Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 06-12-2023 Cooking, Father's Day, & the Shrinking Household

 Hello Dear Reader! This past week was a busy one.  As we've started to settle into the new house we are transitioning from eating out or having meals delivered, to knowing where the pots & pans are so we can cook again.

I made a really nice beef stew and butter chicken from scratch.  My family is full of picky eaters, so the true litmus test of any meal is the answer to the question, "Is this make it again good?".  The answer to both of those dishes was a resounding yes from even my pickest of eaters.  There was one hold out on the butter chicken, but after a rousing review from the rest of the household my son Will tried it with all of the lack-luster enthusiasm of a 5 year old being told to "eat their vegitables".

I was asleep when he made it home from work and heated it up, but the lack of leftovers in the morning told me I could hang the "Mission Accomplished" banner.

This past Sunday was Fathers Day here and in many countries around the world.  It was a great day over here at Casa Ball.  My Mom, Dad, Mother-in-law, little Sister, beautiful Wife, & the kiddos all went to brunch, we watched a Cubs game (to bad they didn't win), and I grilled out burgers. Also our household and my buddy Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri) put together some videos for you all.

Here's one from my family.

Here's one from Neeraj.

And a big HAPPY FATHER'S DAY to all the Dad and the role models guiding people out there!  Your impact will be felt for generations and is essential to all those that you care for.

Father's day brings the realization closer to home that our household is shrinking.  My youngest is off to visit her Mom until early August and my oldest is off to Summer classes at college.  In the Fall my daughter will be back, but my youngest son goes off to college several hours away.  There is a bitter sweet feeling to all of this.  We've done our jobs properly.  The kiddos are starting to be off in the world.  I will need to figure out how to make smaller portions or have more people over for dinner!

All this to say, I remember when they were little and they wanted your attention non-stop.  If you have kids that are those ages appriceate those times, they will pass by before you know it.  But there are many new adventures still to be had, look forward to those as well.

Alright Dear Reader, let's get to that content!

MONDAY 6/12/2023

On Monday Neeraj Jhaveri released his first SOLO video Microsoft Fabric Decision Trees, Deciding Which Service to USE!!

In this video he walks through some of the documentation that we have for Microsoft Fabric to help you understand what services you should use based on your specific skill sets!

WEDNESDAY 6/14/2023

On Wednesday we posted my latest video Microsoft Fabric, Notebooks, Spark, Writing New Tables to our Lakehouse, & Baseball! I doned my trusty Microsoft Zune t-shirt and walked through how to take data in our Lakehouse that we've created using a shortcut so we do not have data duplication, and then how I walk through some data exploration and write out a data frame as a table in my Lakehouse!

I use this to determine the best day of the week to see my favorite baseball team play, the Chicago Cubs.  The key to this is invoking your imagination to see what it possible when using the service.  If you get a chance I hope you will check it out!

TUESDAY 6/13/2023

On Tuesday we had our Azure Data Community Round Table! It was another great show with my colleauges.

As always the STAR of this show is the creators from the Azure Data Community.  Here is the content in order of appearence: 

Neeraj

• Announcing Microsoft Fabric capacities are available for purchase | Microsoft Fabric Blog | Microsoft Fabric  by Mihir Wagle (he/him) Twitter @Ravskkaur

Bradley

• Working with ALS – ALS Awareness Month 2023  by Steve Hughes Twitter  @DataOnWheels via @SQLServerCentrl

Dan

• Hybrid Flexibility in Azure SQL Managed Instance   by Rie Merrit Twitter @IrishSQL

Josh

• Foldable SQL Regions   by Jess Pomfret Twitter @jpomfret

Neeraj

• Synapse Real-Time Analytics: Discovering the best ways to get data into a KQL database  by Anshul Sharma Twitter @anshuldsharma

Bradley

• Azure chaos STUDIO  by Arun Sirpal  

Dan

• T-SQL Tuesday #163 Invitation – What is the best piece of Career Advice you ever received  by Gethyn Ellis Twitter @gethyn_ellis

Josh

• Announcing a general Availability of SQL Bindings for Azure Functions     by Drew Skwiers-Koballa Twitter @SysAdminDrew

Neeraj

• Things to Do for Father’s Day: 20 Fun Ideas   by Alison Ensign  Twitter @FamilySearch

Bradley

• Get skilled on Microsoft Fabric – the AI-powered analytics platform  by Shannon Lindsay Twitter  @shan_gsd

Dan

• PostgreSQL Tutorial for beginners   by Daniel Calbimonte Twitter @SQLShack

Josh

• Create Your Own Microsoft Fabric Environment  by Kevin Chant Twitter @kevchant

WRAP IT UP

Ok Dear Reader, don't forget we have our Azure Data Community Round Table at 1 PM EST on Tuesday, and today Daniel Taylor (@DBABulldog | Twitter) will have his latest MS Tech Bits posted at 12 PM EST today!!  SECURE Azure SQL Managed Instance Backups with Azure Storage Private Endpoints!! 

