Time to take a look back at what happened in 2010. Turns out I was pretty busy – here’s my favorite posts:
January:
- Book Week: The Politics of Writing Books – some of the challenges I faced writing for the first time.
- Book Week: The Economics of Writing Books – my favorite post in the series. Explains why I’m not rich yet.
- LiveMeeting Presentation Tutorial Video
- SQL Azure FAQ – hard to believe it’s been less than a year since this product went commercially live.
- How I Got Here – part of a meme discussing the 3 things that brought me to that point of my career. When I wrote that post, I was still working for Quest Software as an evangelist.
- Should We Hold the PASS Summit in Seattle? – the PASS leadership sent out a survey asking. I (along with the majority of members) said no. Spoiler from the future: the PASS leadership didn’t care what we thought anyway, and they decided to hold it in Seattle for the foreseeable future.
- Book Review: The Secrets of Consulting – my favorite book this year.
February:
- Top 10 Reasons MS Access Still Doesn’t Rock – some jackwagon bragged about the 10 reasons it rocked, and I just couldn’t hold my fingers still when I read that nonsense.
- How to REALLY Compress Your Backups – how we were doing it at StackOverflow.
- Working With Recruiters
- Why I Always Bill By The Hour – written when my consulting work was still only side gigs, and now that I consult full time, I believe even more in this.
March:
- I Tackled the MCM Program – I wrote a bunch of blog posts about the whole experience, blogging as I went through the program. Spoiler from the future: I passed.
- Plagiarism, Inspiration, and John Dunleavy – in a year of rampant plagiarism, this guy was by far and away the worst.
- Proposed PASS Summit Speaking Requirements – I continue to bang this drum every time I talk to the PASS program folks.
- Tuning Transactions and Meetings
- Who’s Your Target Audience?
- Dear Blog Author – tips for aspiring bloggers.
- Fusion-IO ioDrive Review – fast. Damn fast.
- 2 Features of SQL Server You Should Avoid – in which I compare index hints to crystal meth.
April:
- Rock Stars, Normal People, and You – if you only read one post off my list, it should probably be this one.
- How to Make Readers Forget About You – I discussed the problems with the PASS SQL Server Standard magazine. Spoiler from the future: it folded.
- Top 10 Developer Mistakes That Won’t Scale – video of the presentation.
- Unveiled my Free Simple Twitter EBook – I haven’t updated this as often as I’d like, but it was a successful fun experiment. Gets a few thousand downloads per month.
- April Fool’s: Switching to Cassandra
May:
- Announcing SQLCruise – I thought for sure we’d only get a couple of people to sign up. Spoiler from the future: we sold out, and the cruisers loved it.
- NoSQL Basics for DBAs – not an April Fool’s joke. Covers the basic concepts without spin.
- SQL Server 2008 R2 Review – in which I compare R2 to Lady Gaga’s The Fame Monster.
- 5 Things SQL Server Should Truncate
- Why I Pimp Our Book
- Why You’re Not Telecommuting – why you rarely find work-from-home jobs on the intertubes.
June:
- I Joined SQLskills – I truly loved what I was doing at Quest Software, and I thought life couldn’t get any better, but as it turns out, it could.
- Four People Won Free SQLCruises – this just blew me away. Between the new job and the first SQLCruise, I was tied up for a while, so blogging subsided.
July:
- Edward Tufte Wants to Change Everything – my review of his how-to-present presentation.
- Finding Free Pictures for Posts & Presentations – using Creative Commons.
August:
- GTD: Why Things Have Been Quiet Around Here – when I decided to make the big switch into consulting full time, I was terrified that I’d be eating ramen noodles for the first six months. As a result, I took every possible gig that came my way, including more travel than I would have preferred. When I finally figured out I wasn’t going to starve to death, things got a lot better, and my work/life balance returned.
- Jeremiah Peschka Joined Quest – and a bunch of other people started getting paid for community work in 2010 including Tom LaRock, Aaron Bertrand, Colin Stasiuk, and another player who is yet to be named.
- Why I’m Disappointed in the PASS Election Process
September:
- Find Slow Queries with sp_WhoIsActive – demo video of the coolest admin script out there. Spoiler from the future: it won awards, too.
- SQL Servers in Virtualization: Don’t Touch That Maxdop – one of the reasons tuning SQL Servers really is different under virtualization.
- How to Buy Your First Mac
- How I Make Coffee And Servers – yet another cheerleading article about virtualization.
October:
- SQL Server on Power-Saving CPUs – this continues to bite people in the rear.
- Why I’m Sending My Clients to Your Blog
- PowerPoint 2011 Presenter View – one of the coolest Office features continues to get even better.
