Category Archives: Personal

Personal

Two DBAs Walk Into a Bar

Every year, Quest Software convenes a Customer Advisory Board at the home office in Aliso Viejo, California.  We bring some of our highly experienced customers out for a couple of days to talk about what’s happening with technology, and good times are had by all.

At the welcome reception, I was struck by how many of them had a great sense of humor.  I was standing in a room with a couple dozen seasoned and talented IT people, yet jokes were flying around left and right.  Let’s face it, us geeks aren’t exactly renown for our ability to light up a room.  We can be funny-ha-ha in private or on the intertubez, but this was a group of near-strangers that were cutting things up.

Funny Ha Ha

Funny Ha Ha

The morning after, as I was thinking back about it, I figured there were two possibilities:

Option 1: We Hand-Picked Funny Customers

If we hand-picked the comedians, then I bet we’re not the only company who would do something like that.  I bet funny people are more likely to get invited to events like this because they’re more enjoyable to be around.  After all, who wants to invite a bunch of grumpy people to hang out in a conference room for a few days?  If I wanted that, I’d just call a team meeting. <rimshot>

For the record, funny customers doesn’t mean happy customers – we’re not surrounding ourselves with yes-men by any means.  To force the products to get better, we have to hear brutally honest and honestly brutal feedback.

Option 2: Funny People Are More Likely to Succeed in IT

Who gets promoted into higher-level IT positions like DBA management?

To answer that question, back up and ask yourself who does the actual promotions.  When was the last time the CIO came to you and said, “Hey, I’m thinking about appointing a new DBA manager.  Who’s the best person for the job?”

Promotions aren’t handled by underlings – the higher-ranking folks pick and choose who they promote.  For better or for worse, they often don’t do it with the feedback of the rest of us.  They think they know what we think and who we like, and they might take it into account, but they may not.  However, they know exactly who they like – they like people who are easy to get along with, easy to interact with, and easy to sit in a conference room with.  Sadly, management involves meeting after meeting after meeting.  Why bring bores to the meeting?

Either way, if you wanna get ahead, have a sense of humor about what you’re doing.  If you think things are too serious in your job now, then brace yourself, because problems get worse as you go up the corporate ladder.  Getting promoted to management means worrying about who you’re going to lay off, how you’re going to handle Johnny’s drug problem, or how you’re going to decide who gets a raise.  Employees are much harder to manage than technology, because servers don’t bring a gun into the office to take revenge.

Life is short and workdays are long.  To get the most out of both, get yourself a sense of humor pronto.  Stop taking yourself so seriously, and people will be more likely to invite you to fun stuff and bring you up the corporate ladder.

(Note – I’m on vacation, so I probably won’t be responding to comments for a few days. I scheduled this post ahead of time. I’m on a sailboat in Lake Michigan, and I’ll respond if I get within wireless range. And yes, I’m bringing my laptop.)

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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Nice Overalls You Got There

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays long-distance sailors from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.  Chicago-Mac race sailors stand a pretty good chance of running into bad weather, so I picked up a set of foulies.

Not Pictured - Dignity

Not Pictured - Dignity

Pictured here: bibs, just one part of the foul weather gear.  Sailing in foul weather has its own unique set of needs.  Of course the gear has to be waterproof because sailors get soaked from spray and rain, but the bibs also need heavily reinforced knees and rear ends.  (Insert sailor joke here.)  Sailboats have rough non-skid coatings all over the deck so folks don’t slip off the boat.  Unlike powerboats, sailboats spend long periods of time heeling sideways due to the strength of the wind, so traction is important.  The same rough surfaces that help Brent stay on the boat also wreak havoc on knees and butts.

The overalls make me look like a circus freak.  The photo would lead you to believe that I’m seven feet tall.  Everybody looks this way, though – at least, that’s what the salesman said when he wasn’t laughing.

Not pictured: a red foul weather jacket.  Word has it that yellow attracts biting flies.  We’re doing 4-hour shifts, and if it’s raining, that means four straight hours of trudging around a sailboat in the rain and spray.  To make that misery more enjoyable, the jacket has a built-in interior iPod pocket with cable routing for headphones.

Other goodies: 3/4 finger gloves (to keep your fingertips free to tie knots), boots, and a Tyvek jumper to keep the flies off in light weather.

