As we come to the end of another year, I’d like to take the opportunity to say thank you to all of the folks who happened to stumble on to my site. This marks the end of the fifth year of adding to my personal scratchpad and I have thoroughly enjoyed being a part of the SQL Server community once again this year. When I started blogging, I had originally used my site to post assignments and lectures from my classes at NLC, but quickly found that I really liked jotting down things that I found throughout the day working with SQL Server in an effort to help someone out, just in case he or she may come across the same problem in the course of their day. Here are a few of my thoughts and feelings about our landscape as we work with our great product each day, and head towards another year of Microsoft SQL Server.
Job/Work, and school
Life as a consultant is tough as you might expect. I don’t get the luxury of going somewhere, setting up shop, and then cruising through the day; normally I’m tasked to put out a fire or am placed in a cesspool of errors, frustration, and anger. It’s a great feeling to take something gone awry and come away with a victory – I guess that’s why I stay at what I am doing rather than move off to some other job. Satisfaction and achievement realized is a blessing, and for this I am grateful. The company that I work for now has reached 100,000 employees, and its consulting arm in the US now has close to 10K consultants. We’re not overrun with notable “industry experts”, but have a lot of solid, smart folks that develop and deliver top-notch applications and database designs to large companies. We also do not have many departments of highly-specialized delivery groups (teams standing by to write and deploy Fast-Track or Parallel DW implementations, or other BI offerings), but we have a few, and what we do, we do very well. It’s difficult to wake up each morning anticipating the day, so most of the time I actually don’t try to anticipate – no sense in worrying about what may or may not happen. A self-fulfilling prophecy in my line of work will lead to failure, so I keep a positive attitude and outlook each and every day. If you’ve met me before, you know that I joke and crack up way too much, probably too much for a corporate or office setting in the uppity corporate maze of the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, but I do what I do and try not to take things too seriously.
School at North Lake went well this year. Wow, the students are getting smarter and smarter each year! Back a few years ago, mostly college students enrolled. Now, IT folks with 10, 15, even 20 years of experience are the norm. Definitely keeps you hopping. For those that attended this year, thank you for allowing me to be a part of your learning experience. I always tell everyone that I will learn much as well, and I’m there just to sort of guide everyone through the assignments. I never profess to know everything that there is to know, and don’t try to convey that, so hopefully you guys had some good takeaways as we tried to learn SQL Server. It was an honor and privilege to be able to work with you this year, and for this I say thanks.
Blogging
Blogging has been fun again this year. I enjoy adding posts and hope that I am able to help someone out somewhere down the road. As mentioned, I’m not a self-proclaimed expert and don’t try to be, am not a Microsoft MVP and probably never will be, don’t get to go to PASS too often and most likely won’t in the future, and don’t get to hobnob and have drinks with the well-known industry big-hitters. I do, however, like fixing things and making things work, and when I find something cool, I’ll add it to my site. I stick to the credo of “Research, experimentation, and fun”, and often refer those reading to my disclaimer at the bottom of each and every page on my site. I don’t plagiarize, I sometimes make mistakes, but I always keep things light-hearted and fun. I always ask others to take what I have on my blog with a grain of salt, and do so until the day comes that I”m working with Sunil up in Redmond. It’s all about having fun for me in this forum. If I were writing for Ebsco or ABI, or writing a book, I may approach things differently. But, my blog articles aren’t housed at those locations, so I say “buyer beware”.
I also like to blog on a subject just to blog. Whether someone one has blogged about a topic before or not, I still like to blog, even for my own edification. Hey, Rembrandt painted two hundred years after Michelangelo, right?
Observations and Outlook
On a sidebar, I seem to sense some anger and frustration across the pages and blogs of SQL Server. In the past month or so, I’ve read articles about proper methods for calling-out folks, articles that seem to talk-down to the reader, folks upset about others stealing their work, and the like. Are we digressing back to the days of the Mainframe and RS 6000, where we’ll once again slip into the knowledge is power mentality, keep information to ourselves, and crucify our fellow IT practitioner? Maybe we’re becoming “too big for our britches”? I’m not sure, but I do sense a bit of unrest and criticism in the blogs that I read. Are we heading down some ill-advised path? I certainly hope not, but we will see. The tone that I read makes me a bit sad, actually. I hope that you’ll never find anything of this sort within the pages of my blog – and if you do I will quickly make amends. Again, I keep it fun, lighthearted, and hopefully informative, and in that order.
For next year, I am looking forward to another CTP and a new version of SQL Server. Don’t we have an awesome product to make a living with!!??? With SQL Azure exploding, more advances in scale-out, better and faster hardware, better virtualization, and a better economy on the horizon, I see more fun and excitement for the coming year and am embracing the opportunity for the future. I’m also still awaiting word on SQL Server’s version of RAC…maybe this is the year that we get it?
I’ve also been working with Microsoft at the Irving MTC as a VTS, and am excited about that role as well. Some of the guys over there – Bryan Smith, Scott Hulke, David Browne – are amazing with SQL Server, extremely knowledgeable, as well as really good guys.
What’s up with me for 2011 and my goals
I’m probably going to be doing the same stuff at work – some perf tuning, BI, data warehousing, and a little OLTP – and hoping to learn more and more about our product as the year progresses. And get more involved in SSAS…darn I need to get better at it! I always mention that every time I sit down at the computer I learn something, and look forward to the same for 2011. I also look to read more and post less – there are a lot of people smarter than me in our field, and I hope to learn from them even more so for next year. My blogs will probably cover the same subject-areas that I have in the past since I have felt in the past, and still believe, that a top-practitioner should be versed in all phases of our product rather than a single portion of it. Just my opinion.
Leave it better than you found it
For those readers allowing me to come into their domain, I am thankful for the opportunity and appreciate your stopping by. I hope that what I’ve added over the past year helped someone, somewhere along the way, and I left it better than I found it. From those who attended my presentation at SQL Saturday, or those who attended my class, or anyone else in between, I say thank you again for the opportunity. I am excited about what lies ahead, and look to add a thing or two that may make something better for someone along the way.
As always, thanks for reading!
Lee Everest
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