One of the things I have enjoyed about working at ChannelAdvisor is being in the EAP program in Microsoft the last two years. This year that included going to the first ever SQLCAT customer engagement lab for SQL on Linux and seen firsthand how committed Microsoft is to making SQL Server on Linus a success. This is engagement lead to some of my other activities I’ll talk about later such as the PASS Linux Marathon. But The trip to Redmond was fun and the blue soda they have is amazing and not for someone with migraines. They kept us well fed and in the lab for many hours a day. But we learned a lot and had a successful test that told us we could run SQL on Linux in our shop. And told me that SQL on Linux was going to something everybody was going to need to get up to speed on quickly.
Becoming a superhero was something that was years in the making. My coworkers had bought me a cape months long before I got the official job title mainly for my work as a Guardian ad Litem for the state for North Carolina that I have been doing longer than I have been an official DBA. In that capacity, I’ve had the opportunity to shape the futures of over 40 children. This year I was concentrated on five kids in particular. Two kids I no longer have because they have either found their permanent home or have aged-out of the foster care. I still have three kids from the beginning of the year to advocate for and will do everything in my superpowers to protect their best interests. Anybody that has been to any of sessions has heard me say this is my favorite job because it is the one that makes a difference in the word. Helping families heal from past neglect or abuse issues or helping a child find a new permanent family that they will be forever safe with well I just can’t think of anything more worthwhile personally for me to be involved with. Mostly that is due with how I grew up in an abusive household with lots of issues, so I get to be a superhero so to speak and help children not return to those bad situations where I can.
Sealing the deal on my superhero title was probably my ability to SQL or (SQLing) to make it a verb and make my migraines go away. But one wintry day (at least in West Virginia where I was in ski vacation) there was a corrupt database but back in North Carolina, there were very five DBAs that had been awake for over 36 hours. I was on this vacation at my doctor’s behest to get some rest while I awaited the magical cure of medication to help with getting rid of migraines I had for since November. As the snow literally was coming down a request come in for me to hop because the five DBAs at home had maintenance that weekend and had patched all the servers and one server was being a bad server. It will randomly shut down, and it was due to a corrupt database but we had 40+ database on this server so we had to run DBCC CHECKDB on each database until found the bad database. Once the bad database was found I restored it to another server and user a schema copy of the database and bulk copied the data into it and backed up and restored it back to production. Turned out a system table had become corrupt causing the abrupt shutdown didn’t we didn’t lose even one bit of data. But the minute I was given the problem and started working on it my migraine was lessened and even went away. I also noticed at SQL Saturdays that month that when I would present that my migraine would go away. So SQLing is like medicine for me.
So I started SQL Saturdays slow, three in 2015, six in 2016, and well in 2017 I turned into an addict and did 18 (I think I have been dared to beat this and then Idera liked the dare so I think that makes it a double dare, but I’m not sure about keeping up with that pace). Thanks to all of the cities who selected Nashville, Raleigh, Richmond, Colorado Springs, Baltimore (great birthday party), Philadelphia, South Florida (my son had a great 21st birthday vacation), Chattanooga, Atlanta, Columbus, Louisville (doubles as family vacation time), Indianapolis (Go Hoosiers!), Spartanburg, Pittsburgh, Orlando, Charlotte, and Washington, DC. I developed three new talks this year for the events Tips on Managing a Lot SQL Servers, Monitoring Availability Groups, and The Importance of Baselining (which I found out people don’t read your abstracts and think that could be something to do with analyzing business data). I presented to a few local user groups including the Triad User Group in Greensboro, NC, my group TriPass, and the Washington, DC group. I also did three virtual presentations two for the Database Administration Group and one for GroupBy, you can click on my Presentations link at the top of the page to view those. Then to present at the Companero Conference and best of all at the PASS Summit. Wow, what a year of presentations.
The best part of presenting at all the SQL Saturdays and local user groups is the number of people I’ve been able to add to my network and make friends with. I feel like a part of the #SQLFamily now and that is a special thing to part of.
In August I approached PASS about starting a virtual group for Linux but it doesn’t fit into the strategic plans to start a virtual group for that topic. So they asked me to lead bringing Linux content into the existing groups. Which I delivered five sessions before Summit hit and speakers were busy getting ready for their talks for that. Out of that came the opportunity for me the first volunteer to organize a virtual event for PASS which led to the PASS Linux Marathon on December 13ththatt PASS said was the most successful virtual event they have had. So within a four week period of time, I manage to find six speakers willing to speak on various Linux related topics and put together a schedule without too much. I moderated half of the sessions for the event.
Due to my work with the PASS Linux Marathon, multiple presentations, and volunteering to be PASS Summit Buddy I was awarded the PASS Outstanding Volunteer Award in November. Something I was very surprised to receive and very pleased to recognized for my work volunteering in the community.
This year I created four new presentations Monitoring Availablity Groups, Tips on Managing a Lot of SQL Servers, Does This Look Weird? The Importance Of Baselining, and Collecting Performance Metrics. The one I want to perfect and give the most next year is Collecting Performance Metrics (it might need a catchier title or better abstract feel free to take a look it on my presentation page and send suggestions).
In November, a Summit Idera announced I would be an Idera Ace for 2018 which allows me some travel funds for SQL Saturdays while I write blog posts, test software, do Geek Syncs, and participate in other activities for them. It is a great program to be a part of.
All vacations this year corresponded with SQL Saturdays. My main vacation was in Miami which corresponded with SQL Saturday South Florida and my son’s 21st birthday. We had fun we got to alligators, ride on a pirate boat to see mansions, go to the zoo, and see the beach. I may have been working on writing a chapter for a book while I was there so not in full vacation mode. My second vacation was between SQL Saturday Louisville and SQL Saturday Indianapolis (sorry again for not staying for the after party). But my family lives in and around Louisville so SQL Saturday Louisville always turns into family vacation time for me.
Some of my goals for 2017 were as follows and some a completed and some I didn’t
- Be a morning person get up 5 AM and go to bed at 9 AM (people who know me how much of a love/hate relationship my body has with sleep due to medical conditions)
- This took some help from a doctor and to get rid of my migraines
- Lose 40 lbs weight
- Um I gained some weight
- Cut back on watching TV
- I don’t actually watch TV anymore
- Read a book every other week
- I ready a two books month now
- Work harder as a Guardian ad Litem to be sure I am watching out for the best interest of the kids I am representing
- I developed a system that helps feel like I more in contact with is happening, I don’t know that it is working harder or that I’m better, but it makes me feel like I am
- Get a Linux certification
- Didn’t do anything on this besides look at the different certifications
- Take Pluralsight courses for Linux
- Started the Pluralsight courses
- Take Pluralsight courses for PowerShell
- Didn’t do anything with this one
- Finally, pay off my student loans and credit cards
- Due to my migraines, I had some unexpected expenses that prevented me from completing this one
