Are the posted questions getting worse?

  • Well today's a write off. Got into the office, and the system is down because the rebuild I had to do at the end of the day failed. Therefore I have to run the rebuild during work hours, taking half our systems (that were in a low functional state) completely offline.

    Nothing I have control over either, as it's a vendor system, and the error message was simply "ERROR: Bulk Update has Failed", so I can't even do any due diligence to try and do the work for the vendor's support desk (who will just suggest we rerun the process, cause they'll make the error go away...).

    Suppose I'll catch up on my reading of Grant's SQL Execution Plan book while I watch a 3-5 hour long process bar slowly fill up and field phone calls and respond with "No, it's not up yet. (...) As long as it takes. (...) No, I have no control over it and I can't make it faster. (...) I am keeping the business informed by email, you'll receive them from me when and if i have any additional news."

    Thom~

    Excuse my typos and sometimes awful grammar. My fingers work faster than my brain does.
    Larnu.uk

  • Interesting. I go to the last page of this thread and it tells me I must be logged in to reply. So I log in, and it kicks me to the first page on this thread. I click the last page on this thread and see "you must be logged in to reply."

    I go back one page and the reply box is there and I can type in it... So, yeah. Weird.

    Anyway, my back to what I was originally going to post about, my current job aggravation...

    Everyone (different departments) in corporate are suddenly shoving down regular scheduled updates, urgent updates, firmware updates, etc. down our throats. Which normally is no problem. Except no one is talking to each other and they're trying to update our DR production servers during the same time frame and same night as another group is trying to update our in-use production servers. I've been pushing back only to get "but we don't see the need for a reboot and this shouldn't cause any issue" to which my reply is "maybe, but you can't 100% guarantee it and we've seen it before where a server just freezes after one of these non-reboot updates plus I have to explain to my senior VP why we let both DR and production go down if there is a worst case scenario that causes us to lose both at the same time, so please reschedule this."

    To which I got an IM "chat" (more like a rant) after the third such pushback from someone in corporate who needed to inform me how unreasonable we were being and these were necessary updates and how dare I tell corporate we weren't complying with their schedule. And I just kept repeating the same line. We're good with the updates, we're not good with both DR and in-use production being updated at the exact same time, please reschedule one.

    It's been a fun month. Updates every week on one environment or the other, from the middle of June continuing through the end of July because we insisted on protecting one set of servers from changes while the other set gets updated.

    Brandie Tarvin, MCITP Database AdministratorLiveJournal Blog: http://brandietarvin.livejournal.com/[/url]On LinkedIn!, Google+, and Twitter.Freelance Writer: ShadowrunLatchkeys: Nevermore, Latchkeys: The Bootleg War, and Latchkeys: Roscoes in the Night are now available on Nook and Kindle.

  • My day was a half bust. My kid is the touch of death to machines, taking down both the riding mower and rotary mower last week as I was getting ready for SQL Sat Pensacola and didn't have much time to work on either. Initial attempts to get the idler pulley (riding mower) off and loosen the blades (rotary mower) failed.

    Yesterday at lunch I rolled the rider out and took the deck out. Managed to get the idler off and confirm a frozen set of bearings. Put it on my desk to verify the part as I ordered a new one. Then I went to the store to get Liquid Wrench (Liquid Spanner for the Brits) and a pipe. Got back, soaked the bolts, checked email and ate, then went outside and added 72" of leverage to the 1 5/8" socket and loosened the bolts. Aligned the blades and fired up the mower to check things were working.

    My wife pointed to the arena, and I went to cut some grass. Ended up spending the afternoon getting the area cleared, since she's been complaining about it. Finished and went back with an ax to attend to some yucca and thick weeds that the mower/trimmer can't get to. About 5pm, I was beat and went inside. Too tired to work then and called it a day.

    A blown day, but got some things accomplished. As my wife pointed out, gone all weekend for work, so I should have had a day off for her chores anyway.

  • It's the law of home ownership, Steve... all 10 minutes jobs take at least 6 hours to complete. 😀

    --Jeff Moden


    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.


    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

  • Ha, everything takes hours on the ranch. Cutting the property takes about 40-44 hours. Do it once a year, but behind this year.

  • Jeff Moden wrote:

    It's the law of home ownership, Steve... all 10 minutes jobs take at least 6 hours to complete. 😀

     

    Aint that the truth

  • Jeff Moden wrote:

    It's the law of home ownership, Steve... all 10 minutes jobs take at least 6 hours to complete. 😀

     

    And 5 trips to the hardware store.

    Michael L John
    If you assassinate a DBA, would you pull a trigger?
    To properly post on a forum:
    http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/61537/

  • Michael L John wrote:

    Jeff Moden wrote:

    It's the law of home ownership, Steve... all 10 minutes jobs take at least 6 hours to complete. 😀

      And 5 trips to the hardware store.

    6 if they also sell beer. 😀

    --Jeff Moden


    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.


    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

  • Michael L John wrote:

    Jeff Moden wrote:

    It's the law of home ownership, Steve... all 10 minutes jobs take at least 6 hours to complete. 😀

      And 5 trips to the hardware store.

    If those aren't the truth, nothing is.  About the second trip to Home Depot is when I get mad at myself for not thinking of the stuff I needed before I started the job.

