My #PASSsummit 2018 Session Evaluation Ratings & Comments

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After big conferences, I like to share my session evaluations to talk about what worked and what didn’t. Let’s see how we did this year. Pre-Con: Performance Tuning in 21 Demos This was an all-day session that Erik Darling and I co-presented. When Erik and I designed this session, we were both at a point in our presentation-writing style where we were madly in love with demos. All week long when working with clients, we have to spend a lot of time in slides, explaining concepts that we see out in the wild all the time. (I give my talk on…
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2018 Black Friday Sale

Building the 2018 Black Friday Sale at BrentOzar.com

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For last year’s Black Friday sale, I set a goal of $500K in sales, then did a ton of prep work: Set up a new training class lineup with labs Added a new Live Class Season Pass so folks could attend my classes all year long Added a handful of guest instructor courses Wrote a multi-day email launch sequence To handle the doorbuster deal load, upgraded our web site hosting at WPengine to a $6k/mo plan It paid off with a big sales jump: $440K, well above 2016’s $181K but still shy of my ambitious goal. Later, after the sale…
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Vanquest EDCM-SLIM 2.0

What’s In My Bag, 2018 Edition

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I alternate between a few different backpacks depending on trip length, so I keep the core of my electronic gear in an organizer pouch. I can just toss this into whatever bag I want to take: Vanquest EDCM-SLIM 2.0 It’s a Vanquest EDCM-SLIM 2.0 8″ x 6″ organizer pouch with lots of webbing. Wild overkill for a geek bag. Vanquest makes lots of tactical, medical, and first aid organizers with Molle straps for military folks. I was really torn between this and their FTIM 5×7, but went with the EDCM after reading a couple of reviews that said the dual-zipper format of…
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MS The World floorplans

What It Costs to Live on a Cruise Ship

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The World condo floor plan from one of the brochures Years ago, I saw a documentary show about The World, a condo cruise ship. People with at least $10M net worth could buy a home aboard, and then see the literal world go by their windows. When it first launched, it was both a condo and a regular cruise ship, offering nightly rentals for non-owners. The wealthy residents got understandably tired of cruise ship visitors, then bought the whole ship outright, kicking out the management company and running it themselves. These days, the ship is pretty private: CruiseMapper has old…
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How I Use a Mac but Work on SQL Server

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Kind of a convoluted title, I know, but I get questions like this every now and then: @BrentO read your article on your home setup, any chance there could be a follow up on how you have things configured? You’re using a Mac, but how do you do SQL stuff effectively on a non windows platform? Would be helpful to share any tips. — Chris Lumnah (@lumnah) September 25, 2018 Chris and I had a good conversation on Twitter, and I figured it’s time to post an updated version of how I work. I have a “fake job” – I’m…
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Building an Incoming Flights Display

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We live on the flight path to San Diego airport, and we like watching planes as they go by. One afternoon, we stumbled into the bar Nolita Hall. It’s also on the flight path, and they have skylights so you can watch the planes as they fly overhead. They have a big split-flap display behind the bar, and the bottom 3 lines show the next incoming flight: View this post on Instagram A beer list to envy. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Unless you come in to drink from it… Then you just get to enjoy⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ PC: @beersandcameras ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ /⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ /⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ #NOLITAxFIFA…
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My Home Office Setup, 2018

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We moved to San Diego and I refreshed my computer hardware, so it’s time for another update in my home office blog post series. Here’s what I’m using: Home office 2018 Standing Desk: Xdesk Terra Pro – Expensive, but works wonderfully and is built to last. I love the 3 height presets, and I’ve got them set for sitting, standing, and standing on top of my Fluidstance balance board. (There’s also an Aeron chair out of frame – I wheel it around behind my desk when I’m not using it.) Computer: Apple MacBook Pro 15″ (2018) – 6-core Intel Core…
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A Day in the Life of Brent Ozar: July 23, 2018 #SQLCareer

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Steve Jones asked data professionals to cover four days in our lives, so I blogged about a normal non-client-facing day, and then an unproductive day. Today is different: I’m client-facing. We specialize in a 3-day SQL Critical Care: Day 1 – we meet with the client to dig through their SQL Server together while we ask them questions about their database, indexes, queries, designs, RPO/RTO goals, hardware, and more. Day 2 – we split up. The client goes back to doing their thing, and we write the findings for them. (You can see examples of the findings on that page above.)…
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A Very Unproductive Day in the Life of Brent Ozar: July 18, 2018 #SQLCareer

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Yesterday, I blogged what I did in a random work day per Steve Jones’ suggestion. And yesterday, I said I’d blog today as well because it was going to be a different schedule. You shouldn’t read this. It’s useless. It’s useless because as I look back on it, I didn’t accomplish much of anything on Wednesday, July 18th. That’s not rare – there are plenty of days where I feel like I don’t make enough progress. Thing is, Steve wanted us to share the tools we’re using and what problems we’re solving, and this post is pretty well devoid of that information…
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A Day in the Life of Brent Ozar: July 17, 2018 #SQLCareer

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Steve Jones asked data professionals to cover four days in our lives, so here goes the first post: what I did on Tuesday, July 17th, 2018. Nothing special about this day, just the day that Steve prodded me to take part, heh. My days are radically different, so I’m glad he said to do this four times – otherwise I’d feel guilty about just posting this one without more explanation. (I’ll do this again for July 18th because it’ll look totally different, but then hold off for a few days before posting another.) 4:07AM – I wake up without an…
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Hi. I’m Brent Ozar.

That's me, Brent.

I live in California with my wife Erika. 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.

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