Monday, November 14, 2022

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

Monday, November 7, 2022

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 10-31-2022

 Hello Dear Reader!  Last week was Halloween and I hope you all had a fantastic time.  Halloween has long been my favorite holiday.  The cost of participation is imagination, activity, or a couple of bags of candy.  Anyone can do it.  It doesn't hurt that my daughter's birthday is on Halloween which makes it extra special!!

This we had the house decorated, table set up outside to give out candy to the neighborhood kids, and my kiddos were old enough that none of them needed me to walk them around to other houses.  This left me, for the first time in at least 19 years, sitting outside giving out candy.

I learned a few things. First, we need a lot more fans.  Fans outside in Florida will create a cross section of air that will keep mosquitoes away.  It is not so much for the temperature, although it was close to 90 degrees.

Second, it is possible to get stung by so many mosquitoes that you have an allergic reaction. To mosquito bites that led to a wonderful 3 am *asthma attack and hive like welts appeared on parts of my body..... that were covered in clothing and inaccessible to mosquitoes. 

*Not to worry though, as a lifelong asthmatic I had my rescue and daily use inhalers.  All that happened was I woke up, used them, made myself a cup of tea, watched RRR while my body relaxed, and my breathing returned to normal*

Third, and most important, I learned that maybe I just stay inside and give out candy next year.

"So Balls", you say, "what happened on the show?"

Right you are Dear Reader, keeping me on track!  On to the show!


TUESDAY NOVEMBER 1ST

On Tuesday we had Pam Lahoud (Twitter | @SQLGoddess) Principal Program Manager from the Azure SQL Virtual Machine team as our special guest.  Pam talked with us about some of the really cool announcements they have coming up at the PASS Summit. 



We also talked about the IOPs advancements that have been made and are coming to Azure SQL Virtual Machines!!  I wore a Spider-man costume.  Our good friend Dan Taylor (Twitter | @DBABulldog) guest hosted for Andres Padilla (Twitter | @NodeStreamio) as he will be out for the next few Tuesday shows.  Our topic was a spooky topic for Halloween, technology fails!  We had some great stories talking about epic failures, how we recover, stay calm, and most importantly learn from failure. 

Speaking of failure, I was disqualified! AGAIN! Neeraj Jhaveri (Twitter | @Neeraj_Jhaveri) & Josh Luedeman (Twitter | @JoshLuedeman) fought for the win.  Neeraj won the show!  Congratulations Neeraj!!  Neeraj will be the host and pick the topic for our show on Tuesday.


THURSDAY NOVEMBER 3RD

On our Thursday show we had 5 time Microsoft Data Platform MVP Matt Gordon (Twitter | @SQLatSpeed) on our Community Round Table.


We discussed Matt's adventures as a race car driver, his new book Pro Database Migration to Azure: Data Modernization for the Enterprise, and some of his favorite community content.  


Here are the links that we covered:

Neeraj

TIME's 20 Most Successful Technology Failures of All Time | Time  by LISA EADICICCO , MATT PECKHAM , JOHN PATRICK PULLEN AND ALEX FITZPATRICK Twitter @mattpeckham, @LisaEadicicco, @jppullen

Bradley

Resurfaced tale details how Toy Story 2 was saved after being deleted – twice  by Ellie Harrison Twitter @Ellie_Harrison

Josh

It's Time to Go Passwordless - Here's How  by Joey D'Antoni Twitter @jdanton

Andres

Demystifying Machine Learning for Industrial IoT applications  by Jomit Vahela Twitter @jomit

Matt

Converting Azure UTC DateTime to User Defined Locale and DateTime  by Jamie Maguire Twitter @jamie_maguire1

Neeraj

The biggest technology failures of 2020  Antonio Regalado Twitter @antonioregalado

Bradley

SQLskills SQL101: Dealing with SQL Server corruption by Paul Randal Twitter @PaulRandal

Josh

T-SQL Tuesday #148: Just Keep Swimming by Matt Gordon Twitter @sqlatspeed

Andres

Taking Azure Arc and Kubernetes to the Edge!  by Jason Farmer

Neeraj

The 10 Biggest 21st Century Tech Failures by Katie Rees Twitter @Vocal_Creators

Matt

Log Shipping - Pre-Stage Database backups with dbatools  by Jess Pomfret Twitter @jpomfret

Bradley

Using Azure Site Recovery for VM DR, and a SQL Managed Instance Failover Group by Denny Cherry Twitter @MrDenny

Josh

GitHub for Ben Wilkinson by Ben Wilkinson Twitter @brwilkinson

Andres

IoT Edge v1.1 EoL: What does that mean for me?  by Ian Banham

Matt

SQLServerFast By Hugo by Twitter @hugo_kornelis


A big shout out with a lot of love to Hugo!


