I was a developer, working for a small software company outside of Boston. Our product was a warehouse management system, built with PowerBuilder on top of Oracle. We had a handful of large customers helping to keep the lights on, but a few went dark at the start of the year, casualties of the dot-com bust. 

We were soon a casualty as well, forced to sell to a competitor at the start of the year. And despite their promises and assurances about not making changes, the layoffs started within the first few months. 

They hit about a dozen folks the first day, including me. I was stunned.

I still remember the phone call from an executive I spoke infrequently with. “Can you come meet with me in the small conference room we never use for anything?” Yeah, sure. I walked across the office, knowing what was coming.

I’ve been cut from a team before, but I was just not prepared for this. And no one could explain to me why I was chosen as opposed to someone else, there didn’t seem to be any reason. It just…was.

And it really pissed me off. 

I did everything I was assigned. Traveled when other developers refused. I asked to take on challenging assignments. Noticing we had no DBA, I asked to attend Oracle certification classes. It seemed any and all efforts were ignored, or discounted.

And thus my first real corporate lesson: Nobody cares about your effort, they only care about results.

The remaining employees huddled in the large recreation room to hear about the layoffs. My friends looked around and noticed I wasn’t there. That’s because I was at my desk, putting my stuff into a box.

Packed up and walking out the door I said goodbye to a few people, and piss off to a few others. 

I put the box into my car and I started driving. I’m thinking to myself “Surely someone must need a PowerBuilder developer, right?” I drove up to Lexington, where Suzanne was working. She had stepped out to get a coffee. While she was walking back she saw me walking towards her. She didn’t hesitate to stop and yell across the street “what happened?”

She knew.

I told her what happened.

We were scared.

I vowed to never allow this to happen to me again. Never would I be the one to get cut, not in this manner, and not treated so poorly in the process. But I needed to find a job, and fast, since living in West Newton was not cheap.

My only marketable skill was PowerBuilder. Fortunately, it was still in enough demand, and it wasn’t long before my phone rang.

Not from job offers, no. It was recruiters calling me with the hope and promise of finding a job. I had worked with a handful of recruiters in the past, but I was still young and inexperienced in how to play the recruiting game. Or, to be more to the point, how they play games with kids like me.

And I was still scared. 

So I listened to what they told me to do. One recruiter took my resume, rewrote it, put c++ at the very top (because I knew how to spell it, apparently) and sent me off on interviews where I would sit with someone for 5 minutes and they would say “why are you here if you haven’t done any c++ programming before?”

Good question. Talk to the recruiter, I guess.

Another recruiter scheduled me for an interview where I had to sit for an analytical reasoning test, because apparently my MS in Mathematics wasn’t a good enough indicator of my analytical reasoning ability. Shockingly, I scored 50 out of 50, was told no one ever scored perfect before, I didn’t get the job, and never got those 45 minutes of my life back. 

I had no offers, and no prospects.

I was low.

And then, out of nowhere, a recruiter contacted me about a job down in Hartford.

Hartford!

Hartford is 90 miles away from West Newton, but mostly a reverse commute. I could drive to Hartford in about 75-80 minutes as it was all highway driving. Folks commuting into Boston from Nashua, NH along Route 3 take longer than that!

I decided to go for the interview for two reasons. First, the scared thing. Fear is a great motivator. If I had to drive 90 miles each way, I would. Second, I knew getting hired by an investment firm in Hartford is job security. People there had careers, you know? It didn’t matter if you had skills or not, you just needed to get past your 90 days. Once you are in, you are in for as long as you want. 

I interviewed with a wonderful human being named Craig. He needed PowerBuilder help. I needed a job. He asked about the drive and I told him it would not be a problem. He mentioned the company offered some relocation assistance, if I wanted to move. I thanked him, we shook hands, and I drove home.

When I got home, I had an offer. Well, offers. One was from Craig. The other was from a software company in East Boston who specialized in point-of-sale systems for cruise lines. East Boston is only 11 miles away from West Newton. However, it would take me an hour to get to work during rush hour combined with the Big Dig. They also expected employees to work at least ten hours a day, but in reality they were only paying me for eight. I really liked their company, and the idea of being “forced” to work on a cruise ship a few weeks each year. 

Suddenly, the fear was back.

I couldn’t choose East Boston because I’d be doing the same PowerBuilder job, with nothing to grow into. I needed a job, sure.

But I wanted a career. 

And I had vowed to never get cut from the team again.

So I chose Hartford.

And my life was forever altered.

Within a few months 9/11 happened. A few months later, Suzanne and I bought our first home, in Worcester, in order to cut down on my commute (reduced to 60 miles, but not by much time because I was a bit further from the highways). We had our first child there, got pregnant again (the best part about babies is making them) and decided to move once more. This time to be closer to both sets of grandparents. Right around the time of the move, “it” happened.

“It” was the 1.5 DBAs at my company quit within a week or so of each other. One was a contractor who simply gave his 30 day notice. The other was a part-timer who was offered the full time job and he said “yes” then changed his mind a week later. This left no one except the guy who had previously executed the following commands successfully:

BACKUP

and

RESTORE

No bootcamps. All it took for me to be handed this opportunity was the fact I knew how to do a backup, a restore, and change passwords.

So, the greatest manager in the world asked Craig (one of the few truly good people on this Earth) if he could “borrow” me, and Craig knew that the best thing for me (not for HIM, but for ME) was to become a DBA. So Craig agreed, we set a transition period over the next six months or so and that was that.

