In Seattle this week, so naturally coffee is on the menu and I felt the need to share the following information:

• Caffeine is “technically” lethal, but you would have to drink an insane amount to have a 50% chance of death
• There is no reason to ever stop drinking coffee because it is pure awesome
• Caffeine helps improve your memory
• Caffeine can help fight cardiovascular disease, allow me to consume more bacon

Also, apparently the drink of choice used to be beer and gin, but then people started to consume more coffee and tea. So what will be the next drink of choice? I’m hoping it’s wine.

If so, you’re old. Sorry to be the one to tell you. 

Absolutely love this video, looking forward to seeing this technology used in my lifetime for flying cars or…better yet… hover-boards.

Here we are, at the end of 2011, and I suddenly realized I hadn’t done one of those obligatory “crap I did last year” posts like everyone else likes to do. So I decided to write about all the things that didn’t happen to me with the thought that in a year from now I can write “wasn’t consumed by the Mayan fires”. Here’s hoping, right?

Anyway, as we all look forward to 2012, here are my reflections on 2011. You’re welcome.

1. I didn’t die in a weather-related incident

My little corner of the world saw more than it’s share of extreme weather. In the span of ten months my children witnessed two blizzards that dumped over 18 inches of snow at once (causing one of our schools to have a partially collapsed roof and forcing students to finish the year in a neighboring town), a tornado (where we lost power for over two days as major transmissions lines were severed and if you’ve never seen a tornado travel down a river you should watch this), an earthquake (due to our founding fathers rolling over in their graves, apparently), a hurricane (where the eye came right over us), and a freak early snowstorm where we lost power for five days and it also canceled Halloween (no make up date has been announced yet).

That’s a LOT of extreme weather in a short amount of time. Fortunately for us we are all safe and warm right now, our house is relatively undamaged, and life continues as normal. I can’t say the same for the people that live within a few miles of here. And I won’t forget finding a piece of yellow tinted insulation in my yard this summer while the sky was colored orange-green and thinking “hey, ours is colored pink…I wonder where this came from?”

2. I was not awarded an Oracle MVP

I don’t even know if Oracle has this, the closest thing I know of is the Java Champions and while I do think I drink a good amount of coffee I can’t imagine how much it must take to become a Champion.

3. I was not present for the final launch of the Space Shuttle

No, I was not at the STS-135 launch. But I had a good reason why…because I had already seen STS-134, thanks to Stephanie Schierholz (@schierholz) and NASA. You may recall I was invited to the NASA Tweetup for STS-133 back in 2010. That launch was delayed by about 100 days, and I never made it to the actual launch. The week of STS-134 going up I was told about a tweet from Steph that those of us that missed STS-133 were to contact her immediately. Turns out they had some room for us in the twent (that’s short for ‘Tweetup Tent’) if I could get down to Kennedy Space Center in, oh…two days. I cashed in some miles, got my but down there…and the launch was scrubbed.

But just 17 days later I was back down there to watch Endeavour take her final trip into space. Also, I was able to have a most unique photo opportunity thanks to my friend Michael Steineke, who happened to be down there doing some actual photo work for NASA that day.

4. I did not quit my bacon addiction

Of course not, if anything my powers grew stronger these past 12 months. The number of bacon-themed items people give me is astounding. For Christmas this year I was given a string of bacon lights! I love all of the items I get…bacon peanut brittle…bacon t-shirts…bacon soap…bacon toothpicks…bacon sea salt…bacon lube…and even just a package of bacon delivered on Christmas morning. It’s all good.

5. I didn’t quit Twitter, or Facebook, when G+ arrived

And neither did anyone else. All G+ did was give us yet another place to spread some social networking love. I think I’ve hit my limit of social networks to maintain, I believe I have enough. I use each for a unique purpose and can’t imagine I need any more. I would like the ability to merge my G+ accounts though, here’s hoping Google can find a way to get that done in 2012 for me.

6. I did not travel to Brazil

Despite being personally invited to attend SQL Saturday #100 in Sao Paulo, I did not attend. Here’s hoping I do make it to Brazil one of these days. Good weather, good food, good drinks, and that girl from Ipanema.

