There I was, just a couple weeks back, whining that I wasn’t getting tagged by friends when a new meme comes out. Sure enough, when my friend, Paul Randal (blog | twitter), starts a new meme with me as one of the first handful of people tagged, it’s taken me a full ten days to get a response out the door. Yes – I deserve a wedgie.
In Paul’s initial post, I saw that he’d asked for three events that were pivotal in why I’m where I am today. To be honest, I’ve been noodling over my response ever since Paul first tagged me. So, in a sense, I’ve been writing this blog post for about twelve days now. Not that I’m off the hook or anything.
What Didn’t Make the List
Still, I have to admit it’s taken me some time to get to a point where I could write about the events that have brought me where I am today. Because, when I give a truly honest accounting of some of these major life changing events and pivotal decisions in my life, I’m not always proud of what I see. Like item #4 on my list of life-changing decisions. Don’t you DARE ask about #4. I mean it. If you do, there will be blood (see picture below)…
There are also a couple other non-events that also had a huge impact on my life’s direction. By non-event, I mean these things didn’t have a specific date and time. But they were enormously influential about how I handled opportunities or even helped make opportunities happen. First, I’d be remiss not to mention the impact that my personal faith has had on my life. Countless decisions were steered by that faith. Second, my upbringing naturally had a huge impact on shaping my personality, preferences, fears, and joys. (My mother is Italian, so I can honestly say that Parmesan cheese is one of life’s greatest joys.) Finally, my immediate family -marrying very young and having a rather large family- also meant I made a lot of decisions in certain ways, such as opting not to move for a better job so that the kids could have greater stability. Things would be very different if I’d put my own desire and ambitions ahead of them. With that said, let’s hit that top 3 list.
Add 1/5 Beefeater Gin + Article of Lingerie + Collegeboy Prank at a Zoo = Lifetime of Regret, a.k.a #4 on the List
Event #3
Pivotal, life-changing events shouldn’t come knocking on your door every day. In my case, one of the first and most pivotal events for me happened about 3/4 of the way through my senior year in high school, just a few months before graduation. Like my brother from another mother, Buck Woody (blog | twitter), money was a huge issue in my household. (I’ll save you the sob story. But trust me, there were many tears.) So whatever college and career I chose had to provide the most upward mobility as quickly as was humanly possible within the boundaries of the law (that meant no drug dealing). This is where my analytical side kicked in. Looking over my college scholarships, I examined the undergraduate catalogs at the various universities in one hand and the salary survey about their respective careers in the other.
I came up with a two-column list. The first column contained college majors that I would really enjoy career-wise, though not necessarily big money careers. Column #1 contained entries like teaching, writing, farming, and being a stoner. Notice how entries in column #1 were all among the most noble of professions and yet virtually guaranteed a life of penury? Yeah, I noticed that too. The second column contained college majors that I could tolerate, but had much better money prospects. Column #2 contained entries for engineering, medicine, law, becoming Hugh Hefner’s protege, and … computers.
I’d lived with computer since before I could read or write. My father was an analog computer engineer and, I still remember with great clarity, the desk-sized analog computer we had in our house in the 1970’s. It had 4K of memory, used punch cards, created a flurry of discarded chads when it would write data out to a punch card. My dad taught me about binary, octal, and hexadecimal, and the joys of vacuum tube computing. Unfortunately, he did not teach me how to throw or catch any sort of ball, which had dramatic repercussions throughout my school year (refer to wedgie picture above) – but I digress. Suffice it to say that by the time college rolled around, I was already well versed in 8-bit computing (I used Kaypro’s for you Osbourne and Sinclair snobs out there) and could envision that being a good career.
My Initial Career Choice - Stoner
Right about the same time I was choosing a future career, just before I graduated from high school, IBM launched an exciting new business computer called the IBM PC. It was a hugely successful product with the ultimate killer application – a spreadsheet. (The spreadsheet was an amazing innovation in its day. VisiCalc was the one I remembered being all the rage at the time.) These personal computers were also hugely expensive – a nicely loaded IBM PC or XT could routinely cost $5,000 and that’s in 1983 dollars, friends. So that’s when I started a part-time business, which I maintained all through college and a short while after, building and selling IBM PC clones. I learned a lot from that experience – how to pay taxes like a responsible business owner, a lot about salesmanship, quite a bit about business accounting, business law, and the goodness of being an entrepreneur. One surprisingly good outcome from all of this was that I didn’t have to sell out my love of writing and teaching. That’s probably 40% of what I do today, just with computers.