Make sure to check that out when it is LIVE.  I hope your weekend was wonderful, if you have something you did that was awesome sound off in the comments!  I love to hear from you.

As always Dear Reader, Thank You for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 03-27-2023 & MegaCON

Zach's 1st MegaCon 2011

 Hello Dear Reader!  This past week is a blur.  It was a tough week at work.  That sentence is an understatement, but its really all I can say at this point.  Monday sent me for a tail spin.  I was fresh off a weekend relaxing with my wife, planning events with my friends, and thinking things were pretty well set.  Life has a way of suprising you.

We powered through last week, had our Community Round Table, and dropped our new content.  Internally at Tales from the Field we did some Camtasia training, explored some new technology, and started some planning for the next 3 months.  I'm excited about those things.  Before I knew it the weekend was upon us.

12 Years Later MegaCon 2023

I'm really tough to shop for, I hear that a lot around Christmas time.  I don't mean to be difficult, but if I want something I tend to buy it.  Books, collectibles, comics, whiskey, gin, ....I digress.  This year my wife did something exceptionally cool for me.  She bought me things to give me experiences, one of those was ticket's to MegaCON in Orlando.  She bought me floor passes & and extra pass to share.  

I shared mine with my oldest son Zachary.  My first MegaCon ever was with Zachary when he was 7 years old.  When it comes to comic book conventions I've only ever been to two and he was with me at both of them.  He enjoyed this so much, I think this is a must do again next year!

One of the things I've always loved it the effort people put into their costumes, how generous they are with their time, and a willingness to celebrate with others.  That was as true when he was a little kiddo dressed in a Superman t-shirt as it was this year when he was dressed as Eren Yeager this year.

I hope you had a good weekend out there Dear Reader!  On to the wrap up.

WEDNESDAY 03-29-2023

On Wednesday we dropped our MS Tech Bits, Turn SQL to KQL IN SECONDS with Azure Data Explorer.  This video is based off the demo I did with Patrick LeBlanc (Twitter | @PatrickDBA) in our Session at SQLBits (Twitter | @SQLBits).

I love Azure Data Explorer, it is an incredibly powerful service for digesting log data and querying massive data sets and returning results in seconds.  It has so many capabilities and possibilities.  BUT... I don't know KQL and I don't know if I want to learn another language.  Fear not as I show in this video you can use the EXPLAIN statement to translate SQL to KQL that you can then run against your data sets.

I'm hoping this leads to peopel realizing that the bar for entry to this service is low, if you know SQL then you know KQL!

TUESDAY 03-28-2023

On Tuesday I once again teamed up with Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman), Andres Padilla (Twitter | @nodestreamio), & Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @neeraj_jhaveri) to review the AMAZING community content that you all produced!  If you missed that make sure to check it out.

The true star of the show is the content produced by the Community.  Here is the content in order that it was covered on the show:

Neeraj

• Multi-Column Distribution for Dedicated SQL pools is now GA! by Mariya Ali Twitter @mariyaali

Bradley

• How to use an Annotation in Azure Data Factory or Azure Synapse Analytics Data Integration Pipeline?  by Alpa Buddhabhatti Twitter  @AlpaB7

Andres

• How to set up a Python virtual environment on Windows by Abhinav Saraswat 

Josh

• Announcing the Release of Azure Data Studio 1.4.2  by Erin Stellato Twitter @erinstellato

Neeraj

• Working with the GPT-4 and ChatGPT models on Azure by Derek Legenzoff Twitter @DerekLegenzoff

Bradley

• What is Visual ChatGPT?   by  Andy Sansom 

Andres

• Spark Monitoring  by Dustin Vannoy Twitter @dustinvannoy

Josh

• Turn your database into an API in minutes with Data API builder for Azure Databases  by Jasmine Greenway Twitter @paladique

Neeraj

• The Importance of SQL Saturdays  by Angela Tidwell Twitter @AngelaTidwell

Bradley

• KQL Series – ingesting data with Azure Data Factory by Hamish Watson Twitter   @TheHybridDBA

Andres

• Eliminate these 11 phrases that ‘make people question your credibility,’ says public speaking expert  by Christina Helena Twitter @christinahelena

Josh

• Azure Podcast - Episode 455 - Azure ML in the Real World  by Azure Podcast Twitter @AzurePodcast

WRAP IT UP

This week we have our Community Round Table on Tuesday where we will once again feature content from you the Azure Data Community!  We will be live at 1 pm EST, but you can always catch us after the broadcast on our YouTube Channel.

Wednesday we will have a video discussing the internals of Heaps, Clustererd Indexes, & Non-Clustered Indexes!

Time to say goodbye until next week.  Hope you have a great week and as always Dear Reader, Thank you for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad