Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 04-10-2023, Taylor Swift, & The Disney 10 Miler

 Hello Dear Reader!  Last week was a really busy week with an even busier weekend.  We will get to the show recap's in a moment but first let's dive into the weekend.

Months ago my wife & youngest son worked together to get Taylor Swift tickets for this past weekend.  I've enjoyed quite a few songs of Taylor's, but live music isn't really my thing.  My wife loves it.  She had a career working in radio and she was the planner & show runner for many many live music concerts.  She "makes" me go with her.  

To be honest I always have a great time, but it is not something I seek out for myself.  So when Sue & William were excitingly explaining to me over dinner how they were able to secure 3 tickets my first thought was they were taking my sister Julie or my youngest daughter Serenity (both of whom would have fought me..... and probably won... to get these tickets).  It was not Julie or Serenity.  It was me.

Don't get me wrong, I was happy to suggest they offer up the ticket to someone else.  Heck, I got us a really great hotel room at the Tampa Edition.  It had a Michelin star chef.  An amazing bar, a welcome cocktail with a lavender spritz and their gin brewed specifically for the hotel, not to mention a Rum bar, and to top it all off an in house spa.

My offer was that they could go to the show, I would go to the spa and get a massage, go to one of the restaurants and eat some food, go to the bar and get some drinks, then head to the pool where they had a pool side bar, take a nap, wake up, go grab some more drinks, and wait for them to get back so they could tell me all about it.

As you can tell from the pictures my offer was refused.  We had a great time.  There were songs we sang along to, that we danced to, and it was a spectacle.  It cannot be said that Ms. Swift puts on one helluva show.  She performed for 3 hours straight and sang 44 songs from 9 different albums and 2 surprisesongs.

On Saturday morning we woke up, had a really nice brunch at The Pearl and made our way back to Orlando so I could pick
up my race packet for the Run Disney 10 Miler.  I will be honest Dear Reader, I forgot I signed up for this race until the week before.

I have picked my running back up post injury, but had not been training on longer races.  Normally my long Disney Races are half marathon's, 13.1 miles or 21 K, this was a 10 mile run or roughly 16K.

Those 3.1 Miles or extra 5 K's make a difference.  Seriously.  That is normally the part of that race where I hit a wall.  Not literally.  In running when you hit a wall is a condition of sudden fatigue and loss of energy which is caused by the depletion of glycogen stores in the liver and muscles.  It makes that the most difficult portion of the race.

By not hitting that wall I was never truly fatigued during the race.  I was able to keep my run-walk-run-walk method going and averaged 8 minutes per kilometer and finished in 2 hours and 11 minutes. 

At home we my lovely wife was home busily preparing for my Mother-In-Law's 77th birthday!!  I love my Mother-In-Law Judy.  She is an incredible woman.  My brother's-In-Law, my nieces, and one of my nephews made it over.  However the star of the show was my baby grand-niece.  No pictures, but she is the most beautiful and adorable little girl.  She is six months old and in a very fun phase where she is not yet walking, but alert, attentive, and very opinionative.  You knew what she liked and didn't like!  The party was great and seeing family was the cherry on the cake.  

Like I said, busy weekend.  Now let's recap last week!!

WEDNESDAY 4-12-2023

On Wednesday we dropped the demo heavy companion to last weeks video SQL Server Internals: HEAPS VS. CLUSTERED INDEXES!. 

This was a really fun video to make, and I'm hard at work on this weeks content which will be a fun video about Azure SQL and how it utilizes space.

TUESDAY 4-11-2023

Tuesday was a great show.  We started off the Community Round Table with a side conversation about being a parent and giving the magic of wonder to our children.  Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman) reminisced about Castle Greyskull with me from our childhood.  Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri) talked about when he gave his kids the gift of iPhones!  Andres Padilla (Twitter | @nodestreamio) talked about an AMAZING Christmas where his father hung his the Star Wars ships he received from the ceiling like they were flying!

We also covered AMAZING Azure Data Community content from the creators.  Here's the content in order of appearance:

Neeraj 

Unleashing the capabilities of Azure Synapse Analytics for a healthcare customer  by Prabhjot Kaur Twitter @PrabhKaur 

Bradley 

Using Azure Data Factory to read and process REST API datasets by Rayis Imayev Twitter  @RayisImayev 

Andres 

Announcing registries in Azure Machine Learning to operationalize models and pipelines at scale by Manoj Bableshw  Twitter @manojsb 

Josh 

Common Azure Synapse Link for SQL storage permission issues by Kevin Chant Twitter @kevchant 

Neeraj 

Create a Data Solution on Azure Synapse Analytics with Snapshot Serengeti - Part 1 -  by Josh Ndemenge Twitter @Jcardif254 

Bradley 

EightKB Topics  by Andrew Pruski Twitter  @dbafromthecold 

Andres 

Understanding Chaos Engineering by John Engel-Kemnetz Twitter @jkemnetz 

Josh 

Armchair Architects: Data Mesh Architecture by David Blank-Edelman Twitter @otterbook  

Neeraj 

Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot – your copilot for work  by Jared Spataro Twitter @jared_spataro 

Bradley 

How to work with ChatGPT in Visual Studio Code  by Daniel Calbimonte via SQL Server Central Twitter  @dcalbimonte  @SQLServerCentrl 

Andres 

From YOLO to YOLOv8: Tracing the Evolution of Object Detection Algorithms by Abirami Vina  Twitter @abiramivina 

Josh 

Ultimate Guide to Citus Con: An Event for Postgres, 2023 edition Ultimate Guide to Citus Con: An Event for Postgres, 2023 edition  by Claire Giordano Twitter @clairegiordano 

WRAP IT UP

As we wrap things up a quick programming note.  We will be dropping an MS Tech Bits video TODAY on Cost Management by Neeraj & Andres!  Make sure to check that out when it goes live.