WRAP UP

Another week is spread out before us, and it looks to be a really great one.  We hope that you have a wonderful week.  Don't forget our shows are live on Tuesday & Thursday this week at our Tales from the Field Youtube channel at 1 pm EST.

We hope to see you there.  As always Dear Reader, thank you for stopping by.


Thanks,


Brad

Monday, October 31, 2022

Tales From The Field Weekly Wrap Up for the Week of 10-24-2022

 


Hello Dear Reader! This past week was an extremely fun time over at the Tales From The Field show!  Fall is here, the leaves change and fall in Florida very quickly, & today is Halloween!!!  Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year.  It is also my daughter's birthday, which makes it extra special!

This is my favorite holiday because everyone can participate in the holiday, the cost to celebrate is low, & everyone is there to give freely.  We will be giving out candy bags, and the house is decorated in a Nightmare Before Christmas theme!  

Decorated while I listened to Wrexham AFC streaming in my earbuds.  Nothing better than listening to Mark Griffiths (Twitter | @m_griffiths92) talk about the pies or bursting my ear drums as Paul Mullin scores away!

Hopefully all of you will have a fantastic, candy filled, costume wearing day today!

"So Balls", you say, "what happened on the show last week!?!".

Ahh, thank you Dear Reader for keeping me on track!  Off to the recap!


TUESDAY OCTOBER 25TH

We had the great Karen Lopez (Twitter | @DataChick) on the show.  Karen is an 11 time Microsoft Data Platform MVP, a NASA Datanaut, & a Senior Project Manager & Architect at InfoAdvisors.  As the world re-opens and we look at traveling for work and conferences again, we discussed Tips & Tricks as well as #KarensTravelStories


Josh hosted the show.  I shared the crazy story of my bachelor party flight to New Orleans, somehow I was disqualified, Andres WON!!  Andres will be the host next Tuesday!!  There was something weird going on about Andres, Josh, and a VENMO payment.... let's just say Dear Reader, I have my suspicions. 


THURSDAY OCTOBER 27TH

We had Chris Ayers (Twitter|@Chris_L_Ayers) join us for the Community Round table on Thursday. 

Chris is a Senior Azure FastTrack Customer Engineer that is DevOps & Developer focused.  Chis is part of the same FastTrack team that Neeraj, Josh, Andres, & myself are all part of. We talked about DevOps Days Tampa Bay 2022 and some of the upcoming presentations and events Chris has planned. 

We covered a ton of great content on the show, here's a summary of the posts:

Neeraj 

a. MY BEST 61 TRAVEL TIPS TO MAKE YOU THE WORLD’S SAVVIEST TRAVELER  by Nomadic Matt Twitter @nomadicmatt 

Bradley 

a. Starting with brand new Azure AD Lifecycle Workflows – Part 1by Pim Jacobs Twitter @PimJacobs89 

Josh 

a. The Points Guy by The Points Guy Twitter @thepointsguy 

Andres 

a. Deriving real-time intelligence about the physical world with Azure Percept and Azure Digital Twins  by Nabeel Muhammad Twitter @abrsazi 

Neeraj 

a. Parallelism in SQL Server Execution Plan by Amhad Yaseen Twitter @AhmadZYaseen 

Bradley 

a. Synapse Delta Lakehouse and Power BI Enterprise Big Data Worked Example. Part 1: Start With the End in Mind  by Rishi Sapra Twitter @rsaprano 

Josh 

a. Tech Conference Travel Tips by Una Kravets Twitter @Una 

Andres 

a. Securing access to Azure Data Lake Gen 2 from Azure Databricks by Nick Hurt Twitter @Nicholas_Hurt  

Neeraj 

a. More Consistent Execution Plan Timings in SQL Server 2022 by Paul White Twitter @SQL_Kiwi 

Bradley 

a. Mastering DP-500: Synapse Serverless SQL and file types – the ultimate guide!  by Nikola Ilic Twitter @DataMozart 

Josh 

a. 16 Short Funny Travel Stories That'll Make You Laugh Out Loud by Jessie Festa Twitter @JessonaJourney 

Andres 

a. Best practices for designing a Microsoft Sentinel or Azure Defender for Cloud workspace by Tiander Turpijn Twitter @TianderTurpijn 


 WRAP IT UP

Ok Dear Reader it's time to land this plane.  Put your tray tables in their upright and locked positions, take small children by the hand, and DON'T FORGET we are live this Tuesday & Thursday at 1 pm EST!  Comment on the stream on any of our Twitter pages, Youtube Show page, or my Linkedin page as we are streaming and your comments will make it onto our show!


As always Dear Reader, thank you for stopping by.


Thanks,


Brad