Brent Ozar – Page 2 – Sharing what I learn about community and consulting.

Ernie Ozar, 2003-2018

January 18, 2018

Our rescued mini Schnauzer mix, Ernie, passed away last night. She was diagnosed with cancer last year, but she was blessed with a great quality of life right up til the end. Ernestina On car trips, she brought her big bed with her Sunning herself in the afternoons on the…

Epic Life Quest: Level 10 Achieved.

January 9, 2018

Brent

Blog Posts

life quest

Life’s little moments of success can pass us by so easily. If we don’t track the things we’re proud of, we lose track of how far we’ve come. Steve Kamb’s Epic Quest of Awesome inspired me to build my own Epic Life Quest. I keep track of achievements, and after five significant ones, I…

Dream Car Seasonal Garage: 3 Cars, $50K

January 2, 2018

Brent

Blog Posts

cars

We’re up in Michigan, dogsitting for Dad & Caryl while they’re down in Mexico on vacation. Dad & Caryl’s house started as a 1-bedroom schoolhouse, gradually expanded over the years. I absolutely love their garage setup: 2 main cars, plus a side entry workshop garage, plus space to park another…

Free WordPress Plugins I Recommend for 2018

December 26, 2017

Brent

Blog Posts

blogging, wordpress

I recently helped Hugo Kornelis set up a new WordPress blog at SQLServerFast.com, and I realized it’s been a while since I listed the plugins I recommend. Here you go: Crayon Syntax Highlighter – show your T-SQL code in all its glory. Has an SSMS 2012 theme, and you can set…

2018 Data Professional Salary Survey: Early Results Thoughts

December 19, 2017

Brent

Blog Posts

career, salary

The 2018 Data Professional Salary Survey is open, and you can analyze the results as they’re coming in. As of this writing, we’ve just crossed 1,000 results (last year we ended up with around 3,000). Based on your feedback, I made a few tweaks to the questions and answers. I’m…

My 2018 Learning Goals #tsql2sday

December 12, 2017

Brent

Blog Posts

career, learning, t-sql tuesday

For this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, Mal asked us to blog about our 2018 learning goals. Her homework assignment included these 3 questions: What do I plan to learn? I like being at the cutting edge, learning things today that people are going to pay a lot for 5-10 years from…

GroupBy’s One Year Anniversary and What’s Next for 2018

December 5, 2017

Brent

Blog Posts

community, groupby

Last year, I unveiled GroupBy.org, a new free community event where anybody could submit a session on any topic, and the attendees would vote to see what sessions made the cut. I had a lot of questions when we started. Would people submit sessions? What kinds of sessions would readers…

Some Large Businesses Like to Work with Other Large Businesses.

November 28, 2017

Brent

Blog Posts

business, paperwork, setting the tone

Our human resources team Small businesses usually like working with other small businesses. Similarly, large businesses working with other large businesses. During the sales process, small businesses tell me things like, “All the decision-makers are on this call” and “Let’s move forward with this right now. What do we need…

What Specialists and Generalists Get Paid For

November 21, 2017

Brent

Blog Posts

career, generalists, specialists

Generalists say things like, “Yeah, I’ve done something kinda like that before, and I’m sure I can figure it out again.” Generalists get paid to learn new things fast and adapt. Specialists say things like, “Yeah, I did that exact same task last week, and I know it forwards and backwards.”…

My #PASSsummit 2017 Session Evaluation Ratings & Comments

November 16, 2017

Brent

Blog Posts

conference, presenting

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. PASS’s evaluation form this year had 6 questions with a 5-point ranking (I love that): PASS Summit 2017 evaluation form So how’d we do? Pre-Con:…