I was now the DBA.

There was a lot to do, a lot to learn, a lot to accomplish. In time I found and joined PASS. I connected with others. I helped take my company from what was essentially a wild west show into a more stable environment. Now, I wasn’t always nice (I think my communication skills have improved in time), but I was always thinking about the company, and whatever actions I took needed to benefit everyone and not just the one or two people looking to take a shortcut.

As my skills grew, so did my thirst for new challenges. Eventually, I hit the limits of my role. There was nothing more for me to grow into. And what had once seemed an amazing opportunity and role now seemed like a prison sentence.

I could still remember how I was so excited and so proud to have a job with a company in Hartford. It was not just a job, but a career. And here I was, nine years later, burned out and tired. Worse yet, the people around me were tired of having me around. It seemed as if I would say ‘black’, three people would say ‘white’ just on principal alone. I felt my skills were called into question every day, or the environment I spent six years building would be called into question, if for no other reason because I was the voice on the other end of the phone.

There was nowhere else to go.

On a whim, I decided to drive into Boston for a SQL Saturday event. While there I was walking past the vendor tables and I heard the phrase “I bet you’d look good wrapped in bacon”. It was probably the best pickup line anyone could use on me. I handed him a bacon gumball. He tried one, got sick, and still wanted to talk to me. I felt bad about making him ill with the gumball so I did something I had not done in over five years:

I attended a dedicated vendor session.

They talked about their product. They promised me it would monitor my SQL and Sybase instances, something I asked other vendors to give me for years. I agreed to give their product a trial, if for no other reason because they did some heavy name dropping and they told me they read my blog. 

I installed the trial, let it run for a week, and started to fall in love. About a month later they came to visit and walk through my data with me. I liked it even more. We had lunch together. The next month we all met up again at a SQL Saturday. It was me, David Waugh, and Matt Larson (CEO of Confio Software). We agreed to meet and have dinner prior to the SQL Saturday dinner. It was, essentially, my job interview. There was no exchange of resumes, just some conversation over dinner. No talk of salary, just talk about our children. No talk about managers, just talk about the role they felt I could help with.

And there was no job opening. We were creating one. Right there. In a hole in the wall in New York City, on a Friday night in the Spring. 

I was a long way from that walk across the office. 

I still had fear. Joining a startup was a risk. Matt looked at me and said “Tom, lots of things can happen. But I’m fairly certain in a stack of resumes, yours would float to the top”. 

Suddenly, I felt like I had a place to go. A place to grow. New challenges. The opportunity to build something, together. 

I took the job(s). I was a sales engineer, customer support, marketing, product support, and maybe a few other roles. You know how everyone wears a lot of hats when you are small.

I clashed with others, wanted to quit, and was almost fired. Fortunately, Confio had their version of Craig. His name was Don, and Don believed I was a value-add even if others did not. Don saved me, just as Craig saved me before. 

I held on. I survived.

Not long after, we were purchased by SolarWinds, where I am today.

This post is really long and doesn’t have a point. If you’ve read this far I thank you and feel I owe you something of value. Something like “focus on the things you can change” or some type of sage advice. 

I’ve got nothing. Well, maybe something.

Always be learning.

Twenty years ago I had no job. Today I have a career. I went from software developer to database administrator to sales engineer/customer support/product support to technical product marketing. I’ve sought roles where I have the opportunity to grow and be presented with new challenges. These past few years I’ve been immersing myself in data science.

If I needed to find work tomorrow, I believe I could. The same should be true for you, too.

Don’t settle for what you already know. Don’t let your opinions block your judgement when it comes to tools, products, or technology. Be open to new possibilities. Be humble to the idea that you don’t know everything, and you can always be learning something new.

If you can do that, then you’ll always have a place to go, a place where you will add value.

That’s it, that’s the post.

The post Twenty Years appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

It was embarrassing, too. A healthy lifestyle is important to me. So important I included a chapter about health and nutrition in my book. But years of travel were taking their toll on my body, my health, and my spirit.

Then, this past December, my son hugged me goodnight and commented “Papa, your heart is beating fast”. Yeah, sometimes my heart was beating a bit faster than usual. I had noticed but didn’t think much about the palpitations until he said something. At that point I started thinking about friends and colleagues that have died suddenly due to heart failure.

So, it was time to make some changes.

Setting a Goal

I set a goal to run a local road race. It was a simple enough race, a 10k, something I have run many times before. I dusted off my account with Nike Run Club and picked out a training plan. The race was mid-March, giving me about 10 weeks of training.

The first two weeks I was up early and at the gym. I would walk on a treadmill for about 10 minutes, then jog for about ten (when I wasn’t winded) and then play basketball (again, when I was able to breathe).

I was two weeks into the training and decided to have a health screen. Well, I didn’t decide to have the health screen, I was bribed. My HMO offers a discount on monthly premiums if you consent to the screen. So, I give them my blood, they give me $50 a month reduction in premiums. For $600 on the year, I decided I would make the appointment.

When I got there, I told the physician that I didn’t want them to reveal my weight to me. They complied. I will assume they get that request a lot. When they took my blood pressure it was high enough to cause concern. We did it a second time, the reading was a tad lower, and they decided I didn’t need to be admitted to the hospital right away.

Prognosis Negative

Less than a week later my results showed up in an email. I didn’t look, fearing I would see my weight. A few days later an envelope showed up. Inside were my results. I put them aside, not wanting to see my weight.

