I became a SQL guy back in 1998 because the company that hired me used SQL Server. It’s been a good ride and it’s paid the bills, but after 15 years or so it’s time to do something different. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Part of it is wanting to run with the big dogs and while SQL can do great stuff, we don’t have a big dog team, we have a cat team. Couldn’t it at least be a tiger team? Cheetah? Leopard? Something with a fierce growl? The other part is I love the community that has developed and the relationships I’ve built within it – it’s hard to let those go, but I realized that with PASS expanding to include Excel, text files, and probably even XML there’s no reason it can’t add other stuff too. That’s right, after a lot of years I’m giving up the pointing and clicking and moving to a real database, one that will run on Linux even. Today I’m closing out the journey of SQLAndy and starting a new one as….KnowSQLAndy!

Yes, it’s April 1st.

I didn’t have a lot of ideas for it this year, just been busy with other stuff. I debated something about angry pandas (a Twitter thread from a while back), something less politically correct (which I’ll just omit), announcing that Allen Kinsel was going to run for the Board this year, something not at all politically correct (but funny), and a few more. It’s tough to do a good April Fools post. It has to be credible, can’t be too long, shouldn’t be offensive. So I crossed all those off, and that left me with rebranding and one more, which was interesting only because it would seem to be out of character (or maybe not) and is a funny story about being a Dad, but I decided to leave that one for another time. Did you really want to read a post titled Smell My Butt?

It’s not too late for a prank or two. Try BoredPanda (#11 looks like fun), or this list from Mashable (#2 is just wrong, #13 – I might have to try), or one from Buzzfeed (#6 is good for kids).

Enjoy your day.