Look! It's something deep friend in bacon! IT MUST BE GOOD!

7. I was not asked to star in my own reality show

Which seems odd because apparently everyone in America gets to be on their own show, otherwise we wouldn’t have ‘Jersey Shore’, or the Kardashians, or Nancy Grace. Even my sister-in-law (Heather M.) was on a show this year.

8. Still waiting on those funds from Nigeria

I have no idea what the holdup is. I gave my account numbers, just as Mr. Yan asked. I haven’t heard back from him, but I have heard from many others who have made similar requests for my bank information. Which seems completely normal because I am in the habit of just giving those numbers to anyone who needs them. Like when I get a coffee at Starbucks. I could hand them my card, but yelling out bank routing numbers is more fun. Sometimes they just give me that coffee for free.

9. I did not get Hootsuite to pay me $5.99 a month

I can’t stand Hootsuite. To be specific, I can’t stand being treated poorly. Then again, it’s not as if I was a customer of theirs anyway, so I guess it’s OK for them to pretend I don’t have half a brain. I’m leaving that post as “featured” as a reminder to everyone how to NOT do customer service through the use of social media. As if we needed any more evidence of that, right?

10. Did not win the chance to be launched into orbit

Has anyone else noticed that there are no details about coming back to Earth? I only ever see talk about the launch, not the recovery. Anyway, I didn’t win the contest which makes me part of the 99%, I believe.

11. Was not escorted from a plane for playing Words With Friends after the door was closed

Considering I flew over 75,000 miles last year, I’m a little surprised I didn’t have some kind of incident with regards to the TSA or FAA regulations. I have no idea how many miles Alec Baldwin flies, but he sure loves to play Scrabble. As for the TSA, I managed to get through the year with only a handful of “Freedom Pats” being administered, and an equal number of exposures to the radiation from the backscatter machine that does next to nothing to enhance security. But hey, don’t take my word for it, just listen to one of the voices behind the creation of the TSA, John Mica. I was one of the 31,956 people that signed the petition to abolish the TSA, and you can read the response I was given. Hey, at least they wrote back, right?

They don’t. Not one thing. I don’t buy SQL Server, I get it for free. My clients and customers buy it, so maybe they care. You might think that would mean I care, but I don’t. I have no interest in listening to folks at MS tell me that they raised prices but are *still* cheaper than Oracle. I just don’t. They eliminated Datacenter edition? Whatever.

Here’s what I care about: standards.

I want people using database tools and products to have a similar experience. It’s one of the things I can’t stand about NULLs, there are no standards applied to third party vendors that make default connections to data sources, which leads to no end of confusion for end users. It sucks, and I’m mad as hell.

Here’s an example for you. Apparently there is a difference in the default auto-commit settings between Oracle and MSSQL. Can someone explain why that would be the case? You know what, I don’t care why, it doesn’t matter. What I want is for such things to be standard. If I have to be the SQL Server admin and I get an instance of Oracle shoved down my pants then I should have a fighting chance at supporting it, and vice-versa. So why don’t we have some standards regarding transactions, logging, recovery, etc.? Is that too much to ask?

Most people aren’t going to care about these licensing costs, regardless of platform. What they care about is ease of use and standards. They care about known expectations. The difference in a few dollars per core means nothing to the average DBA. They care about performance, administrative overhead, and ease of use. They care about standards and configurations and being able to recover data that is erased by accident.

I’m sure the CFOs and CIOs in the world quibble over the price of the technology, but I am equally sure that those CFOs and CIOs are so far removed from doing actual work that they don’t appreciate the little things, such as an auto-commit setting, and how much money it will cost them to get things back on track. What money? Well, how about the hours lost for your admin (that you decided didn’t need any extra training) that needs to recover from an end-user mistake? Care to add those hours up? Probably not, that is the type of thing to get swept under the rug, especially when you want to show your boss how well everything is going.

If it is really too much to ask for some type of standards, then can I at least get some frozen yogurt?

