December 2019 – Curious..about data

T-SQL Tuesday 121 – Gifts received – Summary

I got several responses for the last T-SQL Tuesday of the year that am honored to host. My topic was to blog on whatever you considered to be a gift that you received during the year. Below is the summary.

Todd Klienhans talks of using his hobby – virtual reality, to make a project that helps post dog pictures online. His goal is to help motivate a friend, Jeff Rush, as well as others who like seeing pictures of pets when they want to. It is Todd’s gift to community, and a really nice one at that.

Rob Farley, my friend from down under, talks of his speaking gigs, encouraging people to speak at PASS speaker-idol(one of whom actually won the contest – Deborah Melkin), and a good friend of his, Hamish Watson, winning the Passion Award. Seeing our mentees succeed is one of the greatest rewards of community.

Taiob Ali talks of getting nominated and winning the MVP award, and all the people who helped him through it. He also calls out the volunteer team he runs the SQL Saturday at Boston with, and his friend Deborah Melkin winning the speaker-idol award. Congratulations Taiob, and thanks for all you/your team do for community!

Koen Verbeeck talks of a new feature of PowerBI, and performance enhancements in Azure Data Factory , in addition to his speaking engagements. These are what he considers gifts for the year.

Deborah Melkin a.k.a. ‘Deb the DBA’ has had a great year with winning the speaker idol as well as getting to be an IDERA ACE. Way to go, Deb!

Shane O’Neill chooses to divide his gifts into SQL Past, Present and Future, and talks of what he received spanning each time zone that way. He prizes his community contacts over everything else he considers gifts in his professional life, and I couldn’t agree more myself.

Reitse Eskins talks of the gift of community, and of his incredibly supportive wife, as being his true gifts.

Tracy Boggiano, one of my good friends in the community – talks of her book writing experience with Grant Fritchey, her mentor Kelly Pot Vin-Gorman, and championing the cost of mental health, as well as finding a new job, and her work with foster kids. Tracy is a natural giver, one for whom I have huge respect for. Thank you Tracy, for all that you do.

Aaron Bertrand talks of his career change as the defining point of the year, and reasons why he did it. This is probably the most popular/most RT-ed post of all, since Aaron is a highly respected figure in the community .(Aaron also mentions the ‘loose definition’ of the theme, which is a point I personally note to do better next time– thank you).

My friend and xevents expert Jason Brimhall talks of the using the free tool from microsoft to resolve the dreaded ‘cannot generate SSPI context error’. He also rightly mentions that we should be blogging in gratitude more often than once a year.

Jeff Miller talks of finding his dream job with Kevin Hill as a DBA. It is always motivating to see people get their first break..Well done, Jeff and Kevin.

Jess Pomfret also talks of her dream job and relocating back to her native England – a job she found via John Martin’s tweet. I am continually amazed at how many careers are made by #sqlfamily connections, this is another one. Good luck on the move, Jess.

Kevin Hill talks of growing his team/consulting business with two more people,and growing prospects in 2020. Best of luck, Kevin!

Steve Jones, my good friend and owner of #tsql2sday as of now talks of his trip to Australia with his family, and how he was able to enjoy it both personally and professionally.

Andy Levy talks of yet another job transition, and one that he did not quite expect. He also mentions a vacation and deepening ties with #sqlfamily as rewards for the year. Well done, Andy, and good luck with the new gig!

Matt Gordon, my good friend and ug lead out of Lexington mentions the two sessions at SQLSat-Charlotte that made a big difference to him – Tracy Boggiano talking on mental health, and Donna Ellis Wilson on ‘Failure needs to be an option’. I personally attended both these classes and found them gifts at a very profound level – or as Matt says, the lines ‘ When you are fairly reserved, as I am, seeing other people call attention to issues that you are also dealing with is a greater gift than a free book, t-shirt, or some new bit of technical knowledge.’. Thank you Matt, for sharing that, and also Donna and Tracy, for speaking up on important issues that most people shy away from.

Ken Fisher talks of being an introvert and still feeling accepted among community – also includes an anecdote about an online twitter conversation with his wife that was misunderstood by a friend and ended well.

I have received many, many gifts in 2019. It has been among my roller coaster years, to be honest. There were several ups and downs and lessons all the way. My recap is here.

Lastly, my friend and DevOps expert Alex Yates micro-blogged on having a new baby and how that has changed his life. Congratulations Alex!