- My Bucket List
November:
- Changes to the Microsoft Certified Master Program – the biggest reason I left Quest. If I’d have stayed there, I wouldn’t have been able to do paid training courses with as much flexibility as I can do with SQLskills.
- SQLCruise 2011 Registrations Open – Tim and I planned two cruises, an Alaska one and a Miami one. Spoiler from the future: Alaska sold out in under 12 hours! Still some spots open for Miami though.
- My Latest Experiment: Free-Con – like a conference pre-con, except, uh, free. And we focused more on being a better blogger than on the technical side of the event.
- What I’m Telling My Clients About SQL Server Denali
- My Thoughts on SQL Server Denali AlwaysOn/HADRON – it rocks.
- My Thoughts on Microsoft Atlanta – it sucks.
- Plagiarism Week: Caught Another One – part of a whole series. Spoiler from the future: he took the blog down despite defending his actions in the comments.
December:
- Twelve Days of SQL Series – my FreeCon attendees picked their favorite blog posts of the year, and I picked my favorites from the FreeCon folks.
- My PASS Summit Speaker Feedback – I was honored to be named a top-1o speaker again this year.
- Stop Tuning Your Queries – and look at the bigger picture.
- Interview with Jeremiah Peschka and Buck Woody – because this year Buck switched to Azure and Jeremiah switched to NoSQL (including a resignation from the PASS Board of Directors)
- Thoughts on Recording SQL MCM Videos – behind-the-scenes notes on the challenges of being the presenter.
- Virtualization at the North Pole – in which I interview Santa’s Chief Information Officer.
- Gave Away 10 iPads and Red Gate SQL Monitor – almost got 500 comments on this one blog post alone!
In addition to the blogging, I snuck in some travel photos:
- January – Caribbean cruise with Mom
- June – New Orleans for TechEd
- August – SQLCruise Miami
- September – Alaska cruise with Erika, Dad, and Caryl (my stepmom)
- October – New York City
- November – Seattle for PASS Summit
- November – Niagara Falls
- December – Washington DC
Whoa. Looking back at this list, I’m surprised I wrote so many posts that I’m actually proud of, and the second half of the year was especially challenging. I’m no longer paid directly to blog – as a consultant, I only get paid when I’m billing clients. I’m blogging now because I really love doing it, and because it helps bring in new clients. I’m tickled pink every time I get an email saying, “I liked your blog post about ___, and we were wondering if you could help us out with this problem we’re having.”
Blogging: win friends and influence customers. Remind me again why you’re not doing it? Oh, that’s right, you’re so busy working for that company you don’t even really like and who didn’t give you a raise again this year. When you get tired of that, read my favorite post from this year – Rock Stars, Normal People, and You. There’s a whole community of people who want to see you succeed, and we want to help. Come join the community in 2011!
When I was first looking at getting into blogging, Jason Strate sent me the links to your posts on the topic. They were incredibly helpful! Your posts gave some great pointers on getting started, what to expect, etc.
Thank you for your posts!!! I wish I got paid to write them, but for now, I blog because I love it too!!
Thanks, Sarah! Glad I could help. It really is fun, and I hope more people pick it up in 2011.
[...] Writing Books – some of the challenges I faced writing for the first time. Book Week: The… [full post] Brent Ozar Brent Ozar – SQL Server DBA writing and presenting 0 0 [...]
You’d think I’d be brighter than to re-read your post on the PASS election process at the start of the last day I’m working this year, but nope, and now I’m all pissed off again. Ah well, New Year’s Resolution #1 – choose my reading material more wisely.
Great stuff by the way, and keep it up!
Jon – HAHAHA, yeah, same here. As I was rereading a lot of my posts, my blood pressure went up. (sigh) Thanks!
Amazingly prolific year sir… My vote for the BOPOTY (BrentO Post of the Year) goes to “GTD: Why Things Have Been Quiet Around Here”. The line “The better I am at accomplishing stuff, the more work people will give me” was quite an eye opener for me. I read that post the day before going on vacation and grabbed the book from library at lunch that same day. I read the book over vacation, spent the next month or two messing around with creating a system (ended up going with Evernote instead of RTM) and have been using it since.
Thanks, man! Glad I could help. Yeah, I had that same eye-opening moment when I heard a sentence similar to that. I can’t remember if I read it first in GTD or elsewhere, but when I heard it, lights went on in my head. The most productive people always get the cool new assignments!
Congratulations on a great year, Brent! I have enjoyed reading about your experiences and wish you a great 2011.
Eric
Thanks, guys! Happy New Year to you too.
Wow! Pretty impressive.. Quick question, When do you have a chance to sleep?
[...] couple of days ago, SQL Server MVP, Brent Ozar took a look back at what he’d been posting on his blog in 2010. I thought that was a good idea, so I’m shamelessly stealing his idea to highlight some of [...]