New Year’s Resolutions

David Stein of Made2Mentor.com posted about his professional New Year’s resolutions (as opposed to personal ones), and Denis Gobo tagged me too, so here goes.  I updated my GTD priority lists on RememberTheMilk during my vacation a couple of weeks ago and I’ve already forgotten them, hahaha, but that’s what RTM is for.

• Learn SQL Server Reporting Services. For years, I’ve sworn I didn’t want to learn SSRS because I didn’t want to be a report writer.  Report writers aspire to become DBAs, not the other way around.  The thing is, SSRS is just too good of a tool not to use, and I think I can prototype things that will help DBAs do their jobs better.  (Dave and I shared this goal.)
• Leverage data mining to make DBA chores easier. I keep dabbling with the SQL Server Data Mining in the Cloud plugin, and I’ve got a few ideas about how I can make DBAs’ lives easier with this tool too.  I’ve blogged about how to use it with Perfmon, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
• Get my Microsoft certifications. We DBAs give Microsoft a lot of crap because the certs are too easy to get, and at the same time, I haven’t had a cert since 1999.  If they’re so easy, I need to get up off my rear and get ‘em all.  Every time I look at Denny Cherry’s site, I get cert envy.  He’ll always have me beat, though, because I don’t have SharePoint skills.

I want my to-do list to be longer, but to be honest, my big resolution this year is to become a confident sailor.  We’re living on a lake this summer, and I’m determined to get out there every weekend and learn the ropes.

Now, let’s see who else has been active on Twitter the last couple of days – seems like most people have packed it in for the winter.  I’ll tag:

• Mike Hillwig
• Tim Ford aka SQLAgentMan
• Tim Cost aka WonkyCoder
• Tom LaRock aka SQLBatman

Brent Ozar

Brent specializes in performance tuning for SQL Server, VMware, and storage. He's one of the very few Microsoft Certified Masters of SQL Server, a published author, and a Microsoft MVP. He likes travel, Jeeps, Apple gear, jokes, and writing about himself in the third person. Read more and contact Brent.

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