Monthly Archives: July 2019

“Do What You Love…

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And you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” – Confucius, Mark Antony, Mark Twain.

Honestly, I think that’s some of the worst advice ever. It’s a sure way to end up hating something you love doing. Or if you do follow it, make sure you understand what it is that you love.

I first realized this in high school. I had signed up to do JV soccer, something I enjoyed, but I can’t say I loved. Before school started, we had a day of orientation. It included a hike or run up the mountain behind the school. I loved the woods and I loved (and still do at times) running through the woods. Somewhere along the way, a fellow student saw me running and suggested if I enjoyed running through nature so much, that I consider doing Cross-Country instead as my fall sport. I took their advice; snd hated it for two fall semesters in a row.

I realized what had happened was that I had replaced what to me was a fun, non-competitive activity and turned it into something where I had to perform at a specific level every single time. What I loved was running through the woods, not running competitively.

People assume I love working with computers.  That’s not entirely true. I ENJOY working with computers. I enjoy solving problems and computers are one way I can express that joy. When I make a query run 10x faster, or automate a process that previously took someone an hour a day to do, I enjoy that. But do I love it? Probably not. And I’m actually grateful for that. Because if I loved it, it would mean those days of drudgery where I bang my head against the wall all day trying to solve a problem, or I’m up until 3:00 AM recovering a failed server would turn something I love into something I dread. Something I loved would become a chore.

I love to teach caving. I get a real thrill out of it. But, I suspect that if I spend 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year doing it, it would soon become a chore.

As my kids started their college journey, I’ve advised them, “find something you enjoy, not something you love. Keep the something you love for your own personal time so it doesn’t become a chore.” And that’s my advice to anyone.

But hey, I could be wrong. What are your thoughts? Did you pick your job because you love it and if so, do you still love it, or did you end up resenting it at all? Or do you enjoy your job?

Challenge Accepted!

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Monica Rathbun in a recent blog post commented on how hard it is to write a blog post in under 5 minutes and challenged her readers to try to do it.

The only thing I can say is… challenge accepted.

But what to write about?

How about how I write, or rather how an idea gets into a blog post.

I have to admit, some Tuesdays my mind is blank. I sit at the screen, sometimes for 5 minutes or longer and my mind draws a blank. That’s rare. Fortunately, I often, sometime in the previous 6 days or so get an idea in my head and start to think about what I should write on it. It might have been a particular issue at work I had to solve, so I might be focusing on a more technical SQL or PowerShell focused blog.  Or it might be something I’ve seen that amused me.  This means I mull the thoughts over in my head and often have a basic outline before I put fingers to keyboard. The can help me cut down on the time I spent blogging.

I’ve also got about a dozen drafts saved in WordPress where I simply write a few lines of an idea for future posts. These are my saving graces. When I really can’t think of an idea I’ll go back and pull one of those up and finish them, such as this one which lay in draft status for months.

So, looking I think I failed. I think this one took just over 5 minutes. And to save time, I’m ignoring adding a picture, so you get the default. For now.

 

Busy Weekend Volunteering

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As I mentioned previously, I was on vacation for about 10 days and got back to Albany very early Wednesday morning (or late Tuesday night depending on how one looks at it.) And once back from vacation I had to jump right back into two other events I had previously put on my schedule. This meant I didn’t have much time to catch up on work or sleep. But it was worth it.

A confluence of events meant that I ended up being double booked this past weekend. The first event was some special cave rescue training called a Small Party Assisted Rescue (SPAR) class. This was a 3 day class, Friday through Sunday. However, in addition, students had the chance to show up Thursday night in order to test on their skills before participating.  I was both an instructor for this class as well as the site and course organizer. My second event was SQL Saturday Albany, which I had been selected to speak at. I’m also the User Group coordinator that sponsors this event. This double booking meant that I couldn’t instruct at the SPAR on Saturday. I do want to note that at both events there were a number of other volunteers, and some were doing even more work than I was.

Between these two events, it meant I was getting about 6 hours of sleep a night plus putting in a lot of driving. It was a long, tiring, essentially 3.5 day weekend starting on Thursday. Additionally the jet-lag made it seem even longer.