7 people out of 18 people talk of their new dream jobs. This should give all of us hope that there are good gigs out there, if we are stuck in a bad place. No gig is perfect, of course, but it helps to have a dream and a direction to get to a better place. Almost everyone mentions their involvement with community/#sqlfamily as a huge reward. If you are reading this and not an active part of community yet – please consider doing so. It helps to be among supportive, uplifting people who care for you and have similar goals as you do.

To conclude – I really liked these lines from Shane O Neill’s post – ‘ I believe the best gift is the gifts that you can give back. So, here’s hoping that the next year sees us all help more than hinder, learn more than laze, and teach more than troll.’

Best Wishes for a Safe and Happy holiday season!

T-SQL Tuesday #121 Gifts received

I am hosting 2019’s last T-SQL Tuesday of the year. I chose to ask people to write on gifts they had received – by way of community, relationships, or even tech features. A rather loose definition , as the one and only Aaron Bertrand calls it 🙂

I have a lot to be thankful for this year –

1 I took a strong liking to the graph data table feature in SQL Server and actually planned a book around it with another very popular author and mentor-friend. But the feature didn’t quite take off as I thought it would. But in the process, I relearned a lot of graph theory that I had learned in school, and also quite a bit about graph databases and how they work. Overall, it was a gift, although it didn’t quite pan out the way I thought it would.
2 I got more comfortable into my new role as dev/architect, which was a huge step away from DBA roles I had worked in for 20+ years. It has taken me a good two years to get comfortable with using GIT, working with devops as practiced at work, relearning TSQL and all that is needed in my job. It has been tough and very rewarding in the process. I consider the gig a gift, and have nothing but gratitude for the people I work with – in particular I would like to single out my colleague and dear friend from Spain – Efraim Sharon, our DBA team lead Mark Wilkinson, data science team lead Kevin Feasel and fellow dbas Andrew Pruski and Derek Fitzpatrick-Jolley. It is impossible to find a better group of people to work with.
3 I got back into speaking in a small way – i did two talks, one for the local user group and one for the PASS WIT chapter. Eugene Meidinger was my speaking mentor – he helped me with many tips and tricks, in addition to reviewing my slide set and giving valuable feedback. I consider it a true gift to have Eugene as my mentor-friend.
4 I was suspected of a serious illness and declared clear after many tests. It renewed my gratitude for the fragile gift that is life, and a renewed effort to appreciate every day I get and live it to the fullest.
5 I enjoyed hiking and exploring national parks in North Carolina and the Colorado mountains with my dear sister.
6 I attended my PASS Summit #16 and renewed many friendships, as well as made new ones. It remains to me the one place I go to recharge and refocus my professional life every year.

These are a few of my gifts for this year. I will end this post with the following quote and I believe this is important:
“When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.” ― G.K. Chesterton

T-SQL Tuesday #121: Gifts received for this year

It is December again. 2019 has gone by in a flash. I have the honor of hosting the last TSQL Tuesday blog party of the year. This monthly blog party started by SQL Guru Adam Machanic since 2009 has completed 121 months this year. I am the lucky host of event #121. If you are participating in this month’s party (kindly coordinated by my dear friend Steve Jones (b|t) – please be sure to read the housekeeping rules all the way below that are necessary for participation.

This is a time for material gift giving, for many of us. It might also be a time to consider the many gifts we have received through the year, and perhaps use this opportunity to appreciate people or situations that we were blessed with. So my question would be – what are a few things would you consider as gifts, and why? Some examples as below –

Getting to know someone in the community better,
Getting to speak at an event you always wanted to,
Attending a conference or training that you always wanted to attend,
Landing a job you never thought you would,
Published a book that you wrote,
Wrote for sqlservercentral/simpletalk/any of those cool websites
Got to play with a cool new technology that has you excited,
A feature of SQL Server that you always wanted and eventually showed up in 2019-I love lightweight query profiling to track query progress, for example.
A new cool feature that you never even thought possible is now there (I was just oooh-ing about how easy it is to script objects in Azure Data Studio, and how nice it is to have it store my query history for me).

Below are the rules of the game when you are ready:

Write your post.
Schedule it to be published at some point on Tuesday, December 10th, 2019. (UTC calendar day).
Include the TSQL Tuesday logo in the top of your post.
Link your post back to this one. Trackbacks should work, but it is a better idea to write a comment with the link on this post. Please give me some time to moderate your comments.
If you are on twitter, tweet a link to your post, adding the #tsql2sday hash tag. Most people filter by hashtag and it increases the visibility of your post by quite a lot.

Look forward to reading about your gifts and learning from them!! Thanks in advance for participation.