In his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell mentions about how most people need roughly 10,000 hours of training at something before they are an expert. Despite my disagreeing with many of the book’s assertions, that was one statement I did not take issue with. I know that it takes dedication and hard work to achieve a goal. I’ve seen it, time and time again. The earliest known examples I was able to witness were (no surprise) related to my experiences as a basketball coach.

Many years ago I met a man named Rob Fodor while we were working at the same summer camp together as coaches. Rob had been a standout player in high school and college and was even drafted by his hometown Detroit Pistons. One thing you noticed right away about Rob was that he could shoot the basketball really well. The first time I saw him give a talk to the whole camp about shooting he spent the first ten minutes going through drills with just one hand (because if you can’t shoot with one, you can’t shoot with two, the second hand is just for balance anyway). So Rob would be out there warming up (and showing off) with one hand shots from all over the court and using both hands. He kept backing up until he would make half court shots with just one hand…either hand…

Part of Rob’s talk was about how long it took for him to become a good shooter. Not just good, actually, but so good he would be drafted by a pro team. That was his goal, he wanted to play professional basketball. And in order to be the best, Rob knew what needed to be done.

He needed to practice.

Rob would shoot 2,000 shots a day. He did 200 shots from 10 different spots on the floor. Know how long it takes to do 2,000 shots? Hours, that’s how long. But he did it, because he had a goal. But Rob knew something else, too.

See, Rob knew that there was some other kid that was shooting 2,000 shots a day as well. And that on some Friday night, that kid would go to the movies, and Rob would go do his 2,000 shots, and in Rob’s words:

“I KNEW I WAS BEATING HIM!”

And that gave Rob the incentive to do the same thing, over and over. His hard work would put him at a certain level of ability, and instead of going to the movies he would go practice and would then have the edge on those that chose to take the night off.

So why am I telling you this story?

If you want to be good at SQL Server, you gotta put in the hours. You can’t just go take an exam and expect that will make you a DBA. There is no substitute for experience. Right now, you and another database professional are of equal skill. Tonight they are going out for a bacon martini (or two). You are going to stay home and build some VMs in order to install the CTP3 of SQL2012  just so you can try out some new features.

Come tomorrow, guess who will have the edge on the other?

Trust me, the hard work will pay off in the long run, it always does.

Yesterday I noticed something different in my Twitter stream using Hootsuite. I was seeing promoted ads. The first one I saw was for some mayonnaise, which kinda made sense because everyone knows I love a good BLT sandwich, but it was certainly not a welcome tweet. I was only slightly annoyed because, hey, Twitter spam is everywhere.

But only a short time later I saw another ad, and now I was more than slightly annoyed. And when I went to click on the user name to report and block them for spam, I found that Hootsuite didn’t show me the ‘Report Spammer’ link like they would for any other user account. If I wanted to block this account I needed to go to Twitter and do so. And while there I happened to notice a most peculiar thing:

The promoted ad wasn’t there.

So, while Hootsuite shows me a promoted ad, the Twitter web page doesn’t? Wait a minute, what is going on here?

It turns out that Hootsuite has partnered with an agency called 140Proof, who specializes in injecting targeted ads into my stream. And I’m not the only one who has noticed the ads appearing. Thanks to my friend Karen Lopez (blog | @datachick) leaving a comment in one of my rants on Google+ yesterday I was able to root around the intertubz to get more details. It would seem that Hootsuite has expanded their targeted ads from just their mobile client apps.

I have now hit my tipping point. I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this anymore.

I am tired of being nickeled and dimed everywhere I go. Everyone wants me to give them a dollar or two and in exchange I get the privilege of seeing no ads. Even Hootsuite wanted me to know that I could have those ads turned off by using their Pro plan.

At the time I found that to be mildly offensive. I likened it to extortion, because that’s what extortion is: obtaining money or something of value as a result of abusing one’s power or authority. It’s no different than if some gangsters stopped by my house to collect some protection money. But it gets better, check out how Hootsuite tried to tell me that this wasn’t them (or 140Proof doing it for them), and that it was Twitter doing it.

