that have “junior” in the title, I want to see folks willing and comfortable raising objections… As I talk about in presentations on learning from real life disasters – agreement in spite of concerns is a disaster causing attitude… I don’t want that anywhere near database servers I care about.

3 – You don’t need to defend yourself…

Along those lines, I also really don’t want you if your only defense is, “I’ve been doing this a long time, that’s the right answer, how long have you been doing this?” Arrogance is also a disaster causing attitude. Just because you personally detest anyone ever using an identity column as a primary key doesn’t mean you are right and any exception to this rule proves the rule breaker is an idiot. So if I ask you to defend your position, just remember it has to be a valid defense (Or at least heading towards validity.. I’ll even take “the glove didn’t fit” over “I said I’m not guilty, what more do you want?”) Tell me why identities are bad as primary keys. Answer my counter points when we have that discussion. Then tell me how you’d work with them anyway if that’s the scenario we paint. You may be an industry expert, but if you can’t get over yourself and outrage that someone would ask you to explain a little further, I’d be hard pressed to suggest you join a team that ever has the potential of being staffed by more than one person.

4 – You do, know and learn what is expected…

Only. Only what is expected. It is a competitive marketplace out there!  So you need to stand out, you have to be different. I will always ask about what blogs you read (if you say my blog, by the way, I know you just googled my name before the interview), what SQL events you go to, what SQL books you’ve read lately, what you do to learn new features, etc.  If you are coming to me for a SQL related job, I will take points away if you can’t show me you actively work to improve your skill set. I don’t mean I expect you to spend every single waking hour living SQL Server – Family comes first, kids  come first, weekends enjoying the backyard come first… There is still time to increase your knowledge and wear your more important hats. Stand out from the crowd by showing you care enough about what you do to know more than just what the scope of your last role was! If you feel you’ve already learned enough and don’t need to grow anymore, then you aren’t the right person.

5 – It’s not you, it’s me (okay, it’s you…)

This one may seem odd to write and maybe odder to read. We have to be able to work together – especially if it is a team I am on or a team I help out frequently. I don’t mean that we have to have the same political leanings, faith, hair stylist (in fact, my wife does my hair, she better not be doing yours too) or like the same bands. I want to see -you- not just a talking resume but a human being. I’m looking for that in the later stages of interview processes definitely but even to a degree in the beginning screening calls. Basic things like eye contact, smiling from time to time, engaging in some idle conversation while walking someplace, you asking questions about the role, the company or even the team or talking about your life. We may have to work on some tough issues together from time to time, it helps to have that feeling of a team atmosphere. Again, I’m not looking for you to hug everyone and be fake, or to bring cupcakes to your interview (I won’t refuse them, though..) I just want to know we’ll get along. Be confident and outgoing, those little things add to the complete picture.

6 – You don’t have the right skills for the role…

Finally, yeah – you do have to have the right skills for the job. If you were great in every other aspect for a report developer role but you didn’t know what SSRS was, it would be tough to give you that position. If you were a little off on some of the technical questions but showed me you had a passion to learn, could explain your thoughts, use logic and apply common sense to troubleshooting I may consider you over someone with a bit more skill but less of these traits. In fact, I’ll do that a lot, I believe you can teach skills better than you can teach “traits” but at the end of the day the skills have to at least me someplace on the same map. Make sure you read about the position you are interviewing for and honestly assess yourself before committing. It shows when you just read a bunch of interview questions the second we go a level deeper.

I’m sure I missed a bunch, what do you look for when hiring for that next position? What are you most nervous about when looking for that next SQL job?

Which kind of brings me to adding yet another post on the latest #SQLFamily dysfunction/feuding. I’m not going to say anything revolutionary and I’m going to probably contradict the way I said some things in comments on Brent’s post – at least the first thing I said there…

First – why share? Because I care. I just want to put another thought/side out there to the decision for the board appointment (If you don’t know what I am talking about, Brent’s post is probably the one that summarizes all of the others the best, you may disagree with some of the commentary – but he summarizes the events pretty well)

I only have a couple some related main thoughts to share -

I Like Representative Democracy better than Direct Democracy

Especially in professional organizations. It’s not that I don’t trust all my fellow citizens, it’s that I trust the folks we send to represent us. I trust the ability to change them if they screw up. When looking at the congress and senate in the United States, I’m happy that they vote on the bills and discuss them. They make the time to understand the nuances, to poll the people but then to vote on what they think is right. Now I may (and I often do – from both sides of the aisle!) disagree with what was decided and what bills made it into laws, but I don’t want the solution to be me and a few hundred million others voting it out. We elect a representative because we feel they can handle business on our behalf.

With PASS we send folks to the board who are willing to take on the time commitment, who are willing to put up with criticism and make decisions on an organization they care about. We vett these candidates (sometimes better than others) then have access to ask them questions, learn more about them and decide to vote on them, or not. I like this system.

I’m Okay With The Board  Appointing Board Members

Because I’m okay with indirect democracy (we don’t like a decision we vote ‘em out, but in the meantime, we get their decisions), I’m fine with the board making these kind of appointments. There are rules to prevent them from stacking the board with folks from their company. There are rules in place on who is and who isn’t qualified. There are standards to be met. Then these people that represent a cross-section of our SQL community have to still approve the recommendation. This still represents checks and balances. Just like a legislator in a committee (although I say even more so with our Board – they aren’t doing this for money, prestige or lucrative speaking engagements while collecting a pension when they are done), they are acting with the best interests of the organization in mind. Even if the decision is a tough one, one that will catch flak and draw ire and silly comments like “Bill should resign”, they make it for the good of the organization. Can you get some bad apples? Sure, but you have to get a majority of them to have a bad decision. I don’t see that with our board. In fact, three of the people who just voted on the recent appointments were the top three vote earners in the same election we’re discussing! The same clamor for “go with the popular vote!” could also consider those who won the popular vote agreed on the decision. I don’t know Denise well but I know Rob and Adam and I know they aren’t pushovers who would be forced into voting against their conscience from peer pressure. I know Tom cares so deeply about the PASS organization. I know Allen has poured so much of his time into the group. We are talking about people who really do seem to care about PASS. I trust them to appoint members. If I didn’t trust them with that, I probably wouldn’t trust them to manage the world’s largest SQL Server event, a budget and the various portfolios they manage.

Further, as Aaron Bertrand has pointed out in numerous direct and indirect ways in response to folks, so many professional organizations already do appointments this way.

The Timing…

Brent raises an interesting point that stands in a vacuum. I don’t know what and why the board did what they did, but perhaps we should stop to consider that maybe they had reason. They discuss people issues in closed session. This is standard in just about every organization I’ve been a voting member of, it’s standard in town or city politics. Because I like a representative democracy and because I trust those we elect to represent us to do what is right and best – I trust their thought process. The only frustrating part here is the timing, it was right near an election, in fact the vacancies essentially coincided with the election process. The by-laws allow what was done to be done and I support the board and exec team in their decision making process, whatever their reasons are. (In fact I respect them even more for doing it! I think the easy decision would be to say, “we are gonna feel this one! let’s just go with the popular vote, we are fine by by-laws either way, if we say no to anyone folks voted on you know we are going to have to explain and if we don’t we get called out, insulted and annoy folks.. If we do explain ourselves then we potentially risk hurting reputations of folks passed over”.. They went with the hard choice, I think).

