Monthly Archives: September 2019

Caving along the Great Divide

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The title is a rife on a favorite folk song of mine, “Railroading on the Great Divide”, apparently first made famous by the amazing Carter Family. In this case, the Great Divide is a feature of a local cave known as Knox Cave in the town of Knox NY.

So, what do you get when you take 2 Canadians, a number of students who are just starting in college and a pair of cavers who have been caving for over 50 years each, two medical students, a fire chief, and a mixture of other people and toss them into a classroom and then a cave? You get an excellent teaching and learning experience.

I again had the privilege of working with a great group of people teaching a 2 day class on cave rescue. On the first day we test the students patience by seeing how many Powerpoint slides they can sit through. If they successfully survive that, we then unlock the doors to the classroom and let them outside. We then do some patient packaging and patient movement.  We end the day with a large quantity of food.

Often I’ll spend the Saturday night at the fire house (our typical location for these classes) but this time I had to head home. On the way one of my fellow instructors texted me to let me know that the student who was staying with her had not arrived at her house. We started to worry.  About an hour later the missing caver had shown up. Turns out she and several other students had decided to take advantage of a baseball backstop and practice their SRT skills and spend some time teaching each other. Even after a long day of teaching, the students were still eager to share their skills with each other.

On Sunday, we spend less than 1/2 an hour in the classroom, essentially just enough time to grab some breakfast and handle some housekeeping chores. We then start a practice rescue. In this case it was at nearby Knox Cave. While the students had known that the practice would be at Knox, they had no idea what the actual would actually involve.  So when the first group showed up, including the local fire chief who was also part of our training, they sprang into action. The reporting party told them that two cavers were in the cave. Both were at the Great Divide, one with a broken leg, the other taking care of the injured caver.

Very quickly the students found the the injured caver but quickly learned that no plan survives the first encounter with reality; the non-injured caver had wandered off and they had to go find her.  The apparently simple rescue had now become a search problem.

After a few missteps, the students found the missing caver and assisted her to the surface. And shortly later the injured caver was also brought to the surface.  It was a successful practice.

At the end of the weekend, instead of 22 students with very little if any cave rescue experience (including at least one student who had never been in a wild cave before) we now had 22 students who had gained a bit of experience and I would actually trust to call if a real rescue was called. From the reports I got back, everyone had fun and more than one person is now very eager to take our weeklong class next year!

For me, it was a long weekend with not enough sleep, but I ended it more energized than I started it. This is typical when I teach courses like this. It’s because I love the aha moment students often have when they’re learning, and this weekend was full of those.

I’ve been blessed to be surrounded by great groups of people over the years and I must say my cave rescue family is among the best, and I’m proud to welcome even more members to that family.

P.S. Don’t forget to check out my latest article at Redgate’s Simple Talk: How to Use Parameters in PowerShell

Thoughts on Writing

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“I also did the copy edit. If it looks good to you, then I can get it published ASAP!”

This is an excerpt from an email I received yesterday. It was probably my favorite email of the week. It means another article of mine will be published at Red-Gate. I’m quite proud of this and once it is published I’ll be updating my page on published articles.

Let me be clear, while I appreciate getting paid for the Red-Gate articles and for the book I wrote, the truth is, I write for more than the money.

I write because I enjoy it. Getting paid sometimes is a bonus. Knowing that others may gain something from my writings is another bonus.

Just about two years ago I decided to go from writing for this blog on an occasional or “as inspiration” hit me basis to a weekly basis. This has had two impacts. I think I have fewer truly inspired posts, but overall I think my (and have been told, but you can judge for yourself) writing has improved. It’s like pretty much any activity, the more you do it, the better you get at it. And it has paid off, literally. I don’t get paid to write this blog, but it indirectly lead to my writing gig for Red-Gate.  So I guess it’s been worth it.

I’m still nowhere near close to giving up programming and writing full-time, but it would be a fun idea to explore. Right now though my writing gives me that little extra “fun money”.  I’m content with that.

Writing also brings me closer to my father. He was an English major at UConn and as such when he graduated became a carpenter. He had bills to pay after all! Some of my earliest memories of him are him sitting in his office trying to write. Based on what I know of him, I suspect he was trying to write the next Great American Novel.  Sadly that was never to be. That said, in the garage below my office I have all his notebooks with all his handwritten stories. Someday I plan on trying to decipher his handwriting to see what it is he did write.

In terms of non-fiction however, I do have some knowledge. He was for many years a stringer for some of the local newspapers and I remember him calling in articles he had written on a variety of topics, including coverage of the local media sensation, the trial of Peter Reilly who was charged with the brutal murder of his mother. Later my father covered the retrial of Mr. Reilly, after it was shown his initial confession was coerced and there were other issues were found with the trial.  He covered more than that, but was the biggest story he covered.