That link they provided? It is Twitter explaining what promoted Tweets are. I went one step further and contacted Twitter (because Hootsuite suggested I do so) to help explain what happened in my Hootsuite stream. I know you may find this hard to believe, but the list of advertisers at this time doesn’t include mayonnaise. It is a short list, and condiments aren’t there yet, apparently. And that link tells me there are only four ways for me to even see an ad in my main Twitter stream, again confirmed by Twitter (whom I contacted because Hootsuite suggested I do so):

1. I do a search.
2. I follow the advertiser account.
3. I see the promoted ad as a related tweet.
4. I do a search for a promoted trend.

The ads I saw yesterday did not fall into one of those four. As much as I love me some bacon, I was not following @MiracleWhip on Twitter. Seriously, would anyone out there think I would even let that crap touch one of my BLT sandwiches? Unthinkable.

So, Hootsuite is injecting ads into my stream through their site, which is completely their right to do so. I will not argue that. But they are doing so in an effort to get me to pay. That’s extortion in my book. I won’t be paying Hootsuite anything, I will just stop using them.

And when the day comes (and I am sure it will) where Twitter itself heads down the path that Hootsuite has tried, then I will stop using them as well. I hear Google has something cool these days, I may just start hanging out there more often anyway.

Enjoy the shark you just jumped, Hootsuite.

Recently there was a topic for the Un-SQL Friday. I didn’t participate, but something came along right after the deadline that made me stop and think a bit, and I thought I would write up a quick post. The topic was “bad interviews” and it made me think a bit about the hiring process in general. This past week I was forced to watch watching Happythankyoumoreplease with that guy who still hasn’t told us who our mother is yet. For those that haven’t seen the movie yet I don’t want to spoil it but I will say that there is far less violence and bloodshed than you would expect from that title, I don’t recall even one gunshot which makes me think Hollywood had nothing to do with the making of this film.

Anyway, there is a point in the movie where Tony Hale’s character is talking about the color of Santa Claus’ pants, and how he once colored them blue, and a teacher told him he was wrong, and his father went down to the school to confront the teachers by yelling “WHICH ONE OF YOU TOLD MY KID THAT SANTA’S PANTS HAVE TO BE RED?” which was actually kinda awesome and brings me to my point.

What color are Santa's pants?

OK, back up a bit. Let’s say you are hiring, or interviewing. Most all of those standard questions are bullshit. They are. I don’t care if you know that database mirroring wasn’t fully supported until SQL2005 SP1. That’s a piece of trivial information. Knowing that detail won’t make you a good DBA. If you want to hire a book, just put a shortcut to Google on your desktop and save HR the paperwork.

Pushing aside the technical questions (which can only measure your depth and breadth of knowledge, and not your ability to adapt or apply knowledge in a skillful manner), you could try to do the interview in a “first date” kind of way where you can get a sense if you will want to be working together for an extended period of time. You do this by having a conversation. It’s that simple, really. And you can talk about anything you want, including geeky technical stuff. It’s just a conversation.

Now, let’s go one step further. Who is it you really want to hire? Who is it you really want to work for? Well you can get all of the info you need by discussing the color of Santa’s pants. It’s true. Let me explain.

Let’s say one person (interviewer/interviewee) insists they are red, no exceptions. They are more than likely going to insist lots of other things are done, without exception, in a particular manner, never wavering. If this is the person you want to hire/work for, then you’ve found a match. If we started asking this question my guess is that we would see 2 or 3 people out of ten respond in this manner. Not many people are this rigid, but enough of them are. They are good at following and executing orders, without questioning anything or anyone, and trust that their good service will be recognized by those in power at some point in time.

If a person says they are typically perceived to be red but in fact could be any color then you likely have someone open to new ideas. I think we would have 4 or 5 people out of ten answer in this manner, as most technical people are open to new ideas and ask natural questions when given instructions. They don’t care as much about what people think of them, they just strive to be allowed to be creative at times. I sometimes think of this group as those that think “outside the box” which is hilarious when you consider how many managers and executives say they want this type of person but always manage to hire/promote the person who insists Santa’s pants are red.