Why do I mention all this? Because, both events are very important to me and cover two large areas of my life. I’ve previously written about some of my SQL Saturday experiences and SQL Pass experiences.  This is part of my professional life. I feel very strongly about volunteering and speaking at these SQL events. I enjoy running our local Capital Area SQL Server User Group (CASSUG) for the same reason. I’m a better DBA because of the shared experiences of my fellow speakers. I’ve written about this previously here and elsewhere in this blog. I hope I’ve helped others.

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Deborah Melkin discusses normalized vs. star schemas.

On the other side, as my slide deck often points out, I’m a caver. More critically I’m the Northeastern Regional Coordinator for the National Cave Rescue Commission. I’ve had the privilege of teaching 100s of people how to perform cave rescue, been a media resource during the 2018 Thai rescue, and have spoken and written on the subject. I am by no means an expert, I’m always learning, as are all my fellow instructors. But, we all are not only willing, but want to spend the time and money and effort to teach others. We are passionate about it.  I don’t mean this lightly. For this particular SPAR, while about 1/2 the instructors lived within 2 hours of the event and it was an easy drive, the rest either drove 5-8 hours, or spent all day flying on standby to get here or to get home. None were reimbursed for any of their expenses and in fact had to pay for linens if they wanted them.  They also had to take 2 days or more days off of work to come to New York.

Next summer, I will be the course coordinator for our 2020 National Weeklong here in New York State. This will bring close to 100 people to New York for a week of 14 hour days of teaching and learning cave rescue techniques. Fortunately, I will have a LOT of help organizing this event. But again, all the instructors and staff are volunteers who will travel at their own expense to be here and help teach.

So I spent my weekend volunteering, because I’m passionate about it. How was your weekend?

 

Lifelong Learning

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Writing a weekly blog isn’t always easy. For one, you have to come up with a topic every week. As fellow DBA Monica Rathbun recently pointed out, that’s not always easy. But sometimes (ok, often) I get lucky and the universe conspires to give me a topic.

This is what happened this week. The other night I was talking to my son about a possible project I might need his programming skills on. We reached a point in the discussion where I realized what we wanted to do was possible from a technology point of view, but I honestly had no idea how to accomplish it. I literally said, “I have no idea how to do that. But that’s ok, that hasn’t stopped me before. If I don’t know how to do something and I need to, I’ll learn it.”

That said, earlier in the week I was chatting with a friend of mine who has her doctorate in psychology and we were discussing learning new things and one of the items that came up was how it does get harder to learn as one gets older. On the flip side, we have more skills and memories to build upon which can help compensate.

Going back, even further, I remember my maternal grandfather. He was a PT Boat vet from WWII. Some of my earliest memories were him staring at me surrounded by a bright glow. No, he was not an angelic being, rather he loved to film everything on 8mm film and often used a bar of bright lights to make it bright enough. Later in live, he started to move all the 8mm and Super-8 film to VHS. He learned the necessary skills.

Even later in life, with some help from us grandkids, he started to move everything to DVDs. He was probably in his 70s when he took this up and learned how to edit everything on the computer, add in new sound tracks and titles and more.  I mention this story because I remember the day my mom again called to vent her frustration with her computer and how she was ready to toss it in the microwave and have them commit a murder-suicide together. She claimed she was too old to deal with learning how to use her computer. I mentioned to her that her father had learned how to edit DVDs and he was even older.  She was quiet for a minute and then agreed I had a point. Now in her defense, I will say, more often than not she will now call up and say, “Well, I had a problem with the computer, but I figured it out.”  Again, proving, you’re never too old to learn.

What brought all this together though in my mind was this post from Grant Fritchey. It’s well worth the read and I think he makes a lot of valid points. I know as my career in IT I’ve had to constantly learn. What I need to know today is often vastly different from when I did my first install of SQL Server 4.21a. It’s one reason why I made a point last year of buying a LattePanda singleboard computer and installing Linux and then SQL Server on it. I had decided to challenge myself and set a goal of building a SQL Server for under $200.

I plan on learning up until the day I die (and who knows, perhaps after that!) What about you? Will you stagnate or grow?

And as a reminder, if you enjoy reading my blog, please subscribe to keep abreast of updates and additions.

And a final note, I will be travelling over the next two weeks, so I may be too busy to blog.