Bought a Porsche Speedster Replica, Sabine.

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The 1950s Porsche 356 Speedster is iconic. From James Dean to Top Gun to Doc Hollywood to Justin Bieber’s Mistletoe, the beautiful German bathtub has stood for decades as shorthand for cool. Originally Porsche’s cheapest, simplest model intended for racing, today its pure form just screams cool. Porsche only made a few thousand examples. Now, the few that remain trade hands for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Sadly, most of them aren’t driven and appreciated – they’re locked up in pristine storage while they financially appreciate. (Matt Hummel is one of the rare exceptions who drives the heck out of his 356s.) Fortunately,…
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Bought a 1986 Ferrari 328 GTS.

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I’ve always wanted a 308 or 328, and I finally pulled the trigger on this 1986 Ferrari 328 GTS from BringATrailer. It screams 1980s with louvers everywhere and pop-up headlights. It’s my first car with a gated manual. Normally when I think Ferraris, I think bright red, aka resale red or retail red, typically with a black or tan interior. I love this one because it’s the exact opposite. I’d never seen a black over red 328 before, and I love the deep color of the leather. I won’t be taking this one on any cross-country road trips. It’s only…
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Bought a House in Las Vegas

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When I bought a place in Cabo late last year, I thought I’d transition to spending full time there. However, I quickly realized that I still really love cars, and Cabo isn’t a great place for sports cars. The roads are really, really rough, and you don’t really wanna advertise wealth there. So I wanted to keep a place in the US where I could still indulge in short performance drives and long road trips. Combine that with the fact that Cabo summers are pretty doggone hot, and I figured I’d get a place up north where I could enjoy…
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How the Company-Startup Thing Worked Out For Me, Year 10: Isolation and Adaptation

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Every year, I post a retrospective about what it’s been like to start up a company. If you want to catch up, check out past posts in the Brent Ozar Unlimited tag. This post covers year 10 of the company: May 2020 to April 2021. Boy, did that year suck or what? What a rollercoaster. COVID raged, we weren’t supposed to wear masks, then we were, then we got vaccines, then a lot of people did their own research, then the Delta variant hit. During Year 10, a lot of good things happened to me while a lot of bad…
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Selling My 911 on Cars & Bids, Bought a 944

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Lemme set the stage with tracks from Just Say Yes, the 1987 Sire Records sampler: Depeche Mode – Never Let Me Down Again (Split Mix)Echo & the Bunnymen – Lips Like SugarThe Smiths – Work is a Four-Letter WordReplacements – Can’t Hardly WaitThe Ramones – I Wanna Live You feel me? Okay, with that in mind: I got a 1988 Porsche 944 Turbo. This… is a 1988 Porsche 944 Turbo from Cars & Bids. Guards Red, pop-up headlights, phone dial wheels, Blaupunkt stereo. It just screams 1980s to me, like a great car to take to Radwood. It’s also kinda…
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Reminding Myself What Life Was Like During COVID19: Day 714

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It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these, and as I rehearse my sessions for next week’s SQLBits.com conference, I figured it was time to pause and catch up. It’s been almost two years since California issued a statewide shelter-in-place order on March 19th, 2020. It’s been about seven months since my last post in this series, and back then, the big concern was the Delta variant. Back then, the 7 day death average in the US was 362 people: These days, governments are starting to ease restrictions because the new variants aren’t as deadly, the populations have…
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Why I’m Gradually Retiring from Teaching Live Online Classes

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I really love Mexico. I love the people, the vibe, the food, the tequila, the beaches, you name it. If I had to pick just one place that’s my happiest place in Mexico, it’d be Cabo San Lucas at the very southern tip of the Baja peninsula, where the Pacific Ocean meets the Sea of Cortés, aka the Gulf of California. Over the years after a lot of visits to Cabo, my favorite beach became the quiet, private Playa Solmar at the very southern tip of Cabo, next to the Arch. Mama sea turtles climb ashore, dig a hole, and…
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Musicar Upgrades for My Jaguar XKR-S

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When I got my Jaguar XKR-S, one of my favorite things about it was the engine roar. It’s delightful, guttural, magical. However, when I was just cruising and I rolled up the windows, the stock stereo sounded terrible. I knew just who to turn to: Musicar did a phenomenal job on my Porsche 911 Targa’s electronics, making it look stock while adding a ton of functionality. Their Stage 3 audio upgrade sounded completely effortless and detailed no matter the volume level. There is absolutely no distortion no matter how loud I crank it, and I can hear every single detail.…
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My Favorite One-Week Summer Itinerary for Iceland

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A friend of mine came over to Iceland for a week, so I planned a road trip. This road trip does require an off-road-capable vehicle, like a Dacia Duster or larger. Dusters are really common rentals, and you can get ’em with pop-up tents on the roof, but I wouldn’t recommend that, so my recommendations also include hotels. Day 1: Jet Lag Recovery Odds are, you’re going to be coming off an overnight flight or a complicated series of flights. Land in Keflavik, the only real international airport in Iceland, and crash at a downtown Reykjavik hotel for a day.…
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Sold the Land Rover Defender.

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Our adventure in Iceland is coming to an end, and we’re moving back to California at the end of this month. We can’t bring our Defender with us – the US makes it doggone near impossible to import a new-ish car from another country. We debated a lot about whether to build a vacation home in Iceland, and we even went so far as to buy a lot up in Siglufjörður. If we went through with building the house, we were going to keep the Defender in storage until the house was built, and then use it as our car.…
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Hi. I’m Brent.

That's me, Brent.

I live in Las Vegas, Nevada. I'm on an epic life quest to have fun and make a difference.

I co-founded Brent Ozar Unlimited to help make your SQL Server go faster. I also maintain sp_Blitz® and the open source First Responder Kit repo.

My current car collection includes a Jaguar XKR-S, Porsche 944 Turbo, Porsche 356 Speedster replica, and a Ferrari 328 GTS.

profile for Brent Ozar on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&A sites