All in all, I spent a disturbing amount of money, but I want Mother Nature at my side at the gambling table.  I don’t want to bet on dry, calm weather in Lake Michigan.  To find out how my bet went, let’s take a look at the current satellite map for the first leg of our journey, going from Whitehall (top right of the map) to Chicago (bottom left) for the race start.

Current Radar for the First Leg

Current Radar for the First Leg

Yep, looks like I did okay there.

Tracking Our Progress

We’re heading out late this afternoon from Whitehall, Michigan to Chicago.  Google Maps shows the car route, but they don’t have routes for sailors, oddly.  I’ll check in when we get to Chicago in a day or so.

Starting Friday at around 3pm, you’ll be able to track each boat’s progress.  We’re aboard the Hannah Frances.  When in doubt, look towards the back of the pack.  Don’t let Friday’s progress fool you – we’ll be pulling ahead only because they let the cruising boats start a day early.  (I wouldn’t be surprised if tracking wasn’t turned on until Saturday morning for the race boat start, either.)

Other links:

And now, I’m off to the sailboat!

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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The Chicago-Mac Sailboat Race

The Race Course

The Race Course

Since 1898, sailors have gathered at the Chicago Yacht Club each summer to race their sailboats up Lake Michigan to the Mackinac (pronounced mackinaw) Island.  The 333 mile course from Navy Pier to the lighthouse makes it the longest annual freshwater sailing race in the world.

The sailboats race around the clock for days as the crew work in shifts, sailing for a few hours and then sleeping for a few. Night sailing, storms, and quiet windless calms make this a memorable experience.

I’m nowhere near qualified enough to get a crew position on one of the real race boats, but I tried it in high school aboard a friend’s cruiser.  At the time, cruising sailboats weren’t technically allowed in the race, but bystanders shuffle down to Chicago and start at the same time as the serious racers.  We lived about halfway up Lake Michigan, so we were proud that we even made it down to Chicago for the start.  We made it about halfway back up before calm winds and a problematic engine made us give up.  I still fondly remember steering the boat in the middle of the night, watching the compass and the stars, talking to friends about what we planned to do with the rest of our lives.

The Hannah Frances

The Hannah Frances

This year, I’m honored to be able to give it another shot.  The Chicago Yacht Club started a separate class for cruising boats recently, and I’ll be aboard the Hannah Frances.  Mike Cook’s a good friend of mine, and he tolerates my complete ignorance of how to tie a knot.  (I was a Boy Scout – how come I know absolutely nothing about how to tie lines together?!?)

We have no delusions of winning, but we do have delusions of finishing.  The Hannah Frances is a wonderful boat rigged for easy shorthanded sailing and relaxed self-tacking, but fast, she is not.

We’re hoping to finish the race in under 4 days, but that means a lot more than 4 days of sailing.  We’re leaving in two weeks – Wednesday, July 16th – for a couple/few days of sailing down to the Chicago starting line on Saturday.  Then it’s four days of sailing up Lake Michigan, a day of partying with the other sailors on Mac Island, and then another few days of sailing back to White Lake.  By the end of it all, the crew will be intimately familiar with the boat and with each others’ quirks.  (Mike’s already warned me that if I want to listen to Death Cab for Cutie, I’d better bring headphones.)

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll blog a little about race preparations.  Sailboat racing really is a sport, and it’s harder work than it looks.  For starters, I have to go pick up a Tyvek suit to fend off the black vampire flies.

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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My Michael Jackson Story

I’ve been joking a lot on Twitter about the passing of the King of Pop.  Somewhere between the Jesus Juice and the Elephant Man, he’d lost a lot of credibility in his fading years.  Earlier in both of our lives, though, things were different.

This Had Me Written All Over It

This Had Me Written All Over It

In middle school when he was at the peak of his popularity, I desperately wanted a red and black leather jacket like his.  I mean, desperately.  I had enough money saved up, and Sears carried one that I could afford.  That right there should tell you everything about my level of style – I aspired to own a piece of clothing carried by the most unhip of 1980s retailers.

My parents, having slightly more taste than me, would not allow me to purchase the jacket.  I was upset, mortified, angry, you name it.  Today, my father sports a diamond earring inspired by Jimmy Buffet – but I digress.

