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Links for the Week – 2010.02.12

Feb 13, ’10 12:00 PM

This is more of a “what I’ve been reading” rather than a link dump from previous week’s RSS feed.

A Plea for Plain English – Tony Davis’s “A Plea for Plain English” rings home with me. Far too much writing is full of heavy, pompous words used purely to make the author feel smarter. Joseph Conrad – one of the greatest writers of the English language – was not a native speaker. Yet he wrote with a simplicity, grace, and style that is still unequaled. While we all can’t be Joseph Conrad, we can all strive to write in clear, concise, readable prose. Technical writing doesn’t need to be dry, writing effective prose can be just as much an art form as creating a brilliant short story, novel, painting, photograph, or song.

I’ve been getting a lot more interested in mathematics. Not just how they related to computers, but also how mathematics relate to design. Design, art, and aesthetics are partially governed by universal principles. There are ratios that are more visually pleasing simply because we find them in nature. Being aware of these ratios helps us create effective designs that draw in the reader and hold them to the content.

B-movies. I watch a lot of old slasher, exploitation, b-movies.

Flash, iPad, Standards – Jeffrey Zeldman talks about why the total lack of Flash on the iPad is a good thing: it provides an incredibly compelling, public, reason for designers and developers to abandon proprietary formats like Flash and Silverlight and focus on open standards. Some people would argue that a lack of Flash would kill the device but on the flip side what can you do in Flash that people need to do that you can’t do with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS? Combine that with the in browser relational data storage that HTML5 provides and there is no reason to use a proprietary graphics engine apart from vector graphics bullshittery/professional masturbation.

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How the Hell Did I Get Here?

Jan 19, ’10 12:32 PM

Paul Randal started this chain post. He tagged Steve Jones who, in turn, tagged Jack Corbett who finally tagged me. I’m pretty sure everyone who nominally makes sense has already been tagged at this point thus leaving Jack to scrape the bottom of the barrel.

Like Jack, I think I could approach this in a number of different ways. I think I’ve already answered the professional route that I took. If I haven’t, it’s probably because my professional route isn’t all that interesting and it’s also all available on LinkedIn. You can, and should, fill in the job changes on my resume with something interesting like “After being attacked by a bear in the janitor’s closet at CareWorks Technologies, Jeremiah decided to take a safer job at HMB (they have no bears on staff as janitors).”

Anyway, you asked for it, you got it: how the hell did I get here?

I’m a Rock and Roll Machine

I love being on stage and in front of people, even though it terrifies the crap out of me. Apparently, I like that adrenaline surge. I’ve been playing guitar since I was 13 years old. When I was 23 I answered an advertisement and auditioned for a band. I got the job after 5 minutes.

Being a musician takes a lot of hard work, dedication, and practice. You work for hours and hours as a group, and hours and hours on your own preparing for a show. At that show, you’re going to walk up on stage and try to steal the attention of a room full of people who would, frankly, rather be doing one of a million other things – playing pool, talking to friends, hitting on that girl across the bar – than listening to you. As musicians, it was our job to get their attention, hold it for an hour, and make sure that they were happy about it. That job gets even harder when you’re in a band that only plays original material.

What seemed really fun – being in a band – turned out to be a lot of work – practicing three nights a week for four hours a night with the band and then practicing even more on my own. I learned a lot about myself – my tolerance for bullshit, how to get attention, and how to act in front of a crowd of people – while I was in the band. I also learned a lot about how to budget scarce resources – money and time – while still getting the job done – getting to the show.

The band eventually fell apart, as most do, but I learned many valuable lessons that I carry with me – time and resource management, performing skills, and how to make an ass of yourself and be okay with it. Most importantly, I learned that passion alone isn’t enough. You have to work for something if you really want to be good at it.

Everything to Everyone

The fact is, I’m not everything to everyone. But for a long time, I thought that I could do it.

