Year 5: May 2018 – May 2019

May 22, 2019 Andy 3

In my last few posts, I’ve walked down memory lane, and talked about a ton of great successes I’ve had in my five years as blogger & speaker. It’s been fun to reminisce about how far I’ve come and brag about some success. Today’s post … [Read More]

Year 4: May 2017 – May 2018

May 21, 2019 Andy 0

In Year Three, I had a pretty big year. I kind of felt like I had peaked. I had received the Community Influencer of the Year Award and Microsoft MVP Award. Where do you go from there? Mostly, I just wanted to keep up what … [Read More]

Year 3: May 2016 – May 2017

May 20, 2019 Andy 0

In Year Three, my goal was to keep focused on what I learned in the FreeCon the year before, and keep moving forward with speaking and blogging. I was putting a bit more effort into my speaking (and thus easing off on the blogging some).

Year 2: May 2015 – May 2016

May 17, 2019 Andy 2

In Year 1, I only wrote 6 blog posts. In Year 2, I decided to take things seriously, and kicked things into high gear. During this 12-month period, I wrote 36 blog posts–my best 12-months as far as pace & productivity in these five years.

Year 1: May 2014 – May 2015

May 16, 2019 Andy 0

I’ve lost my blog stats for that first year, so I can’t say exactly how many visitors I had. I can say that the number of views was so low that it didn’t matter. If I were going to offer a generous estimate, I would guess I got whopping 100 page views in year one (mostly from me). I wrote a total of six blog posts that year. Let’s look at two of my favorites.

Blogging on a whim

May 15, 2019 Andy 0

On May 16, 2014, I bought a domain on a whim. I’d been sitting in the NOCC at my employer, helping with maintenance. I was waiting on another team to perform their task, and champing at the bit. Over the next week, I set up a Blogger website, tied my domain to it, and thought about what I’d done at work recently that might be worth sharing.

What the heck is downtime, anyway?

April 15, 2019 Andy 2

There’s a lot of discussion about preventing downtime. As a DBA and IT professional, it’s my sworn duty to prevent downtime. I usually describe my job as DBA something along the lines of, “to make sure data is always available to the people and applications … [Read More]

SQL: A love story

January 21, 2019 Andy 0

I’m a college drop-out. When I was trying to figure out my life, a friend (my brother’s ex) referred me to a software company where she was working–I got the job because I was (a) breathing, (b) eager to do the job, and (c) cheap. … [Read More]

Failure is always an option

January 15, 2019 Andy 1

Bloggers spend a lot of time writing about our successes, but we’re human and we make mistakes, too. This post is a chance to share one of my memorable failures.

Working from home: Home office tour

December 18, 2018 Andy 4

About two years ago, I moved my home office down into the basement at our house. Earlier this year, I started a new job at SentryOne, and work from home full time. This means I spend more (awake) time in my office than any other room in the house. I thought I’d take everyone through a guided tour of my home office.