Maybe A Change Like…

So I signed the petition that Andy Warren put out. Early on but now I wish I hadn’t. I like the spirit of the change but there are issues with it.. What happens if a vacancy is 6 months after the election? A lot can change in 6 months. I wouldn’t mind seeing something like:

- If the vacancy is before, during or within 1 month of a general board election, the Board shall appoint the next highest vote getter

- If the board learns anything that disqualifies that individual (and has clear and convincing rationale – maybe even discussion with the NomCom about that info) then they can pass them over to the next on the list.

- If no one is next on the list, the board can proceed with a recommendation from the President of PASS as they do today. Same thing if those appointed decline.

- If the vacancy is greater than 1 month after the election, but less than 1 month before the next election, the PASS president shall recommend candidates in a manner they see fit. These candidates are then interviewed, discussed and voted on by the voting members of the board.

- If the vacancy is less than one month prior to the next general election, that position is not filled until the general election

- All Board appointments made outside of the general Board elections shall be valid for the remainder of the calendar year, and any appointed candidate who wishes to run for a seat shall go through the nomination committee process as though they were a new applicant.
Or something like all of that… Now we still run the risk of the NomCom allowing someone to go through, having them get position four and then learning something about them in the 2 weeks between election and nomination. The board would be able to reject that person and to protect privacy they wouldn’t be able to state why. That does lead to speculation, that does lead to “reputation concerns” for the individual rejected. I don’t think there is a way around that though. If something about you coming out would hurt you and your reputation, I don’t suggest you run for President of the United States – it will come out. If you are honest with yourself and feel there is something that could do damage to your reputation or cause you to be rejected by the NomCom or the board during an appointment, it probably isn’t a good idea to submit an application. That sounds harsh, but kid gloves only work so far.

Wrap It Up, Walsh…

This is another tough moment for PASS. We can handle it in a few ways that these statements summarize:

• “Fire them all! JRJ should resign immediately, Bill should be fired and this whole process is junk.. They are all liars and corrupt!”
• “Forget it… I’m done with PASS.. It isn’t going to change”
• “Let’s tackle this new challenge. Let’s analyze the by-laws, let’s see if we can be a bit more direct in explaining our reasons without causing issues, let’s figure it out and clean it up”

I’ve never uttered statement 1. I started off with the sentiment in number 2, when I got fired up in chain reaction mode and let other comments influence me. I’m at sentiment number 3 now… No heads need to roll here. No confidence has been shaken. We found a potential weakness in one of our processes. I don’t think it is a weakness that needs radical change like “anytime someone vacates a position, fire up an election” – that hamstrings an organization that is actually trying to adapt to change and make itself better. But maybe something heading towards the c- towards the c-c-c..compromise described above (or someone else’s compromise idea, I don’t care)

Some of the comments (thankfully there aren’t tons of them) on some of the blogs are just brutal and mean spirited and without all of the information. It seems like we are learning too much from the political discourse coming out of both major political parties in the USA and the media supporters on either side. We can all just get along, so let’s do it.

The noise is loud right now and I want to see it quiet down, I want to see folks support the board (the board that we elected) and then I want to see the board tackle some of the sentiment I had in my series of posts linked to above (and more). After all, our ability to work past our differences and talk about touchy subjects is one of the reasons I really love this #SQLfamily and PASS is one of the orphanages for all us SQL People in the family.

SQL Server Community Involvement

Like I said, I hadn’t blogged as much as I would have liked (about 50 posts) but I did get to speak at the SQL PASS Conference (With Erin Stellato – we gave a fun presentation basically asking the all-important vendor and DBA question, “Can’t we all just get along?!” I’m inclined to say no still – it’s that “all” word in there…) had a good ending to the User Group and a bit of a bumpier start this year with it (we’ve still met, just not as many times as I would have liked). All in all – not a bad year -

• Spoke at SQL PASS Conference
• Spoke at SQL Rally Orlando
• Spoke at 7 or 8 local or regional SQL/Developer Events in addition to the two conferences
• Helped Run a SQL Saturday in Boston
• Was recognized as a SQL Server MVP in April
• Still had people reading the blog (just over 33k unique visitors per Analytics and about 21k views/clicks on the feed by feedburner’s reckoning- not a ton and more than half found me through google searches, not because their friends and family said “you have to check out this blog!” but still surprised me like last year)
• Helped some folks out with some of the StackOverflow sites towards the end of the year (mostly with the dba property – great resource, even if their DBA is a turtle expert who dresses his dog up and takes it out in public like that)
• Volunteered on the Speaker Selection Team for SQL PASS’ Program Committee
• Helped out the Deep Dives 2 book as a technical editor
• Helped organize the Birds of a Feather lunch at PASS again

I am already signed up for speaking at SQL Connections Spring ’12 and hope to help get a SQL Saturday together in Boston as well as one in NH. I am sure I’ll be speaking at some SQL Saturdays and User Groups this year as well.  I want to maintain my level of community involvement and try and minimize the travel time at the same time. We’ll see how that works out in 2012!

Straight Path Solutions

Last year, one of my “goals” for this year was to be a great employee. I started off with the year having that defined as for the consultancy I was a SQL Server Practice Lead for. It ended with me being the “CEO”, Book Keeper, Principal Consultant, Sales/Marketing Team and Janitor for my own Consultancy. What a ride it has been! I am so happy I made the jump off to my own and think I’ve done well in the role of Principal Consultant. I need help in the other areas (especially book keeper and janitor) and I need to make sure I give myself the free time I need and make sure I remember one of the goals of going off on my own was to spend more time with the family and giving time back to God. I’ll be working on that as a 2012 goal. Some highlights for this hat, though:

• Continued helping with Winxnet with several of their SQL Server needs (performance tuning, health assessments, helping out the Remote DBA team with escalations, etc.)
• Stayed busy with one customer in particular – a well known travel industry website – primarily as a SQL Server performance and database administration resource but also helping out with their Hadoop/Hive environment and loading data to and from this environment – I’ve learned more about Linux shell commands and writing Bash scripts in the 6 months I’ve been with this client than I ever have. Definitely wouldn’t mind doing some more Hadoop work in the future.
• Helped out a handful of companies with SQL Server Performance and Health Assessments – tuned a lot of queries, made systems run faster and helped DBA teams be more efficient.
• Was selected to be a remote DBA resource to help out a busy DBA team at the 4th largest credit union in the US. Started working with them towards the end of the year and hoping to see that pick up in 2012 and take a more prominent role in the schedule.
• Continued helping as the sole DBA resource for the IT department for one of the largest cities in New England via Winxnet.
• Helped Microsoft Learning develop some new exams for the next release of SQL Server in a few different capacities and on a few different projects.
• Started helping and talking to a couple SQL Server gurus in a venture they are working on. I’ve done some work for one of their clients and talking about ways of aligning with them a bit more in 2012. More on that hopefully in the coming months.

I am still glad I chased that dream down in July and I’m hoping that 2012 continues to be a success but I’m hoping I don’t just define that success by staying busy with clients but that I do give myself more family time and that I am able to give abundantly to charities and ministries like Options for Women and Living Water International.

More Popular Posts of 2011

Some of the more popular posts in terms of traffic or comments/tweets/mentions last year (as well as some of my favorite ones thrown in):

• Your Dreams? They Don’t Come Looking For You! – A little background – I wrote those while in the final stages of mulling over my decision to go off on my own or not. Ultimately? I decided to get off the ladder and try the water.
• Can’t Troubleshoot? Don’t Apply – Reflections on changing my truck’s starter and the kind of person I look for when interviewing.
• Are You Planting Asparagus? It’s work, It’s a picky plant, You can’t even enjoy it for a few years… Success in the workplace is a lot like Asparagus.
• You Can Restore It! (right?) – Your backup is verified, the job isn’t failing. You’re all set, aren’t you? No? Maybe?
• If You See Something, Say Something - Normally, I don’t have a ton of praises for government advertising campaigns. I think there is something for DBAs in this one, though.