Before and while I was in the band, I was married. The band took up a lot of time and it took a lot of time away from my marriage. While being in a band didn’t cause my eventual divorce, I’m sure it contributed to it (I quit the band about a year before my ex-wife and I quit the marriage). I remarried pretty quickly and that marriage ended almost as fast as it started.

Throughout all of this, though, there’s a huge undercurrent – I was trying to make everyone happy. I was trying to be a good husband, musician, developer, friend, son, brother, step-father, and about a million other things. I stretched myself thin and I broke.

These days, I know that I can only be me and that I’m the only person I need to make happy. There’s a reason why I work with SQL Server but I program with Ruby, why I listen to old school hardcore punk but I play a bizarre blend of folk and country, why I devote more time to my friends and family than I have before – these things all make me happy. If it doesn’t make me happy and I don’t need to do it to live, I don’t do it.

Self-Fulfilling Catastrophe

A couple of paragraphs ago I said “I stretched myself thin and I broke.” I really do mean that. During the first divorce, I moved into a tiny house on the ass end of Columbus, stopped paying most of my bills, and ended up living on as little as $20 a week. The funny part, though, is that I always found the cash to go out and party, or to stay in and party. This became a bad habit even once the divorce was done and I should have been back on my feet. Over the next 4 years everything spiralled completely out of control.

I’m pretty sure there were more than a few times I nearly lost my job. I frequently called in “sick” from the crowded patio of a bar at 1:30AM, had my car repossessed, racked up so much debt that people were calling my family members to find out where I was, and I partied seven nights a week. I lost a lot of my friends and damaged most of my remaining friendships irrepairably in the process. Throughout this ordeal, a few of my friends stood by me. They didn’t give up on me despite my ardent attempts to turn myself into a drooling train wreck of a human being.

In June of 2008, I gave it all up. I realized that I was a total train wreck and that everything around me was completely out of control. My career was stagnant. I was sliding backwards as a person. I wasn’t meeting any of my goals for myself because I was too busy slowly killing myself.

I stopped drinking. I got the help I needed and I began the long, painful, process of pulling myself up by my shoelaces. I dried out.

By August, I had completed the SQL Server 2005 MCITP: Database Developer certification. I started the Columbus chapter of PASS in October. I started paying back all of my bad debt (only a few months left to go). Nine months after I quit drinking, I quit my one to two pack a day smoking habit (sorry about that one, Mom and Dad) – I never would have thought I could end my 13 year addiction to nicotine.

I have a great relationship with my family and friends now, it’s better than anything I could ever hope for.

I learned a lot of things from this.

  1. I can be horribly selfish.
  2. There’s nothing better than not being that selfish.
  3. I can do damn near anything I want to do if I put my mind to it.
  4. There are some things in life that are so important you can’t afford to overlook them.

Afterward

This summer, one of my friends (someone who met me at my lowest and stuck by me through everything) is giving me the greatest honor I could ever hope for: on June 19th I’ll be officiating his wedding. Like a lot of people, I wouldn’t change a thing about my life.

Comments (18)

Knowing and not Knowing

Jan 14, ’10 9:00 AM

In the IT field, people have the expectation that we’ll always have an answer or a solution. The problem is that we usually don’t have the answer. A lot of the time, we don’t even have the beginnings of a clue. Your reaction when you don’t have an answer speaks volumes. I’m going to use a story to illustrate this point.

The Story

Adam and Bill work together at Amalgamated Spats. During a design meeting Adam mentions a product that could solve some of the problems the developers at Amalgamated Spats are facing. Although Adam is a specialist, he has a great deal of work on his plate and Bill is designated to develop the features. Bill isn’t a specialist, he’s a generalist. Bill is a great developer, but he’s unfamiliar with this specific product.

Over the course of development, Bill makes great strides. Unfortunately, there are some features that he isn’t able to solve programmatically even though they are included in the product. These features are features that were sold as part of reason to use the product. When Adam and Bill’s manager talks to Bill about his progress, Bill tells the manager that he wasn’t able to get the features done because it isn’t possible using the product. The problem is that the features do exist in the product, they just weren’t available the way Bill was using it.

