Last week I wrote about our FRC team, asking for support in in the form of a cheering section. Today, I’m asking for more assistance for these amazing students.

Things went better than expected at the Finger Lakes Regional event and TAN[X] 3003 was part of the winning alliance. This means that we earned an invitation to the 2023 World Championships. You can watch all of our qualification and playoff matches via YouTube links on The Blue Alliance. They also appeared in a local news segment about the event.

For the past few years, I have been a mentor for FIRST Lego League and now FIRST Robotics Competition at our school. When I was in high school, I participated in some of the early seasons of FRC and now with the addition of FLL, my kids have gotten involved at an earlier age and really latched onto it. So of course, I talked myself into helping out with the program. And they’re stuck with me for a while; my son is a sophomore, and when he’s a senior, my daughter will be a freshman and she’s champing at the bit to get into the “big” competition (after 2 years of FLL).

TL;DR: My home firewall/router is slow, please help me pick out a new one.

After replacing my firewall/router/WiFi access point one too many times, I’m ready to get off the upgrade treadmill and buy something better than the consumer-grade gear sold at Staples.

T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly blog party hosted by a different community member each month, and this month Garry Bargsley (blog | twitter) wants to know what activities we undertake to wrap up the year.

My ask is, what do you have planned for end-of-year activities for your SQL environment? Do you have annual processes or procedures you run? Do you clean up documentation? Do you just take time off and hope someone else does the work?

Fairly short post here. Due to the recent events around Twitter (which I will not get into), I’m making an effort to reduce or completely cease my activity on that platform. My Contact page has been updated with all of the below accounts/sites.

As I write this, it’s the weekend before PASS Data Community Summit 2022 and depending upon when I finish, it’ll post either shortly before SQL Saturday Oregon, or in time for folks to read it on SQLTrain en route to Seattle. Summit has snuck up on me this year and far more than any other year, I’m feeling woefully unprepared.

The Prompt

In July, Brent Ozar (blog | twitter) asked us to make September Community Tools Awareness Month.

In September, I want you to improve community knowledge about one free tool that you rely on every week in order to get your job done.

I’m sure it will come as no surprise to readers of this blog, but I’m going to select the amazing PowerShell module dbatools.

dbatools Is for Everyone

Despite what the name may imply, dbatools is a valuable toolkit for anyone who needs to interact with SQL Server. It’s not just about upgrades and migrations anymore. I like to tell people it’ll make them look like a wizard to their colleagues because of how quickly things can get done with just a few commands.

So Many Meetings

I’ve said it. We’ve all said it.

I can’t get any work done today, I’ve got so many meetings.

I need to be reminded on occasion that for most of us, the meetings are work too. They are part of the job and we need to think of them as such.

But I get it. I’m a technical professional. If you’re reading this blog, you probably are too. We feel “productive” when we’re actually putting fingers to keyboard, marker to whiteboard, “making stuff.” Being in meetings doesn’t feel like we’re doing anything to move things forward.

T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly blog party hosted by a different community member each month, and this month Kevin Kline (blog | twitter) asks us to talk about an IT conference that resulted in a major opportunity.

Tell us the story of how attending an IT conference or event resulted in an amazing career or life opportunity.

It will be a common refrain in this community, but I’m going to pick a PASS Summit. But not my first one.

T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly blog party hosted by a different community member each month, and this month Deborah Melkin (blog | twitter) asks us for a database-related rant.

Who are we kidding? I like to rant. Here we go.