A week later, curious to know about my cholesterol levels, I decided to look at the results. I knew it was possible to avoid seeing the weight and focus on the other metrics.

The results were poor. Alerts for total cholesterol and for glucose. The glucose results labeled me as “pre-diabetes”. My body was slowly refusing to break down insulin created naturally. I was on track to have Type-II diabetes.

I was now more determined than ever to make a change in my life.

Eat Bacon, Don’t Jog

Christmas 2016 I was given the book Eat Bacon, Don’t Jog, written by Grant Petersen. I opened it up and didn’t put it down until done.

Everyone should read this book. I wouldn’t tell you to follow all the advice, but there is bound to be something in there that you can take away. For me, it was reinforcing a few key concepts:

• The amount of carbs in my diet had me on track for Type2 diabetes.
• I would remove unnecessary carbs from my diet by cutting back on beer, wine, popcorn, chips, etc.
• I would eat more proteins during the day and get necessary carbs from leafy greens and some fruit.

Grant is a huge fan of keto. I’m not as big a fan, I don’t want my body to start consuming itself through ketogenesis.

OK, Maybe Jog a Little Bit

In addition to diet advice, Grant also talks about exercising. He is a big advocate for upping the intensity of a workout, instead of longer workouts. So, instead of jogging for 11 miles, you jog for 3 but pick up the pace. This is a training technique I did previously for road races, and worked well for me. Grant reminded me about the Tabata, a routine that encourages brief outputs of intensity. I started incorporating Tabatas as well.

And that’s been my life for 2018. I haven’t traveled as much this year, but when I do I bring my workout clothes and sneakers. In mid-July I was down a full 50 pounds. I still have more to go. My heart doesn’t race as much. I’m not as short of breath. I can jog again, and run up and down a basketball court without the need for an oxygen tank.

I don’t have a “before” photo to share, but here is the photo taken in the studio last month:

And here is a photo that helps to show how large my pants were, and I can see my feet again:

Here’s my list of tips and tricks for you. A quick warning: I am not a doctor. The things I did worked for me, they may not work for you. Like, not at all. Every person is different. This list is the result of decades of understanding what works best for my body and lifestyle. Take the parts that make sense for you and give them a try. You might find success as well.

Use a Meal Tracker

I use MyFitnessPal to track meals and exercise. This was a great way to understand all the different ways carbs were creeping into my diet. For me, it helps to write down what I eat during the day. If nothing else, it’s a great way to remind me how much I have eaten, which helps to avoid overeating. If you have an account, connect with me, I’d love to help you reach your goals.

Reduce Carbs

I tried to keep carbs low at first, less than 30g a day for a week or so. But I believe that your body needs a mixture of foods, like fiber, that have carbs. That’s why I call this “smart-carb”. I didn’t shun all of them, just the unnecessary ones. One of the worst things? That carb-tray that Delta passes around the first-class cabin. There’s nothing worth eating, so I pack my own Epic bars. I’ve cut back on beer and wine, too. I try to eat food higher in protein, low in carbs.

Build a food routine

For breakfast, a boiled egg, a slice of bacon, and a coffee is all I need. I do this most every day of the week. Even when I’m on the road I can find a boiled egg as part of the hotel continental breakfast. This lets me have a routine, and routine is good. For lunch I go with some leafy greens (OK, it’s a salad), with some protein (tune, chicken, steak). I find I don’t need to snack as much or as often. Then for dinner, whatever I want but avoid the unnecessary carbs from things like bread, pasta, and potatoes. Conference and event food can be difficult, but it get’s easier when you realize you can just eat the top of the pizza, and not the dough.

Get Moving

Exercise is something that works for me, but not for everyone. That’s something to consider. If you aren’t the person that enjoys a sweat, then you will need to make a lifestyle change to the foods you eat in order to lose weight. If you combine diet with exercise you can see faster results. Of course, if you let your body go into ketosis, then you’ll see even faster results. But I don’t believe ketosis is the right answer, just as I wouldn’t believe jogging 20 miles a day is the right answer.

Up the Intensity

You don’t need to work out for hours on end, if you up the intensity of your cardio workouts. A Tabata is a great way to improve your overall fitness and promote weight loss in a minimal amount of time. Fat cells don’t ever leave your body, they can only shrink. And they only shrink by releasing water or carbon dioxide. You know, like when you breathe heavy and/or sweat from working out.

Pack your sneakers

Every trip I have taken this year I have included my workout clothes and made time to get a sweat in during my regular workout day. My goal is to be active 3x a week. That means I need to work out when I’m on the road.

Track your progress

I knew I was overweight and refused to weigh myself. But if I had stepped on a scale, I may have started down a healthier path a long time ago. I can’t stress this enough: you need to measure your weight on a regular basis. If you don’t, then you don’t have any idea if your lifestyle may be slowly killing you. [NARRATOR VOICE: It most certainly is killing you.] I weigh myself a few times a week, and I don’t get mad when I gain a pound or two. Your weight will fluctuate. Focus on the long-term trend, not the short. (It’s like the difference between climate and weather.)

Summary

Don’t wait to get started on making better choices for what you eat, and being active. I put it aside for far too long. I’m hopeful that my next visit to the doctor’s office will show that my actions are making me healthier. If you are looking for some support as you try to get started, just let me know. Drop me an email and I’d be happy to help, or connect you with a professional nutritionist (spoiler alert, it’s my sister). I’ve seen a lot of folks in IT with health issues, and I’d like to help reverse that trend.