Adam and Bill’s manager is upset that they’ve put so much faith in this product. While the manager trusts Adam, Bill has been working with the product day in and day out, trying to implement these features – why wouldn’t Bill tell the truth? As a result, Adam loses credibility. He can get that credibility back, and certainly will, but for a while it’s gone.

The Problem

There are a couple of problems with this situation:

  1. Bill has effectively thrown Adam under the bus (we call this bussing). Adam has lost credibility with the manager because he gave “wrong” advice.
  2. Bill said “No” when he should have said “I don’t know.”

Of these, the second is far worse. Ultimately, the first problem will go away and Adam will gain that respect back and everyone will be happy again. But the second problem speaks volumes.

It’s Not Okay to Say “I don’t know”

But I just said that Bill should have said “I don’t know,” right? Wrong. Saying “I don’t know” and ending it at that is not acceptable. In this crazy software development world, it’s our job to find the solutions to problems. Did you read that correctly? I didn’t say that it’s our job to code the solutions to problems, it’s our job to find the solutions to problems. Sometimes the solution is to use an existing solution or feature which you can only find through research. Do you see what I’m getting at yet? “I don’t know” isn’t acceptable but saying “I don’t know, but I’ll find out” is perfectly acceptable.

What’s the difference?

When you say “I don’t know” and you stop there you’re effectively throwing your hands in the air and giving up. You’re not only admitting that you don’t know, but that your lack of knowing is the end of it. It ends the conversation

If you say “I don’t know, but let’s find out,” you’re telling the other person that you don’t know the answer and it bothers you. It bothers you so much that you’re going to find out the answer. You’re advertising your inquisitive mindset and the way you solve problems.

What Should I Do?

The next time someone asks you a question where you don’t know the answer, tell them you don’t know. Be completely upfront about it. Follow that up with “but I’ll find out.” Then, actually find out the answer. Research the problem, research the product, and consult with experts – even if you think you are one.

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Project 52

Jan 11, ’10 8:00 AM

Rather than make a resolution to blog more frequently, I’ve decided to hold myself accountable and I joined Project 52. Here’s what Project 52 is all about:

Project52 is a personal challenge geared toward getting fresh content on your website. The goal is to write at least 1 new article per week for 1 year. Because we all know what it‘s like to procrastinate on our content. A website is not just a fresh design that can be uploaded to the web and forgotten about!

I’m hoping I can hold up my end of the bargain, but here’s to hoping.

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Goals for 2010

Dec 31, ’09 7:12 AM

Thomas LaRock thought it would be fun to tag me in yet another round of blogging bingo, this time to answer the question “What are you Goals and Theme Word for 2010?”. To tell the truth, I have not made any kind of New Year’s Resolution for a number of years. I usually review my goals on a regular basis, but let’s put them out here for everyone to see.

Theme word? I don’t have one, “f*%#ing rad” is two words, thank you very much.

Communication

Become a Better Writer

A long time ago, I went to college for four years, took out a bunch of loans, and got a degree in English, Non-Fiction Writing. I did exceptionally well in my English classes and did even better in the writing classes. I love writing and, frankly, the quality of my writing has not been up to par recently. I want to change my focus as a writer this year. I want to switch from writing short, highly technical, blog posts and change to creating longer article and essay length pieces. There’s nothing wrong with shorter, technical, posts but that is not where my interests lie. I want to focus on improving my writing so I can effectively teach more advanced concepts through writing as well as through public speaking. I was a good writer before and I’ll be a good writer again.

Become a Better Presenter

I have no doubts about my abilities as a presenter – I have a lot of room for improvement. Over the course of the year I’m going to team up with a number of people to improve my presentations. I want to get better at better content and delivery as well as meticulously practicing my presentations until I can deliver them in my sleep. I know that a lot of improvement comes from repetition and I would like to speak at least six times this year. With my current upcoming speaking schedule, that shouldn’t be difficult at all, but we’ll see.

Self-Employment

I don’t intend to be self-employed by the end of 2010, but I plan on being well on my way. How am I going to get there?