Here’s To 2012!

I really thank you for checking out this blog. I thank you for the contributions you’ve made or are planning on making to the SQL Server community in 2012. Let’s make 2012 a prosperous year. Let’s make it a year where we all learn and grow together in amazing ways. Let’s make this the year of the #sqlfamily… But… Let’s do what we can to make 2012 the year where everyone can drink water that won’t kill them.

I don’t want much. Bill Gates is already taking care of the world, so no beauty pageant wish there. As a SQL Server professional I just want a few simple gifts – stocking stuffers really. In fact a tune comes to mind…

The defaults in SQL Server anger me
Auto Shrink and Full Recovery mode by default especially
I do know just who to blame for this catastrophe!
So my one wish on Meme Monday is as plain as it can be!

All I want for Christmas
is the auto-shrink option dead
the auto-shrink option dead
see! that fragmented database!

Gee, if I could only
have the option dead
then I could wish you
“Merry Christmas”
It seems so long since I could scan
all those fragmented tables quickly
Gosh oh gee, how happy I’d be
If it were only dead

All I want for Christmas
is the auto-shrink option dead
the auto-shrink option dead
see! that fragmented database!

That’s It -

I want SQL Server to make it a little tougher for well meaning, but ill-trained people to shoot themselves in their feet. I don’t want people to have to hire high priced consultants to fix problems that are caused by defaults, by maintenance plan options that allow them to fragment their database, by a simple check box to enable auto-fragment mode of their database. It isn’t that consultants are bad – it’s just that my posts on transacation log shrinking and management (and why you shouldn’t need to do it) shouldn’t be the most popular google search traffic to my blog

Reminds me of the series of posts about the top 5 things I wanted SQL Server to drop during an earlier meme. That’s what I want.

P.S. – That means if you are auto shrinking your database or you have to do gymnastics to clear your huge transaction log every time you run out of disk space – you’re doing it wrong. See these posts.

Merry Christmas – I’ll be leaving cookies and milk out for Microsoft in a few weeks. I’ll let you know if they came.

… Ok, you can put your socks back on – there won’t be any more counting. According to most of the studies on world health, somewhere around 3 kids under the age of five just died in the time it took you to count because they didn’t have access to clean drinking water or safe sanitation. That’s right – depending on whose statistics you use you can come up with a ballpark of about 5,000 kids under the age of five die every day from this. About 3.75 Million people die of water related disease a year (per this study done by the World Health Organization.. I’ll let you look for the other statistics yourself)

Seriously? Water?

That was my reaction when I first saw this quick video (that states the cost to bring clean drinking water to the world is about $10B while us Americans spend somewhere around $450B on Christmas presents each year). I knew people were dying of hunger. I knew kids were dying in war ravaged countries. I knew there were AIDS orphans throughout Africa. It never really hit me that that many people die because of what they drink. It never occurred to me that so many people are kept down because of their daily trek to a distant water source to bring contaminated water back to their thirsty family.

As I type this my home office is a little bit of a mess. Looking around I see three 20 ounce empty water bottles, a couple empty 12 ounce cans of Coke Zero and an empty 1 Liter empty seltzer water bottle. Look around you right now. See any drink containers? Yeah. 3.75 million people die because they share their drinking water source with a bathroom, a disease infested river and all that lives within it or some muddy puddle that someone just washed their hands and face in.

It never even occurred to me that kids aren’t getting educated right now because they are journeying miles to bring water back home that we wouldn’t even touch – let alone drink…  It never even occurred to me that people are poor in many places simply because of water. I never imagined that some women spend 15-20 hours per week on the task of bringing water back to their family. Forget about Women in Technology chapters there in those villages…

Now I’m not saying this to challenge you – or me – to say we have to live in guilt. I’m not sharing that video link with you (here it is again) to tell you you have to give up every last possession, you have to give up every trip to Starbucks, etc. No, I’m just sharing it with you because maybe you are like me – maybe you never stopped to consider this crisis that is happening in our world. That’s okay, we can make a difference – even in small ways.

What Can We Do?

There are many groups out there helping in many ways with this water crisis. First – let me tell you they are making a difference. Villages are thriving because of clean water being brought to them. People are alive because of these groups. The grim statistics are improving but they still have far to go. Until everyone in this world has the ability to drink clean water without spending their day journeying for it we aren’t done. But it is important to remember – a difference is being made and help only increases that difference. Some organizations are giving the tools and tricks to filter water in innovative and inexpensive ways. Some groups are drilling wells so they can have the water where they are. What do they need? Awareness – maybe you aren’t at a point where you can help out one of these groups directly but you can let people know they are there, right? They also need money.

They aren’t asking for a lot to solve this problem. We are talking about a $10B problem from one source – This summer the iPhone topped $28B in revenue for Apple. Black Friday 2009 (just that weekend) saw around $41.2B in sales… This is the kind of problem that a small sacrifice (though I wonder if that is even the right word?) from everyone could see a world of difference.

I realize that there are SO MANY other needs out there. I just think that drinking water – clean drinking water – is potentially the most basic of those needs. Fixing it leads to fixing other aspects of life. Fixing it in our generation is a powerful message. Fixing it now means we can tackle that next problem next.

A Challenge For December (and beyond)

It’s 12/1/2011 when I am typing this. I am going to go a month drinking water tap water in most places – unless on a flight or finishing off a gallon in the fridge already. When I feel tempted to go grab an iced tea or a cappuccino while driving to a client site – I am going to figure out the cost that I would have spent and set the figure aside. Same thing at the restaurant, etc. Even “just” living on tap water – I’ll still be living better than the billions without safe or clean water. I don’t get many presents for Christmas or my Birthday any more but if folks ask – I’ll ask them to make a donation instead. I’ve also decided to give an additional portion of my consulting gross revenues to the Living Water charity starting now – and I’m going to keep doing that until this isn’t a problem anymore.

I don’t share this to brag. I don’t share this to say I’m better than you – I guarantee you I am not   I share this to encourage you to see what you might do. Maybe you can share the story of the water crisis in the world with someone. Certainly you can pray. Perhaps you, too, can do the Christmas gift giving frenzy just a tiny bit lighter this year or skip the latte and pitch in to bring fresh, cool and clean water someplace it has never been before. Talk about a Christmas gift! Imagine drinking mud your whole life and someone offering you a sparkling glass of fresh water? Maybe you are wiling to see some percentage of your company’s revenue going to making sure we can tell our kids we live in a world where everyone has clean water.

I encourage you to check out the source of the video: Advent Conspiracy. Or the organization I’ve felt led to support: Living Water.  Or do a quick Google search for water charities and find one that works for you.  Living water has placed about 10,000 wells so far and they’ve seen lives changed from their presence. They are a recognized and audited charity.

Who else is in?

#sqlwater works as a hashtag here, I think. You don’t have to be a SQL person to join. Blog about what you are going to do, leave a comment here if you want. Tweet about a small (or any size) “sacrifice” you are willing to make this month and tell us which charity you’ve picked and why. I’ll keep my updates going on that twitter hash tag and here. Remember – the goal in sharing here isn’t for us to brag about the little bit we are doing. It is to encourage each other along and to raise awareness. I know we are a giving community donating to waks, marathons, food banks, cancer treatment or awareness, etc. I think it is great and I happen to think we still have a little room individually to give but as a community of small donations? We can bring water to those in need – right now. Who else wants to hep out?