Instead, I ended up buying a large boom box, with which I played songs like Thriller, Bad, and Billie Jean.  Over time, my tastes changed to Huey Lewis and the News, but the King of Pop will always make me wanna get out on the dance floor and perform ill-advised moves that show off my complete lack of physical grace.

So today I’ll be listening to the Essential Michael Jackson collection I just picked up off Amazon MP3 for $17, dancing around the desk, and I won’t stop til I get enough.

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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Latest Quiz: Great Leaders in My Career

Chris Shaw tagged SQL Server DBA bloggers and asked, “Who has been a great leader in your career and what made them a great leader?”

I’ve been fortunate to work for a stream of really, really good managers, but “leader” means something else, as Chris explained.  I even had to hit the dictionary because I wasn’t quite sure how to put my finger on it.  Dictionary.com says:

Leader – noun – a person or thing that leads.

That reminds me why I stopped using Dictionary.com and switched to Wikipedia.  Wikipedia’s entry on the topic starts out with:

Leadership is one of the most salient aspects of the organizational context. However, defining leadership has been challenging. The following sections discuss several important aspects of leadership including a description of what leadership is and a description of several popular theories and styles of leadership. This page also dives into topics such as the role of emotions and vision, as well leadership effectiveness and performance….

Wow, from one extreme to the other.  The article drones on for pages.

My Definition of Leadership

I believe leaders get groups of people to do something that requires tremendous dedication and sacrifice in order to accomplish a goal that, while perhaps righteous and admirable, may not be visible to everyone else yet.

Leaders don’t just see the goal – that’s genius, not leadership.

Leaders don’t just get people to do something – that’s management, also a good skill, but different.

A real-world example of leadership would be a high-level military official who, during the heat of battle, figures out what needs to be done in order to win, sees through the fog of war to understand how to do it, and then motivates his staff to accomplish it.  In my mind, I just can’t think of the word “leader” without thinking of the word “battle.”  We battle against the market, against our competitors, against economic forces, against timelines, you name it.  (I probably read too much of the Art of War.)

A Leader in My Career

I hate naming names of people who are currently involved in my career.  If I talk about them negatively, I’m shooting myself in the foot, and if I talk about them positively, nobody’s going to believe me because they’ll think I’m kissing butt.  Therefore, I’m going to reach back over ten years and grab a couple of names from my prior career – the hospitality industry.

Hotels and restaurants are full of battles.  I could write a whole blog about that lifestyle, but I’ll give you just one story to demonstrate what it’s really like.  On Father’s Day, a father checked into one of our hotels with his two kids.  He’d lost custody of them, and he’d picked them up from his ex-wife to spend the holiday with them.  Evidently he decided if he couldn’t have the kids, neither could his ex-wife, so he shot them both and then shot himself.  This was a small town without a big crime scene cleanup company, and the hotel general manager cleaned the room personally so that his maids and maintenance guys would be spared the nightmarish task.

That’s the hospitality industry.  It ain’t all leftover porn under the mattress and leftover drugs in the toilet tank.

When I met Tom Eaton, I was a night auditor and he was the hotel general manager.  I was so impressed with him that shortly after he left the city to manage a hotel a thousand miles away, I packed up and followed him.  While working for Tom, I never questioned why I was doing it or whether I enjoyed it.  Those were probably the shortest two years of my life – time just flew by.  One battle after another was over and done with before I even knew what was going on.

As my career progressed, I had the fortune of working under Wayne West, a regional manager (multiple hotels).  He too ended up switching companies, and again I packed up and traipsed across the country to go to work for his new company.  His leadership completely blew me away – he could walk into any hotel and restaurant in any city, and within a matter of hours, he knew enough about the market to figure out what the hotel needed to do next.  And he was right.  And he got people to do it.

I ended up bailing out of the hotel industry – too many battles, not enough battle pay – but the leadership of those two guys really stuck with me.

Who I’m Tagging Next

  • Kendal Van Dyke – because he was complaining about not ranking in this whole tag thing. The squeaky wheel gets the oil.
  • Grant Fritchey – because I’m not done reviewing his book yet, but it’s AWESOME.
  • Gail Shaw – because I referred to her blog three or four times this week to solve an index problem.
  • Rhonda Tipton – because I miss Houston this week. It’s springtime here, but I still can’t smoke a cigar outside yet.

