An open letter to young people entering the job market

This is aimed mainly toward young people who fall into any of the following categories: has graduated from college within the past five years and is actively job searching, has graduated from high school (maybe also within the last five years) and is looking to enter a trade, is still in school (high school, college, …

#PASSDataCommunitySummit — day 1 debrief, and what I look forward to for day 2

Greetings from Summit day 2! This morning, I'm writing from the speaker's lounge in the Seattle Convention Center, where a number of speakers (myself included) are busy looking at their laptops. I'm not sure what the others are doing -- working on their presentations, maybe? -- but I know that I'm here writing in my …

Hello, New Jersey — I’ll be there on July 23! #SQLSaturday #SQLSat1027 #Networking #SQLFamily

First, I'll start with an apology to anyone who's been looking for more 'blog articles from me. My life's been pretty hectic lately (in a good way!), and I haven't had too many opportunities to sit down at my computer to write. But nevertheless, here I am. That said, my first article in a while …

Your User Manual

As a technical writer, anything that mentions “manual” (or “documentation”, for that matter) tends to catch my eye. I suppose it’s an occupational hazard. But when I saw this post from my friend, Steve Jones, it made me take notice.

I’m reblogging this for my own personal reference as much as anything else. Suppose you had a set of instructions for yourself? How would it read?

I might try this exercise for myself at some point, but for the moment, read Steve’s article, and see if you can come up with your own manual for yourself.

Voice of the DBA

Many of us have spent time looking through manuals or the documentation for some software or product. I know I’m on the MS docs site regularly for work, and there is no shortage of times I’ve used various manuals to help me fix something around the house. We usually use a manual when we want to learn how something is supposed to work, or how to get it to do what we want.

I saw a post on a personal user manual that I thought was a good idea for some people, maybe many people. This isn’t a manual for how you should live your life or work, but rather, how others might interact with you. This manual describes how you work, what motivates you, stimulates you, what pleases you, and even the environment in which are most productive.

Whether or not this is something you might give to co-workers…

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When information is overlooked

I went grocery shopping the other day. I picked up what I thought were two identical bottles of salad dressing (in the photo above). I remember thinking how strange it was that they put the same bottles of salad dressing in two different spots on the shelf. Nevertheless, I took one from each side and …

Upcoming speaking engagements (as of 8/30/2021) #ProfessionalDevelopment #TechCon21 #PASSDataCommunitySummit #DataSaturday #SQLSaturday #Networking #SQLFamily

Now that I have a couple of confirmed speaking engagements, I figured that this was a good time to update my upcoming speaking schedule! Confirmed These engagements are confirmed. I don't have exact dates or times for either of these (and I might not for a little while); all I know is that these events …

Getting my music heard

As some of you may know, when I'm not coming up with ideas for professional development 'blogs, I'm a musician on the side. I'm a classically-trained pianist, and I also play the clarinet, saxophone, and mallet percussion instruments as well. I perform in a large symphonic concert band, I accompany a local church choir, I …

#PASSDataCommunitySummit — I’m speaking! #PASSSummit #SQLSaturday #DataSaturday #SQLFamily

And now that it's been made public, I can announce this! (I've actually known about it for a week, but haven't been allowed to announce it until now!) I have been selected to speak at PASS Data Community Summit! For those who've been following along, PASS Data Community Summit is the successor to PASS Summit, …

Heading graphics: it’s not just about good looks

I've been building Confluence pages as my initial projects for my (still-relatively) new employer. I've been building landing pages, coming up with designs and layouts as I go along. For a couple of these pages, I wanted to come up with graphics -- not just to be aesthetically pleasing, but also to give each page …

The things we do for free stuff

This morning, I'll be sitting in on a 10:00 webinar by some company called 36Software. I have no idea what the webinar is about, and since I'll be working during the webinar, I'll be sitting in my home office working on documentation with the webinar on in the background. Why am I sitting in on …