If a person says that they are typically thought to be red but they don’t really know what color they are because they have never met Santa Claus then you have someone that is not only open to new ideas but will likely want to test those ideas thoroughly. My guess is that maybe 1 in 20 people would respond in this manner. Most folks don’t like to be the pain in the ass that points out the obvious facts to others around them.

Then again, most folks aren’t DBAs, either.

And even fewer folks know how to hire one.

Don’t believe me? Check out the email I got from them this morning regarding their outage this past Sunday:

So, in an effort to appease me they thought it best to offer me a 3% credit. On the PORTION of my bill that is for streaming, although my CURRENT plan isn’t broken down into to “streaming” and “DVD only”. No, I have a plan (until September 1st at least) that is $19.99 per month and not broken down into parts. So either this is a generic letter sent hastily out to all customers, or Netflix is so strapped for cash that they can only afford to give me $0.24 as opposed to $0.60 for my “inconvenience”.

But here’s the best part: they try to put a value on my time. And not just any piece of my time, but my family time. I wanted to watch a video with my children at that time, and couldn’t.

Now, I know someone out there is going to say to me ‘Hey, knucklehead, instead of watching a video you could have gone outside and done something else, or perhaps just talked with your children.” And to you I would say “good point”, followed by “perhaps I should just cancel my Netflix membership altogether”, which is not what Netflix would want the majority of their customer to realize. No, I am certain that Netflix would not want people to know there is life without their service.

To Netflix, my family time was worth $0.24, but to me it was worth a lot more. Do you know what I would pay $0.24 for?

An explanation.

That’s right, if Netflix had sent me an email that said “sorry” along with an explanation of what happened, how it happened, and what steps they would take to ensure it doesn’t happen again, they could have kept their 3% offer.

I don’t want my money back. I want my time back. I want the chance to watch that video, with my children, at that precise moment in time. I am certain Netflix regrets being down, but I don’t want their 3% credit, what I want are assurances that they are taking steps to avoid this situation from happening again.

Today I am “downgrading” my service plan with Netflix to the streaming plus 1 DVD, saving my family about $50 a year. It may not sound like much, but I am going to take that $50 and apply it towards an Amazon Prime membership. That way, as Amazon starts to offer more and more titles, and eventually puts Netflix out of business anyway, I will be able to enjoy movies AND free shipping on stuff I am already buying.

So, in a way, I guess this is my “thank you” to Netflix, for forcing me to understand more about all of the options available for my streaming needs. Without the outage, and your unfeeling offer of a 3% credit, I would have never known that I could be spending my money a bit more wisely.

Now to head over to Amazon and pick out some good books to read to my children.

This past Wednesday at least two tornadoes struck within a few miles of my house. The first one started about 4:30PM. I had finished with a meeting for work at about 4:15PM, walked downstairs to talk with Suzanne, and was asked a question by my daughter: “Papa, will there be a tornado?” I laughed because…well…we never get tornadoes and told her not to worry about anything.

We lost power a few minutes later. I was in the middle of an instant message discussion with a colleague and was cut off. The power came back briefly and then was gone. It still hasn’t come back. But at the time we didn’t have any idea about what was happening. We just assumed there would be no soccer practice and that we should get dinner ready on the grill. It wasn’t raining so I went outside and started the grill.

By about 6PM I noticed a very interesting cloud formation to the North of our house. There was a lot of lightning as well and I stood there, watching, and grilling. Suzanne and my daughter joined me for a while as well, just watching the lightning strikes and unusual cloud formations roll by. Soon enough dinner was done, the storm had passed, and as we ate we all started wondering if the power would come back on before nightfall.

Later on I realized that I had cooked dinner, on my deck, in between two tornadoes that rolled through our area. I’m thinking that makes me eligible for some kind of Grilling Hall of Fame. At the very least I should earn a nomination for a Darwin Award.