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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What I Do at Quest Software

At Quest Software, my official job title is Domain Expert.  That means I’m supposed to be the master of my domain – my domain being SQL Server, storage area networks, and virtualization.  Ideally, I’m also supposed to be pretty good at the Quest products for that stuff, too.

I don’t have a written job description (as far as I know) but my daily routine revolves around:

  • Learning the latest and greatest tools and tricks for SQL Server DBAs
  • Teaching other people about those tools and tricks (customers, developers, support staff, etc)
  • Influencing product direction by pointing out things DBAs need help with
  • Testing Quest products to see if we’re getting it right

I interact with a lot of SQL Server people at Quest – developers, support, marketing, execs, and so on.

If you’ve run into challenges with Quest, whether it’s people, products or processes, and you haven’t been able to get ‘em fixed through normal channels, let me know about it.  I can’t be the first person you call for tech support, and I can’t get you special discounts on software, but there’s usually something I can do to help when things aren’t going well.  I’ve heard from a few community members that they had questions, but they didn’t want to bother me – by all means, feel free!  If there’s something I can do to help, I’m all over it.

I am by no means a figurehead here for Quest: the things you read here are my own poorly-thought-out opinions alone, and do not represent Quest’s official viewpoints on anything.  Just think of me as a buddy who works for the company.

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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Are You Being Treated Fairly?

Chris Shaw posted a question on his blog and tagged me:

Do you feel like you are being treated fairly at your current or past employers? The question stems from the fact that very few people today stay at a company 20 to 30 years like they did when I was growing up. Do you feel like the company feels a loyalty toward the employee or do you think that they look at you just as head count? No reason to get yourself in trouble, so you can refer back to past employers.

I’m glad you asked.  I’m being treated like garbage and I hate these bozos who pay my salary.

Oh, wait, is this microphone on?

Alright, seriously, time for a rant.  Sorry, Chris, but you pushed one of my hot buttons here.

The Life of a Hotel Housekeeper

Did you know that many housekeepers make below minimum wage? They often make $3/hour because they’re considered to be tipped employees.

Hotels have to clean occupied rooms every day whether the guest is checking out or not.  Sometimes they get lucky: the guest might be exceptionally considerate, use only one trash can, use only one bed, and not leave Cheetos crumbs all over the nightstand.  Sometimes, they’re not so lucky, and they get a room where a family with kids has done what a family with kids does on vacation: leave stuff everywhere.  Overall, housekeepers average around two rooms per hour, or about 15 rooms during an 8-hour shift.  The numbers vary depending on whether it’s a corporate hotel (businesspeople are pretty clean) or a vacation hotel (families are filthy.)

A $3/hour housekeeper who cleans two rooms per hour needs to get $1 tip per room just to make it up to minimum wage.

Sadly, many hotel guests don’t leave tips.  And the ones who do, often leave tips only on the day they check out, thinking that that’s the only day the maid really works.  Not so much – my 2 rooms/hour number includes stayovers.  Next time you stay in a hotel, tip the maid $2 minimum every single day, and start noticing how much she does. I’m super-anal about reducing their workload: I only use one trash can, I clean the coffee pot myself after I use it, and I try not to use the glassware when I just want a sip of water before bed.

Why I Know About Housekeeping

I got my start in the hospitality industry working in hotels and restaurants, and I worked my way up from front desk clerk to managing hotels.  No matter how high up you go at a 100-200 room hotel, there’s still going to be days when you have to make beds or clean toilets or cook omelettes because somebody didn’t show up.  You’re relying on a pyramid of people, and a great deal of them make near minimum wage or below.  Dozens of them have to show up every day in order for your business to run successfully, but you can probably understand why some of them will choose not to make that commute into work in the morning, or why they’d want to work their way up to a better job (and out of your hotel) as fast as possible.

Succeeding in the hospitality business means a never-ending cycle of training replacement staff.  When a new hotel opened up, they’d offer $.10-$.25 more per hour in order to lure experienced housekeepers or laundresses over.  For a $3/hour employee, that’s a big incentive, and they’ll take that offer.  Hotel managers are handcuffed by budgets, and they can’t simply give everybody raises every time a new hotel comes into town.  Managers try to keep employees happy, build a positive work environment that people will enjoy, but it’s tough, and sooner or later every employee is going to leave.