  • Jeff Moden wrote:

    Michael L John wrote:

    Jeff Moden wrote:

    It's the law of home ownership, Steve... all 10 minutes jobs take at least 6 hours to complete. 😀

      And 5 trips to the hardware store.

    6 if they also sell beer. 😀

    ....I have lost count... 😉

    😎

     

  • BrainDonor wrote:

    It's nice to know that I'm not the only one who has to struggle for a year to get Redgate tools purchased.

    I struggled for several years way back when, when I was pretty new this community.   The products way back then were not like the ones there are today, but they appeared to be miles better than having nothing.   I hope my successor carried on the struggle and eventually won - I lost, although  I ran the company for a year or two or three as "Technical Director" (and temporary acting CEO, according to the employees but not according to the Board, as our CEO had departed leaving me as the senior remaining director)  but they wouldn't make me CEO because I would have insisted on a sane spending policy which the CFO (a pal of the company's founder) would have hated (guess why I couldn't acquire RedGate products).  The Creative Director and I (the two remaining full time employed directors) ended up demanding an emergency board meeting to stop the CFO from killing the company by refusing to spend the money needed to meet out contractual commitments to our customers, so neither of us was at all popular with the dimwit 75% of the board, but even the dimwits understood that breaching every customer contract would not be a good idea - the dimwits were evidently somewhat brighter than the CFO.  However, winning that battle with the imbecile CFO got us nowhere on software (license) purchasing.

    Tom

  • Grant Fritchey wrote:

    Chris Harshman wrote:

    I don't trust anyone... not even myself! 🙂

    My name is Grant Fritchey and I endorse this message. Except I'd change it slightly: I don't trust anyone... especially not myself!

    I do trust bright young developers.

    I trust them to write terrible code, to lay it out and format it so as to make it as difficult as possible to read,  to buid SQL queries in C++ or even something worse (Basic?  C?) and pay no attention to injection risks, to keep comments that describe previous versions of the code, and to forget to write comments that describe the latest version.  I also trust them to skimp on unit testing, to do inadequate system testing, and to try to bypass rules about testing and QA and not shipping updates without proper authorisation.   Sometimes I have wished I could just fire the lot of them, but there would have been just about nobody left to do the work so I couldn't do that.

    After a couple of years of having sensible development, testing, verification, QA, security and release techniques dinned into them about half of them learn to do it properly.  Unfortunately, the other half don't - and some companies are so badly managed that the half that don't learn get promoted faster than the half that do, which may explain why so much bad software is released.

    Tom

  • TomThomson wrote:

    Grant Fritchey wrote:

    Chris Harshman wrote:

    I don't trust anyone... not even myself! 🙂

    My name is Grant Fritchey and I endorse this message. Except I'd change it slightly: I don't trust anyone... especially not myself!

    I do trust bright young developers. I trust them to write terrible code, to lay it out and format it so as to make it as difficult as possible to read,  to buid SQL queries in C++ or even something worse (Basic?  C?) and pay no attention to injection risks, to keep comments that describe previous versions of the code, and to forget to write comments that describe the latest version.  I also trust them to skimp on unit testing, to do inadequate system testing, and to try to bypass rules about testing and QA and not shipping updates without proper authorisation.   Sometimes I have wished I could just fire the lot of them, but there would have been just about nobody left to do the work so I couldn't do that. After a couple of years of having sensible development, testing, verification, QA, security and release techniques dinned into them about half of them learn to do it properly.  Unfortunately, the other half don't - and some companies are so badly managed that the half that don't learn get promoted faster than the half that do, which may explain why so much bad software is released.

    +1 Billion.  It's not always their fault, though... about half of the problems come from managers that "want it real bad" and continue to reward "through put" rather than good code and the efficiencies that go right along with that.

    --Jeff Moden


    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.


    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

  • Jeff Moden wrote:

    +1 Billion.  It's not always their fault, though... about half of the problems come from managers that "want it real bad" and continue to reward "through put" rather than good code and the efficiencies that go right along with that.

    They want it "real bad" which is exactly how it is delivered. Another shining example of software being delivered exactly as the business asked for it, which is not the same thing they wanted.

    _______________________________________________________________

    Need help? Help us help you.

    Read the article at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/ for best practices on asking questions.

    Need to split a string? Try Jeff Modens splitter http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Tally+Table/72993/.

    Cross Tabs and Pivots, Part 1 – Converting Rows to Columns - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/T-SQL/63681/
    Cross Tabs and Pivots, Part 2 - Dynamic Cross Tabs - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Crosstab/65048/
    Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 1) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69953/
    Understanding and Using APPLY (Part 2) - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/APPLY/69954/

  • I've been working with a young developer for over a year on trying to get her to format any SQL she writes, SSIS or SSRS packages.  Since I do most of her code reviews I thought that she was getting on board with it.  She asked for help on an SSRS report she was working on, she sent me the SQL , it was all over the place as far as formatting.  I asked her why it wasn't formatted correctly, she said it was the developer that worked on it prior to her.  I know this is BS since I reviewed his code as well.  I just wanted to scream at her "Why the 'F' isn't this formatted correctly?"  Then she tries to use a MAX or ROW_NUMBER to get just one row back instead of taking the time to join the tables properly.  I know the MAX or ROW_NUMBER is needed in certain situations but not EVERY WHERE.   Sorry, just wanted to vent.

    -------------------------------------------------------------
    we travel not to escape life but for life not to escape us
    Don't fear failure, fear regret.

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