Writing

I’m writing stronger blog content. That’s not going to be enough. I want to get my name in a more places – magazines, guest blog posts, paid content, white papers, and a book. I’ve been shopping an idea around to various publishers and I’m hoping to have a book written and finished by the end of 2010. None of these things pay big bucks, but they all add to the bottom line.

Consulting

I haven’t done much consulting in the past, of course it was difficult when my day job was being a consultant – there’s an expectation that you will bring the business back to the company. Things have changed, I’m a full time employee now. My employer and I have had the talk – I’m allowed to do consulting work as long as I don’t help out our competitors.

This year I will take on several clients that require a small amount of time (10 – 20 hours each) every month. This isn’t to replace my existing job, this is to supplement it and provide additional income. Before I go completely solo, I want to have a substantial savings buffer built up and doing work on the side makes this a lot easier. I don’t plan on going at it alone – I’ve discussed this several co-conspirators and we have plans to get started this year.

Personal Ventures

I have an idea for a business that will make me tens, maybe even hundreds, of dollars. I plan on fully pursuing this over the course of 2010. Honestly, I have incredibly high hopes for this business and we have already thought of multiple ways to monetize our business. That’s not to say that it’s sure to happen, I have a lot of hard work ahead me, but I’m looking forward to it.

PASS

As many of you know, I was elected to the PASS Board of Directors and subsequently put in charge of the Summit program portfolio. This is the heart and soul of what I want to do over the next 12 months. I am going to make sure that the 2010 Summit program committee has my full support and that we’re can make the summit the best event possible.

Inky Mess

This is a personal one: I want to finish both full arm tattoo sleeves this year and, hopefully, start on my legs.

Once again, I think I’m supposed to pick victims. I’m going to pick Matt Nowack, Rick Kierner, Jeff Blankenburg, and Jorge Segarra

I also want a chainsaw on my hand like Bruce Campbell in Army of Darkness. That would be f*%#ing rad.

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Busy Busy Silence

Dec 24, ’09 8:37 AM

It’s time for a personal message from your friendly Director-Elect-at-Large.

In about a week, I’m going to be taking on my first year of duties as a Director-at-Large of PASS. What are those duties? I’m going to be overseeing the program efforts for the 2010 PASS Summit. I’ll be working closely with an established team of volunteers to make the upcoming Summit an amazing experience for everyone.

Outside of PASS, what have I been doing?

Writing
I have been working on an essay length blog post. I want to branch into writing longer, more-focused, articles here. I love the shorter posts, but sometimes I don’t have anything to write about. Sometimes I just want to focus my creative energy toward something that requires more effort from me. These longer articles give me a chance to be a bit more creative and exercise my creative powers.

It’s also nice to get back to one of my passions: writing. Long before I went to college, I had a passion for writing and a passion for the sciences. When I went to college I majored in English with a concentration in Non-Fiction Writing. My original goal was to go into technical writing. That didn’t happen. I had to feed myself, so I got a “real job.” It’s nearly ten years later and I’m confident in my knowledge and ideas and writing abilities. It’s time to start writing longer pieces.

Working
For those of you how might not know, my client hired me on in November. They made me an offer a few days before I left to go to the PASS Summit and I accepted. This has been a big change for me. For the first time in 5 years I’m not a consultant – I am now responsible for the longevity of our data. With that added responsibility, I’m now the key decision maker for our databases (barring the budget, of course). In addition to my move onto the PASS Board and becoming a strategic thinker, I have to wear both tactical and strategic hats at work. It has been an interesting change and I’ve been fortifying the shop so I can do enjoyable things moving forward instead of plugging holes.

