April 2008 - Posts
I've never been much of a mentor to people, partially not having the chance, partially focusing too much on myself, and partially, well, I haven't thought aobut it enough.
However I've had some discussions with Andy Warren lately about mentoring and I always find them interesting and intriguing. He's actively trying to mentor someone and putting effort into thinking about what he should and shouldn't do to help someone else grow their career. I admire that effort and to some extent I wish I'd had someone that mentored me. The closest might have been the guy that I used to work for at Virgina Power. That was a year where I learned a lot, he helped push me and taught me a lot about business dealings with clients. Not all of it good; some was taught with the "don't do this because I'm making a mistake", but it was all enlightening.
The other day we were talking about reading and how his young protoge spends time on the Internet and watching TV/movies, but not really reading books other than technical ones. We debated a bit on whether encouraging him to read, especially non-technical books, would be a good idea and what value there is. I think both Andy and I agree that there is some value, and while we don't want to unduly influence someone to just read what we enjoy, there's some cultural intelligence and awareness of things outside IT that you can gain by reading all sorts of books.
So Andy asked me for some recommendations and I need to sit down and think. My first reaction was to flip through some books on Amazon, link between the recommendations, and pick the things that struck me as interesting to the person I'm buying for. I've done that in the past and had good success with friends and family. However I also need to come up with a good generic list and I'll put down a few that I remember as standing out:
- The Last Juror - John Grisham - It's fiction and invovles a crime as most of his books do, but it mainly follows a small town newspaper owner that grows up with the town and events there. It's a slow, down home kind of book and I liked the introspective parts
- On Writing - Steven King - For anyone that writes or wants to write, read this book.
- Odd Thomas - Dean Koontz - Kind of a spooky story, but Odd is everyman, and ordinary guy that just wants to live his life.
- One Year Off - David Cohen - the story of a family that literally packs up and takes a year off from life to travel the world. Not for me, but it'sa great story and everyone should consider it. We had friends that did this.
I owe more on a list, but I need to think about what I'd pick.
I hate to say it, but I can't say anything. At least not yet until I confirm some things are not under NDA.
However it was a great week, I met some very smart people, and had a good time. Lots of things in the works for both SQL Server 10 (2008) and 11, and it was a week to get excited and energized about the product. I'll write more as I can.
Yesterday was an interesting day up at Microsoft. The SQL Server track is split into two sessions, with 2 assigned rooms, and luckily for me, all of the sessions I wanted to attend were in one room, so I never had to move. I liked that, though I was regretting not having the laptop. The give and take is good, with about 40-50 people in each room that ask questions throughout the session, which slows things down, but it does help us as MVPS, direct how the talks go.
I can't talk a lot about what's going on, especially as I need to get some permission about what is NDA and what is releasable. There is a lot of work going on up here and while I don't always agree with the direction, I do see something I like.
Passion and effort.
It's what I like to see from my sports teams, win or lose, and there's a lot of both up here. Even though things are muted in the offices, it does seem like people are interested in building great things up here.
Facilities
The facilities are pretty nice. We're in the Microsoft conference center on campus and the main room I've been in is a tiered audience area with rows that have mini-desktops, plugs for laptops, and great wireless. The chairs are comfortable, and it's easy to see and hear, something that doesn't happen in most conference rooms I've been in.
It was announced yesterday that Service Pack 3 for SQL Server 2005 is coming! I've been trying to get people to vote and participate in the Connect item and it appears that everyone's efforts got noticed at Microsoft and they are starting to realize that having a servicing model is a good thing. I'm glad to see that and we actually got some good information about how they are working on patches and fixes moving forward. I'm not sure about how much of this information is available for release, but the news about SQL Server 2005 SP3 is good.