This post is all about my Savior and my faith. If that isn’t your kind of reading, check out one of the other posts from this series-

• Perspective - Why looking back at past challenges can make current ones seem, well, not that big.
• Relationships - I am where I am in large part because of the people who have put time into my life. Relationships matter.
• Self Employment – I made the decision to try it this year, and I’m glad I did. I think you can make that same decision.
  
• Community – The SQL Server community is an amazing community of technologists that gets stuff done.

What is Grace and Why be Thankful?

Some have turned the word grace into an acronym – God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense – and I like it. That sums grace up quite well, I think. Another definition that works is, Unmerited Favor.  These drive at the same point – Grace is a gift. Grace is a gift from God. Grace is a gift from God that we don’t deserve. Grace is a gift of God through the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ, that we don’t deserve. But he still offers it.

I never realized all this before I started talking to Christians. I had my own notions of Christianity before. I thought Christians were mean, self-righteous people who worked at good works to earn favor with God. I thought they were all hypocrites. I wasn’t sure what I believed about the eternal state of my soul but I certainly felt that I hadn’t done anything that bad. I hadn’t killed anyone, I helped other people, I shared. I figured I’d be fine and didn’t need to turn into one of them.

It wasn’t until I started a Bible study with a Pastor who was trying to answer all of my objections to Christianity that I realized that the Christianity I saw on TV or even in the way some faiths try to live it out wasn’t what the Bible said at all. Condensed way down -

God is perfect. God is Holy. God is Righteous. God is Truth. Our sin separates us from that type of being. We can’t ever enter into His presence in a state of sin – nor would we ever want to. If you think of God’s standard as a “heavenly yardstick” with holiness at the full yard, we barely measure a quarter of an inch with our “good” or with our  attempts at “righteousness”. God’s standard is Himself – Romans 3:23 describes this standard – “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” One lie is enough. One lustful look is enough. One selfish, pride-filled moment is enough. One moment of greed is enough. You get the point. We daily fall short of the glory of God. Whether you are Christopher Hitchens, Mike Walsh, Billy Graham or your dear grandmother this holds true.

So where does that leave us? Condemned in our sins – heading towards the just punishment for those sins – an eternity apart from Christ (Romans 6:23a – For the wages of sin is death). In fact it isn’t even a punishment only, it is what we want. If we don’t want to chase after God in this life, if we don’t want to love Him then why would He force us into His presence forever? Whether we want to admit it or not (and I didn’t for the longest time) – our sin has a price. Our sin fixes a gulf between us and God.

But Grace created a bridge. God’s grace provided a path – the only path – to salvation. Out of a motivation of Love (John 3:16), God sent Christ to take our place. The only One who could legally pay the price of sin – for He was man – and the only One who could pay the price for all that ever have or will live – for He was God. This Christ came to earth, as history and secular scholars agree, and took on our punishment on that cross. He laid down His life, but more – he faced the punishment of our sin on that cross. His fellowship with His Father was broken, He bore the full weight of our sin. Romans 5:6-10, one of my favorite passages in the Bible, describes this act:

For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. (Romans 5:6-10 NASB – emphasis mine)

That’s grace. Grace is a gift. It is a gift offered to all people in all times but having a gift offered doesn’t mean it’s ours. If we need a lifesaving blood transfusion and someone is willing to offer it to us – that isn’t enough to save our life. We have to accept that gift and apply it to our lives. We have to receive the blood. We have to open ourselves to it. God’s grace -  God’s unmerited favor – is the same. We have to accept it. We have to receive it and believe it. At that moment we get to see the joy in the second part of Romans 6:23 – It started with “For the wages of sin sin is death”  but I thank God that it doesn’t end there. Instead it ends “But the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus” That’s grace. I’m thankful for Grace. I’m thankful for God entering history to make a difference for me. I’m thankful that 10 years ago I was convicted of where I was on that yardstick and realized that my “good acts” mattered not for eternity in light of all the ways I fall short. I’m thankful for all the people along that path.

To this day, I still hold that this is a decision I would have NEVER MADE on my own. I didn’t want it, I didn’t think I needed it and I thought that I was smarter than “those” Christians. I was relying on me and thought the Bible to be foolish (The Bible even says it is foolishness to those who are perishing, as I was! – 1 Cor 1:18). God, through His Grace hasn’t left me in that state. I have banked my eternity on His grace and after ten years of answered prayers, walking with Him, Bible study, apologetics study, research, etc. I can say with confidence that my faith is well founded. That the grace it is built on is real.

Not Holier Than Thou

As I see the Christians I spend time with – the committed, Bible believing, Grace reliant Christians – I see that the perceptions I had of holier than thou attitudes were not typical of Christians at all. The perception of people working hard at being better than everyone else was not Christianity! I’ll even say that those churches that rely on works for salvation are not founded on Biblical principles. Salvation is a gift of grace. That means that I’m not any better or worse than Billy Graham. That means that I don’t deserve this grace any more or less than Ron Bronski (His story is an interesting one). You see these Christians that I started getting to know are all people, just like me. They have hurts. They have pains. They mess up and still make mistakes after accepting Christ but they are still different. Their hearts are burdened for Jesus. Their hearts ache when they mess up, they have a love for others and a spirit of giving that puts the United Way to shame.  They don’t judge, because they realize that they are the same. They don’t judge because they know they, too, need grace. I’m telling you, you haven’t seen love like the love you see when a group of Christians comes around another battling sin or battling something personal and perhaps even embarrassing. The outpouring of love isn’t natural, it isn’t something that the world normally resorts to. It is the result of that Grace that they’ve received. I am so thankful for the loving church I go to. The compassionate believers I worship our Creator with. Thankful for the love they show new believers, visitors and even believers who fall down. We are called to be Christ to people and the Christians who work at this instead of seeing their mission as condemning and distancing actually make a difference in lives every day. I’m thankful for that.

A Community

Last, but not least, I’m thankful for the #PassPrayers group and discussion list. I’m thankful that Christians are part of one body – Christ’s body. That we are united by something that lasts for eternity. Wherever I go, when I meet a Christian – there is an instant friendship, there is a closeness that I can’t describe. I got to witness it first hand at this years SQLPASS and saw the impact the #PassPrayers group had. Brothers and sisters from around the world gathered together to share prayer requests, to share burdens, to Worship our God in song and thanksgiving. It was great. It was actually the highlight of the entire conference. There were deep hurts shared openly at prayer request time. There were unashamed, unembarrassed voices lifted loudly to bring praise to God in public while we sang along with Rob Farley and his guitar. Even now, the #PassPrayers e-mail group is active. Sharing encouragements, stories, prayer requests and looking to have more meetings across the country. I am so incredibly thankful for the technology that allows us to stay connected, for the hearts that are willing to share with others, for the hearts that pray for others. I’m thankful for God’s grace that allows me to be a member of the body of Christ.

• Perspective - Why looking back at past challenges can make current ones seem, well, not that big.
• Relationships - I am where I am in large part because of the people who have put time into my life. Relationships matter.
• Self Employment – I made the decision to try it this year, and I’m glad I did. I think you can make that same decision.
  
• Community – To quote a mall or theme park map, “You are here”
  
• Grace – I touched on this in the relationships section but I’m going to talk a bit more about grace and perhaps Pass Prayers on Friday.
  

