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So things are messed up. Bad. I mean, you lost a $2.7 Billion Dollar Secret Blimp or your team accidentally sent your client $6 Billion Dollars bad. Messed up.
In business as in life we have challenges, problems, “opportunities” as we like to say. Things get complicated and life doesn’t slow down or ease up on pressure to let us catch up. Pressures only ramp up and problems intensify.
How do things get so messed up?
In our fast-paced, competitive, efficiency driven (read “cost cutting”) environment…(continue reading on LinkedIn)
I have been in Corporate IT long enough to know that when a bad decision is made, you move out of the way of that train while quietly doing what you can to mitigate the inevitable wreck that is ahead…
(read the rest on LinkedIn, here)
Hi everyone,
I just published a new LinkedIn article entitled “Let It Go”. Please check it out!
Just a brief note to say that I will be voting for Grant Fritchey for the PASS Board and I encourage you to do the same. I have corresponded with Grant from time to time for several years and I know him to be an outstanding individual. He has authored some of the definitive books on performance and query tuning and has travelled the globe to serve the community. It’s not often that you have a chance to vote for someone this qualified as Grant is. Take this opportunity to make him a member of the Board.
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
I began my career working with Sybase on UNIX. Everything was done via the shell. There were strong practices in the space we were in for UNIX shell programming standards and strictly enforced source control procedures that we had to follow. Somewhere down the road I switched to SQL Server and I was usually the only SQL Server member of a DBA team that was strongly dominated by other RDBMS platforms (DB2, Oracle, etc.). What I learned from the governance practices of those other professionals was specialization. There were Oracle App DBAs, Oracle Sys DBAs, Mainframe DB2 DBAs, UNIX DB2 DBAs, Informatica Developers, Hyperion Developers, etc. I have never seen Oracle shops (App or Sys) tasked to build and tune Hyperion installs or create Informatica jobs. This is not because Oracle DBAs aren’t smart enough to work with Hyperion or Informatica. Most of the Oracle DBAs I have met (and I have met a few) can hold their own or run circles around me. Oracle DBAs specialize in this way because it maximizes value. I think it’s time we learn from our colleagues that work with other RDBMS platforms.
N.B. – I have no problem with a SQL consultant developing breadth across the entire SQL product as that helps them find work. I am also not talking about small shops that don’t operate at the Enterprise level.
Within the Enterprise, I think that it is long past time for SQL Serverdom to accept its maturity and affect governance and specialization practices that maximize value to organizations. We have separate conferences for the different specialities within our SQL Server product and recruiters certainly know the difference between a Sys DBA and a BI guru. It’s time for IT to do the same.
When I received my first MVP award for SQL Server it was fairly abstract to me until I went to my first TechEd conference after being awarded. There it got real. At that year’s TechEd I recall sitting in the SQL “Birds of a Feather” area with my late friend Kent Tegels and watched in awe as people were lining up to talk to Kent (and me, for that matter) over every and any aspect of the SQL product. I felt like I had a target on my back that said “SQL MVP. Argue with me”.
After one particularly long and intense SQL debate that Kent had with a TechEd attendee, he walked back over to where we were sitting and looked at me and simply said “jousting” and we both laughed out loud.
Jousting is fun. It’s a part of what we do as geeks and it’s how we learn. But it’s not how we should work.
The Beatles will always be my favorite group and John Lennon was a genius. The magic of the Beatles is that they worked hard as a team and the best idea always won – even if it came from a roadie. John Lennon didn’t berate George Harrison because he didn’t have the same gift of songwriting. He helped him write his first song. Ringo didn’t sing in too many harmonies but his drumming in “Rain” and “Tomorrow Never Knows” is iconic. The Beatles were masters as collaborators. Mick Jagger called them the Four-Headed Monster.
Let’s joust but let’s also get over ourselves and collaborate. Life is a lot more fun when we rock out.
Chuck's SQL Server blog 