He never had a book published, which I know was a dream of his. I finally did get a book published, unfortunately after he died. That said, in fairness, I think a technical book, especially in today’s climate is a bit easier than the fiction book he was shooting for.

One writing tip I took from Stephen King (and others to be fair) is to set aside a time each week to simply write.  On my calendar I have a period set aside every Tuesday to write this blog. It’s a constant reminder that I need to make time to write. More recently I added a similar block on Wednesdays to write for Red-Gate.  It doesn’t mean I’m always successful during those times or that I only write during those times, but it forces me to set aside some time to write. And the end result is, I write more. And it’s been good.

That said, I think my next goal is to write a non-technical book, whether it’ll be a work of fiction or non-fiction remains to be seen. I may need to put that on the schedule now.

So, that’s my writing for this week!

 

Dress for Success?

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“Dress for the job you want, not the one you have.” This is advice I once heard years ago. Of course I’m not sure what you do if the job you want is the one you want.

Back around 1999 I mentioned to my dad what I was wearing to work. I think I mentioned something about cargo pants and hiking shoes. He admonished me that perhaps I should dress more appropriately for the office and see what the COO and CFO were wearing as an example.  I replied, “Dad, they wear shorts and sandals without socks to the office. I actually dress up more than the COO and CFO do!”  It took me awhile to convince him that in the new dot-com era, not everyone was wearing a shirt and tie to the office.

This all came to me yesterday afternoon as I was deciding what to wear to the Capital Area SQL Server User Group meeting. Since I’m generally the host, I do want to project a professional, but relaxed atmosphere. So, my usual fallback is khakis. But, I was also the speaker so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to make sure I dressed even a bit more appropriately. Fortunately, having been to a number of SQL Saturdays, I had more than enough choices. I ended up with my SQL Saturday Albany 2016 shirt. But as it is starting to be cool here, I figured tossing a top over that would work, and funny enough, I had my Chicago SQL Saturday 2017 top to toss on over it. I’m nothing if not a shill for SQL Saturday!

My kids will claim I have a certain style when it comes to what I wear and they’re right. And while it may seem I often don’t give much thought to what I wear, the truth is, my choice of clothing, especially t-shirts, is often far more deliberate than it may appear.  I just don’t let on often to that fact.

And the truth is, between t-shirts from SQL Saturday and from National Cave Rescue Commission trainings, I probably have close to a month’s worth of shirts if need be.

Makes me wonder, do I volunteer because I like to give back to my community, or because I need the t-shirts? Hmm.

 

 

This Site Makes Cookies

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Apparently under new guidelines here and in Europe I’m ethically obligated that I’ve been known to make cookies from time to time.  Oh, excuse me, something is coming in to my earpiece now.  Oh, never mind, I’ve been informed those laws apply to a different type of cookie.

In any event, I first got into the habit of baking cookies on a somewhat regular basis while in college. It became a stress release for me, and also apparently made me quite popular among the sorority sisters and outing club members I lived with.  I would, probably at least once a month my sophomore year make a double-batch of Tollhouse Chocolate Chip cookies. They rarely lasted more than a day or two.

Since then, I’ve expanded my repertoire, including once trying “bacon cookies” for my very first SQL Saturday. Those weren’t a huge hit, but haven’t stopped me from baking.

That said, I’ve learned a few things over the years about baking cookies. For example, my daughter would bring cookies to school for an event and would often be asked, “oh did your mom make them?”  She’d patiently explain that no, her dad did. Even today, the assumption is that when it comes to school events, the mom does the baking. I’m glad that my kids both realize that it’s unfair to expect that mothers have to do all the baking and other domestic duties.

But, I also learned something else that sort of threw me for a loop. People don’t like homemade cookies from a zip-lock bag.  Sometimes I’d bring cookies to events and people wouldn’t eat many of them. Now, being practical and in a hurry, I’d almost always just toss the cookies into a zip-lock bag.  It was my daughter who suggested I start putting them into a plastic container with a lid instead. Suddenly I found the same cookies were much more popular. My daughter explained her theory, which I tend to believe. For whatever reason, perhaps hygiene, people don’t want to reach into plastic bags for food. It may be touching the same sides that everyone else did or something else. But regardless, putting them into plastic tub with a container works.

Call it a UI problem, but, it seems to work.

Today’s take-away, just because you’re comfortable with a solution and think it works, don’t be adverse to making changes, even if they seem silly or trivial, if that’s what your users desire.

P.S.: Check out my latest writing for Red-Gate: PowerShell and Secure Strings.