The post I Lost 50 pounds in 5 Months, Here’s How appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

(27-May-2029)

“Hey Cortana, restore the Clinic database to 10:43 AM yesterday.”

I don’t remember when humanity gave control to the machines. It was a gradual takeover, like black mold inside your walls. It was slow. You didn’t notice until it was everywhere you look.

But here I was, a former operational database administrator, asking a machine to do the work I used to do.

“OK. I understand you are asking for the Clinic database to be restored to 10:43 AM yesterday. Should I schedule that for you now?”

“Yes, schedule it to start in one hour, thanks.”

“OK, I have scheduled a restore of the Clinic database to start in one hour.”

Backups were out of our hands even before The Girls arrived. AWS and Azure managed backups for years. This allowed operational DBAs to do restores without the headaches of configuring backup jobs. Backups, replication, disaster recovery – all part of the database as a service. No human needed.

In the decades before the arrival of The Girls, the number one task for any operational DBA was the recovery of data. If you couldn’t recover data, you couldn’t keep your job. This fact was still true today.

Despite The Girls being able to perform vital operational DBA tasks, I still had a job. The Board felt more comfortable having at least one human around. To keep an eye on things, I guess.

The Board were also the ones to first refer to, and thereby name, Cortana and all the female-voiced AI in the office as The Girls. In their mannish minds, this was somehow more evolved than “Our Girls”.

“Hey Cortana, send an email to all business stakeholders. Tell them the restore will begin in one hour, so they should log off the system.”

This is the human element the Board liked. Cortana may not always know exactly who to contact about a restore. In time, we will build the rules to help her understand. And she was learning already, keeping track of what databases and what teams to notify. It was as if I was training a human. Except I wasn’t.

“OK, I understand that you want me to send an email to Albany Steakhouse to tell them the restore will begin in one hour. Shall I send that now?”

Learning can’t come fast enough, I thought to myself. But this was my mistake. We had converted our email lists when The Girls arrived. As part of their training, we configured email lists tied to a server, database, or application name. This would help us interface with Cortana and speed up the learning process.

“No.”

“OK.”

“Hey Cortana, send an email to the Clinic server to remind them that the restore will begin in one hour, so they should log off the system.”

“OK, I understand that you want me to send an email to Clinic server to remind them the restore will begin in one hour. Shall I send that now?”

“Yes, thanks.”

“Email sent.”

Database restores should be easier than this, I thought. In the days before The Girls, this restore task would have been completed already. But the voice commands make restores a lengthy process.

Restores weren’t even necessary anymore. But we did them anyway because humans were still used to having humans do certain tasks. The Girls could reload specific chunks of data as needed. All you had to do was ask. But the Board wasn’t comfortable with the idea of data flowing in and out so easily, all done by AI. How would the business ever know if the data was correct?

A while back we tried to build markers into the schemas to identify good datasets from bad. But that solution turned out to be a mess. If you’ve ever seen Wikipedia editors arguing over an entry, then you can imagine what it was like when two salesmen argued over a sale.

I stood up to get another cup of coffee. The next hour I planned to spend with coffee and a magazine. I would rather surf the internet, but the Board monitors usage. I didn’t want to risk my employment on a few Hulugrams. Reading magazines wasn’t monitored, yet. It would be another six months before the Board installed cameras. The Board was under pressure from Wall Street to have employees working at full capacity.

I was about to nod off when the phone rang, startling me and causing me to spill my coffee on my pants. It was Brad, and he wasn’t happy. Brad was on the Data Analytics team. He yelled at me, saying the restore didn’t work. Half asleep I hung up the phone and got to work.

“Hey Cortana, what is the status of the restore?”

“I don’t understand.”

No, of course you don’t, because you aren’t a DBA, but I’m forced to use you if I want to have a job.

My job depended upon two things. First, that the Board wasn’t comfortable turning everything over to The Girls. Other companies were willing to take risks, but not ours. The Board wanted a human to be here, and I was lucky that they selected me. Many of my operational DBA colleagues were finding it tough to get work these days. Some were forced into dreadful roles such as network administration.

The second thing is that I had the skill to talk with Cortana. I took a class on AI Interfacing two years ago. It taught me to speak efficiently with voice-activated devices. I knew my mistake and corrected myself.

“Hey Cortana, what is the status of the Clinic database?”

“The clinic database is in an online status.”

That’s the info I needed to know. The database wasn’t in a restoring state. The restore either was complete or did not start. I wasn’t sure of which. But before I could ask Cortana, Brad appeared on my screen. He was using YouFace for a video chat. Brad only uses YouFace when agitated. Brad told me that the daily 6AM data load from yesterday wasn’t there. And that it looked like the database was from two nights ago.

How odd, I thought.

I decided to check Cortana’s work. But you can’t just talk to Cortana like a human. If you do, you won’t get the answer very fast. You need to know how to ask the right questions. This was my specialty, some called it my superpower.

“Hey Cortana, what was the last point in time restore for the Clinic database?”

“The Clinic database was last restored to the point-in-time 10:43 AM UTC yesterday.”

That sounded correct, it was what I had asked for. But Brad says the data is from two days ago. I sipped my coffee and told Cortana to start the clock.

“Hey Cortana, start the downtime clock.”