Event #2
Another major turning point in my professional life occurred in the early 1990’s. By that time, I’d held a couple professional jobs of the programmer/analyst variety working with Unix-based CAD/CAM tools, dBase, Fortran, and very early versions of Oracle. While my skill in these technologies was growing by leaps and bounds, this particular event isn’t about technology. You see, my first three professional jobs (outside of my own little business) all held in common the fact that I worked for terrible bosses. (I wonder if it’s any coincidence that these bosses, all male, were from the John Wayne school of management?) I then had the opportunity to move from those smaller businesses to a fairly large company called Nichols Research Corporation, now a part of Computer Sciences Corporation. I gleefully clapped my hands because my title was “Research Scientist” and, get this, I was actually working on NASA and US Army missile projects. I was literally a rocket scientist! However, the thing that truly amazed me about this new work environment was that my bosses were women. Great women. Women (like Liz Kennedy, Pat Burns, and Bev Meeler) who were collaborative, consensus-driven, and encouraging. They made me wonder why my male bosses never figured out that cussing an employee for 15 minutes at a time might not be the best way to motivate staff. These excellent business leaders taught me my first real world lessons in the difference between the autocratic style of management versus the coaching style of management. It was a lesson that I carried with me the rest of my life and try to instill in others whenever I get the chance. (Blatant Plug – Attend my top-rated professional development sessions at the next PASS Summit and read my professional development column in the PASS Community Connector e-newsletter!)
Event #1
She was my sugar-mama, and I was her lovin' cabana boy. She put me through college...
The number one event that changed the course of my life came up quite accidentally. I’d set my sights on earning a Master’s degree and, as the truly lazy know, you can complete a Master’s degree two semesters early by writing a thesis rather than sticking strictly with classes. Laziness (or perhaps it’s creativity?) raised it’s head once again with this thought “Why not write my thesis as a dual-purpose document? One that will earn the advanced degree and be published as a book?” That’s when I saw a rather small advertisement in the back of one of my favorite computer magazines of the day, a now defunct mainframe-oriented publication called Datamation, calling for authors for a new IT series they were starting. I pitched my master’s thesis and was shocked that I was accepted. I find it funny that I finished the book, Oracle’s Cooperative Development Environment, but never finished the Master’s degree. That book helped me land a new job in Nashville, TN at a prestigious Big 3 accounting firm, which helped me get another book deal with O’Reilly & Associates, which earned me a seat as a founding board member of the Professional Association for SQL Server, which helped me land my current, wonderful job at Quest Software. And which will eventually earn me a place in history for being the first database expert to dance on the bar at Coyote Ugly.
What Others Are Saying
Let me be honest with you. I really enjoyed this meme. And it’s one of the things that I’ve really enjoyed seeing happen with the SQL Server community in the last year or so – people opening up and sharing. This is what community is all about. One hundred years ago, I would’ve been thrilled to live in a town with as many supportive and encouraging friends who were just down the street from me. But thanks to the technology we work with and the willingness of all of these people, it’s almost like a small, friendly (Southern!) town all over again. I intend to read more in the meme thread, but here are just a few others that I’ve already read and enjoyed:
Brent Ozar (blog | twitter): I loved BBS’es too, amigo!
Kim Tripp (blog | twitter): She taught the first SQL Server class I ever attended!
Jorge Segarra (blog | twitter): He’s Mr Popular, being tagged 4 times. But who doesn’t love chicken, I ask?
Donabel Santos (blog | twitter): She’s a ninja, but a very nice one who’s not likely to cut your arms off.
Andy Leonard (blog | twitter): We’ve got to Mrs Leonard and Mrs Segarra to cook a big ol’ dinner for us. Then we can all die happy.
Jeremiah Peschka (blog | twitter): You’d think it was a movie based on real events, with a little extra drama added in, but it was ALL real.
There are so very many other good ones that I could go on for several more paragraphs. The reason I mention them, though, is that I somehow feel closer to all of these people. And at the end of the day, our lives are really and truly about the people we have touched and the friendships we have made. Everything else stands for naught.
I’ve always been intrigued by our process for allowing creative content, such as songs or movies, to become public domain. A common usage for public domain might be to create a short family video and, seeking a peppy and familiar piece of background music, you settle on “The Entertainer”, by Scott Joplin. (If you’ve never heard of it, listen here. You’ll recognize it.) Since the music is past the 75 year limit of copyright protection, it is now public domain – meaning that you don’t have to pay or seek permission to use it for your family home video.
