Monthly Archives: February 2022

A Birthday

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For most people, today stands out in two ways: the one that happens every year is the anniversary of Washington’s Birthday. The other is fairly unique to this year, it of course being the date of 2/22/22 on a Twosday… err Tuesday. And of course at 2:22 AM (when most of us are asleep) or 2:22 PM for those who us who are awake. I won’t be doing anything special at that particular time, other than taking notes for class.

But for me, February 22nd has always had a different meaning in my heart, and this year even more so. My father was born 75 years ago today. He always got a kick out of sharing his birthday with the Father of our Nation, but for me, it was always more important to share it with the Father of me.

It’s been just under six and a half years since he left my life. But that’s not entirely accurate. While his voice has faded in my head and he’s no longer a physical presence in my life, he’s still there. More than once I’ll say something to my kids like “Oh your grandfather would….”. They were fortunate enough to be old enough to know him when he died, but of course I have far more memories of him than they ever will. Part of the reason I say such things to them is that it helps to keep his memories alive one more generation. I think that’s a worthy goal. And one I think he’d support.

He was an English major in college, so of course became a builder to pay the bills, and later in life an architect. He understood the power and the value of “the story” no matter what the story might be about. While we didn’t agree on genres, we agreed on that much. He was never much of a fan of Star Trek for example, but even years ago when the only Star Trek was the original series, he respected the stories it told and the archetypes it often drew upon, such as its reliance on Greek mythology and Shakespeare. So, I think it would tickle him pink to know he’s become a part of oral history, if nothing more.

A few weeks ago, I wondered to myself, “I wonder if my dad would be proud of what I’m doing (going back to school).” I immediately corrected myself and said “I know he would be.” Back when I first went to college, he decided he couldn’t be a builder his entirely life, his body just wouldn’t handle it, so he decided to become an architect. I’m still not entirely sure how he talked his way into Columbia, but he did. So for awhile we were both in college at the same time, me getting my Bachelor’s, him getting his Master’s. And to show that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, his mother, Chestene, at the same time decided to take some classes at her local community college in New Haven.

And in sort of an echo to the past, I find myself in college at the same time as my daughter. So history repeats itself.

I started by mentioning he would have been 75 today had he not succumbed to C. Difficile Colitis in 2015. It of course saddens me to know he’s not here. I won’t hear his voice again. I can’t ask him for advice on something. I can’t even argue with him over some trivial point where neither of our stubbornness will allow us to concede. He was part of my life for decades and I had hoped he’d be there for decades more. He was simultaneously one of the wisest and most compassionate man I knew, and also the most stubborn. He was a giant to me, both figuratively and at 6′ 4″ literally. And yet my memory of him, laying their in his hospital bed, he’s so small.

As I like to say, he wasn’t just my father. Biologically that’s the easy part. He was my dad. And at that, while sometimes he stumbled, he always would strive to do better. And this humble jumbled attempt doesn’t do him the service he deserves in recognizing him. But, I have now, included made you part of his story. And though not here, and he’d never admit it, I think he’d appreciate that.

A Month In

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As I’ve previously talked about, I’m enjoying taking classes as I prepare to apply to Physician’s Assistant School. I’m a month in and still loving it.

As a toddler I apparently had a habit of turning on and off light switches. As a toddler, I have a vague memory of going with my parents to visit a friends apartment (which means it was probably in New Haven) and turning on and off a switch, not immediately sure what it did. I’m not sure it turned on the light in a closet or in the room at the end of the hall, but it wasn’t immediately obvious to my 2-3 year old mind what it did. But I was committed to flipping it until I found out.

I’ve always had a curiosity about how things worked. For some, simply knowing “it works” or “this is how I do something” is good enough. And to be honest, I often apply that in my own life. But, I have a strong bias that understanding the fundamentals goes a long ways to improving ones ability to do their job. In the world of SQL Server for example, I know many programmers who know enough to write a select statement, but have no clue how that’s executed under the covers in SQL Server. And for them, that’s fine. But as a DBA I’ve always wanted to know more. It’s a reason why I’ve read books such as The Database Relational Model by CJ Date and others. I want to understand better how things work.

And so, I’m loving my current classes, especially Anatomy and Physiology I. We’re still in the introductory phase, but starting to dive deeper. Yesterday afternoon’s class for example we started to dive into things like Carrier Mediated Transport channels and chemically gated ion channels and more.

Did you know that the inner well of the plasma membrane of a cell is typically at a -70mV potential compared to the outside, and this is due mainly to the cells ability, nay, requirement to transport Na+ ions outside to the extracellular medium? Well now you do.

“But why would one care?” you might ask. Well, from this we get to the point where in certain cells, by properly manipulating this potential we can cause cells to contract and then un-contract (I hesitate to use the word expand here). And by doing that, when we have large groups of specialized cells, we have muscle fiber and with muscle fibers we can build muscles, such as the heart.

And this all starts with a miniscule voltage difference between the inside and outside of a cell.

