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Did you mean to come here? My blog is now at http://msmvps.com/blogs/robfarley
This morning on my way in I started listening to Greg Low's sixth SQL DownUnder podcast. It's an interview with Itzik Ben-Gan. He talks about T-SQL enhancements in SQL 2005, and what excites him about it. I like this guy! I haven't come across him very much, but I do like his thinking.
For example, he talks about using an auxiliary table of numbers, for use in a number of different type of queries. This is something I've done for years - I think as long as I've used databases. It was something I remember looking for in both SQL and Oracle. In Oracle I could use the RowNumber feature to be able to get around it in some cases, but SQL really didn't have an equivalent. Since then, I've tended to create a table called 'nums' in almost every database I've used. It's just SO useful.
I thought it was really interesting to find that Itzik had a Pure Maths background, and that he found an immediate appreciation for the SQL language. I was the same. I did a half-major in Pure Maths at uni, and I even skipped the database subject in my CompSci major. Everyone always said it was easy marks, and I really wasn't interested in that.
With a job offer coming part way through my honours year, I left uni and got into the real world. Immediately, I was faced with databases, and had to learn SQL. It made sense to me straight away. Since then, I've enjoyed using SQL, finding better ways to do things in it, and ways to do better things. I treat it as a puzzle solver (like Itzik does), and I often have problems that are particularly suited to a database approach, rather than using an interative language. I'm the same with Prolog - a language which is great for solving particular types of problems.
I'm not sure if I'll get around to picking up any of Itzik's books, but I will put them on my list of 'books I'm planning to read'. And hopefully he'll come to Adelaide one day, instead of only doing the east coast!!!
Any day which starts with the news that England has lost 1-0 to Northern Ireland can't be that great.
On top of that, work seems to be getting remarkably busier than normal. I knew the todo list for my team for September was quite long, but it seems like things are conspiring against me to make the list even longer and put obstacles in the way of shortening it. Don't get me wrong - I like being busy. But I also like to be able to keep my clients happy. Typically they can all handle "You've picked the wrong week to ask for something new..." because they know me and understand that I will work hard to get everything sorted as early as I can. But I find it frustrating when I'm limited by the number of hours in a day to get everything done.
I'm off home now, and I'll try to catch a bit of the cricket. I'd happily tune in to see that rain has delayed the start - but I would also love to see England beat Australia for the first time since I was a kid.
One of the RSS feeds I subscribe to is the Daily Manna - a bit of the Bible every day. It's nice to have the decision about what to read from the Bible taken out of my hands, I hate thinking about what to read when I pull out the Book.
Today's verses were from Genesis. Chapter 12 if you're that interested. It was where God said to Abraham that He (God) would bless those who bless him (Abraham). I love this promise. It's an invitation to show everyone kindness, to do your best for everyone, to throw yourself into helping people. That's great! And it comes straight after another fantastic promise - that He would make Abraham's name great. He says (paraphrased) "Get out of your comfort zone, go and do something new, and I will give you success in it." I want that in my life. I'm not interested in having a comfort zone, I want to be on the edge, doing things that are new to me, and blessing others through it.
For those of you who don't believe in God (well, you probably haven't read this far down), you'd be wondering how this affects you. Well, you could just say "Cool - I can ask Rob for help with stuff", but my challenge to you is to try thinking about what your take is on the topic, Maybe you believe in karma or something like that. Maybe you think I'm a mug! Who knows? But next time you have the chance to bless someone, give it a go. Maybe God will notice and bless you for it.
"You could win from here" was an expression that I became known for around the pool table I mentioned in my last post.
Typically, I'd be playing someone, or maybe talking to someone who was playing, and one of the players was losing badly. Maybe 5 or 6 balls left on the table (8-ball, by the way, not 9-ball), compared to their opponents 1 or 2. Their turn would start, and they would start looking around the table, hoping to find a way back into the game.
I would look at the table, and often say "You know... you could win from here." Typically they wouldn't believe me, but I would follow it up with "Pot this one, then take that one, with the white ending up around here. Then put that one into the corner..." you get the gist. Just occasionally, they'd believe me, and sometimes even pull it off. But my point didn't change. The fact was - the odds might've been against them, but they could still achieve success from where they were.
No situation is hopeless. Your project might be seriously late. Your team might be inadequate for the task. Your client might be turning the screws. But success is never out of reach. Things can always be turned around for the best. We don't always feel like things are that way, and at times like that, I appreciate people like Stu telling me that I could win from here. And it's not even a question of having to define 'win' to something that's achievable. 'Winning' is a state of mind. You need to expect to come out of your situation in 1st place. Not beating everyone else, but satisfied that you won.