Now, it seems that many old media companies are deliberately destroying great old celluloid video footage rather than allow it to become public domain. Of course, there’s plenty of old TV programming that don’t have a single living fan, but we’re talkin’ about classics here like Jack Benny and the BBC’s Dr Who. Read this news story and this one for an example.
So, what do you think? Is this a misuse of private ownership of aging IP? Is this just another example of old media putting their finger in the dike of digital entertainment for the sake of a dying business model?
I find this to be particularly ironic since old media companies are the first to exploit public domain material for their own uses. Case in point, what’s the last Disney animated film you’ve seen (no, not Pixar – Disney) that wasn’t adapted from an age old story?
A neat new administration and configuration management tool for the SQL Server set. I especially like the Run Book features, because Run Books are the way us “oldtimers” like to run our IT infrastructure. My pal, Buck Woody, also likes Run Books (and really big explosions by the guys on MythBusters, but that’s another discussion). Find all the details about the new tool, created by Bill Wunder, here.
"Richard, wasn't that an awesome interview?!?" "Carl, I could've danced, er, talked all night!"
In addition, I’m honored and amazed that the team at RunAsRadio invited me to participate in interview #143. These are the same guys who also put together one of the best and longest running IT podcasting shows – .NETRocks. Unlike a lot of interviews, it seems like we had too little time to cover all the topics. I’d love to hear your feedback!
I’ve been really intrigued by a meme making the rounds of the blogsphere concerning goals for the coming year and picking a theme word, rather than the usual New Year’s resolution.
As in all memes, one blogger starts it off and then others are tagged, spreading the chain outward. So Tom tagged several other good friends of mine, all of whom also chose to ignore me including: Brent Ozar (blog | twitter), Jeremiah Peschka (blog | twitter), Tim Ford (blog | twitter), and Jason Massie (blog | twitter) in their respective blog posts. So here’s the chain of the mem a couple levels deep:
Jorge Segarra (blog | twitter), whom I -DO- know, responded in his blog post called “There’s Going to be Some Bank Robbing in My Future“. Jorge in turn tagged: Ron Dameron (Blog | Twitter), Jonathan Gardner (Blog | Twitter), Tim & Lori Edwards (Blog | His Twitter – Her Twitter) whom I just had the pleasure of meeting at the last PASS Summit and, in a sacrilegious move sure to enrage the High Church for inviting a non-SQL person, his own wife, Jessica Segarra (Blog | Twitter). Actually, I really want Jorge to bring Jessica to a PASS or SQLSaturday event – WITH MANY OF HER INCREDIBLY YUMMY RECIPES READY FOR US TO EAT.
Since I know only Lori Edwards out of this group of taggees, you can read her (and Tim’s) blog entry here. The Edwards, however, tagged no one else.
Andy Leonard (blog | twitter), close friend and fellow Nashvillian Joe Webb (blog | twitter). Neither of these picked up the meme.
Possibly the coolest Canadian not sporting hair, Colin Stasiuk (blog | twitter) wrote his goals bloggery, “Comment Crazy and the Nasty Red Fonts of Doom“, and in turn tagged Andy Leonard (introduced earlier), Jorge Segarra (introduced earlier), and a new (but quite significant) blogger, Michelle Ufford (blog | twitter). Sadly, Michelle hasn’t blogged since last November. But there’s still time Michelle!
Jason didn’t pick up the meme and, honestly, I can’t tease him since I don’t know him that well. However, I do hear he can wax poetic about bacon much the same way my Dutch friends get misty-eyed about certain strains of cheese.
Where’s the love, I ask?
Oh, and just to whine a bit more – you can read some other good entries in this meme by Kendal Van Dyke here and Tim Mitchell here.
THEME WORD, I HAZ IT.
Not Nefarious. Multifarious!
I love it that so many of my friends are focusing not only on their technology skills and professional stature, but also on their family life and spiritual life. I’ve long believed that specialization was for insects, but we – as human beings – are multifaceted and have manifold skills and traits that need to be cultivated. There’s no reason an educated and urbane 21st century American can’t be physically fit, in tune with their family and significant other, able to write a cheesy line of verse, sing a few bars of a popular song, take a decent picture, repair a broken toaster, and do some on-line banking. As others have said before me, our parents and grandparents had one career and one employer. That’s not our lot in life.
So my theme word for 2010 is MULTIFARIOUS.
