Professional Development Archives - Page 13 of 16

30Sep 2013 by Grant Fritchey 9 Comments

An Experiment Concludes

[caption id="attachment_2548" align="alignleft" width="300"] That was hard work[/caption] You may or may not have noticed, but every single week day for the month of September, I've put up a blog post. Some were short little blurbs linking to some other person's blog or an article that I decided to comment on. Some were the normal, longer, type of posts that I put up, explaining some bit of technical behavior that has interested me or that I've had questions about. This is the last week day of the month and I'm excited to be able to go back to blogging 1-2 times a week again. There was no small amount of stress ensuring that I had posts scheduled out for each day, coming up with ideas, getting them written up. Whew!…

06Sep 2013 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Speaker of the Month: September 2013

Professional Development

This is my second post in what I hope will be an ongoing series. You can see the rules for this, such as they are, and the last winner here. I didn't travel this past month, so I'm pulling my speaker of the month from a session that was recorded at 24 Hours Of PASS. I love the topic of database design. I love the topic performance tuning. So, my speaker of the month is Audrey Hammonds (b|t) and her session Design Matters! The Performance Impact of Database Design. I've known Audrey for a few years now, but I'd never sat through one of her sessions. What's wrong with me? I don't know, but I finally did and I'm really happy that I took care of it. I loved how…

02Aug 2013 by Grant Fritchey 6 Comments

Speaker of the Month, August 2013

Professional Development

I'm trying out a new blog post series, mostly for myself as an exercise. I'm going to pick one speaker each month that I've seen present recently and tell you what I thought of them. Now, don't panic. If you stunk up the place, I won't abuse you... by name. Kidding. This is going to be endlessly positive and supportive. I'll try to find places where you can go to see these speakers in the future, if I can (Lanyrd.com people). If not, maybe they'll notice this post and tell us themselves. For those interested in getting picked, don't bother me. This is arbitrary & random. However, be sure that you have a blog (or equivalent) that I can direct people to or I'll skip over you. If you don't…

09May 2013 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Book Review: Business in the Trenches

Professional Development

I'm trying to improve. That's at just about everything too. I know I don't know enough or have enough skills to alwaysÂ get things done in an efficient manner, so I'm trying to learn more. One way is by reading, a lot. I've read a number of management and leadership books, many of them reviewed on this web site. I just finished the book Business in the Trenches. I really enjoyed it. It combined two of my passions, self-improvement and history, specifically history of World War I. Now, this is a tech, community and business blog, so I won't go on & on about the Great War (although I could if you wanted). Instead, I simply want to provide you a link to my review of this book. It really isÂ a…

20Mar 2013 by Grant Fritchey 8 Comments

Laws You Break at Your Peril

Professional Development

Laws of Thermodynamics TANSTAAFL Gods of the Copybook Headings All magic comes with a price Winter Is Coming My adult years started with a pretty thorough education in physics thanks to Uncle Sugar and the Navy Nuclear Power School. The laws of thermodynamics were carved into our brains (along with Baumgart's Law*). Experience has taught me that all these other statements are more or less riffs on the concepts put forward by the fundamentals of the laws of thermodynamics. They're just applications of the same within social spheres. In short, if you have a physical engineering background, you tend to be a realist. But note, I'm not a pessimist. I just recognize a simple thing. No matter how positive my thoughts are, no matter my belief in the righteousness of…

11Mar 2013 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

Time to Chat

Professional Development, Redgate Software

The greatest part of my job is that I get to travel all over the world to present different technical sessions. But, it's not the presentations that make it cool. It's the fact that I get to meet people. I get a chance to hang out with my #sqlfamily. I get a chance to make new friendships. Those contacts are amazing. I love the opportunity to sit down and talk to people about what they're doing with technology, the challenges they face, what's common with my own experience, what's different. From all that, I get a chance to grow and learn. Sometimes I even get the chance to help people. I'm going to be all over the place between now and June. I'd love to get the opportunity to talk…

27Feb 2013 by Grant Fritchey 18 Comments

It Is Your Fault

Professional Development

I earned my nickname. I'm proud of it. I am the Scary DBA. I don't really like to advertise my other nickname, Rant (get it, Grant shortened to another word). I earned that one too. I'm not proud of it at all. I got that one because I sometimes don't listen as much as I should and, because I tend to be more than a little passionate about my job and my databases, I would go off on a rant. And yeah, I stood in the way of some development processes and approaches that I shouldn't have. Instead of facilitating the development team and trying to understand their problems and issues, I just said "No." Usually at length. I just finishedÂ reading this post from Martin Fowler, whose work I've Â enjoyed,…

25Feb 2013 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

SQL Saturday #187 Richmond And More

Professional Development, Redgate Software

In just a couple of weeks I'll be flying down to Richmond, VA to speak at SQL Saturday #187. I'll be presenting two topics, Backups for the Accidental DBA and Query Tuning in the Clouds. It's going to be a great event with a bunch of excellent speakers. If you're in the area, come on down and say hello. And, if you have some time on Friday before the event, Red Gate Software is hosting a special 1/2 day seminar targeting the database professional just getting started with their career. There are only a few seats left, so if you're interested, sign up quick. Steve Jones and I will be presenting on several topics from monitoring to backups, database corruption and indexing. It'll be great way to learn, network, see…

06Feb 2013 by Grant Fritchey 11 Comments

DBAs and the Dark Closet

Professional Development

For many years, I loved being a DBA because, unlike being a developer, I could sort of hide from the world. I could go into a dark closet (a well-lit cube, but hang with me here) and hide from everyone (except the people in the cubes next to me, my boss, the teams I supported, the people I passed on the way to the toilet, others) and just be a hermit (except for the daily stand-ups, weekly status meetings, occasional training) and only ever talk to people when things went wrong at 3AM (or at 2PM when the CIO and a bunch of other managers would be standing in my desk). As long as I did my job well, maintaining the backups, running maintenance, and setting appropriate security settings, I…

09Jan 2013 by Grant Fritchey 5 Comments

Plans for 2013

Professional Development

I have lists. Lots of lists. I even have them in different locations sometimes. Some of them are carefully written down in my notebook, others are typed into OneNote and I've been experimenting with Remember the Milk and Trello (Trello is winning). These lists include ideas for presentations, blogs, articles. Notes from sessions I've attended or meetings. Lots and lots of plans and ideas and all that sort of stuff. I try to keep it organized, but sometimes it runs away from me. However, I find writing things down helps me to keep things organized. Between very carefully scheduling out my calendar and all these notes, I only occasionally completely drop the ball. One ball I dropped was coming up with some goals, some plans, for 2012. I just plowed…

Category: Professional Development