My first robotics competition

Last Saturday, I had an opportunity to attend my first robotics competition! The opportunity came up when my friend Andy Levy came to town with his team for a competition! Andy wrote a couple of 'blog articles about his robotics experience; you can read them here and here! It was a fun time, and I …

The menial tasks are appreciated

Years ago at a previous job, I once had my manager say to me, "Ray, I have a job that really, really sucks, but someone has to do it, and it needs to get done. You game?" Without getting too deeply into it (mainly because it's sufficiently long enough ago that I don't remember the …

The joys and benefits of volunteering

This afternoon, I took part in an STC panel discussion about volunteering -- how to volunteer, where opportunities exist, and so on. (A recording of the webinar will be made available; once it is, I'll post a link to it.) Those of you who know me well know how involved I've been with volunteering. To …

Enemies and adversaries

I stumbled across this article today. I won't get into the politics behind it (those of you who know me know how much I despise politics), but I wanted to write about it because of a quote by one of the perpetrators I read in the article -- one that I found to be extremely …

Communication lessons from air disasters

I've always had a morbid fascination for air disasters.  (Don't ask me why; I have no idea.)  I'm fascinated by shows such as Air Disasters, Why Planes Crash,  and Mayday: Air Disasters.  Whenever I hear about a plane going down, I'll start thinking about what happened, clues, what might have caused it, and so on.  …

What goes into organizing a #SQLSaturday? From the words of #SQLFamily

As my friends and regular 'blog readers are likely aware, I am a frequent speaker at SQL Saturday. SQL Saturday has shaped my professional life in ways I couldn't have imagined. I've traveled to many events, learned about data topics and professional development, gained public speaking experience, become more prolific with my writing (this very …

Where do I best fit in?

I play the piano for Sunday morning church services.  One particular day earlier this year, the choir director and his family were out, and the choir was shorthanded that day.  The cantor was also not there that morning.  We desperately needed someone to step up, and no one was willing to do it. This is …

References and memorization

I was working on a document, and wanted to toggle the language on MS Word that was used for proofing (I downloaded the template from our UK subsidiary, so it was proofing in UK, not US, English). I couldn't remember how to do it, so I consulted Google, found my answer, changed the setting, and …

Paying it forward

Once upon a time, I wanted to be the rockstar in pretty much anything and everything I did, whether it was my job, my extracurricular activities, or my relationships.  I wanted the glory and the recognition.  More importantly, I wanted to be respected for whatever I did.  In my youth, I thought that demonstrating that …

The symbiotic relationship between documentation and application development

One of my current projects involves documenting processes for an application that are still under development. As such, much of what I write may change, depending on how processes are changed during the course of development. At one point, I tested one of the processes so I could determine functionality and document it. In doing …