Pretty weird, eh?
When I first encountered the word multifarious, I thought of the word nefarious. Nefarious means “bad or evil”, so I thought multifarious meant “lotsa bad or evil”. In fact, they’re antonyms. Multifarious, in its Latin roots, means “many” plus “goodies” while nefarious means “negative or not” plus “goodies”.
So if you can think of another word that means “having many different parts, elements, or forms; numerous and varied; greatly diverse or manifold”, then I want to use that one. In the meantime, my theme word is multifarious because 2010 is my year of focusing on many elements, some long-neglected, in my life.
GOALS, HAZ DEM TOO.
Like many of the other folks I teased earlier, I have a variety of goals – some related to work (and therefore technology) and some not.
Every child needs a little 1-on-1. Even Little Critter by Mercer Mayer
Personal Goals: In 2010, I’m working on some entirely non-technology goals because I frankly feel a little too much dehumanized by technology. I want to put some humanity back into my life. So here are a few quick hit goals:
Fresh berries are very expensive, but berry bushes are not. The strawberries are already in and blackberries are a goal this spring. There’s something very primal about digging in the dirt that reconnects us with the earth and our agrarian roots.
I used to be a very accomplished Spanish guitarist – about 20 years ago. Twenty years of abstention puts the ol’ guitar skills at zero. I’m going to pick up the guitar and get at least three of those back.
I intend to master at least a half-dozen knots. Knots? Yes, knots – the kind you make with laces, rope, or twine. Hey, I’ve got seven kids in the house and you never know when a half-hitch sheep-shank will come in handy to lash several of them to a chair, the stair rail, or in a moment of dire need, a toilet.
I intend to spend at least one weekend of one-on-one time with each of my kids and step-kids. I don’t really believe in the concept of quality time, since as many learning moments come when dad bangs his thumb with a hammer as from any other so-called special time. But in this unusually large family with distractions nearly every waking moment, I still want to set aside a little time under the label “Just Dad and Me”.
Zero consumer debt except for the mortgage. (Dave Ramsey is my hero!)
Somehow – some way – I want to get a worm-eye-view photo of any man wearing a kilt at the PASS 2010 Summit. Strictly for blackmail purposes. (Grant and Steve, you’re on notice!)
Diversification Goals: Here are a few goals for 2010 that relate to my livelihood, but are not part of my day job.
At least one major new book for this year. I frequently gripe about the ROI of book writing these days. However, there are still a few powerful topics to address. So, with that in mind, I have one technology book ready to pitch and, believe it or not, one non-technology book.
Improve my personal productivity – somehow, someway. Maybe more caffeine?
I developed a lot of new personal skills in 2009, like wiring and electronics. I’m continuing that because I’m also very close to filing my very first provisional patent (non-IT, believe it or not). I’ll blog about that whole process in much greater details when the time is right. But this is my biggest diversification goal for 2010.
Retool my presentation style to be story-driven, rather than bulletpoint-driven. I felt like I’ve given some useful and informative presentations over the years. But I can do better and I know it. I’ve always been drawn to the old Southern tradition of story-telling and I’d like to bring that to life in my presentations. That goal starts immediately since I have presentations almost every week and, while it might get easier with time, it’ll never go away as a goal.
So that’s a wrap for me. I don’t have any specific goals about number of presentations, blogposts, or podcasts (though I want to do as much as I can). Sure, I want to continue to actively present, blog, write, tweet, digg, scribble, podcast, and otherwise excrete goodness into both print and the Internet.
ANYTHING ELSE?
Why, yes, there is one other thing. It’s a meme, right? So that means I need to tag a few others. First, I want to beseech those already tagged to go ahead and share with us – Joe, Andy, Jason, and Michelle. Please give us your wisdom!
Next, I’m going to tag a few friends in hopes of nudging them into another blog post, cause all of these folks are t’awesome but don’t blog enough:
If you’re like me, you’ve used Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V more than a time or two, but you’ve always felt a little dirty afterwards. Yeah, you can use the command-line COPY or XCOPY utilities. But they’re decidedly 20th Century, much like some of the laundry still loitering under my office couch.
So I spent a little time over the holidays cleaning up my file system by scripting a backup routine using the very cool and very free ROBOCOPY utility. Now, I’ve got a regularly scheduled job that, after the first run which captured all my files, only backs up new or changed files (and directories) while keeping all of their NTFS attributes. Boo-Yah!