This Thing We Call “Community”

Or, as Thomas LaRock put it – #sqlfamily…

I’ve blogged about the SQL Server community before a couple of times (“Community, Community, Community” comes to mind first) but I still think it’s a mighty neat group of technologists. I am not even sure how it came to be this way and I’d love to study the family tree someday to figure out why this community is different than some other technology communities. To clarify when I talk about the SQL Server community, I’m talking mainly about the folks who actively blog, read blogs, tweet, speak at or attend events, answer questions on SQL Server Central, actively vote in the SQL PASS elections, etc.

So what is there to be thankful for about this community? Well in no particular order, let me count the ways – I’m thankful that…

We don’t always agree but we just about always get along.

To me the classical examples are the things we aren’t supposed to talk about in public. Faith. Politics. Dynamic SQL vs. Stored Procedures (Stored Procedures, btw) Surrogate Keys vs. Natural Keys, etc.

There have been many a sidetracked twitter conversation that escalated into a multiple person conversation with folks on very different sides. We’ve talked about heated points. There have been animated discussions over political policies and the direction a nation should go. Tough discussions/debates on principles of faith. Yet.. Yet.. It seems like anytime I see (or take part in) one of those discussions, everyone ends up knowing each other a bit better, finding points of agreement and even making new friendships with people whose views completely clash with your own. I’ve seen families torn apart by these divisions yet we find unity in our differences. That doesn’t mean I am endorsing views I disagree with – it means I see that a human being holds them and I want to learn about myself and my world through their views or why they came to them. That is a common attitude. I am thankful that we all can just get along.

The “leaders” seem to pour themselves into other people.

Have you seen the movie Pay It Forward? Well it’s almost like that kid was person one in the SQL Server community. With rare exception, take a look at the people with the “must visit” blogs or “must read” books. Take a look at the long time SQL Server MVPs, the sought after speakers, etc. They almost all share a trait that you don’t always see everywhere – They can’t help but help bring others up. Everyone who is active in this community of technologists seems to want to see others grow. Even the well experienced and much desired consultants at the top of their game seem only happy to give referrals to other consultants. They seem happy to give tips to others. They all realize there are a lot of potential customers and rather than get stingy and hoard knowledge, they share it and hope others do well. That’s different. Everyone learns something every day if they stay active in the SQL Server Community. SQL Saturday leaders have to say no to speakers because so many people want to learn by teaching. We are a community of learners and teachers.

We take time to get to know each other.

Meaningful relationships. When there is a SQL Server event (conference, SQL Saturday, etc.) I always bump into at least one person (and usually a lot more) that I know fairly well. Someone who wants to know how I’m really doing. Someone I care about and want to know more. Plenty of razzing and joking to go around but when someone is stuck… When someone is down on their luck… When someone needs a job… When someone needs prayer… When a family member dies… The community rallies around that person. The only real superiority contest I ever see is who can outgive or outcare someone else. That’s different than any other technology community I’ve been a part of.

 We could fix this country.

Seriously. Some of those political twitter conversations I mentioned? We talk about hard issues. We come at them from different points of view but through our logical and rational thought processes, we usually end up exploring the heart of the matter. We end up finding the points that unite us and let go of partisan bickering or allegiances. We talk about some interesting real solutions together. You fire Congress (all of them) and replace them with members of the SQL Server community and I think this nation is a bit closer to solving those issues that plague us perennially. Common sense wins. Logic wins. Doing what’s right for all wins.

We love new members of the SQLFamily.

No jealousy. No frustration with someone learning. We welcome people just starting out and put on big events for them at our Summits, we go out of our way to find the “new ones” and ask “how’s this summit treating you? Are you learning everything you wanted to learn? Have you met  so and so yet?” I was just chatting about this with Brent Ozar the other day and he drew a parallel to High School. I think it works…. If the SQL Server community were a High School or Middle School – there would be less traumatic memories for some… If the SQL Server community were a lot of workplaces, new employees would be more productive. Again – the folks in this community pour themselves into others and want to see new folks learn as much as possible and they love helping them out there.

So yeah, I’m thankful for this SQL Server community I fell into when I got deeper into SQL Server. I have some friendships that will last well beyond my time working with any one technology. I’ve seen projects touch lives (Like the Deep Dives books, Project Phoenix, etc.) and I’ve seen resources put together to get stuff done. This SQL Server community is pretty amazing.

Perspective - Why looking back at past challenges can make current ones seem, well, not that big.

Relationships - I am where I am in large part because of the people who have put time into my life. Relationships matter.

These are slightly off topic but I think you’ll find that there are some lessons that intersect life and career. Professional development, if you will. Today I’m going to continue and share the thanks for these first five months of working for myself. This post isn’t shared out of a bragging or self-promotion intent. The purpose, instead, is to give thanks first and to maybe encourage someone else second.

Thankful That I Did It

I have talked about and thought about this decision off and on over the past few years but it never seemed right. Even when I started approaching the decision it took awhile from me to go from the “thinking about” to “doing phase. I tell you, though – it has been great since making the choice. I am thankful for the “leading up to” events that unfolded and for the confirmations along the way. Back in June as I was thinking through the final decision I used that perspective I talked about on Monday. I remembered the fear of jumping in a pool but the reward that always came once I got used to the water (that time has increased as I get older each year, btw). I wrote about that in my post, Your Dreams? They don’t come looking for you. So I went for it. People have asked me since about the motivators or driving force behind that decision and I guess it comes down to more things to be thankful for but in a nutshell:

• 80(ish) years vs. Eternity –> I’m going to be around on this planet for around 70-90 years total, if I live according to the average life expectancy.  As a Christian, I am going to live forever in perfect eternity. What is the worst that could happen right now by taking on this “risk” of working for myself? Some tough financial times, maybe some hungry days. I believe God will take care of me here and even if I suffered for the next 40 years – I’m heading to a forever in Heaven. I was talking to another Christian businessman about this and I said “it’s kind of like we are cheating.. the risk of entrepreneurship isn’t the same for us”.
• Full Time Employment Isn’t a Guarantee –> Let’s face it – look around the economy… How was I any more stable and how did I have any more job security working as a number on another’s budget?
• I Have Skills –> That’s not bragging. There are many things I don’t know but when I look around the companies that I help out, I realize that I know quite a bit more than I give myself credit for. I’ve seen differences in the clients I have helped so I knew that if I could just get in the door of clients, I’d have customers.
• Money & Time –>  My wife has changed me in many ways. My faith has changed me in many ways. One of those ways is having an attitude of giving. I firmly believe that all of my time and all of my money is God’s. Working for myself means I have the opportunity to potentially have a bit more of each – that means I have the chance to give more of it away. We love giving and I have more freedom there financially now. I also have more freedom to engage differently in ministries and give my time – or even my skills – to those ministries, charities, etc. that need them.
• My Kids are Kids Once –> Now this is an area I need to fix in the business – when to say no, when to decide which projects can be taken on at the same time, etc. but one of the motivations is that I can be more flexible. That I can take my daughter to a class, that I can do events during business hours with my kids more often than previously. That we can have a “slow” income month, dip into savings and work less and do more with them. As I learn more about myself and working for myself I’ll balance the schedule out and have the ability to be around more.
• I had a Network –>  Linked In, Former co-workers, recruiters, other consultants who somehow trust me enough to recommend people to me, friends of friends of clients. I have a network of people already and that beats marketing dollars. So far because of that network, because of being “out there”, I’ve been too busy to figure out how to market. Now I’m working on that because it won’t always be like that but I knew I had contacts.

When I looked at those facts and reasons, I had to say “If I don’t jump in the pool, I’ll never even have a chance to get used to the water”.