“OK, I have started the downtime clock.”

A year ago someone wrote a program to calculate the exact cost, to the second, that an outage was costing the company. The Board then decided to have downtime clocks installed on each floor. Part of my job was to tell Cortana to start the downtime clock whenever there was an outage. The Board wanted everyone to see the severity of the outage in a way everyone could understand: money.

Instead of showing time, the downtime clock showed dollars.

Seeing the numbers on the wall didn’t make me work any harder. Or faster. Or smarter. I knew we weren’t losing money. The clock was a façade, an old-school scare tactic put into place by managers who motivate people by yelling at them.

Brad had told me about the program last year. Brad said The Board did a side project at the same time when building the downtime clock. After the clock added up the dollars, The Girls would take the final tally and adjust the billing for the upcoming month. The service fee increase got buried inside the monthly statements. Few customers would notice because everyone pays bills through auto-pay. For those that do notice, if they complain, they get adjustments the next month and a “Hey, we’re sorry” email.

So, we won’t lose money with the outage, but we won’t make money either. The following month the adjustment is reversed. Well, unless there were more outages.

I didn’t need a clock to remind me to focus on the problem. I was so focused I went to take another sip of my coffee and forgot I finished it earlier. Annoyed that Cortana couldn’t deliver a coffee to my desk, I got up to get more.

Damn machines are supposed to save us time, I thought.

Time.

The mug fell out of my hands, shattering into pieces. I realized my mistake. As the Bruumba came to clean up my mess I threw myself into my cubicle chair.

Ever since The Girls came into service it was clear they were excellent at doing what you asked. The hard part was matching what you asked for with what you wanted. The Girls didn’t make mistakes, they did as we asked.

Despite our advances as a society, we still needed time zones. Ask The Girls what time it is and they report the time based on their home location. But the Cloud has no concept of time zones. All data in the Cloud is UTC.

I messaged Brad. “Figured it out, will be back online in less than 15 minutes. Sorry for the delay.”

Then I went to work on fixing the problem.

“Hey Cortana, restore the Clinic database to 4:43 PM UTC yesterday.”

“OK. I understand you are asking for the Clinic database to be restored to 4:43 PM UTC yesterday. Should I schedule that for you now?”

“Yes, thanks, starting now.”

“OK, I have scheduled a restore of the Clinic database to start now.”

Mad at myself for not realizing my mistake sooner I went back to my magazine. The restore would take a few minutes. When it finished, I would message Brad.

At least I still have a job, I thought.

I knew the Board would get comfortable with The Girls running everything and I will get a new job. But there’s no need for me to speed up that timeline by making silly mistakes because of time zones. You don’t need The Girls to do everything. Many DBA tasks, and DBAs, are replaceable with a few lines of PowerShell.

I flipped the page of my magazine, looked at the time on my phone, and wondered how long before my car would drive itself here to take me home. I looked at the downtime clock and did some math. This outage was going to raise the bill for our customers by an average of seven BaCoins.

No one would ever notice such a small amount. And no one, not even the Board, would think it was a human error. They review the log files on a periodic basis. When they do, the multiple restore attempts will be flagged for a follow-up review. And that’s assuming Brad doesn’t say anything prior to the log review.

I sat back in my chair, wondering what network administration was like as a career.

The post Hey Cortana appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

I, however, have never been one to follow the crowd. Ever.

So as we close out 2017 it’s time for my annual review of things that didn’t happen to me during the previous twelve months.

As always, you’re welcome.

Didn’t sell my organs for Bitcoin

I’m not saying I didn’t think about it, though. But the Bitcoin bubble has been interesting to watch. It seems that everyone has a thought about Bitcoin. You can’t go through your day without some talking head giving your their analysis of the Bitcoin market. I just wish they would dive into the origins of Bitcoin: a virtual currency built for purchasing organs and drugs.

Didn’t lose my home to a flood

But others did. Houston received 51 inches of rain with Hurricane Harvey, which is a weird way of saying that because it’s not like Houston could refuse shipment on the storm. With my company SolarWinds based in Austin we had a lot of friends and family affected by Harvey. I’m also proud that we stepped forward as a group to provide relief in every way possible.

Didn’t WannaCry about being hacked

Back in May a lot of people were victims of the WannaCry ransomware attack. WannaCry targeted out-of-date Windows devices, leading to a nice discussion amongst us data professionals about the frequency of patching systems in our enterprise. Oh, and the frequency of your backups, too. If ransomware strikes, you can always rollback, as long as you have backups. If you are being told to hold off on patching because something might break, or are being told to wait until it’s time to upgrade, then you are doing it wrong. It’s 2018, you must be able to deploy changes with confidence.

Didn’t lose my job to the cloud

And chances are neither did you. AWS and Azure keep making things easier for us, and there are advances in AI as well, but the robots haven’t come for us yet. The Cloud doesn’t replace our jobs, it enhances them. But the Cloud does remove the need for humans to do operational tasks, such as backups and performance tuning.

Didn’t have my password breached in Equifax

Because the Equifax breach wasn’t about passwords, it was about leaking the credit information for nearly every adult in the USA. Besides, my password is my birthday, which no one can remember, apparently.

Didn’t watch one episode of GoT

Keeping my streak alive of never having watched Game Of Thrones, ever. There ought to be a badge or something for this accomplishment.

