What I'm Up To

I’m excited to announce that I’m joining the evangelist team at Redgate.  Starting next Monday, I’ll be working with Steve Jones, Grant Fritchey, and Kathi Kellenberger — plus the whole Redgate team. Why take on a “real job”? The last time I had a manager and a normal paycheck was back in the spring of 2011. Since then, I’ve had company co-founders, or I’ve been doing my own thing, solo. When you go out on your own, it can be uncomfortable being your own boss at first: you have no-one to blame but yourself when things go wrong, or if you end up working weekends. But after a while, you get pretty comfortable with it, like anything else. If you keep at it, you’ll likely end up thinking, “I couldn’t ever go back.” But after 7 years, I started asking myself: is this really the best way for me to work?…

I’ve just scheduled two new podcast recording sessions! These are live, half hour sessions – you can join in listen, or share comments. Here’s what we’ll be talking about…. Employee Agreements and Contracts for DBAs and Devs: Anti-patterns Fri, Aug 10, 4PM PDT When you take a new job in IT, within the paperwork there often lurks an employee agreement: a contract between you and your employer. In this half-hour live episode we’ll talk about why these contracts exist, and multiple anti-patterns you should avoid. This is the first of a two part series. In the following episode, we’ll talk best practices for understanding and negotiating the contract. Register here Employee Agreements and Contracts for DBAs and Devs: Best Practices Fri, Aug 17, 4PM PDT So you’ve got an employee agreement in front of you: now what? In this half-hour live episode, we’ll talk about practical steps you should take…

In the last year, developers and DBAs have heard a lot about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law passed by the European Union. These regulations not only impact companies that are incorporated in Europe, but all companies processing the data of Europeans. These new ground rules include obtaining consent before adding people to mailing lists, allowing people to revoke that consent easily, and requiring processes for handling personal data to protect the data by default. The GDPR also allows individuals in the EU to request copies of information that a company holds about them, and grants “the right to erasure,” or the right to have their data removed. This is particularly an interesting issue when it comes to data stored in backups, and copies of data, which are frequently used for software development, test, and analysis. These rights are now coming to the United States If you didn’t pay…

Join me in two weeks for a really fun free webcast. Update: watch the recording of the webcast here! DBA vs Memory Settings Tues, April 24, 2018 – 8:30AM Pacific / 11:30AM Eastern Quest Free Webcast – watch the recording here External memory pressure: What is it and how does it affect SQL Server? In this session, I am teaming up with SQL Server expert Jason Hall from Quest to play around with various configurations of Max Server Memory, Min Server Memory and Lock Pages in Memory and watch SQL Server squirm – for science! You’ll come away with a fresh understanding of how to configure major memory settings for SQL Server. Watch this free session here. Check out more free upcoming sessions.

I woke up early on Tuesday with a hundred things to do and plenty of energy to match my task list. By noon, I’d made a loaf of bread, helped a friend solve a tech mystery, and had various professional adventures. Then I opened Twitter and saw the news that Robert Davis passed away. I haven’t really gotten much done in the hours since, except think about Robert. And cry a bit. And laugh. It feels weird laughing, but I think Robert would understand. Robert was one of the smartest people I’ll ever meet Robert’s mind, and his memory, were amazing. He learned quickly and he had amazing recall of facts, he was so accurate and fast! Robert was someone who really knew it all, when it came to SQL Server – but he was the opposite of a know-it-all. He loved learning things, and he was always excited to…