I also started thinking about a lot of things and decided to start writing them down with the idea that I would eventually write a blog post. A third storm came through about 8PM and by then we knew that the rumors of tornadoes were real because of the debris we were finding in our yard. So we rode out the last storm in the basement, just to be as safe as possible, as I had finally gotten a weather map to display on my Droid and could see a band of deep red heading our way. While they were coming I started making notes of my thoughts and continued with them throughout the day today. Here you go:

• The longest power outage I can ever recall having is a few hours, possibly more during the overnight hours. So far we have been without power for over 29 hours and it looks like we are facing at least 40 more. Since our town wasn’t directly hit, and neighboring towns have power, this seems very, very, very odd to me.
• When I lived in Washington state we were often reminded about having a kit ready so we would be prepared to survive for up to 72 hours without power. I laughed at such a thing. I mean, who would put themselves in such a situation as to be without power for that long? It seemed silly. It doesn’t anymore.
• My house has no power and yet every time I enter a dark room I immediately flip the light switch. Talk about old habits dying hard. I wonder how long it will be before I stop doing that?
• My house is dark, even in the middle of the day, thus the reason for always wanting to turn on a light. We need more natural light. I wonder how much electricity I could have avoided using had the architect simply put in a few extra windows, or had the house face a different direction?
• The application ‘DroidLight’ is awesome. Download it now, you’ll thank me later. Especially if your house doesn’t have enough light.
• Know what else is awesome? Car chargers. Get one for your phone. You’ll thank me later.
• Allie Fox was right, ice is civilization. Many times I wanted to have a glass of ice water but couldn’t because (1) the ice machine had no power and (2) neither did the water dispenser. So, I had to reach into the ice bin and drink from the tap like I was back in the Stone Ages.
• Ice melts, by the way, so if your power goes out and you think it will be out all night then you might want to empty your ice bin before you go to sleep. Unless, of course, you enjoy waking up to a big puddle on your kitchen floor and you don’t even own a dog.
• Only people that have actually been in a war zone should be allowed to use the phrase “this looks like a war zone”. I feel strongly about this.
• You know those clock-radios that come with a battery for when the power goes out? Yeah, well…those batteries don’t work the radio part, only the clock part…and they didn’t even do that! So, we had no radio to get information from, we only had our phones.
• On a related note, Twitter was again my number one resource for getting details. I had no power, and no radio, but I could follow the #westernma and #matornado hashtags to get updates.
• When the power goes out they close the liquor stores. Also, in my state, liquor stores are closed on Memorial Day. I want both of these things changed.
• Sitting in your car with your spouse, in the driveway, listening to AM radio, and drinking wine is a wonderful way to spend a June evening. Right up until Senator Kerry speaks, of course. That’s when you know it is time for bed.
• Car radios have awful AM radio reception. Reception for FM is fine, but most every FM station is owned by some corporation and has few (if any) local DJs, so you aren’t going to get any updates from FM stations just a bunch of pre-programmed crap. That’s why Twitter was so full of win for us, we could get some details on what was happening.
• Very few people around here have any idea what a funnel cloud would look like, but this woman did. Check out how the cars keep driving by. Nobody is worried about the storm. There are two reasons for this: first is that they don’t know what to look for and second is they can’t see through the buildings and trees. This isn’t the midwest plains here, we have trees, and hills, and buildings that all obscure the horizon. Do you think those people would still be driving around if they could see the funnel cloud? Of course not. I am amazed that more people were not killed as a result.
• You can see a bunch more videos here. Watching a tornado form over a river is nothing short of amazing. I always wanted to experience as many different types of natural events as possible. I’m not sure I can quite cross this one off my list, but I think we are pretty close.
• Trees can be stripped of their bark and snapped in half rather easily. This amazes me.
• I will never again think of storm reports in the same way, and will always have trepidation when I see a strong breeze coming my way.
• The people I see on the news right now…even national news reports…are my neighbors and my friends and I can’t believe that all of their worldly possessions have been scattered to the winds. This just doesn’t happen here.
• Planes continued to take off and land from nearby Bradley airport (BDL). So, how bad could things have been, right?
• Most people around the world are going to see images of Springfield and say “wow, look at all the destruction” and not realize that much of Springfield already looked like hell only now there is a tree in the road. Seems a shame it takes a disaster for anyone to notice, and I wonder how things will look after they are rebuilt. Let’s hope for an upgrade.

That’s all I have for now, but this story isn’t quite finished yet.