Notes from SQLSaturday #232 in Orlando

Our seventh annual SQLSaturday here in Orlando went well. To the casual observer it might appear to happen without effort, if only that were truly the case! Kudos to Shawn and Karla for a great job of leading the event and we couldn’t have done it without the help of volunteers either. Now, on to […]

My 2013 PASS Suggestion Tsunami List

Back in August I posted about an approach that Aaron Nelson and I thought of to try to get more ideas and suggestions into general circulation with regards to PASS and the SQL community – in short, designate a ‘suggestion day’. We only lightly evangelized the idea so it will be interesting to see how […]

Log Backup Failing–A Simple Mistake

Last week I was checking on some stuff and noticed that a couple databases were in simple mode – unusual, but not necessarily wrong, so I asked someone on the team that manages the environment about it. He said that because of the usage it wasn’t critical but they did prefer them to be set […]

Skills I Used Last Week

Ever thought about what your average week looks like? What are the real core skills your environment uses every day or every week? I tried to write down all the variations I did last week, during an admittedly slow week: Adhoc full backup of a database Restore database with different name on same server Restore […]

Building a Better Litter Box

First, I know as I write this that my friend Kevin will be emailing me later today that I’ve jumped the shark again (is it possible to do it more than once?)! Still, it’s every bloggers right to inject a small amount of whimsy into what they write and I’m exercising that right today. Over […]

Notes From The August 2012 OPASS Meeting

Luis Figueroa did a nice job presenting on Master Data Management. It’s nice to see the tools evolving, though I’ll confess to thinking that MDM is one of those dreams that is rarely achieved in most organizations. Jen Underwood did a presentation on predictive analytics. Lots of good background on the terminology, nice demos, and […]

Need Recommendations on Being a Better Listener

This past weekend I’ve been reading The Zen of Listening by Rebecca Shafir, part of my ongoing efforts to be better at many things and also part of research for an upcoming project. The book was a good starting point for me, with some ideas on the different types of listening and how mindfulness and […]

Interview Candidates for Skills, Aptitude, Maybe Both

Over the years I’ve been primary a skills interviewer. In theory I know what skills are needed and in theory I want to hire someone that can do a hundred percent of those on day one. The other technique is aptitude hiring – asking questions that can reveal the interest and ability to learn new […]

Be The Connector

Few things are more satisfying than to introduce two people when you think they have common interests. Often it’s driven by someone needing to fill a position or someone needing work, but that’s by no means the only scenario – it can just as easily be some common interest that has nothing to do with […]

OPASS Meeting W/ Luis Figueroa & Jen Underwood–August 22, 2013

Luis Figueroa will be presenting Getting started with Master Data Services 2012 and then Jen Underwood will be presenting Practical Predictive Analytics – looks to be a nice evening of learning! Get all the details on the oPASS site.

SQLAndy

Author: SQLAndy