Didn’t get interrupted during my interview with the BBC

I mean, I *do* get interrupted. All the time. I work from home, which means I live at work. People assume that working from home is a strict progression of cause to effect, resulting in productive outputs, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint – it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey-worky stuff. I’m just not in a position where the BBC comes calling for an interview. Maybe, someday.

Didn’t go blind watching an eclipse

Yes, people have gone blind from looking directly at an eclipse. Eclipse Glasses were a thing this past summer, as were the cheap imitation knockoffs that were being sold. At first, I was shocked to learn about the fake glasses. Then I remembered capitalism. And then I thought “who would ever think it’s OK to look directly at the sun, glasses or not”? The answer is even more depressing when you think that these same people are allowed to vote and drive cars.

Didn’t lose data in the Amazon S3 outage

But lots of folks did as they discovered how poorly they architected their business infrastructure when the East region of AWS went offline. I’m always surprised at how many people are surprised to find out that the cloud can go offline. It’s as if they assume the network is a constant thing, something that is always going to be there, like a utility or something…

Didn’t vote to end net neutrality

Because only three people did, showing just how silly our government can be when it comes to protecting consumers from corporations. Its absurd to me that three people can control the wishes of 300 million, but here we are. The debate for and against net neutrality will continue no matter what the FCC decides. I understand both sides of the debate, too. I also understand that technology happens at a faster pace than legislation. At the end of the day, I’d like to see internet service declared a utility. It’s a shame that the FCC just waited to have their vote and didn’t spend time putting together something to offer as a replacement.

Didn’t admit to throttling performance for my customers

But that’s what Apple did in December, admitting what we had already known for years: your iPhone got slower after 18 months or so, right around the time a new iPhone was set to be released. Choosing battery life or performance was the decision that Apple had to make, so they decided to “help” your battery. If they truly wanted to help, they could have included information about our battery and let us make an informed decision about how to repair or replace our equipment. By making the choice for the customer they lost a lot of consumer trust. About the only way to make things worse for Apple right now would be if their phones suddenly caught fire.

Didn’t purchase an autonomous vehicle

Because they still aren’t available. But when they are, I’m buying one for my parents, no question. I think I will always enjoy driving myself, but the idea of having a car that can drop me at the airport and return home for my family to use is Jetsons-level cool. Here’s hoping that autonomous vehicles go mainstream by 2021.

Didn’t have a wardrobe malfunction

I presented over twenty sessions at data events in five different countries and recorded many hours of video for SolarWinds Lab and THWACkcamp without any wardrobe malfunctions (bee costume not included). My next event is in Darmstadt at SQL Konferenz in February, here’s hoping the streak stays alive.

Didn’t get re-accommodated by an airline

In the race-to-the-bottom for airline customer service, United Airlines doubled down by dragging a passenger off a flight this past April. To make matters worse, the reason for his removal was so space could be made for United employees. Because airline crew assignments are more important than Dr. Dao being on time to work at the hospital the next day, apparently.

Didn’t get an explanation for Snoke

Then again, I’m still waiting for an explanation about canyons in Iowa. Apparently, J.J. Abrams likes to use the ‘mystery box’ writing device, which means that we aren’t likely to get an explanation for whatever is inside the box. After years of being burned by his stories, I hope J. J. Abrams is maimed by a mystery box falling on his car as he drives to the bank.

Didn’t eat a unicorn

But others drank the blood of a Unicorn, which is what I assume is inside those drinks from Starbucks. At 410 calories (and 59g of sugar), the grande-sized Unicorn Frappuccino is the latest reason why American’s have issues with obesity and health. On the bright side, these drinks allow me to have candid discussions with my children about nutrition.

Didn’t fall asleep while writing

Covfefe.

There you have it, a list of things that didn’t happen to me in 2017.

I can’t wait to see all the things I won’t do in 2018!

The post 17 Things That Didn’t Happen To Me in 2017 appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

The thing about Rob Collie is that he has a way of asking the most direct questions possible in the nicest way possible.

The year is 2010, and I am at TechEd in New Orleans. It’s my first day on the job for Confio.  We are in a bar on Bourbon Street, upstairs in a private room for one of the vendor social events. I have no idea how Rob was even there, to be honest. But he sees me and, being Rob Collie, he wants some data. So he decides to get it by accosting me in front of others.

“What do you mean,” I ask.

“Your people. You DBAs,” Rob continues. “You are all so miserable, all of the time. I see you all talking to each other on Twitter, and it’s mostly depressing. Why?”

I’m stunned. I’ve got no answer for Rob. I’m defensive, trying to tell Rob that we aren’t so miserable. Rob sees this and presses but does it in that Rob Collie way that lets me know it’s safe to open up a bit, even though we’ve just met.

I’ve never looked from the outside on our SQL Community and how we treat each other, or others. It only took a few minutes of conversation with Rob before I realized he was right. We are a bunch of curmudgeons. We complain a lot. We like to prove we are smarter than others. We like to prove we are better than others. We strut and point out the mistakes others make. We are dismissive of others, especially non-DBAs. We talk down to people with new ideas. We are everything you aren’t supposed to be online. We are a miserable lot.

I try to explain that DBAs are miserable because our jobs are miserable. On a weekly basis, we are asked to convert pickup trucks into Ferrari’s, colored green, and if we can’t do it then management will find someone else who can. Or, at least promises to try. We are asked to do things, crazy things, and when we try to explain why something might not be a good idea we are just seen as saying “no”. It’s not fun for many. And saving everyone’s ass at 2am because an end user did something silly gets tiring, especially when the people you save don’t even acknowledge that you’ve saved them. You are Superman, unbeknownst to anyone, and without a three-movie contract.

