Well, it certainly was. The book is the story of David Novak, current Chairman and CEO of YUM! Brands, the owners of KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver’s, and A&W Restaurants. He tells his story and it is one I found to be fascinating. Novak is a former marketing executive and he has a handful of stories about some of the projects he was involved with through the years, many of them while at Pepsi. What I enjoyed most was probably how he was willing to talk about both his successful campaigns (Ray Charles and “You’ve Got The Right One, Baby” ) as well as the not-so-successful ones (Crystal Pepsi). Through it all you get the feeling that Novak is someone that is an open book himself and is probably the type of executive that really inspires others to perform at a high level.

There are a lot of stories in the book that I could spend time writing about here but instead what I want to do is convey what I consider the most important lesson. Novak could have spent his life feeling sorry for himself, but he didn’t. As you progress through the book you start to understand that Novak tends to take something positive from every experience he has, whether that is living in 32 trailer parks in 23 states by the 7th grade, or not getting the promotion you wanted. See, it’s not about what happens to you in life, it ‘s all about what you do with it when it happens.

Here is the link to the book:

The Education of an Accidental CEO: Lessons Learned from the Trailer Park to the Corner Office

It’s well worth a few dollars to have this book on your bookshelf. In fact, I decided to add it to my library here as well.

With Dean Jorge’s blessing I have been allowed to carve out my own unique faculty position as DBA Coach. Unlike my basketball practices, there won’t be any physical exertion necessary on your part this semester. What I intend to do instead is to provide you different focus areas and options for the weekly subject. And I will do this by breaking my levels in a similar fashion to my blogger rankings. For the resourcedb I will include links to books that I feel would be helpful as well.

Today’s topic is Creative Writing. Let’s get started!

tempdb

If you want to get better at writing, then you need to get better at reading. How do you get better at reading? Well, by doing mroe reading, of course! Start reading everything you can. Books, magazines, newspapers, blog posts, bathroom stalls, it doesn’t matter. Read as much as you can and while reading start getting an idea for what strikes a chord with your own inner voice. Not everyone reads the same material in the same way. For example, consider the works of Shakespeare. For some, they think it is the most beautiful things they could ever hear. But others, myself included, would rather have nails on a chalkboard than to listen to a performance of The Tempest.

So, find what works for you. Find a particular author or columnist that you like and keep reading them for a period of time and try to make notes about what it is you like most about their style. Over time you will find similar authors and can read them as well. How will this happen? Simple, most authors will, from time to time, mention other books or articles that they like, and often time it is because the style of that author is something similar such that you may find it enjoyable as well.

msdb

Now that you have been doing more reading it is time to start doing some writing. First thing you need to do is find your own voice and style. If you simply try to copy someone else then you will always find yourself coming up short to an unattainable ideal. Find out what style parts you like from others and see if you can assimilate them into your own voice. Once you have an idea, start putting words to paper. It doesn’t have to be much, but it has to be something.

A while back I was given some advice from a writer when I explained that I often didn’t have anything to write about. They told me that a very simple trick is to write down, each day, a sentence or two. Even if the sentence was “I don’t have anything to write about today.” I lost track for the number of times that I would start with that very sentence only to have my mind wander, the pencil kept going, and before I knew what was happening there were two or three things for me to write about.

Still struggling with how to get started? Fine, keep it even simpler than all that, start with a checklist, or a to-do list. Go ahead, start making a list of items, and jot down a sentence about each item on the list. Let your mind do the rest, I bet you will find that in time your mind will wander around enough that something creative will be the end result. If checklists aren’t your bag, then go with some documentation. A favorite of mine is to document my SQL Servers, because then I get a chance to recall some history of a server and I always enjoy the chance to tell history from my point of view.

model

By now you should have at least been putting pen (or pencil) to paper. What’s that? Oh, fine, you use a computer instead. It really doesn’t matter. Please stop interrupting me because my laptop battery is about to die and I really don’t have time for you to lecture me about how many trees actually died to make both the pencil and the paper. Last time I checked, trees were a renewable resource, as opposed to the materials used in your computer…or even to power your computer. So stop lecturing me about who loves Mother Earth, because it doesn’t seem like you care all that much.

Anyway, get yourself started. Blogging is a great way to get started with creative writing. Writing articles can be another way, although you may find that some editors may not appreciate your style. That’s fine, it is more important for you to find a voice you are comfortable with. If someone wants you to change your style drastically, and you are not comfortable with the changes they suggest, then don’t change anything. Keep doing what you are doing and continue to search for ways to express yourself with the written word. For me, it’s this blog more than anything else right now.