Read all about it on my Tool Time Blog at SQLMag. I’ll also show you how to use some other free and powerful alternatives in future entries.
Before I jump onto the Goals and Themeword meme started by my buddy, Thomas LaRock (blog | twitter), I decided I’d spend a few minutes looking back on both the year 2009. (From a personal standpoint, the 00’s were my most difficult decade yet. Major problems of every stripe beset me on all sides and with alarming frequency throughout the decade. I was all “Good Riddance” and “Don’t let the door hit y’ass on the way out, 2009!” as the ball dropped in Times Square.)
Rather than spend a lot of time cooking up my own top 10 lists, I reckoned (that’s Southern for “thought”, btw) I’d recap a few others top X lists that are in the ballpark of my own personal opinion. I couldn’t resist putting together my own list at the end, which I’d love to hear your thoughts on. In addition, I want to hear about your Top 10 (or 5 or 3) for 2009!
Their Lists
Time Magazine’s list of Top 10 of Everything 2009 was a pretty good recap for the year on big ol’ cultural touch points like movies and music. I found at least one thing to agree with in each of their pop culture lists: movies – The Hurt Locker – check; TV shows – my personal favorite for its brilliant cohesive multiyear storyline and excellent character studies, Lost – check; album – I and Love and You by the Avett Brothers – check; books (sigh – if only I had more time) included the wonderful The Age of Wonders by Richard Holmes.
Lifehacker’s Top 5 Hive Topics of 2009 is a very interesting list covering lots of topics and pointing out a lot of interesting tools that I hadn’t encountered before. My personal favorite among them was the Top 5 Alternative File Copiers, since the Windows Explorer copy feature reminds me of hungrily awaiting my food in the microwave and just as the counter gets to the T-10 countdown, it goes back up to 30, then down to 8, then back up to 42, then down to 14.
I’m not sure if they meant to be funny but Digg’s Top 10 Most Popular Stories of 2009 is hilarious, much in the same way that Brent Ozar (blog | twitter) and I were when we put on an unintentionally hilarious performance at the PASS 2009 Summit Quiz bowl. Go ahead – ask Colin Stasiuk (blog | twitter) what he thought of our performance…
Impressed by Our Quiz Bowl Performance?
Speaking of unintentionally funny, have you seen Yahoo’s Top 10 Searches of 2009? Evidently, the median Internet user (at least from their metrics) is hormone-laden, teenage redneck with a thing for fast cars (Nascar), Hollywood hotties (Megan Fox), and an unassailable but secret love for Mormon-influenced Vampires (Twilight).
My List
I usually try to blog at least once per week and, when I can, even more. I still have this deep down urge to post lots of small blog posts of just a couple paragraphs. But for some reason, I always seem to come out with these big ol’ epistles. Despite my verbosity, y’all still read what I write and for that I’m very thankful. Over the last year, these were my top ten blog posts according to your interest:
Looking for Good DMV Database Admin Queries, where you can find just about every good DMV query ever written except those other really good ones that are posted here in the comments.
Things You Know Now, a semi-successful meme I started where I asked participants to tells us about stuff they’d do differently if they knew it way back in the day.
I excluded a few posts that were numerically in the top ten because, well, they’re my blog posts and I didn’t want them in the top ten. So there! But those that I excluded were things like reposting an interview done by another blogger or maybe a product or book that I plugged for some reason or an other.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my blogging and found it valuable. Tomorrow, I’m jumping on the themeword and goals meme. In fact, I’m crashin’ the party because none of my peeps called on me. [pout]
I was honored to be recently interviewed by the crew at Consortio Services. You can find my portion of this particular webcast at http://www.cstechcast.com/podcasts/cs-techcast/episode99/ beginning at 17:24. In the interview, I discuss a number of thoughts and opinions about the future of cloud computing, where our profession is headed, and more.
When I first became aware of the website, they were audio podcasts only. Since then, they’ve changed up their format a bit, and now have a video portion along with the audio. They now included a visual “slide” with your headshot and title (not a pretty sight, in my case). Also, they some scrolling shots of other things I’m involved with such as Quest Software, my blog here, my Tool Time column on SQL Server Magazine, and the SQL Server MVP Deep Dives book, and my personal website.
I encourage you to add this podcasting site to your list of favorites. There’s lots of great information waiting for you there.
Enjoy!
-Kevin
P.S. I just got the word that I have been re-granted MVP status for the upcoming year. Thanks to Microsoft and all my fellow MVP colleagues for making the MVP program such an awesome credential!
