Brent Ozar – Sharing what I learn about community and consulting.

Things I Love About Teleworking in Iceland

April 20, 2021

We moved to Iceland in January to work remotely, and there’s a lot about it that feels like we’re living in the future. It’s an easy transition for Americans. Cars drive on the right side, English is spoken by enough folks in enough places, but the dominant language is still Icelandic, so it still feels like a foreign country. English is spoken, but rarely written – store signs are almost always in Icelandic, which presents a bit of a problem during the pandemic. I often find myself standing at a door, looking at a sign with a big wall of…

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How the Company-Startup Thing Worked Out For Me, Year 9

March 9, 2021

Brent Ozar Unlimited, business

It’s time for my annual update on the wild ride. If you want to catch up, check out past posts in the Brent Ozar Unlimited tag. This post covers year 9 of the company: May 2019 to April 2020. As a quick reminder, COVID-19 reared its ugly head late in year 9. I started year 9 with a new toy. In year 8, I made tough decisions and worked my ass off to secure the future of the company. I’d laid off the consulting employees, then worked a lot of weekends and late nights to build up a financial safety…

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How Iceland’s Dealing with COVID-19

February 17, 2021

covid19, iceland

When Erika & I started planning our move to Iceland last year, COVID-19 was by far and away the big motivation. We didn’t expect to be eligible for a vaccine in California anytime soon, so we wanted to socially distance somewhere for a while. Iceland’s a great place to socially distance because they have a low population density, great Internet connectivity (so I could keep working), and the government seemed to be taking COVID-19 pretty seriously right from the get-go. The government runs twice-weekly briefings. They’re very open about what challenges they’re facing and what solutions they’re considering. @Iceland_Review live-tweets…

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We Bought a New Land Rover Defender in Iceland.

February 15, 2021

cars, defender, iceland, land rover

When started planning to move to Iceland for a while, we had to decide what to drive – and we picked it out long before we got here. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Brent Ozar (@brento) If we were just staying in the capital city Reykjavik, we’d just rent a normal small car. However, we’re staying in a rental house in the countryside in the north of Iceland, and we’re staying during the winter. Even the long dirt driveway has hills that would challenge a regular small car. Our neighbor plows our driveway out with a…

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How to Get a Kennitala and an Electronic ID in Iceland (For US Citizens)

February 4, 2021

iceland

In Iceland, a kennitala is the equivalent of a US Social Security Number. It’s a personal identification number, and everybody’s got one. Kennitalas are required all over the place – getting a cell phone plan, opening a bank account, getting car insurance, even registering a TV for its warranty. An electronic ID builds atop that: it’s like a country-wide single-sign-on system that lets you authenticate for stuff and sign contracts. Apply for a kennitala before you fly to Iceland. You’re going to want to start this process at least a week before you arrive in Iceland if you wanna hit…

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How to Get Icelandic Teleworker Visas

January 22, 2021

covid19, iceland

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Brent Ozar (@brento) We made it into Iceland today with our brand new Icelandic teleworker visas! We wanted to move to Iceland for a while for a few reasons: they’re doing such an excellent job of controlling COVID-19, life is going on normally (bars & restaurants & museums are open), they have phenomenal internet connectivity (gig fiber everywhere), and it’s just a beautiful place to visit year-round. As Americans, if we want to get into Iceland, we have a few choices: Just drop in as a tourist for 90 days –…

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We Bought a 2013 Jaguar XKR-S.

December 7, 2020

cars, jaguar

Let’s get a few awkward things out of the way: yes, I’m also keeping Helmut, my 2019 Porsche 911 Targa. Yes, I still telecommute, and no, I definitely don’t need another car. I haven’t even put 5,000 miles on Helmut in the ~18 months that I’ve owned him. Yes, we’re still moving to Iceland for a while. Yes, taxes on imported cars in Iceland are extraordinarily expensive, like 70% of the car’s price. Jaguar XKR-S Alright, with those out of the way, let’s talk Jags. Today in America, Jaguar isn’t the first brand name you think of when you think…

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Building the BrentOzar.com 2020 Black Friday Sale

November 13, 2020

black friday, business, marketing

Seven years ago, I ran the first Black Friday sale at BrentOzar.com just for fun. I always like shopping for stuff like TVs around this time of year, even if I don’t actually buy anything – it’s just a fun diversion for looking. However, it caught on with consumers in a big way, so over the years, it became a really big deal for the business. In 2018, we crossed the half-million dollar mark, and then things got better in 2019 as well. Every year, leading up to the sale, I put a lot of thought into two things: What…

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Reminding Myself What Life Was Like During COVID19: Day 237

November 11, 2020

covid19

It’s been about eight months since California first went into lockdown. Every now and then, I blog little reminders to myself about what life is like so that I’ll be able to read back in the future and remember how things were going. You can read the past ones under the covid19 tag. I’m doing a mental checkpoint because 3 significant things happened recently. 1. San Diego is heading into lockdown again. This week, we got word that the number of cases here has gone up to the threshold of the purple tier again, California’s highest risk rate, so we’re going…

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We’re Planning to Move to Iceland for a While.

October 19, 2020

iceland, travel

@brentozar #iceland #travel #glacier #ocean ♬ Landslide (Live on PBS in Boston 2004) – Fleetwood Mac Erika and I first visited Iceland for SQL Saturday 2019, and returned again in 2020. We had such a good time and loved the place so much that we started making plans to go for longer and longer periods of time. In mid-2020, we realized that the coronavirus situation was going to get a lot worse before it got better. I decided not to do any in-person client engagements or conferences until we could both be vaccinated, and that wasn’t going to come around…

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Hi. I’m Brent.