It takes about ten minutes of conversation before I see Rob’s eyes light up. It’s like he just discovered that he never need to do a VLOOKUP again, that’s the look he has in his eyes.

“Oh! I get it now! You are just like us! Excel professionals suffer in the same ways that you do. We can be a miserable bunch, too. But we don’t do it in public. And we always come together to help each other.”

And that’s when I realized Excel was a thing. It was no longer a spreadsheet. Excel became alive to me. Excel wasn’t just an application that came with Office, Excel was a Community.

Excel also had Rob. And I wanted to hang with Rob. And not just because he had a seemingly endless supply of Rum ‘n Cokes to hand out at conferences.

It’s been seven years since I met Rob. In that time I have found out things about him, personally and professionally. I found out that Rob was a former roommate of Conor Cunningham. Yes, that Conor Cunningham. Rob also worked for Donald Farmer. Yes, that Donald Farmer. Rob worked at Microsoft helping to build PowerPivot into Excel, which has changed how millions of data professionals do their jobs. Let that sink in for a minute the next time you think it’s cool that a few people are using a script you wrote. Rob’s contributions to data are cool, squared.

In short, Rob Collie knows a thing or two about data, databases, the business of data, and Community, too.

If you don’t yet subscribe to Rob (blog | @PowerPivotPro), you should. His writing is wonderful. What’s more wonderful is reading how he helps makes people lives better.

Using Excel.

I’m serious.

I didn’t believe it at first. Excel is just a spreadsheet, right? Yeah, it’s a spreadsheet used by 300+ million people. Excel secretly powers every business on the face of the Earth. Embedded in a world of Microsoft SQL Server I find myself in many arguments about what database platform to use. Now I look and smile, knowing that the single most important feature of any application is the ability to export to CSV so someone can bring the data into Excel and PowerBI.

Why Am I Telling You So Much About Rob Collie?

Rob wrote a post yesterday, a personal one, a post that struck a chord with me. Rob knew this, too. Because last night he tweeted to me as I watched the Celtics.

@SQLRockstar will like today's post, we think.

— P3 (PowerPivotPro) (@powerpivotpro) May 4, 2017

Rob, as usual, was right. I did like his post, The Intertwining of Professional and Personal: a Note from Rob. In the post, Rob talks about the phrase “It’s not personal, it’s just business” and explains why INPIJB is not acceptable. It’s a way for one person to absolve themselves from hurting another. I’ve had this phrase on me more than a few times and I’ve never accepted it or any variation. Here’s my reason why: When you use this phrase you are telling the other person that money is more important than your relationship.

Let that sink in for a minute.

You are telling someone, perhaps a (current, maybe soon to be former) friend of yours, that you would rather have money than their friendship. And while some jerk is now getting ready to leave the comment “everything has a price” my answer is “not my friends”.  If you can put a price on your friendships then maybe you need better ones.

A wise woman once said, “If money is all that you love, then that’s what you’ll receive.” I cannot, and will not, accept being told that my friendship has a price. I value friendships, honesty, and loyalty over money.

We are all human. All that we have is personal. INPIJB is a lie people say to make themselves feel better.

I am certain that there are circumstances where the money would matter more. But I am also certain that, no matter what the circumstance, you can put the relationship first and figure out the business part later.

Seriously, What’s This Post About?

It’s just personal, it’s not business. As Rob talked about in his post, there is a blend of professional and personal in everything we do. If you are coming to this blog for a steady stream of SQL Server tips and tricks then today I let you down.

I have long advocated that writing is something that must feed one’s own soul first before it feeds the souls of others. I needed to get these words out. Today, I woke up and this post needed to happen.

That’s how writing works for me. You should do you.

But don’t let people put a value on your friendship.

Relationships matter more than money.

The post Relationships Matter More Than Money appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

I, however, have never been one to follow the crowd.

So as we close out 2016 it’s time for my annual review of things that didn’t happen to me during the previous twelve months.

As always, you’re welcome.

Didn’t run for President

But everyone else did, it seemed. The Democrats had seven people run. Not to be outdone, the Republicans had eighteen candidates step forward. And out of those twenty-five candidates, America selected an internet troll to be President.

Didn’t eat my weight in Scotch eggs

But I made every effort to do so while at SQLBits in Liverpool this past May. In 2017, SQLBits is returning to Telford and I have no idea if I can get a scotch egg there or not. I may need to buy the scotch and eggs separately and combine them myself.

Didn’t lose the kids in London

We took a family vacation to London this past July, spending 10 days traveling in and around the city (see above photo). I believe that it is important for children to travel to better understand more about the world than just their hometown. I’m fortunate to have the opportunity and the means to make that happen.

Didn’t get to name a research vessel

In a perfect example of how crowd-sourcing can go horribly wrong, here’s what happens when you let the internet pick a name for something. Remember folks, none of us is as dumb as all of us.

Didn’t vote to leave the EU

UK: #Brexit.

USA: Yeah? Hold my beer and watch this.

Didn’t buy a new VCR

I didn’t even know they were still alive until I saw this article. And then, while Christmas shopping, I noticed a store had turntables for sale. Pretty soon 8-tracks will be available again and then I can listen to Donny Osmond’s Disco Train in all its glory.

