I decided to take a long weekend this weekend. I haven’t taken any time off from work since the end of May. I took that a long weekend then to get married. I believe that was a great reason to take off, right? Well this weekend I had another great reason to take off. It was my birthday!.
Friday I hung out with my wifey and relaxed. Went out to eat with the fam and had a great time decompressing. My in-laws are nuts, but we all have a grand time when we get together! We went up to Gary’s BBQ. If you live in the greater Charlotte, NC area, you simply have to try this place. Great Barbeque, great baked beans, awesome onion rings. Basically everything I’ve had to eat in moderation for the past year.
Saturday morning started bright and early. I headed down to Columbia, SC for SQL Saturday #48. I had an awesome time! The day started out with Eric Humphrey covering Power Shell, a topic I definitely need more experience with. Then I moved on to Jose Chinchilla and his discussion about Certifications. He definitely underscored the importance of getting the Microsoft Certifications to further develop my career.
After that, I listened to Andy Warren discuss building a professional Development Plan. This really jived with Dan Schawbel’s book Me 2.0. When I read that book, I had already built a rough plan to develop my career and market my skills as a commodity. After this session, I discussed what I felt my next steps should be in my career. He also introduced me to several other presenters, and organizers. At the end of those conversations I found out the next steps were entirely within my control. That’s an amazing thing to learn on your day off! I’d really like to help spread that message a bit further… Maybe Andy wouldn’t mind some assistance with that…
Not to short change the other presenters I met. I’d like to thank Andy Leonard for showing me a few patterns I could follow in my future SSIS packages.
Stuart Ainsworth, thank you for giving me a more structured primer on XML in SQL than I’d been able to extract from the books alone.
And finally, Geoff Hiten, I’d like to thank you for covering a few examples I’ll keep an eye out for in my work improving the performance of queries.
Sunday and Monday were pretty cool too. Sunday I went out with my fam for lunch. We all came back to my place to hang out for a while. Later, I decided my office needed a revamp, so I tore apart the room, and rebuilt it…hopefully this new view won’t end up being too distracting 🙂
After a very restful Monday, I’m actually looking forward to work tomorrow. I have a chance to impress a company with my performance tuning skills. This might end up being my first step down the consultant’s path. If not, it’s always a great chance to pass along some knowledge to people seeking it! In the end, that really is worth a lot to me.
If you didn’t have the chance to hit SQL Saturday this week, let me know, I have some notes I’d be happy to share!
Oh, stay tuned the rest of the week, I’ll be posting a few more questions I’ve been working through in preparation for my 70-433. We’re coming down the wire to my first shot… stay tuned to find out how that goes!