I had someone complain recently that I've spent too much time talking about servicing, and perhaps I have. But I think that the servicing model for patches and fixes is important, especially for a piece of software on which we build many of our applications. It's no less important for Oracle, MySQL, Windows, Linux, IIS, Apache, or any core software product. And it's something that I think we as consumers, have been too lax about making our feelings known. We should be pushing for regular, and published, servicing models. It makes our lives easier in planning for testing and applying these patches and it allows us know have more confidence in the product. Our particular issue for each of us might not get fixed in the next patch, but it does show us that things are being fixed and there is work being done to build a more stable platform.
I am actually stunned. I knew that more bandwidth makes a difference, but having way more bandwidth is truly amazing.
My daily upload routine, which actually ends up being anywhere from twice to 5 times a week for video, is to start uploading one video while I render another one. This way I have time, about 15-20 minutes, while one video uploads to get the second one rendered. Depending on what's happening at the ranch network, things usually go smoothly without me waiting too long. However there are times I log onto the MSN Zone to play a quick game of backgammon while waiting for things to finish.
With my trip to Seattle for the MVP Summit, I was a litle concerned about upload bandwidth as I've had issues in various places. I expected downtown Seattel hotels would be pretty good, but I was still nervous. I'd uploaded a couple future videos, but I had planned on shooting some off the webcam in my laptop while I was there and uploading those each day.
Today I came over to the Microsoft campus for the day and got on the guest wireless network. I processed and edited a video near the end of the day, entered the various data I needed a Podshow, clicked upload, then went to get things ready on the site so I could copy and paste the URL in when it finished. I hadn't finished with the metadata when the sound started and I clicked back to the Podshow tab to find my MP3 uploaded. It was less than a minute for a 5MB file to upload, which was amazing. I wondered about the 30MB video file, but it went in a couple minutes as well, way faster than I could process them.
I'm sorry I only had three videos on the laptop to upload. Could have saved a bunch of time if I'd done more before I came.
Actually it wasn't really an official day. I came to Seattle a day early to see the Mariner's play and went to the game with Kalen Delaney and her husband, Peter Ward, and Jeff Wharton from Australia. We had a good time and chatted a bit about SQL, but mostly watched the game and talked about it. We got to see the roof close, which was very cool.
Later we had an informal dinner and drinks, about 14 MVPs there from 7 countries and we chatted things up and engaged in some debates. Talking about software estimation, bugs in SQL Server, issues dealing with Microsoft and more. It was a good start and I'm looking forward to more debates throughout the week.
As MVPs we should, I think, represent the community and I try to keep that in mind, however MVPs are human, we have our own issues and jobs, and I think some people often get caught up in the access that they get from being here. However everyone seems to be an optimist and idealist, looking to really improve the product wherever they can.
Ok, I'm a bit of an ID10T at times.
I've talked about this for months, especially trying to push SP3 for SQL Server 2005, but when the date came I missed it. I could blame it on a busy life and a wife that's been gone 7 of the last 12 days, but the truth is I blew it.
Support for SQL Server 2000, both Service Pack 3 and 4, ended yesterday, April 8. If you don't have a maintenance contract, or don't buy one, you're not getting anything fixed. Even if you have an issue, there are no guarentees, but at this point you cannot report a bug or issue and hope it will get fixed.
So, if you're still on SQL Server 2000, and many of you are, then you are without support right now.
My guess is that most SQL Server 2000 systems are fairly stable. If they're not, and you've got an open case, I assume Microsoft will keep working on it, but I'm not sure. I'll try to find that out when I'm up in Redmond next week.
I acutally don't think it's that big a deal to run without support, providing you've been running in a stable mode for awhile. There's always the chance you'll hit some new bug with enhancements or changes to your code, but it's not that likely. If you haven't upgraded yet, I'm not sure I'd be in a panic at this time to upgrade. I'd be thinking about it and perhaps planning/budgeting for a move to 2005 or 2008 sometime in the next year, but chances are you are fine for now.
Remember there are still people out there on SQL Server 7 and even SQL Server 6.5 that haven't had support for a very long time and are doing just fine.