Didn’t buy a smartwatch

And neither did many of you, either, according to this report. It’s almost as if the folks at Apple have no idea what people want anymore. Go figure. Look, I don’t wear a watch now, and I haven’t in years. Making a watch “smart” isn’t going to end that streak for me.

Didn’t attend my own funeral

I suspect that for many 2016 was seen as a rather depressing year. And it seems that 2016 has seen a high rate of celebrity deaths as well. I think this video best describes 2016 for everyone.

Didn’t occupy land in protest

The year started with a protest in Oregon and ended with one in South Dakota. Reviewing details of the two incidents shows a stark contrast to the methods and tactics used by both sides. In both cases, peace won out, which probably pissed off 2016 to the point it started taking all the celebrities it could (see previous item).

Didn’t have EverNote steal my data

Because I stopped using Evernote years ago when OneNote became comparable and started offering decent versions for my iMac and my iPhone. I’m still in shock that Evernote thought that what they were doing would be okay in any way.

Didn’t visit Cuba

Not yet, but if there is ever a data event taking place I want to be the first to sign up! I have always wanted to visit Cuba, and hope to do so soon. I’m not even bitter about Obama devaluing overnight the value of my Cuban cigar collection.

Didn’t have my water tainted

But they did in Flint, MI. We take so much for granted here in the USA. Things like electricity and clean water. Last week my furnace quit, making me understand how I took my heat for granted, too. Access to clean water is difficult for many in the world, the leaders in Flint should not have acted so carelessly with something so precious.

Didn’t visit Jupiter

But Juno did, and I had been accepted to attend the Juno launch years ago but had to back out. So, I guess that means this counts as two things I didn’t do in my life – yet.

Didn’t have my Yahoo account breached once

Because it didn’t happen once, it happened twice. In the span of four months, Yahoo came forward to admit two breaches affecting millions of accounts. For years I have considered Yahoo to be one of the worst companies with regards to data security and privacy, and these breaches confirm my suspicions.

Didn’t have my home devices attack me

I’m not much of an early adopter for a lot of things. As a result, my home is not full of IoT devices like refrigerators, light bulbs, and toilet seats. That’s probably how I missed out on the Mirai botnet this year. It seems to me that humans are far too trusting when it comes to security. perhaps we should let the bots build themselves for a while.

Didn’t buy an online spam rolodex

But Microsoft did, overpaying for LinkedIn, the global leader in spam emails, overtaking Yahoo by a slim margin back in 2014 and getting worse with each passing week. It has gotten so bad that we now have Nigerian Princes openly creating profiles on LinkedIn. I’m optimistic that Microsoft can help reduce the flow of unwanted spam from LinkedIn, perhaps by leveraging one or more of their bots in some manner. At the end of the day I believe that Microsoft knows better than I do about the true value of LinkedIn, and I’m looking forward to LinkedIn on Linux soon.

There you have it, a list of things that didn’t happen to me in 2016.

I can’t wait to see all the things I won’t do in 2017!

The post 16 Things That Didn’t Happen to Me in 2016 appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

While that sounds fantastic to everyone (including me!), I am here to remind you that machine learning, by itself, has a slight flaw.

Machine learning is only as good as the data that it can consume. That data is a finite set, bounded by the human(s) that have been tasked with curation and cleansing of the data. Therefore, predictive analytic monitoring tools are only as good as the data they can access. That means that as an administrator I will still be blind to the things that are unknown, because ML has no way of knowing anything outside of the data it is fed.

Predictive analytic monitoring tools that rely on ML are going to be wonderful at helping administrators adjust their environments for optimal performance. ML is going to help system administrators manage workloads and squeeze every ounce of performance out of the available hardware. This is great stuff, and I’m looking forward to using these tools as they become available. But I also understand that these tools are not going to help predict when a developer is going to decide that today is the day they want to alter that index in the data warehouse and fill up the transaction log, or when an architect decides that they can store 30TB of data on a network share, or when everyone in the office decides that today is the day to play Pokemon Go and use up all the network bandwidth. As long as humans are part of the equation, the idea behind predictive analytic tools will remain slightly flawed.

It’s this simple: machine learning won’t fix stupid. This new wave of monitoring tools will help reduce sys admin headaches but what we really want is for our tools to reduce the amount of time we spend being reactive.

Enter Artificial Intelligence (AI). What AI promises to do for us is to do the thinking that ML cannot. AI will make an effort to fill in the gaps in logic, make guesses, and eventually learn from its own mistakes. Think about IBM Watson and now imagine Watson was the AI on top of your ML monitoring tool.

That’s the future of monitoring.

It’s a future where we use data to help predict future events and use AI to make the decisions that ML cannot.

It’s a future where we let the machines talk to each other and not let humans near them (and we all know at least one person that we don’t want touching our servers, ever.)

We are a long way from automating ourselves out of existence in the IT industry. And yet I feel that day will come sooner than we know. As we adopt Hybrid IT to be a standard for enterprise shops we start letting go of the traditional monitoring, alerting, and administrative tasks. Managing more with less is becoming easier. Backups, HA, DR…all done automatically for us through software defined policies and scripts we never see.

The new wave of predictive analytic monitoring tools is coming, and it’s the first step towards building the monitoring systems of the future.

But the future will arrive only when AI is here. Until then, as long as there is a developer out there looking to fill up a transaction log drive, humans will be needed.

The post The Future of Monitoring appeared first on Thomas LaRock.