I believe the key to good creative writing lies in your ability to have a conversation. The conversation can be with others or with yourself, it doesn’t matter who you talk with, and then you capture that narrative in words. Blogging and writing articles are two good ways for you to practice having such conversations.

master

If you are looking for a master when it comes to conversations and creative writing, look no farther than The Bloggess. Jenny is by far the most creative writer I am reading right now, but Tim Siedell (twitter) is also quite good but not as prolific as Jenny. His recent plan to fix our government was just, well, awesome to read. Both of these are what I consider to be masters of creative writing. Start with them for now and work your way outwards to find other creative masters.

resourcedb

Here are some books that I feel would be helpful with your writing and general communication skills.

The first one, Write From the Heart, does a great job in helping you to find your own voice. The books dives a bit too much into spirituality for my liking, but the point I want you to understand is that good writing is as simple as having a good conversation. If you have stories to tell, and especially oddball stories at that, then get your thoughts down onto paper and see where your mind takes you.

The next book listed, The Jelly Effect, is a fabulous book on how to communicate with others in a variety of situations. It has a lot of material on how to help you organize presentation materials. What I found interesting is that in a way you are always presenting yourself and the tips inside this book help you to overcome that fear. If you can get your creative juices going and be able to present them to others in an organized coherent way then you are going to be way ahead of hacks like myself.

I included the ProBlogger book because there are a lot of tips in there about how you can go about getting a blog started, how you can build something using your own voice, and how your blog can help foster your creative writing side. I’m not sure about the six figure income, but I suspect that the decimal point is not where I expected it to be. Your results may vary.

Write from the Heart : Unleashing the Power of Your Creativity

The Jelly Effect: How to Make Your Communication Stick

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income

The excerpt includes my “shards of broken glass comment” with regards to merge replication. The exact context is as follows:

“I would rather eat shards of broken glass than implement merge replication, but that’s just me. Some people make a great living eating broken glass at carnivals. You should choose your own path in life.”

Yeah, the book *was* fun to write.

Anyway, as I was assembling materials for DBA Survivor, it occurred to me that Chris would be best suited to handling code reviews for any IT organization on the planet. So I included it in the book, inside of Chapter Four, “A Development Server is a Production Server to a Developer“, and posted it to the DBA Survivor website.

Enjoy. And Chris, if you are ever reading this…call me.

I’m not sure I could ever thank them for taking the time to write a foreword for my book. I owe them both a debt of thanks for a lot of help they have given me over the years. Kevin introduced me to my love Operations Manager (we dated for a while and then married four years ago) and Buck once helped me disable a logon trigger using the DAC during a chat session in a LiveMeeting that we were both attending. Having them both agree to write a foreword was easy: I didn’t tell them about each other. But, now with the book out, they are sure to find out I was cheating on them with the other. So, I might as well go public with the info and wanted to share with you what they wrote.

Kevin and Buck, thanks for your help.

The new phone book is here! The new phone book is here!

I brought the box into the house and eventually opened it. You can get more of an idea how I felt by watching the video.

[See post to watch Flash video]

Yeah, it’s for real. You can order your copy from http://dbasurvivor.com.

When it comes to free SQL Server training I tend to think of things in terms of “what does the Intertubz provide to me?” That’s easy: blogs, podcasts, LiveMeeting, and forums.

SQL Server Blogs

I maintain a list of prominent SQL Server Bloggers, and would recommend you start there. I try to keep the list updated frequently, moving people in and out as needed, so that the list stays as current as possible. I never liked blogrolls, they always seem to be full of stale or dead links, so that’s why I created and maintain my list. The other thing I don’t like are blogs that are cutting and pasting from manuals or stealing content from other bloggers, so you won’t find those on my lists. What you get are real people, with real knowledge, and real stories. I also include their Twitter handles, so you can follow them there as well. And if you use Twitter, ask questions with the #sqlhelp hashtag, you’ll get a quality answer probably from one or more of the people in my list.

Don’t like to read? Are you more apt to learn from watching or listening to videos? Well then the next section is for you.

SQL Server Podcasts

Microsoft makes available a wide variety of podcasts. You can even subscribe to the RSS feed specific for SQL Server podcasts. And if you want to listen to people with funny accents, then you should check out the SQL Down Under podcasts. Or you can listen to the Midnight DBA podcast series. SQLServerPedia also makes available some training videos.