Thankful For Pioneers

I got to talk to some people who have successfully led businesses of their own. People like Brian Moran. People like the owners of Winxnet, the company I left full time employment with (but stayed very close partners with – helping them with their SQL work from afar), people like Joe Webb or Andy Kelly. People like Paul Randal and Brent Ozar. People like Karen Lopez. These people all gave advice, encouragement and even warnings and honesty when I was either making the decision or after I made it. All of them working in the same space, but all of them offering their time to see me be successful. I am so thankful for those relationships.

Thankful for Providence

Two opportunities came up at the same time that would have only worked if I were on my own. Winxnet was okay with seeing me try to go on my own and still do their advanced SQL stuff for them as a partner instead of employee. All of these things came at once, as I was praying and thinking about the decision. It was like I walked up to the automatic door at a grocery store by thinking about going on my own, by praying for the decision making process and the doors just swung open. Even after going on my own, I’ve actually had to just turn away clients because I realized I was taking on too much and had to say “no” or “not yet” or “call these guys instead” to give the best service to my clients. I really do serve a God who answers prayers.

Thankful for Clients

I’ve worked with some great folks. Winxnet with some steady (and fun) work; The well known online travel industry site that I’ve been learning Hadoop and Hive at while improving their SQL environment, the Credit Union that has given me some steady work and some patience as I sort my schedule out, the training opportunities, the opportunities to help Microsoft Learning with some projects, and many other projects. I’ve worked on some fun projects, I’ve taught a lot and learned just about as much in the process of helping people get the most out of SQL Server. I am thankful that clients give me a try and I’m thankful for the longer term relationships that many have formed through working with them.

Thankful For Support

My wife has put up with this adjustment and me being home a lot more. We’re still married. In fact, when I was going back and forth on my decision and having that “what did I just set in motion.. how will I find clients?” thing  she was great. She gave me a pep talk and reminded me of all of the calls from recruiters that I could just take some job I wouldn’t love but could do for 3-6 months while I figured it out. She was supportive and has been supportive even when the schedule hasn’t been as free as I thought it would be going into it. She’s been so supportive.

Thankful For “That Feeling”

I gotta say. When I went to the secretary of state’s office in shorts, t-shirt and sandals to file the paperwork to incorporate my llc, I felt great. When I go do a walk through with a client and tell them that their most frequently run query (by a wide margin) used to take 3-80 seconds and with a little work I have it down to an average measured in milliseconds it feels great to know they’ll have happier customers and can feel better about selling to more. When I see a light-bulb go off  when teaching a DBA a tip or trick it rocks. There are many occasions to get what I call “That Feeling” and I love it. Now, instead of just solving problems and making things go faster, be more secure or reliable – I am doing that but I am also creating something – a business – at the same time. While I pray about the business and know that God is in control, I also know that I have the ability to make something or nothing out of this thing I’m trying and that is a great feeling (and a scary one at times also).

Thinking about going off on your own? Send me an e-mail. I’d love to talk to you about the lessons I’m learning even now as I am trying to see how this first year of full time self employment goes. I can share some of the “just starting out” lessons which are still fresh in my mind because I’m only just now learning them.

But yeah. I’m thankful that I’ve been able to go into business on my own in this bad economy and make something that sustains itself.

This is Thanksgiving week here in the US. This week, I am going to try and share a post each day about something I’m thankful for. We’ll started Monday with perspective and continue today with Relationships. Lots of different types. This topic is definitely Off-Topic and I talk about the Bible and my faith a little bit throughout it. If you want SQL stuff only, avert your eyes

But first… Why Give Thanks? A few reasons depending on the lens you wish to employ. For me, sometimes I forget to show thankfulness – so consciously “counting my blessings” is a good way to remember how I’ve been blessed – it helps me have an attitude of gratitude. Like I talked about in the perspective post, thinking of things to be thankful for is a great way to face the next challenge. It sounds corny, but a glass half full attitude really does produce something different in you than a glass half empty kind of attitude. Finally, It’s God’s will that His people are thankful people – 1 Thessalonians 5:18 reads, “in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” I firmly believe that the good that comes to me (and the good that seems to come out of me occasionally) is from God.

So… What kind of relationships am I thankful for?

Mentors

Along the way of life I’ve had a few mentors. I’ve probably had more than come to mind but one of the most influential in the professional world has to be a former manager of mine, George. I blogged about him before so I won’t go into all of the details but I’m thankful that throughout my career and my life there have been people willing to invest their time and their energy into me with nothing expected in return. Through a few conversations with Brian Moran, Joe Webb, Andy Leonard and other successful SQL Server independent consultants, I paved the road to go into business for myself this summer with eyes wide open. When considering a position on the board of directors for SQL PASS this year I had an excellent, and honest, conversation with Brent Ozar about it. Through that conversation I realized that it wasn’t what I needed to do to accomplish what I wanted to see PASS accomplish.

I’m thankful for mentors. What makes a mentor? I don’t know the textbook answer but I think it is someone who embodies these qualities - Concern for others before themselves, Listening Skills, Honesty, Integrity (putting that honesty to good use even if they are saying something you don’t want to hear and they don’t want to have to tell you), Desire for others to succeed. Someone who has had success in whatever area you are being mentored in and has those qualities is a rare find. So I think the folks like George, Andy Kelly, Andy Leonard, Brian Kelley, Pastor Andrews, Pastor Arnold, Brian Moran, etc. who posses those qualities and have formed some shaping towards who and where I am today.

Family

I have a whole family – well the immediate family anyway My kids love my wife and I. My wife loves me. She knows my weaknesses and loves me anyway. She gives  me an honesty check every now and again. She sees me struggling with a work problem and reminds me gently that God isn’t just “God of the big” with her, “Well have you prayed about it?” reminder. Next August we’ll be celebrating our 10th year and while there have been momentary valley’s, we’re growing closer together in different ways. I love her and she loves me. She cared enough about me as a human when we first met to more or less point out where I was wrong in life, where I was on the path to ruin. Through our early friendship and what it became, I’ve grown up in so many ways. Throughout our relationship she’s been a part of me dredging up some ugly baggage from childhood and  she’s helped me unpack that all nicely. Through her and her family, I got to see what Christianity was actually all about.

My kids are great. 6, 3 an 1 and they each teach me different lessons about life. I see the way they watch me and it humbles me. It scares the heck out of me that these kids want to emulate daddy and mommy (the mommy part doesn’t scare me). They are precious and I thank God for bringing each one of them into my life. I thank God that we have our health, when so many I know don’t. That we are functional – I didn’t grow up as part of a functional family, it is pleasing to know that that isn’t something that prevents me from living in one now.

I’m thankful for restored relationships in the larger family of in and out laws. I have parent in-laws who are great and love me for who I am and treat me like their own kid. I have in-laws who adore my children and see them nearly every day. They love them and they are positive influences on them.

