Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 04-17-2023 Jorge, Wrexham AFC, & Guys Night Out

 Hello Dear Reader!  This past week was one I had been looking forward to for quite some time.  A couple of months ago I had started reaching out to my other guy friends.  We all  have busy lives, but we need to take time to spend with one another outside of dinner's with spouses, game nights, or Marvel movies.

Not that those things aren't great, but something that allowed us to just relax.  

Let me back up a bit, I love the podcast The Armchair Expert with Dax Sheppard.  On it they refrenced a study that lead me to this article on How loneliness is killing men.  Which shocked me.

I have this really cool Uncle we all idolized.  He was always taking trips to go golfing, hunting, or fishing with his buddies.  Growing up I thought that was really amazing.  As I got older and had kids, amazing turned into questions.  

How did he find the time to do this?  Shouldn't he be spending this time with his family and kids?  He was a really great Dad and family man, was his life out of balance or did these things matter?

I should have picked up the phone and called him.  I should have asked.  But I never have.  Then my kids got older, and getting their attention and even time with them became more and more scarce.

This lead to another realization.  My buddy Jorge Segarra (Twitter | @SQLChicken) and I were talking.  Jorge is doing the beautiful work of being a stay at home Dad and taking care of his kids.  We were having a great conversation, he was picking up kids from school, they got in the car like a chaos bomb and he said, "I should probably let you go this is going to be too noisy for you".

"I'm good", I replied and we kept the call going.  I've been a single Dad, a divorced single Dad, and a very lucky married man with a great partner.  The chaos of the call reminded me of picking my kids up from school about a decade ago.  We also realized that not many men could talk about some of the issues I faced and he was facing.  We also talked about how men don't talk about these things.  I brought up the podcast and the article.

We talked about the need of having time to go out with friends, re-engergize, and come back in a better head space to be father's and husbands.  For the first time, I understood my Uncle.

That was January.  We started planning.  We would talk more regularly, it had been months since our last phone call.  That needed to change. 

We found a weekend that worked, it took a while.  We set the date.  There were other gentlemen invited who could not make it, but hopefully next time.  It was this past Saturday.  Jorge, Daniel Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog), Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman), and myself planned a day.

It involved a spa visit for Jorge and myself, a cabbana by the pool for all of us to relax, a nice steak dinner, and watching John Wick 4.  Along the way we listened to Wrexham AFC win PROMOTION and toasted them from afar!!!

The day was perfect and we are all looking forward to the next time.  Long way of saying this, but if you are reading this think of your friends and reach out to them.  It is litterally the best thing you can do for your health.... and theirs.

All right, on to the recap!

MONDAY  4-17-2023

On Monday Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri) and Andres Padilla (Twitter | @nodestreamio) delivered a video on Azure Cost Management!  They have a discussion about different options to save money on a subscription.

They also show you how to use the Azure Price Calculator, Cost management and billing in the Azure Portal, how to set a budget, and how to set cost alearts!  Great stuff!

WEDNESDAY 4-19-2023

On Wednesday my video on Azure SQL Space Management for Azure SQL Database came online.  

This was a really fun video to make based off of a customer conversation and our amazing documentation on the subject.

TUESDAY 4-18-2023

The highlight of the week is always the Azure Data Community Round Table.  Josh, Neeraj, Andres, and myself kicked off a review of those articles that we found to be super helpful from the last week.

Here is the star of the show, the content in the order of appearence on the show:

Neeraj

• The Power of AI for Medical Imaging: 5 Key Applications & Use Cases by Katarzyna Rojewska Twitter @k_rojewska, @DLabsAI

Bradley

• Make data more human with Azure OpenAI and Azure SQL by Valentina Alto Twitter   @AltoValentina

Andres

• Integrating Azure OpenAI and Azure Speech Services to Create a Voice-Enabled Chatbot with Python  by Jiadong Chen Twitter @chen_jd

Josh

• Back home, but still a long way to go by Hugo Kornelis Twitter @hugo_kornelis

Neeraj

• How does AI actually work? by Kristina Bravo Twitter @BravoKristina 

Bradley

• T-SQL STUFF – Taking it to the limit by  John McCormack Twitter @actualjohn

Andres

• Using  MLFlow Recipes to refactor messy notebooks by Jeanne Choo  

Josh

• Master Databricks and Apache Spark Step by Step Video Series by Bryan Cafferky Twitter @BryanCafferky

Neeraj

• Can Data and Analytics Help Save the World? by Troy Hiltbrand Twitter @trohil

Bradley

• Using SQL Alerts to Spot Suspicious Activity in SQL by David Fowler via SQL Server Central Twitter @SQL_Undercover  @SQLServerCentrl

Andres

• Next-Generation Computer Vision Capabilities with Project Florence by Adina Trufinescu Twitter @abiramivina

Josh

• Citus Con Reminder (Keynote was at 12-330 ET/9-1230 PT, EMEA tomorrow 9-1230 CEST) by Citus Con Twitter @CitusCon

WRAP IT UP

We've got another great week planned for you, and we hope you can make the time to join us.  On Monday Daniel Taylor is dropping his first ever MS Tech Bits on how seperation of duties requires Azure Administrators and DBA's to work together in order to backup to utilize backup to URL.

On Tuesday at 1 pm EST we have our Azure Data Community Round Table and on Wednesday I will be droping a video utilizing Azure Open AI to read and collect insights on my Azure SQL Data.

Take care of yourself Dear Reader, and as always Thank You for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad