Just a little under 18 and one half years ago, William came into my life. There are a lot of words to describe a new baby, but the one surround Will's birth is hard to quantify. Don't get me wrong. Joy, happiness, elation, wonder, awe, all-encompassing-love, all of those words were there.
Holding Will's hand on day 3
Eventually.
Will's birth was the most intense 24 hours, and then week, of my life.
William was my third child, so having one was not new to me, but this experience was. Whereas his brother and sister had cried loudly, been weighed, and handed over in warming blankets to be cuddled with; William was rushed away. He was born into this world with a collapsed lung.
While I've spoken about this, I've never written about it before. There is a lot flooding back to me just looking at the picture on the screen. He was born just before Christmas and I've always been thankful to the nurses, the doctors, and other stall at the Sentra Hampton Roads Hospital until we moved we used to bring them cookies every Christmas Eve, remembering those wonderful people there over night with us.
The Graduate & Family
Let me skip forward in time. William's lung miraculously reinflated. After 5 days the oxygen hood came off, we were able to hold him, and feed him. He came home a bright beautiful bouncing baby boy, and grew so very fast. We have had lots of adventures.
My Bug, my nickname for Will, loves roller coasters and amusement parks. I think he is the only person in the family that loves theme parks as much as I do. For the last 15 years he has been my roller coaster riding buddy.
Last Thursday he graduated from High School. Roller coaster riding buddy indeed. That first hill was a big one. He is off to college this Fall, but it feels like only yesterday I was holding that little hand. One of my favorite quotes comes from the Little Buddhist Handbook, "The trouble IS you BELIEVE you have time". Yes. That is the trouble.
Next up, we will head to college orentationnext month. Before then we will move, because we bought a house. We've all been doing a lot of work on it getting it ready to move in. William is leading the way on the painting front, having painted his room and helping is younger sister with hers. The move is officially underway, not just because of the hours of work, or mounds of things we've already moved. No, the way I know this is I am sore in places I forgot I could get sore.
THE BIG WEEK
We talked about it last week Dear Reader, but a very big week is upon us. Microsoft Build starts today. On Wednesday 5/24 & Thursday 5/25 there will be a massive Digital Event that will be simulcast across the Guy in a Cube, Power BI, and Azure Synapse YouTube channels starting at 9 am PST.
One hour before we will be live on the Tales from the Field YouTube channel. Adam Saxton (Twitter | @awsaxton) of Guy in a Cube (Twitter | @GuyinaCube), Kal Yella & Bradley Schacht (Twitter | @BradleySchacht) from the Azure Synapse PG, and of course Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman), Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri), Daniel Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog), Andres Padilla (@Nodestreamio), and myself will be live.
On Monday my friend Daniel Taylor released an AMAZING video. He walked through the process of taking Ola Hallengren's SQL Server Mainteance Solutions and using them with Azure SQL Database using Azure Data Factory.
I don't feel like enough people are aware of the service and what it can do. If there is an item on the list you want to see a longer video on, let me know we always love the feedback!
TUESDAY 5-16-2023
On Tuesday we had our Azure Data Community Round Table featuring content from the creators in the Community for the Community! We had a great conversation opening the show about Mother's Day weekend and the activities surrounding it for each of us, plus a Happy belated Mother's Day to all the MOM's out there!!!
As always the star of the show is the content, so here is the content by the WONDERFUL creators by order of appearence on the show:
Ok Dear Reader remember today is the kick off of MS Build. If you haven't registered go do it, it takes a few minutes and it get's you free access to the big show.
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:
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.