Tomorrow we have our Community Round Table show Live at 1 PM EST.  On Wednesday I will be with you for an MS Tech Bits on Azure SQL Database Shrinking Operations for Data & Log Files. 

We hope you have a wonderful week and make some time to hang out with us Dear Reader, if you did anything fun this weekend I'd 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 11-07-2022 Run Disney, Gareth, & Veteran's Day

 Hello Dear Reader!  Last week I was fresh off of finishing the Run Dinsey 5K, 10K, & Food and Wine Half Marathon.  My good friend Josh Luedeman (@JoshLuedeman | Twitter), his wife Lisa, and my wife Sue all did the 5K together.

The 5K was particularly meaningful to me.  

My dear friend Gareth Swanepoel and I once did the Princess 5K together.  Gareth was famously known throughout the Microsoft Data Community.  

If you knew him, you have only to close your eyes to see his beaming smile and hear his booming laughter.  Gareth was the one who got me to start running in the first place.  

Gareth didn't do anything half way.  So when we were set to run the race he insisted we dress up for the occasion!  He dressed as Donald Duck, with a tutu that had lights interlaced inside of it.  To match him, I dressed as Mickey Mouse complete with black tutu that had lights as well.

We were supposed to walk, but the excitement got to me.  I had trained for this and was not yet running longer races and I ran off.  I then ran back, in the end I completed a 7K instead of the mere 5K we had signed up for.  I was worried I had upset him by running off, instead we laughed and he loved the progress I had made.  In the end we finished how we started.  Together.

Josh & I had signed up, and as we walked the expo floor I saw tutu's and better yet! Sparkly headbands!  I bellowed out, "OH WE ARE DOING THIS"!

Josh, to his credit, was a fantastic sport.  While these tutu's did not light up, we found tutu's that matched our jerseys.  To make it even more special Gareth's sister Tessa had given me two of Gareth's shirts.  A rugby jersey that bore his name and his favoirte Rugby team, which I wore.  Another was his Captain America Sharks jersey which was given to Josh and he wore.  Both of those shirts have special significance outside of just them belonging to Gareth.  Gareth wore these multiple times around us and for special occasions.  

So we two friends started out the weekend, in tribute to our dear friend and we finished the way we started.  Together. 

"So Balls", you say, "I miss him too."

Well said Dear Reader.  Well said.  

On to the show. 

TUESDAY 11-8-2022

On the Tuesday show we had Andrew Nathan (@AndrewNathan05 | Twitter) Principal Engineering Manager from the Azure FastTrack Infrastructure team.  Andrew is also a Veteran, and he is very active in Veteran's organizations within Microsoft.  Andrew shared with us his experience transitioning from the Military to Microsoft.  

His perspective is one that we have encountered many times with former and current Military members.  Operational excelence is the standard operating procedures.  Many veterans do not realize that the skill set they have translates to a career in technology and in IT Security. It was a fantastic conversation, and it will lead to many more conversations we have with Andrew in the future.

Neeraj was the host this week, I WASN'T DISQUALIFIED!!! I won!  So I am the host this week at Live 360!

THURSDAY 11-10-2022

Thursday is Community Round Table day!  We had a call for content this week and recieved some great submissions. 

Here are the links that we covered:

Neeraj

• Data Security Explained: Challenges and Solutions By Mike Tierney Twitter @Netwrix

Bradley

• Data Science For Power BI Developers  By Sandeep Pawar Twitter @PawarBI

Andres

• Zero Trust Security for IoT  by Arjmand Samuel Twitter @arjmandsamuel

Josh

•   Configure Bicep code scanning in GitHub with Microsoft Defender for DevOps  By Will Velida Twitter @Willvelida

Neeraj

• Veterans in Tech: Transitioning From Service into the Tech Industry By Kristen Capuzzo Twitter @KCapuzzo @QwasarSV

Bradley

• Mastering DP-500 Exam: Querying JSON Data in Serverless SQL Pools  By Andy Cutler Twitter @MrAndyCutler

Andres

• Microsoft Defender for IoT Ninja Training   By Kim Wall

Josh

•   Fun with KQL - Arg_Max and Arg_Min By Robert Cain Twitter @ArcaneCode

Neeraj

• Krebs on Security – In-depth security news and investigation By Brian Krebs Twitter @briankrebs 

Bradley

• Database Projects – Merging changes By Olivier Van Steenlandt Twitter @Oli_Vsteenlandt

Andres

• DevOps Security Workbook By George Wilburn 

Josh

•   Granular Cost Management for Azure Data Factory  By Koen Verbeeck Twitter @Ko_Ver

WRAP IT UP

The week went well.  I have the medals at home, but I realized that I did not take a picture of the medals themselves.  

As I type this I am sitting in our pre-con at Live 360!  

So here's a quick picture of me with the medals after the race.

A quick programing note, we are NOT doing Live shows the week of Thanksgiving.  

We are taking some time off to spend with our families and we hope Dear Reader, that you too have some time off planned.

HOWEVER, we do have NEW content that will drop Tuesday at 1 pm and Thanksgiving Day at 1 pm!  

Tuesday will be technical content dealing with ACID and Transaction Isolation Levels within SQL Server, Thursday will be a really fun suprise!

We hope you will check out the content, but most importantly we hope you have a great week with your family!  As always Dear Reader, Thank you for stopping by.

Thanks,

Brad