Christian Brothers and Sisters

Until I was 21 or so I thought Christianity was about doing. I thought it was about holier than thou people who were better than I could ever be and unless I picked up their rule book and followed it word for word I’d never be one of them. I didn’t want to be one of them – I thought they were joyless, hypocritical, mean spirited, self centered, arrogant, self-righteous fools. I got this from the few random church services I attended, watching TV and seeing the attitudes of some of the more vocal “do as I say” crowd. It was only after I actually met Christians – people who have admitted they were with sin, people who admitted the need for a savior and who believed and trusted on Christ – that I realized my stereotypical view was false. It was only after I met true Christians that I ever heard that the Gospel wasn’t “I’m better than you, be like me and you’ll be fine, kiddo” but it was actually “I’m broken too. I sin, I do things I don’t want to do and don’t do things I want to do. I’ve tried to be ‘good enough’ but I had to admit I can’t be so I believe and trust on Christ and He’s changed me and He can change you, too.  I would have never come to Christ on my own but I didn’t have to – He came to me from the Christians he put in my path (Phil when I was in High School an he planted a seed.. Megan when she met me. Her mom and grandparents. The people at First Baptist Church, Pastor Andrews there) and He stole me – in spite of my best efforts to protest. I’m a different person because of this relationship that I didn’t want and would have never looked for. I’m a different person because people loved me – in spite of areas of my life that weren’t lovable. In spite of hard sin, they loved me anyway.

Band Of Four – I’m also incredibly thankful for the bond I’ve been developing with three dear Christian brothers in the SQL Server Community (Jack Andy and Brian). We meet regularly and are going through a tough and introspective Bible study together right now. These brothers know me as well as I know myself. I can totally let down any guard with them – and do. They see the good Mike and they see the bad Mike. We are bonded in Christ and a closeness that is unlike I’ve ever had with anyone other than my wife. We challenge each other to properly prioritize our life (Christ first) and we check in on each other. When Jack’s dad had been going through his battle with cancer and his hospice days, our prayers were deep and from the heart – to the point of being moved to tears just thinking of our brother’s father going through this. This is like mentors but on steroids. We keep each other accountable. We lift each other in prayer. I am so deeply thankful for these Christian friendships and the growth I’ve seen in my own walk with Christ from it.

So.. What relationships are you thankful for this Thanksgiving season?

Tomorrow I’ll give thanks for my business and the journey these past 4-5 months of independent consulting have been. Thursday it will be my profession – the SQL Server community, bloggers, etc. and Friday? Well I guess we’ll just have to see what is laid on my heart by then.

A Gigantic Boulder, a Tremendous Hill and a Big Neighborhood

From the age of 5-12, I lived in a decent sized sub-division. I lived at the bottom of a huge hill, far away from the street. I had huge trees in my backyard, the biggest swamp I ever saw across the street and the commuter train ran behind the house way way off in the distance. I blame my Nintendo and interesting childhood, but I have more outdoors memories of the younger part of those years and recently I made a quick visit to my stomping grounds of childhood. I can vividly remember exploring those deep woods. I can vividly remember climbing that mountain of a hill with such a steep grade. I remember making big treks way out to the train tracks to throw a penny on the tracks. I can still remember “ghost riding” my bike down that hill. I can still remember using the road sand to dam the water coming down to the swamp after a heavy spring rain. It was fun. Once, when we were old enough, I remember foraging deep into the woods and finding a mountain to climb… Well it wasn’t a mountain, it was just the biggest rock you could ever imagine! We spent hours climbing this mountain, running around it and having fun on its summit. I remember spending time hidden in the bushes along the side of the road spying on the cars that would drive by occasionally on our dead end street, cleverly hidden in the thick underbrush. Those were some great days of my childhood. Running around the huge outdoors, playing in the expanse of our suburban wilderness back yard.

So, a few years ago when going down the familiar exit to my home of 9 or so years to visit a client, I had to make a detour on the way home. I wanted to see if I could find my way to that neighborhood. To see how it has changed. See if I noticed any of the neighbors I hung out with or their parents (that was back in the day where you’d let your kids into neighbor’s houses, when you invited your neighbors to cookouts, etc.). I did manage to find my way there. But what I saw shocked me. It made me feel off about something. I can’t even explain that emotion when I saw the neighborhood, but I felt like I was in a different world. I felt like I was huge, or someone shrunk my neighborhood. I had to go back there today when driving down that way again for a different client.. I had to see what happened. I had to see if I could find that mountain I climbed, the one we called “Bum Rock”. Why? Because I already knew I wanted to blog about perspective and I wanted some pictures — Plus I’m a sentimental kind of guy…

So.. I found that mountain again today. I found the road again today. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. So I’ll share a couple:

Bum Rock Perspective - Then? A mountain. Now? I "summitted" it in one stride (from the opposite, and steeper, side)

Steep Hill Perspective - Then? You should have seen how proud I was when I rode my bike up this mountain! Now? .10 miles, wouldn't even be fun to sled down.

What Changed?

I did. I grew up. My house was a gentle beach ball toss from the house, not miles. The train tracks? I could have thrown a pebble and hit a train from the back porch. Those bushes I “hid” in? I bet those adults had more fun pretending I wasn’t there than I had thinking I was spying on them. The trek out to “Bum Rock” through the deep woods at the top of the hill? I found it in 20 seconds on a well worn path of leaves to the from the top of the hill. Those distant neighbors? I could have spit on their house if I wanted to. That huge expanse of a swamp we caught bull frogs in? I had to look really carefully to find it

I changed. I grew up. My perspective changed. As a kid those things were huge. Some of them even insurmountable at first. Scary thoughts like, “Up -that- hill without training wheels and without falling?!?!!?”

Why Be Thankful For Perspective?

Many reasons. In fact I think speakers, bloggers and Pastors should go visit where they grew up. I bet they’d have inspiration and illustrations enough for at least a half dozen talks/posts/etc. But I’ll zero in on two reasons in particular right now on why I’m thankful for perspective -

Learning Doesn’t Scare Me

Let me give you a recent example of how my experience with SQL Server has me more excited than scared to learn to play the guitar…

12 years ago, I didn’t know what SQL was. I didn’t know what SQL Server was. I didn’t even know what a database was. Probably 6 years ago I didn’t have an understanding of what column or index statistics were. I didn’t know what to do with that scary looking query plan thing the SQL consultants used 7 years ago. When I started learning to go deeper with SQL Server, I was intimidated by even the basic building blocks. It was intimidating. Today? I teach some of these concepts to clients! I speak on them at SQL Server events. I blog about them. I get paid to help clients out with them as a consultant.

This month, I decided I wanted to learn to play an instrument. My daughter is learning the piano, I like listening to worship music with guitar strumming in it. I wanted to learn to play a guitar, so I bought one and have been talking to people like Rob Farley and Buck Woody about the process. Rob started giving me advice and started talking about musical notes, chords, “chord shapes”, Capos, measures, bridges, etc. I’ll be honest. My gut reaction was, “Feet don’t fail me now! I’ll never pick these things up, I don’t even know the basics!!!” But then it hit me… I was exactly there with SQL Server 12 years ago. I’m not bragging, because I have much to learn still, but “look at me now” with regards to those SQL skills – a lot of changes these past t2 years. That perspective became my deep breath.

I’ve reminded my six year old daughter of some of her “before” attitudes to help her build these experiences with perspective a couple times lately. She is reading certain words, even some of the “first reader” stories. She is even writing some of the “first reader” stories herself. One year ago when she knew she’d be learning to make words out of letters in the coming months or year her reaction was “Wahhh!!! I can’t do it! How can I do it?! I don’t know how to do it! I can’t read!!”. Now she uses inflection when she hits a question mark. She uses exclamation in her voice when reading a sentence with an exclamation mark. I like to do my best impression of her “before I could read” attitude to remind her she’s more than capable.