Honestly, the more I learn about just the basics of how a typical cell works and the amount of chemical activity in it and across its plasma membrane, the more I sit back and just say “Wow, that’s just so incredibly cool.”

So yeah, I’m over a month in now and still loving it.

SQL Upgrades

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Fear

Today’s another T-SQL Tuesday, thanks to Steve Jones. This month he’s asked us to talk about SQL upgrades.

I thought I’d write about a SQL Upgrade that wasn’t.

As a DBA I’ve worked with SQL Server since 4.21a. Yes. I’m that old. And a common experience I’ve had, which I suspect I share with many DBAs, is that every company I’ve worked with, either as an employee, or as a consultant has been reluctant to upgrade.

And often it’s understandable. Depending on their licensing situation and finances, an upgrade can be costly, especially for a smaller company. So companies often soldier on with older versions. In fact, just the other day on Twitter, I saw a post from someone asking about tuning queries on SQL 2020. In any event, especially as a consultant, I’m not alone in seeing resistance to upgrades.

But one client really stands out. I started working with them about a decade ago. They were running SQL 2005. Now, if you do the math, you’ll realize that by this time SQL Server 2008 and SQL 2012 had come out.

Technically I was brought in for a separate project, but when they became aware of my skills, they asked me to help tune their current database. There were some easy lifts (such as removing a duplicate index on a particular table that did nothing to help select performance, but obviously hurt insert performance). But by far one of their worst performing procedures was one that was handed an XML string which it then had to parse. I made several recommendations but realized that as long as they were depending on this stored procedure to parse the XML and were using SQL 2005, this would be a huge bottleneck. There was a pretty common and known issue with the way that SQL 2005 parsed XML.

The simple and obvious upgrade was to upgrade, ideally to SQL 2012. The answer was a firm “no”. It wasn’t even the cost, it was fear. It seems they, like many folks who had done the upgrade from SQL 2000 to SQL 2005 had hit several performance issues due to changes in the query optimizer and were afraid that they’d have as bad or worse issues upgrading to SQL 2008 or SQL 2012. They were far more comfortable with the devil they knew than the devil they didn’t.

Now, I can fully appreciate this, but it was frustrating. It was more frustrating because their business was fairly seasonal in nature, which meant that they could have done the upgrade soon after their busy season and had 8-9 months to debug performance issues. They would have also gained other benefits from the upgrade.

I’d love to say I finally had shown them enough proof of the advantages, had shown them how low the risk would be, and how to mitigate such risks. Alas, I didn’t. They decided (and to be fair there were other reasons completely unrelated to their SQL Server concerns) to migrate to a full LAMP stack. SQL Server was out, MySQL was in. Of course they had other issues there, but those weren’t my problem.

Upgrading SQL Server Today

I knew then, and still know now, that the upgrade would have been far less of an issue than they feared. But, I couldn’t and still can’t completely dismiss their fears. They were far from the only company that had been somewhat burned by the SQL 2000 to 20005 upgrades. I’ve heard of other companies that resisted upgrades during that era for similar reasons .I still sometimes hear echoes of such fears. And let’s be honest, often a database server is absolutely essential to the core of a company. Unlike front end code that might be easily rolled back, often SQL upgrades are very hard to roll back. (In reality it’s not as bad as some think, but it’s often non-trivial also.)

I will give Microsoft credit for listening. Since then, I know they’ve taken a lot of steps to mitigate such fears and have made backwards functionality a far higher priority than they used to. Other than licensing costs, honestly, at this point, I think companies should be on a regular update cycle. There’s almost always performance benefits and these days, the drawbacks are pretty minimal. And honestly, if you’re on Azure, you’re being upgraded without knowing it.

My advice, don’t fear the upgrade, anymore.

Time Management

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One of the side effects, happy I tend to think, of taking my prereqs for PA school is that it’s forced me to better about my time management.

I’ve often said that one of the advantages of consulting is I can set my own hours. And there’s truth to that. But there’s a flip side. Sometimes it can be hard to get started on projects or to even get motivated. With projects sometimes I feel guilty if I’m setting aside time for them and not hustling for more work. Or, motivation is low because well, sometimes it’s tough to get motivated when the highlight of your day is “Can you add this user to the database?”

But now, I have approximately 12 hours of the week I absolutely have to block out. I can’t make excuses to myself of “oh, I can do that later” or “Oh, I should be trying to drum up more work” etc. I have to be in a room or lab, focusing on a particular topic.

But more so, on top of that, I have to block out time pretty much every night and so far one day of the weekend, to go over notes, study the past week, prepare for the next and work on study aids. So this has forced me to get better about time management. Fortunately I’m not in the stage where it’s highly stressful. If anything I’m feeling a bit better. I feel like I’m accomplishing more. So, a side effect of my school work is I actually feel a little more charged because I feel like I’m using my time more effectively.

And part of that, is making sure I get this blog out in time to take care of the rest of my day.