Brent Ozar

How I got started in IT

I was tagged by Brent Ozar in his post Starting the SQL Journey where he talked about how he got started as a SQL DBA.  So here’s my story, in all its glory. Continued »

Slide Decks and Sample code from Quest Day with the Experts

The slide decks and sample code that Brent and I presented with have been uploaded.  The recordings have to be edited down, as Live Meeting uses a single large recording, and no one wants to sit through a 5 hour recording, so it’s being broken down into smaller chunks.

The slide decks are hosted via Slide Share and the sample code from my presentation is up on the SQLServerPedia.com servers.

Denny

SQL Quiz: Toughest Challenges

Chris Shaw posted a new SQL Quiz where he asks: “What are the largest challenges that you have faced in your career and how did you overcome those?”

I found this question rather tough to answer (as I have when I’ve been asked similar questions during interviews), but here goes.

1:  Dealing with some of the developers that I’ve had to work with in the past.

Most of the people that I’ve worked with in the past have been great.  But there are a few out there (who will rename nameless since the IT field is a pretty small group) that were just a major pain.  Never open to anyone’s ideas but their own.  No project is important unless it is their project.  Unfortunately at the time this was the CEO’s favorite employee since he was the one that had gotten the company that far.  It didn’t matter that a new group of people had been brought in to help get the company to the next level.

As far as dealing with the problem, we eventually went to our boss and basically told her that someone needed to bring him back down to earth.  There were other good ideas that deserved consideration and as the infrastructure team we should be listened to at least once in a while since we might know what we are doing.

2: Same company, a year later having to work with (and for) people that didn’t understand half the stuff coming out of my mouth.

After butting my head against statements like “a Table and a worksheet mean the same thing” I took the easy way out.  I just had to, I gave notice and left.  It took me several months of biting my tongue and explaining myself over and over before I had finely had enough.  I ended up moving on to another company which ended up laying me off after 6-8 weeks because they ran out of money.  But all in all it was a good choice.

(I’ll put up a third answer, but only because I’m cheating and stealing Brent’s second answer.)

3: Learning when to tell people “No”.

I love telling people yes.  Sure I can add that functionally.  Stay late and get that done; no problem.  Eventually people start taking advantage of you and planning on you being able to be taken advantage of.  My wife (Kris) helped a lot on helping me fix this one (I still have a hard time telling her no, but that’s something else to work on) and I thank her for that.

Brent Ozar  (brento on Twitter) tagged me for this one.

I’m tagging:

Denis Gobo (DenisGobo on twitter)

Tom Larock (sqlbatman on twitter)

Denny

PASS 2008 - Day 2 Recapped

Today was another excellent day here at PASS 2008 in rainy Seattle, WA.

Continued »

Congratulations to Tom LaRock and Douglas McDowell!

Two of my fellow SQLServerPedia.com editors Tom LaRock and Douglas McDowell, have been nominated for elections on the PASS Board of Directors.

Continued »

New SQL Server Wiki Launching Today

Today is the unofficial launch of the new SQLServerPedia.com Wiki.  The official launch for the wiki is during PASS, so you have to go to the /wiki folder manually.  The SQLServerPedia.com site is run by Quest Software, and the Wiki contains all the information which used to be contained in the KnowledgeXpert product which they used to sell.  They are know giving it away for free to the entire SQL Server community.

I could go on all day about it, but forunitely I don’t have to because Brent Ozar already has in his post “The answer to SQL Server training problems“.  I highly recommend reading Brent’s post about the site.  It gives some great background and tells all about the site. Continued »

SQL Server Experts: MS SQL beats the “ACID” test for Database Technology in Features, Ease & Cost

I was asked to be interviewed for an article on Microsoft SQL Server by OdenJobs.com.  They have just posted the interview of myself and Christian Lefter, Andew Fyer, Namwar Rizvi, Brent Ozar, Brian Kelly, Chris Shaw, and Pinal Dave.

Part 1: MS SQL beats the “ACID” test for Database Technology in Features, Ease & Cost

Part 2: Stress, Pet Peeves, Roles and Responsibilities of a SQL Server DBA/Developer

Part 3: Becoming a SQL Server MVP and other Career Choices

Thanks,

Denny