Employees Are Replaceable

I can almost hear the protest comments rolling in now.  “But you have to train people and promote from within,” they’ll say.  “You have to make sure there’s opportunities for everybody as they grow!”

That’s naive.  If you’re running a kitchen, somebody’s gotta wash the dishes, and nobody wants to be a career-long dishwasher.  You can’t have an entire kitchen made up of head chefs, and furthermore, when somebody makes it to head chef, they aren’t itching to leave.  You can’t expand your restaurant to more locations simply because you’ve got a few good chefs – there has to be a market demand for your food, ample room for expansion, and a lack of competition.

Business owners and managers have a tough job: they have to make employees feel welcome and needed, yet at the same time make sure that every employee can be replaced.  An irreplaceable employee is a business risk.

I know I’m completely replaceable.  If I quit Quest tomorrow, there’d be a line of people begging for my job, and there’s a bunch of people who could do it just as well or much better than I’m doing it.  Heck, I’ve even pointed a couple out to my managers and said, “This is the next person who should have my job, and they’d be great at it.”

So how do I sleep at night?

Companies Are Replaceable Too

Both parties in the negotiation process have to benefit in order for the deal to work.  Your job has to be a win for the company, and it has to be a win for you.  It sounds so BS-life-coach-y, but it’s true: it’s gotta be a win/win scenario.

If you’re the only one winning, the company will let you go. If you’re making too much money, if you’re not putting in enough hours, if you’re not delivering the results they want, they are gonna drop you like a temp table.

If the company is the only one winning, you need to let go of them. Nobody else is going to do it for you.  Nobody else is looking out for your career.  (If you think headhunters are looking out for you, think again – they’re paid by the company, not by you.)

Sounds inconceivable in this economy, but there are always jobs for the right people.  Even since the stock crash started, I’ve been contacted by companies who are hiring top notch DBAs, and they’re not paying housekeeper wages either.  I’ve passed that info on to my friends who are looking for work, and I know two great database guys who might make great career moves in the next couple of weeks due to info I’ve passed along.

If you don’t believe me, and if your experience indicates that you can’t get another job right now, then stop to think about that phrase again for a second, and look at it closely.  Other people are getting better jobs right now, as we speak.  Maybe – just maybe – the problem is you, and you need to re-evaluate the way you think about careers.

It’s Not Just About Your Skills

Talent Is Never Enough

I'm Talking To You, @ReaderName

Every time I write something like this, I get a chorus of private emails saying:

“You don’t realize how bad the market in @MyCityName sucks.  Nobody’s ever hiring @MyCareerName, and I’m a rock star genius mad scientist with amazing talent.  You’re a jerkwad who doesn’t know @MyFavoriteExpletive.”

You’re partially right: I am a jerkwad, and you probably have amazing talent.  But like the book says, Talent is Never Enough.

Your manager reads books to figure out how to get more out of you: maybe you should be reading books to figure out how to get more out of your managers too.

I won’t deny it: the first few times I picked up books like this years ago, I thought they were flakey inspirational crap.  But my career has changed when I started applying geek techniques: I stopped trying to overclock my desktop’s CPU, and started focusing on overclocking my career.

So before you blog about how your company doesn’t respect you, doesn’t love you deeply and truly, doesn’t take you for long walks on moonlit beaches and never wants to let you go, stop to think about whether you feel the same about your company.  I like the company I work for, but only because we’ve come to agreements that are win/win for both of us.  When it’s not – either when I stop delivering for them, or they stop delivering for me – I expect us to both start making plans to replace the other.

Who I’m Tagging

Got scared there, didn’t you?  Thought I was going to tag you by name and make you tap dance around this question.  No, I’ll refrain from tagging anybody on this particular meme.  When I first read my name on Chris’s blog about this, my first reaction was, “There’s no way in hell I’m answering that one,” so I don’t want to put anybody else on the spot.  If you’d like to answer it on your blog, go right ahead though!

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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We Agree: It’s Not My Problem

Manager: “It’s come to my attention that the application performance isn’t as good as it should be.  Users are complaining that it takes too long.  Is it fair to say that every query sent to the database should finish in under ten seconds?”

Developers: “Yeah.”

Database administrators: “Yeah.”

Manager: “Okay, we’re in agreement.  Going forward, all queries sent to the database need to finish in under ten seconds.  Meeting adjourned. Great job guys.”