I Appreciate Where I Am

It’s that simple. When I look at many aspects of my life with a lens of perspective, I realize how much I have to be thankful for. As we continue this week, many of the “I’m Thankful For: ” posts are built on looking at where I am and how I view life now compared to the time I like to call, “then“. I am humbled by things I’ve done, said, or believed in the past. I’m embarrassed by ways I’ve gotten things wrong. I am where I am because of a lot of great people in my life, because of grace, because of providence in a few cases. I have so much to be thankful for. When I look around at the world. When I look at the circumstances so many are in, and see how much I’ve been blessed with, I realize I have much to be thankful for. This perspective can help ground me and realize that I don’t really have any needs unmet. In fact this perspective even challenges me to give more of my time and reousrces to those with less. Be that in the form of child sponsorship, investing in the career growth of another or just loving someone with the same grace I was loved with way back when.

Get Some!

Perspective… Take a look at your past, your journey towards where you are now. Take a look at with the perspective of where you are now. Ever think you’d get to where you are? So why is that new challenge so scary? Why are yo so afraid to make a jump?

Related Posts

• Your Dreams? They Don’t Come Looking For You –> This was my favorite post of the year. I wrote it more to myself when I was in the final decision making process of deciding to jump on my own. Your dreams really don’t come looking for you, and if you let fear paralyze you, you’ll be guaranteed to miss them.
• Are You Planting Asparagus?
• “Captains Mentor and Teach”
• SQL Quiz On Leadership
• I Grew Up Before my Very Eyes

* Bum Rock - This was named by little kids. I think this picture illustrates the genesis of the name…

A rock by any other name...

The Announcement?

You’ve heard of Hadoop? No? Well Jeremiah Peschka does a great job with a quick explanation in this post.

Well Microsoft wants you to work with data in Hadoop. So they announced that this is a large part of their data strategy and there are two really neat ways they are going to be implementing this:

• Interoperability –> We’ve already seen one example of this with the recent RTM release of the SQL Server to Hadoop connector that works with Sqoop.  There will be much more coming really soon though. Additional connectors, yes but also an ODBC Driver to connect directly to Hive. That right there is great news. When this driver is released you can connect to Hive (Which is a query language, largely modeled on SQL and looks incredibly close 80% of the time, that sits on top of Hadoop and translates this Hive Query Language – HQL – into the java that gets the data out of Hadoop) directly from the Microsoft toolset. This means that you can let Hadoop do the work it is great at – large transformations, parallel and scaled out aggregations, computations across compute clusters, etc – and easily utilize the tools that Microsoft is really proving themselves in* – data analysis, data visualization, self service reporting. I am consulting with a live web commerce company right now and they have much data in hadoop. Mainly hundreds of millions of new clickstream and web access logs. They chose hadoop for many reasons but they have not been able to find a suite of analytics tools as good as or with as great a TCO as the Microsoft analytics tools (chiefly they are looking at SSAS, SSRS, and PowerPivot but that may be expanding into new visualization tools like what Project Crescent – Now called PowerView offer). The cost of creating their aggregations and working with the large raw data sets from their XML page view information made Hadoop a great choice. They can easily add nodes to their cluster as their business grows, the map reduce functionality and splitting the load up across their compute nodes makes shorter work. Getting that data into the analytics tools has been a bit of a challenge. They’ve had to create massive data warehouses to load from the data from Hive, effectively keeping duplicate copies of the same data – results of hive aggregation queries – and then build cubes and reports. Very soon they can cut out that step and begin doing much of their analysis direct against Hive.

• Become a Player Themselves –> This one had me scratching my head when I first heard it, “wait, Microsoft wants to deploy hadoop on Windows and Azure?! The facebook’s and .com’s of the world won’t ever buy it, they love the open source community, they hate paying for licensing.” But then it hit me… They are not aiming for the flash and hip web companies who have already embraced hadoop… They are actually offering something in the market that has a really compelling story and call to action. There are many companies that are in the data explosion situation. Credit card companies want to find fraud and stop it before the sale even happens. Phone companies want to trend their billing data. Political campaigns want to know the exact moment that all the tweets and facebook comments turned negative and they want to correlate it to data from lots of other sources, insurance companies want to spend less on healthcare and want to find trends in the reams of claim data they process. A lot of these companies are not turning to the open source community for help. The data is more sensitive than web visits or saving tweets or facebook status updates. The usage is different and there is a need for those “enterprise-y“words. Words like Management, Instrumentation, Security, Coordination, Modeling. These are the things that Microsoft already delivers for products like SQL Server. They have tools like SCOM/SCCM that do some of that management and instrumentation. They integrate their products with trusted active directory authentication.  So… Microsoft will be releasing a distribution of hadoop (based on the same community driven architecture and standards that all the current flavors are released on) that sits on top of Windows Server and Windows Azure. I’m not normally a kool-aid drinker, and maybe it is because I have been immersed in a world of hive queries and hadoop lately but I actually think this is a huge shift for Microsoft and I think we are going to see endless possibilities and some great adoption stories really soon.

Why I’m Happy

Some would say that Microsoft sees a positive trend and tries to copy it normally. They try to make it their own and sometimes they get it right, sometimes they don’t. It is a copy though. They take some good and interesting ideas and “microsoft-ize” them. I’ve been working with (and loving) SQL Server for 12 years, so don’t get me wrong when I say this, but sometimes they miss the mark. With this? They aren’t copying, or borrowing or trying to redo… They are embracing. They are looking at why people use a tool like Hadoop. They are asking good questions about it and saying, let’s embrace the open source community their standards and all their work and let’s make a platform and integration for it. They are saying, “Hadoop – you do what you are great at, don’t go changing, here let’s help reach other customers and we’ll extend this great tool set with what we really know and are good at – enterprise support, manageability, instrumentation, reliability” That is cool. That is big.

Get Ready

We live in a world of data. It is getting tougher and tougher for each of us to spend a day without leaving behind hundreds of rows of data in various systems and touch points throughout our day. Just today I’ve had a quiet day and haven’t done much but I’ve left hundreds of data sets in my wake by all of my actions. This data tells a story. Sure, that story will be aggregated, analyzed, stored, charted to help turn more profit for companies but that data will also be used to change our world. I know Big Data is a buzz word that folks throw around a lot these days, like cloud, but we live in a big data world and, well, to paraphrase Karen Lopez, love your data. Pick up a copy of Hadoop: The Definitive Guide (get the second edition – linked here) to understand more about the concepts around Hadoop and all of it’s components. It is an exciting read and this is an exciting time to be a data geek.

* – This doesn’t mean I don’t think SQL Server proves itself. It really has and does. It is a great enterprise platform for your data. It just has a different use case than a toolset like Hadoop does. They will complement each other well. Keep your fast paced OLTP database in SQL, put some traditional dimensional databases there too for the reporting you do there. Look to these new offerings and interactions with Hadoop and SQL Server to be another piece in the puzzle.

Other Links

I’ll keep my eye out for other posts about this announcement and may write up some follow up posts as I learn more about these changes. I’ll post links here as I find them.

Hortonworks –> This is a company that Microsoft was working with on some of the Hadoop changes. Ted talked about that in today’s keynote also

If You Can’t Troubleshoot – Don’t Apply –> I relate the experience of finding and repairing a broken starter to IT troubleshooting skills. Seriously, if you can’t troubleshoot, don’t apply to work with me. Read on to see why.

Avoid Using Those Troubleshooting Skills –> Sometimes the best troubleshooting is the kind you don’t have to do because you did it right the first time.

Troubleshooting Methodology – Get One –> This was one of my very first blog posts a few years ago. I think it still rings true

Jorge is also posting this week and I’ll hope to get some more out soon but for now, ask yourself if you can troubleshoot. Ask yourself if you exhibit any of those shotgun troubleshooting methods. Then figure out what you can do to fix it.