Archive for December, 2009

Whats your favorite time of the year?

People often ask why I enjoy this time of year so much.  For me its very simple, the time frame from about Oct15-Jan1 is easily the busiest time of the year for me which I guess means that I thrive under pressure!!

It all usually starts around the 15th of Oct when the last minute tweakings of the PASS summit are starting to fall into place, then usually the first week of Nov the annual PASS Summit happens and we get to see all of the hard work the dedicated PASS volunteers and speakers put in come together in a great display of SQL community and quite possibly the best quality SQL Server education opportunity anywhere! 

In years past I have almost 100% dropped PASS work until the following January/February to give plenty of time to recharge before embarking on another marathon ordeal of working on the various committee’s and such.  This year I have attempted to start working on PASS stuff almost immediately after the summit.  I’m not convinced yet that this is the right thing to do as the risk of burnout runs high when you have no “down” time.  We’ll see how this works for this year and if it doesnt seem to effect anything, Ill continue down this road.

The Fun Stuff

As soon as the summit is over I head home and its prime time Yellowfin Tuna fishing season.  This means that I spend as many weather permitting weekends (60 hr trips) as possible headed out about 200 miles into the Gulf Of Mexico in search of fresh hard fighting Yellowfin tuna.  This is one of may favorite hobbies/vices and can quickly consume huge amounts of time, Just ask my family who have happily learned to deal with it.

Wait there is more

On top of all these “fun” things I like to do, there are those little things called Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New years.  Those 3 wonderful days that every employee (in the U.S at least) looks forward to if for no other reason than the time they get off work.  Some days around my office this time of year I have enough time to catch up on some of those “nice to have’s” at work, other days its like the flood gates have opened up and there is no seeing the end of the torrent! 

Get to the point already

So whats the point of this post?  there are 2 points actually

1: To wish all 2 of you that read this a Merry Christmas, or whatever holiday you choose to celebrate. 

2: To give you a slight timesuck and very big laugh for the day before your long weekend hopefully begins!

This Bohemian Rhapsody is from the end of the first SQL Karaoke night when we ran the bar out of Jaeger got together and had a good time. Please be forewarned that there is quite possibly some NSFW language in this video.  How many of your SQL Server colleagues can you pick out in this video?  be sure to look to the right side where its dark and many of them were hiding!

Next year at the PASS Summit in Seattle make sure you attend the #SQLKaraoke night(s) at Bush Garden and you too can appear here.  Hopefully, I’ll get the minor editing done on the grand finale from night #2 of SQL Karaoke with 2 times the amount of SQL people up before the new year!