Working… for myself
I’ve been working on several side projects. There’s very little to report. One of the projects is a loose idea that will be hashed out over the next year and will hopefully become something great. Watch this space for more. I should be able to announce another one in a few weeks. And, the third one…

Well, I’ve jumped headfirst into the world of software development, again. My friend, Matt Nowack, and I (with some help from Brent Ozar) have been collaborating for the last two weeks on a project. There’s not a lot to talk about, yet. But the change in technology stack has been interesting. Rather than use a Microsoft stack, we’re using Ruby on Rails, a pair of Macs, TextMate, SQLite, and github to work together on this project. It’s been a fun experience getting back into development and considering a different set of problems from the day to day issues of a DBA. What has really amazed me, though, is how well all of these different tools have come together so nicely to make our development experience painless.

Restores
As an aside, I had the primary HDD in my laptop die not once, but twice, in the last few days. The first time it threw an error during a routine drive check that OS X thankfully performs. I had backups, so I booted the machine from the install DVD, plugged in my backup drive, and did a full restore with a low-level format. within 48 hours, the machine wasn’t booting and Seagate’s tools were reporting massive disk errors. Seagate’s tools also let me put in an RMA request through the tool itself and I have been informed that my new drive should be shipping soon. Meanwhile, I went down to a local computer emporium and purchased a new HDD. I threw it in the laptop (unformatted) and fired up the laptop with the install DVD in the drive once again. Within three hours I was up and running with a working copy of my laptop. I have never doubted the need to take regular, reliable, backups. After the events of the last several days, I am doubly convinced. Without backups, I would still be installing software right now.

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What is Your Biggest Weakness?

Dec 9, ’09 1:00 PM

David Stein started a fun little game of blog tag and zapped Brent Ozar who, in turn, zapped me. The challenge here is to answer the interview question “What is your biggest weakness?” David’s answer was that he loves to jump straight into code. Brent’s answer is that he only wants to do things that he can do better than everyone else and only if he can do it quickly (Brent is what I call a Type A Slacker).

What’s my biggest weakness apart from a fondness for car keys and the gas pedal?

Well, there are two glaring flaws that come to mind. One is Brent’s raging flaw – if I don’t see myself as having any chance of being better than just about everyone, I don’t have a lot of interest in doing something.

As for my second flaw: if I’m going to do something and do it well, I’m also going to study that subject as if it were an academic subject. If I’m going to do it and I’m going to do it well, I’m going to understand why I’m doing it, how it works under the hood, and why it works that way. I will pursue the academic theory behind a subject thoroughly, sometimes far more than is necessary.

I love music. Over the course of my life, I have taken lessons in piano, guitar, and the french horn. I have taught myself the fundamentals of multiple percussion instruments, clarinet, and the fife. I’ve studied music theory formally in music classes and lessons and informally on my own. I’ve experimented with a variety of techniques to produce the sounds I want and have even taken apart and reassembled various musical instruments to gain a better understanding of their inner workings. Sounds like someone who likes music, right? Well, here’s the catch: I approached all of these instruments methodically, even though I wasn’t fully aware of it at the time. Ultimately, music became a passionate hobby: I knew that I would never be a great musician or composer. I didn’t have the drive or talent.

When I went to college I got a degree in English. I’ve always loved the written word. Rather than focus on analyzing literature, I studied the craft of writing. I read every book we were assigned on writing multiple times. I analyzed my favorite authors’ writing styles. I pared down my writing and built it up in other styles. I challenged myself to write about subjects I had never written about. I studied writing the way that many people study math or science.

I’m very lucky that I’m in a career where I can go beyond my immediate tasks, look inside, and find the theory that makes it all tick. It sometimes takes a good tug to pull me back from the theory to focus on the practical. Thankfully, so much of database development is based on a thorough understanding of theory that it’s okay to go off on a tangent.

Who is next in this game of tag? Matt Nowack, and Joe Webb.

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Links for the Week of 2009.12.04

Dec 4, ’09 9:00 AM

SQL Server

  • Kendal Van Dyke: Delegation: What It Is And How To Set It Up – The title says it all, folks.
  • wmarow’s disk & disk array calculator – Storage calculator. This wouldn't be terribly fascinating, except I know the performance characteristics of our I/O subsystem and when I plug in the variables, this is pretty close to real life performance. (Not directly SQL Server related, but it’s my blog so it goes where I wants it.)
  • A Loan At Last! – Brad Schulz thoroughly describes how to create a loan payment schedule stored procedure using nothing but T-SQL. The end result is beautiful to behold.