Ugh - I feel like I'm philosophizing... but at least it explains why I've called my blog "You could win from here"
A few years ago I worked in London. After I'd worked there a few months, the company bought a pool table. I don't really remember the reason for it - it was just something they did. It was the kind of thing that would've been more commonplace in 1998 than in early 2001, but either way, I didn't mind.
It took 20p pieces (small seven-sided coins for those people unfamiliar with English money), and it was in use more often than not. In a company of 3 people, that's not bad. Haha. Only joking. There were 30-40 of us working there. I was a Project Manager then, so you can imagine my concerns about how having a pool table in the office would be recorded in the risk logs of my projects, and about how I should adjust my project plans accordingly. However, to this day I like to keep a 20p coin in my pocket, and I really miss those days for various reasons.
As a Project Manager, the main thing you need to know from your people is how the project is actually going. If you can apply eXtreme Programming (quick shout-out to Dr Neil!), then great. In that case, you probably have each item in your project plan broken down into tiny tiny pieces, such that your project plan is actually quite accurate. But I wasn't doing that in those days. Don't get me wrong - my project plan was quite well broken down, but either way, I wanted to talk to my team and find out what their concerns were.
Talking to developers at their desk never works, in my opinion. You're distracting them from their task. They feel distracted. They want to give you their time, but they feel compelled to get on with their work. They can't get past looking at that line of code they're half way through, or that form they're designing. So having a pool table in the office was a fantastic opportunity. You could walk up, put 20p next to them, and within 5 minutes, you'd have them away from their desk, without them feeling like they needed to be finishing off their current task. Of course, sometimes they would say "Don't have time, Rob" - in which case I would either decide to postpone it or insist - but on the whole, it had the desired effect.
Once away from their computer, they would be more relaxed, and feel more comfortable talking about what was going on. I took the role of ally, of friend, of brother-in-arms. As we put down our mice and keyboards and picked up the pool cues, it made us equals for a while. They could beat me (occasionally) on the pool table, and that helped too. And I could find out what was bothering them, and take appropriate steps to help resolve that. It showed that I cared (I really did - I'm not just saying that), and the fact that they knew that helped deliver the project on time. Taking 20 minutes out for a game of pool was a great way of having a meeting with them. And for the benefit of the project, it really helped a lot.
I still talk to some of those guys on Msgr. I've lived in Adelaide for over three years, and most of those guys don't work at the same place either. But the relationships were forged there, and we made a good team.
At TechEd, the wireless connectivity wasn't great. Maybe they needed this: http://j-walk.com/other/wifispray
More and more I'm finding that it's good to read books on my PDA. My PDA is also my phone, so it doesn't tend to leave my side. It has wireless too, which means that it syncs really easily when I'm at work, or some other hotspot. So it's great for downloading RSS feeds, podcasts, that type of thing. I have a 1GB SD Card in it, so storage isn't a problem. Nowadays when I'm by myself in the car, I'm listening to podcasts instead of the radio, and at other times, I can check out media-casts that have downloaded, or read some PDF that I have. Recently when I had registered to do a couple of exams at TechEd, I bought a couple of exam prep books, and was pleased to see they had PDF versions on an accompanying CD. So I put them on my PDA, and found that it was really handy. Certainly better than lugging around a massive great text book with me. So next time I want to get a book (maybe Jesper's book on security) - I'll be hunting around for a way to get hold of a PDF of it. Dr Neil was telling me that there's a publisher who creates personalised PDFs for you when you buy a book through them. It puts your name in the PDF, so that they can tell if you make it available to other people. I think this is a neat idea. It makes the publishing costs really small. Shipping becomes free. And yet there is still no real worry about the publisher being ripped off by having the electronic version file-shared around the world. Now, if only I could get a bunch of non-technical books too... Oh yeah - my phone is the O2 XDA IIs, for anyone that's interested. It's a good phone, although I would've traded it for the IIi if it had've been available at the time. The IIi basically trades the built-in keyboard for a better camera. I don't use the keyboard, so it's probably a trade I would've made.
