How I got started with SQL Server?

I was a Sybase DBA and the company where I worked was conducting a physical audit and they were powering down physical machines in the hopes of clearing out a server room.

A machine that was incorrectly thought to be not in use was powered down and internal clients complained. The team doing the audit powered the machine back up and logged in and discovered it had a SQL Server install on it.

We did not have a SQL Server DBA and since I was the Sybase DBA it fell into my lap.

I had no client software and we had no installation media for me to install SQL client tools.

I did some googling (or AltaVista or whatever was around back then) and discovered a swiss army knife of a multi-RDBMS client tool called WinSQL.

The sa password was blank so I was able to login with WinSQL using sa and no password.

Thus began my relationship with SQL Server.