Development

Stuff & Things

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Links for the Week 2009.11.20

Nov 20, ’09 8:00 AM

Bonus link dump week! Since I haven’t done one of these in several weeks, some of these links go all the way back to October 29th, enjoy.

SQL Server

Development

Stuff & Things

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Shameless Self Promotion

Nov 17, ’09 8:30 AM

or How to get Yourself Adopted from the Animal Shelter

A Trip to the Humane Society

Way back in 2001, I took a trip to the local humane society. Ostensibly, I was going there with my girlfriend at the time to look at kittens. We were resolved about not getting a cat that day. This story wouldn’t be interesting if we didn’t get a cat, so I’ll spoil the ending for you and let you know that we did take a cat home that day.

I don’t know if you’ve ever taken the time to visit your local humane society, but I will let you know that it is a series of cages filled with the cutest animals you have ever seen. The kittens are particularly cute balls of fuzz that either nap in a ball of kittens, meow in a pile of kittens, or frolic in some kind of tumbleweed of kittens. On that magical day, my normally cold heart was warmed by frolicking kittens and I took one of them out of a cage and brought her to one of the little rooms where you can acclimatize to an animal and make sure it isn’t going to try to claw your face off.

Sure enough, this kitten did not want to claw my face off. Instead she wanted to run in circles, meow, rub up against my leg and beg for attention. The very reason I pulled her out of her cage was because she was perched at the very front of the cage, waving one tiny paw through the bars, crying for attention. In short, she was a vocal kitten.

The Pay Off – For Someone

Eight years later, I still have that kitten, although she has grown to be the largest cat I have ever seen. If you are reading this after 5 PM Eastern time, there is a very good change that this cat is perched behind my head on the back of my desk chair. She still gets a lot of attention because she still calls out for attention – she shows me the toys she has “killed”, the socks she has shredded, and makes me aware of the random other things that cats do when people aren’t watching.

The point is that she knows how to get the attention and praise that she wants. Over the years she has learned the most effective ways to annoy the heck out of me and still get a positive response. Because my cat demands my attention, she gets it.

What Does This Have to do With Anything?

The point is – if my cat can figure out how to get attention and praise, you can get attention and praise (or free tuna). More appropriately: you can make your accomplishments known and profit from them.

Your Accomplishments

First off, it’s important that you start keeping track of your accomplishments. A few months ago, I mentioned making a personal development plan. One of the things in your PDP should be a list of your accomplishments. It’s going to be silly for you to make a list of your accomplishments once a year. Instead, I keep a list of my accomplishments in a text file. You could just as easily use a spreadsheet, One Note, Outlook, or any other record system. The point is that you’re recording your accomplishments.

Record and Review

Any time I do something that I’m particularly proud of, I add it to this list. If I’m not at home, I’ll send my self a reminder email from my phone to add whatever I’m pleased about to my list. The key about my approach is to record everything that you do and review it later. Don’t think, just record it. Did you fix a server and resolve a production outage in 30 minutes when it could have taken 24 hours? Record it. Re-write a stored procedure to use 95% fewer reads? Record it. Save the company $10,000,000 by shipping flanging skrill production to Denmark? Record it.

The point is, you’re recording it. You can filter it later.

I like to review this list of accomplishments weekly, at the very least. This keeps my recent accomplishments fresh in my mind and it helps me focus on my goals. A lot of the time, I’ll open up a copy of my PDP and have it in front of my while I review my goals. This not only helps me determine if I’m on the right track to meeting my goals, it also helps me keep track of whether or not my long-term goals and my current situation are aligned. This also gives me the chance to revise my PDP as the year goes on, rather than marching forward foolishly thinking that my goals from three months ago are still one hundred percent valid.

At the end of the day, you won’t get anywhere without making people aware of you, what you’ve done, and what you expect in return.

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