I am willing to bet that you could easily find over 100 hours worth of quality videos just at the sites I have listed above.

SQL Server User Group Meetings

There are a lot of SQL Server user groups in existence, some of which may be located right near where you live. PASS maintains a list of chapters, and each chapter is also a SQL user group. This may not be helpful to you if the nearest group you can find is more than an hour’s drive away, especially if the meeting is done at night.

A handful of user groups will broadcast their meetings, for free, so that you can participate without having to leave your home (or desk). PASS has a dedicated group of Virtual Chapters that use LiveMeeting to broadcast their presentations each month, for example.

Still another option is to take part in a SQL Saturday, which are free events held in locations where there is an established local user group base. Youcan view the current list of events already scheduled to see if there is one coming to a location near you.

SQL Server Forums

Yet another resource available on the Intertubz are forums or newsgroups, which is an acceptable way for some people to get information about SQL Server, but this is where you will find that “you get what you pay for” comes into play far too often. Honestly, I don’t use forums or newsgroups, they just are not my style. I find a majority (not all!) of the answers to be unreliable and I cannot stand reading about two or more people having an argument in a thread.

But, since there is some valuable information there (mostly in the questions themselves), I want to point you to two places to go for SQL specific information. The first are the forums over at SQLServerCentral.com, which are well maintained and many of the people that participate and respond in the forums are leaders in the SQL community. The second is ServerFault.com, a wonderful place that is part forum, part newsgroup, part wiki, part blog, and all awesome. You can spend a lot of time on these sites just absorbing some wonderful SQL knowledge.

Now,  there is a cost for accessing the tubes that make up the internet, so let’s just agree that those costs exist. Otherwise, you can just head to the library and grab some books. Which books? I’m glad you asked!

SQL Server Books

I also happen to maintain a list of SQL Server books for DBAs. You can start adding these to your own personal library. Check out the authors I have on my shelf and remember their names. If you come across another book written by one of them you should feel comfortable purchasing it as well. My library has a mix of technical and non-technical books. If I had to single one book out for anyone to get started with I would recommend Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 T-SQL Fundamentals (PRO-Developer) by Itzik Ben-Gan, as that would give anyone (developer or administrator) the best fundamental skills with regards to T-SQL.

After my experience reading Outliers, I knew heading into Tipping Point to not expect many hard facts or statistics, which was fine. The book is an attempt by the author to explain why things “tip”. That is, why certain ideas can spread rapidly through societies and other ideas do not. Again, everything in the book is Gladwell’s opinion, and you need to keep that in mind. Even knowing that you are being presented with opinions, many of the stories he weaves for you are quite interesting. One of my favorite parts of the book is how he tries to explain why Paul Revere’s midnight ride was so much more successful that William Dawes.

Gladwell offers up three rules that he uses to explain why things may tip. There is the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context. I do wish Gladwell had chosen a different way to explain “the Law of the Few”, because as a mathematician the word “law” means something particular to me. For Gladwell to state something as a “law” could give the impression that what he is stating has been proven, when in fact it has not, and I also don’t think Gladwell is a lawyer. Still, the concepts behind the three rules are quite interesting.

How do you explain this?

If you want an idea to tip, then you need to get your idea into the hands of people who are well connected, your idea has to stick in people’s minds, and it has to be able to be consumed in the correct context by others. Believe it or not, it really is that simple. Think of pet rocks, cargo pants, or Lady Gaga. Gladwell tries his best to explain why things may tip, but can he really explain Vanilla Ice?

I won’t put this book into my library, but I would still recommend it to others.

One such book is SQL Server 2008 Query Performance Tuning Distilled by Grant Fritchey (blog | twitter) and Sajal Dam. Each morning, while I wait for my desktop to boot, I pick up their book, turn to any page, and just start reading.

Give it a try for yourself. Unless your name is Paul Randal, I bet you’ll learn something new most days of the week.

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You

Many of the “Laws” discussed were idea that I have already come across at one time or another. The power this book has for me is that it will serve as a handy reference going forward. I hope it can do the same for you as well. At one time or another you will need help with one or more of the “Laws”, be it Influence, Connection, Respect, or Solid Ground.

I have added the book to my Book Review page at http://thomaslarock.com/book-reviews/, inside of the Professional Development section.