Is everyone really in agreement?

The developers think it’s the DBAs’ fault because the server isn’t fast enough.  The DBAs think it’s the developer’s fault because the queries are so poorly written.  The managers think everybody’s just flat out incompetent.

Groups of people can agree on something on the surface, but ask a few questions, and all hell breaks loose.

This seems to happen a lot in database administration due to the kinds of knowledge DBAs have.  People bring us lots of ideas, but they’re not really clear on what needs to be done in order to accomplish that goal – or who’s the right person to actually do the legwork.  As a result, sometimes we have to break some hearts.

I struggle with this, because I’m the kind of guy who will turn right around and give a flip answer like, “John, I agree, that’s a great idea, and I can’t wait to see how it turns out for you.”

Better answers are probably along the lines of:

  • “I agree – that’s a great idea.  Is there anything I can do to help you get it done?”  People freeze at that one because they don’t feel comfortable saying, “Yeah, you could do it for me.”  It at least gets them to stop and think.
  • “That sounds great!  Could I help you by testing your work or finding beta testers?”  Again, sets the expectation that you’ll get involved when their work is over.
  • “I’ve been thinking about that same thing for quite a while, and I haven’t been able to find the time to do it.  Doggone day job of mine!  Who could we track down to do it?”

And still, as I write these, I know they’re all too sarcastic. <sigh> This is one professional skill I still gotta work on.

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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Communication Breakdown

Here’s how I see the forms of communication and what they say about who’s sending the message:

Twitter or forum message to the public: “I need help, and I’ll take it from anybody who’s available, inside or outside of my company.”

Email: “I need you specifically, but it’s not urgent.”

Instant Message: “I need you specifically, and whatever you’re doing on your computer right now is less important than what I need.”

Phone Call: “I need you specifically, and whatever you’re doing on your computer or in your office right now is less important than what I need.”

Before you send an IM or make a phone call, stop to consider the person on the other end.

Is what you’re asking for really a higher priority than whatever they’ve got open on the computer and who’s standing in front of them?

If not, be a nice guy: send an email, or even better, ask more people at once so that someone with free time can respond faster.

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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Oldies but Goodies

I use Delicious, an online bookmarking service, to keep my bookmarks in sync across all of my computers.  When my beloved Macbook Pro went in for service on Sunday, I set up Firefox on another machine here and happened to glance at my bookmarks while they were syncing.  Just for yuks, I started going through some of ‘em, and I forgot about some of the gold mines I’d run across over the years.

I’m sharing some of the highlights here, along with what tag I used for the bookmark.  You can click on the tag to see more of my bookmarks from that same category.

PC Load Bacon

PC Load Bacon

Bookmarks Tagged with “Funny”

50 Recent Quotes from IRC – Be aware that these are usually not safe for work (NSFW).

HPInsertCoin photos on Flickr – You can set the HP printer status displays to just about anything you want – here’s how.  For inspiration, check out this Flickr photo gallery from people who’ve pulled it off.

Passive Aggressive Notes – most of these are NSFW due to cursing. Be patient – the site takes a while to load. Very worth it.

Achewood – my favorite strip from this very-out-there comic. I have used this punchline repeatedly in meetings. No one ever gets it. <sigh>  They do usually get it when I say their computer makes me want to type through a napkin, though.

Bookmarks Tagged with “Inspiration”

Distinguish Yourself – I abhor people who want to “get famous for being famous”.  If you want to be memorable and have a real personal brand, then you need to stand out for your quality.  This is a massive collection of articles about all kinds of ways to do it.  It ties in really well with the “Things I Wish I’d Have Known When I Started” quiz that went around recently.

Getting Things Done When You’re Only a Grunt – Don’t use the excuse that you’re the low man on the totem pole, therefore you can’t make a difference.  In order to get to the top, you have to start making a difference wherever you’re at now. (Or have rich parents, I suppose.)

Building an Experience In Your Meetings – To ensure a crappy meeting, have crappy surroundings.  To ensure an exciting, upbeat meeting, have an exciting, upbeat environment.  I’d forgotten all about this one, and I’m determined to put some of this stuff into play in my next user group meeting.

Seven Questions That Will Change Your Life – A few self-evaluation questions that will helped me sharpen my focus and make some progress on my goals.  They sound like cheesy crap, but they work.

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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