The Silver Summit

~ SqlAsylum ~ 2 Comments

I attended a different event this weekend. It wasn’t specifically a technical event, and it wasn’t specifically NOT a technical event.   It was about something we are all facing in the future. 

Aging.  

That’s right, whether we like it or not,t we are all getting older.  For me personally, ly it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I’ve always thought about and focused on the future. I believe in two major concepts in my life.  

Visit your Default Future. 

I’ve presented on this before. This idea comes from a book called Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success(Amazon Audible link).  I highly recommend this book; I typically re-read it every few years.  Default future means that you can meet/see someone who will be your future if you change nothing else right now.  Perhaps you are in the same roles as a family member, perhaps you do similar things to that family member. You can quickly see what you will become in 5-10 years by observing this person like you.  If you don’t like what you see in your future, you need to change it.  The book outlines steps to do so.  

Chapters. 

I see my life as a series of chapters. As we go through life, we experience big events and moments.  I don’t believe anyone has just one path that they stay on for the entirety of their life.  I believe it changes, and when you leave a path or change it, you open a new chapter.  I believe I am in Chapter 3 of my life right now, and I have no idea how many more chapters there will be.  

During the event, we heard from many participants of diverse ages and backgrounds. The items below are my key takeaways. 

  1. Keep talking to each other! Making connections, having friends, and even just having discussions are statistically proven to prolong life.  I wrote about connections recently, and that post confirmed it even more.  
  2. We have a serious problem with our Senior population right now.  Scammers are targeting them.  We need to help educate and support them in these times. Legislation is also a good idea to help address this problem.  I will personally volunteer for more events to get involved. 
  3. 90% of Seniors are now connected to the internet and using applications, just like the rest of us.  But the tech industry is not building for this Demographic.  They are not developing applications for older adults.  We need to start considering this when designing applications and building solutions.  
  4. AI can greatly help the aging population, but it is not designed for seniors to use. We can’t just provide the same tools everyone else has; we need to customize them and make this better. Several people at the event were working on solutions around this. 
  5. Your identity should not be related to your work.  Many of us in this industry devote so much of our time and lives to our jobs that they become our identity.  I plan to write a blog post soon about how to separate these items.  Think about this now, though,h as it becomes a big part of your life moving forward. 
  6. Some of the simplest things you can do to improve your life are to show Gratitude to yourself, others, and to play!  That’s right, enjoy some of life and make sure you have time for play.  

I have a lot more to share on these topics and events, but this is enough to get the discussion started. Please take a minute to start thinking of these things now.  Time is always moving, and it moves very quickly. 

Let’s do our best to LIVE with the time we have. 

TSQL Tuesday #194 Learning from mistakes

~ SqlAsylum ~ 2 Comments

This is very similar to my server in the story below.

TSQL Tuesday info.

TSQL Tuesday is a blogging event that happens on the 2nd Tuesday of the month. This week’s host is Louis Davidson (https://drsql.link/2026/01/13/t-sql-tuesday-194-invitation-learning-from-mistakes/)

You can find all the key rules and information on hosting if you would like to host at this link. https://tsqltuesday.com/

The Request. 

I haven’t participated in a #TSQL Tuesday in quite some time.  I saw this topic and said, “That’s perfect!”  I love talking about Failure and mistakes!  I have a whole presentation about it, and I’m hoping to make a series of blog posts about it very soon.   

You do not learn from success in life; you learn from failure.  I hope you are making lots of mistakes so that you can learn! 

“This month, I am asking you to share about a mistake you made that touches on data in some way. Whatever the mistake was, maybe when you were a complete newbie, maybe just last week.”

I have lots to choose from, but I have been very nostalgic as of late, so I’ll go to one of my very first mistakes as a DBA. 

Some of you won’t even be able to go back this far in technology, but some of you will appreciate this.  It was Mid 1999. I was just learning about Databases and had only recently inherited a Sybase SQL Anywhere DB.  I had no formal training in SQL and just a general understanding of what the Database was and what it did.  I was a customer support manager and needed to figure out this new DB that we were using.  It quickly became evident that I preferred working on the DB items to the manager items.  My passion at the time was the technical side of things.  

It started with a simple request: The DB had a front-end called HEAT (later Goldmine CRM).  This system allowed the creation of simple forms and the entry of data about support tickets and customers.  We needed a backend process that would update the phone number whenever another field was updated.  I had just read something about Triggers… yeah, some of you know where this is going.  

So I wrote up a Trigger that updates the phone number field whenever another field is updated.  Pretty simple…..Unfortunately, the trigger updated every phone number in the table every time an agent updated a field in the system. I didn’t understand that each update was row-level, but the query was acting on the whole table, and I didn’t specify that it should only update the record that was changed.  As people started using the system, it would wait about a minute each time to update all the other records. Luckily, the data was still correct since it was just updating the same row, but it was using all the system resources.  Since this was the late 90’s, we didn’t have high-powered servers. The DB didn’t stand a chance of staying up and running correctly.  It took most of the afternoon for us to bring the server down, start it back up, and remove the trigger.  We weren’t sure what the issue was at first, but then I remembered the change I made. 

Luckily, it was a small company, and they were pretty used to the system going down throughout the day.  Uptime wasn’t as big a thing back then as it is now.  I learned some great lessons on this day, and they have continued to shape me as a DBA.   

Lessons Learned 

  1. Test everything!  I did not have a testing environment for this system. 
  2. Respect all Triggers. I’ve seen tons of triggers since this first issue, and I’ve questioned every one of them to understand whether they are fully needed and how they are used.  They are very powerful and very dangerous. 
  3. Enjoy the early days and the small companies. Suppose you find yourself in a DBA position in a small company and are just learning new things.  Enjoy that time! Use that time to really learn about some of these things that can go wrong.  I learned a ton of important lessons at this company. 
  4. Ask questions and seek out others. I was the lone DBA at the time and had no one else to bounce ideas off.  I didn’t find community till years later, and I’m sure it would have helped if I had a community back then.  

Connections 

~ SqlAsylum ~ 4 Comments

In my previous post about my planning for the new year, I left something out.   

This wasn’t entirely intentional.  It was just a problem I didn’t know how to articulate. I still don’t have a firm answer, but it’s something I want to talk about more and more.    

Most people would say that I have a lot of Connections, a large network.  I’ve even had my kids tell me, “Dad, you know everyone”.   While many people know me in the community, or know of me. I don’t really feel like I’m connected to them.  One of my favorite Authors and speakers, Simon Sinek, has recently started talking about this much more. Here is a quick video describing some of the ideas. 

I want to make something very clear: I’m not advocating for moving back to more in-office work.  I just started a fully remote position! What I am advocating for is connections.  Human connections that mean something to you. Now more than ever, we can go through a full day without any actual human intervention. We can pretty much do everything sitting behind our phones or computers and never really talk to people.  Even if we do talk to a friend, it might just be in a chat channel or something else.  This is concerning.  

I can’t change the whole world;

I can only change myself.  

I can change the events I manage and attend. 

I can influence the people I meet.  

My goal is to make real connections. 

We have seen a decline in convention attendance over the last year; people are questioning the value of conferences and events, given that they can do everything through AI or learn online.  Personally, the value of an event to me has never been the learning. It’s always been the connections I’ve made.  I know that I can learn without an event/conference.   I cannot easily make connections outside my company without an event/conference.  

This is my initiative for the year.  My next post will be all about how to make this happen for you with tips and tricks.  If you are interested in helping with this initiative, please reach out, and I’ll suggest ways we can work together. 

Human connection should be one of the most important things in our lives.