A short while before TechEd, Andrew Coates wrote on his blog that people could do free Microsoft exams at TechEd. I did my first MS exam in 1998, getting my MCSD under the old Architecture I and II exams. I upgraded to the VB6 exams as the other ones deprecated, but hadn't taken the .Net exams yet. Just hadn't put the priority on it that I had done in the past. Perhaps it would be different if the VB6 ones had deprecated too, but they haven't, so I hadn't taken any of the new exams yet. But I had thought I should get around to it, and had even bought a couple of exam prep books. So I registered to do one at TechEd, and then registered to do the second one too. Stupid really. Just made me stress a bit, remembering how I always went into uni exams feeling under-prepared, and had typically felt the same about MS exams. I figured they were free, and it wouldn't matter if I failed - but I don't do failure, and I did stress a bit. I read through the two books once each by the time TechEd came round. It just reminded me that I tend to rely on documentation for knowing the details of how to do lots of things. The principles are there, but when I go to write the code, I'll look it up, use Intellisense, that type of thing. I'm sure this is what most people do, but it doesn't help pass an MCSD.Net exam. The first exam was 70-320 - XML in C#. I passed in about half the time. So I asked about doing the other exam right away. Not because I felt I was ready (I didn't), but because there was an offer to resit any exams done in August for free during September. It was Aug 31st, so I just planned to get a month study time. But I passed that too! And still before the scheduled end of the first exam! I was now MCAD. I asked about trying the other two exams during TechEd too, and they said ok. One during my other scheduled time, and one on stand-by. I had no study material for them, so I was a little stressed (Roslyn tells me I was very stressed), but I just thought maybe I could get one of them passed and behind me. So anyway, I'm now MCSD.Net, and didn't use that stand-by time. I think the exams are less pedantic than they were in the 90s, which I guess is why I managed to pass them without doing Transcender exams and reading lots. If you're in the .Net space then you're doing this type of thing often enough so that you probably know enough to pass the exams - so don't worry about maybe failing them. Buy a book. Do a sample exam. But even if you can't do these things - just try the exams. And if you see them offered for free, then jump at the chance. And I'm including you in this, Alastair!
I really enjoyed TechEd. I met a bunch of people, I caught up with people I don't get to see very often, I became MCSD.Net, and I learned some stuff too! I went to TechEd 99 in Brisbane - felt like I left there knowing a lot more about lots of technical stuff. This time, I went wondering what I would learn, because these days I go to user groups more, read articles a lot more, and test beta software more. So looking at the agenda, I wondered what I would learn. I was pleased to find that I did come away having learned stuff - I'll be downloading all the slides soon. But the real value will come out of the conversations I had. The time spent with Phil and Lorraine, Alastair, Nick and Meg, with Greg, Geoff, Michael, Mick and Cam, Wayne, David, Chuck, David, Andrew, David, Frank, Dave, Steve, Peter, Milton, Brendan, Alan, Julian, Cheryl, John, Athena, and the other people I haven't listed here - lots of them. All with different perspectives on the world of course, and all of whom I could learn something from and hopefully teach something to. I probably told most of them the same jokes - and they probably all smiled politely. But hopefully I'll get them on my Msgr lists, catch up with them online now and then, and keep swapping knowledge, ideas, and passion. I'm definitely better off this year. Last time I left knowing more information. This time I left knowing more people.
Last time I wrote here was back in June. That's forever in blogging terms. But since then I've formed a different opinion about blogging and podcasting. I've been doing my Aussenal podcast (www.aussenal.com) for a while now - I figured that it was quite easy to put together an audio blog, particularly about something I can rabbit on about like football - especially Arsenal. But my opinion on that has changed too! I still think it's worth doing, but now I'm wondering if I should make the time to do it better. I spent a bit of time with Mick Stanic and Cam Reilly last week at TechEd. Great guys (let's not talk about Cam's thoughts on creation/evolution) - they run thepodcastnetwork.com, and they're trying to put together a site of quality podcasts, rather than the directory concept taken by iTunes, podcastalley and others. They're looking for someone to do a soccer show for them, and I'm tempted to put my hand up for it if I can find the time. Could be a lot of fun. But the thing about blogging and podcasting comes down to this: podcasting can be an audio blog - great if don't have the time to write - but to be decent, it should be better. But blogging is about putting your thoughts out there. I wanted to have a blog that didn't get distracted by drivel, but it meant I just stopped writing. Now, I want to write more often. That way people can get to know me better and they might decide they are interested in more than just the technical side of my blog. I plan to do an occasional audio blog, but I'll see... Thanks to the guys at TechEd that opened my eyes to the idea of blogging to gain a bit more of an online identity... Frank Arrigo, Phil Beadle, the Daves, and others. Over the next few days I'll post some more about what went on at TechEd on the Gold Coast. Plenty to say, so watch this space.
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