Presenting at SQLSaturday #107 in Houston in April 2012

I was just looking at the schedule for Houston, an amazing 10 tracks for this event on April 21, 2012. I’ll be doing two presentations, one on professional development plans and another on SQL security for developers. This will be my first time at the Houston SQLSaturday and really looking forward to it.

Stress Thoughts-Part 4

Recently I suffered through a frustrating and contentious meeting, and that was stressful. I needed a walk, a few minutes to sort out why I was stressed, but instead I had to step right into another meeting. It was a follow up meeting to build out an implementation plan for a plan the team had […]

Stress Thoughts-Part 3

It’s not fair. I hear it a couple times a day. Sometimes they are right, sometimes not, but it’s how they feel and that is real enough. The first thing I do is listen, because that’s the first thing they need. Once they’ve explained (vented!) then I can tell them what I think: I agree, […]

Stress Thoughts–Part 2

One thing I’ve learned is that even losing one hour of sleep or just not sleeping well degrades my ability to handle stress. It feels wimpy to say that, I should be able to handle losing an hour of sleep! Maybe I’ll get to a point where it won’t, but I suspect it’s just how […]

Stress Thoughts–Part 1

2012-03-25 14:20:45

Start Building Your Next Network

Take a look at your network right now and while it probably has some diversity, I bet it’s tied pretty closely to what you do right now. That make sense, right? You meet people that are in the same line of work because those are the blogs you read, the events you attend. It’s smart, […]

Gardens and Scarecrows

A few weeks ago I started clearing space for a small garden. Tedious work due to the area of the yard I picked, tons of some ugly vine that took hours to remove. I built four mini raised beds by using some 1×4” fence pickets and a small block of 2×4” at each corner. Not […]

I’m Not a Bozo!

Something fun for Friday, this was a gift from the client I work with to lighten things up and do some stress relief – punch it and it comes right back up. It sits on a table in the corner when I’m in the room, but I’ve taken to putting it my chair when I’m […]

Done or Not Done

One of the things I hear a lot relating to work big and small is that it is “almost done”, with a close relative “basically done”, often spoken as they reach for the marker to cross of an item on the task list. I can appreciate that it’s useful to indicate progress in a simpler […]

Jedi Mind Tricks

Here’s a story from a recent meeting. We were discussing some problems and the team was talking through some options that were very interesting, technically good, just not ones that could get done for a variety of reasons. It’s frustrating to be in that position, seeing at least a “better” solution on the good/better/best range […]

SQLAndy

Month: March 2012