I won’t get personal here, because in spite of everything, I do imagine that the folks in MSL are under quite a bit of stress right now (yes – so is the community, but more on that later).  I myself remember getting chewed out back in November of 2010 when we announced that SQL MCM was removing the training requirement.  While I received some support, I received a good share of hate-email and comments – and I cannot recall a more stressful period of time in my career.  Communicating change is tough – and there is definitely a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it.  I think the first mistake is to think your audience can’t handle the truth.

With that said, here, in my dream world, is what I wished MSL would have said on today’s call.  They might have expressed some variations on a few of these items – and I’ll save it for MSL to communicate – but otherwise this is just an imaginary list of talking points:

<imaginary MSL talking points>

• I’m sorry about how and when we communicated the program cancellation.  It was incredibly ungracious and we really regret it.
• For anyone who has invested in the program in the last X number of months, we’ll be providing full refunds and will work through each scenario on a case-by-case basis.
• We will extend the ability to take exams for X number of months.  We agree it was unreasonable and unfair to give a 1 month notice.
• We ended the MCM program because we never really knew how to make it work.  Our organization isn’t structured to support programs like this – programs that are strategic but don’t generate direct-revenue.
• We wanted to model the programs after what Cisco does, but we didn’t actually do much of what we should have to make it more like Cisco.
• We wanted MCM to have industry-wide recognition, but we didn’t invest in long-term marketing.
• We don’t really plan on making an MCM\MCA replacement, hence the cancellation.
• When we say “pause” – we mean cancel and retire.  There will be a new “top” tier certification, but a much broader audience and it will not resemble MCM.
• Even if we ask the product team to protect these programs, they have other priorities right now and aren’t in the certification business.
• We will move all distribution lists and NDA-access related benefits to someone on the MVP community team to manage.  They have budget and know how to handle very large technical communities. They will manage this moving forward and you will be a member of the community and will be grandfathered in as appreciation of your time investment.
• Business is business, but we’ll throw in what perks we can to soften the blow (MSDN subscriptions, PASS tickets, we’ll use our imagination).

</imaginary MSL talking points>

Now back to my own, non-imaginary voice for a bit.  A few thoughts and opinions:

• I do really hope that anyone in the pipeline gets a chance to complete what they started if they choose to do so.
• I do also hope that people are reimbursed according to each situation.
• I hold out a very, very small hope that the various product teams will re-adopt each MCM/MCA program.
• I hope that everyone will be civil and not resort to bullying the people in MSL.  Be tough.  Be honest.  Be vocal.  But don’t be vicious or get personal please.  Keep perspective.
• I know we don’t need an acronym to be masters with the product.  The biggest benefit of being an MCM was the community and also the process of achieving it.
• We’ll all be okay.

Lastly, I of course remain fiercely loyal to SQL Server.  It is the horse I bet on 16 years ago and I have no regrets.   But as for the SQL Server certification program, quite a bit will need to happen before I would feel comfortable advocating for them again.

The post We can handle the truth appeared first on Joe Sack.

“Lindsay Lohan’s dad, Michael Lohan, and girlfriend Kate Major are expecting their first child together. For HELP call 18888906150”

The source of the text varied – showing numbers like 835-77, 770-50 and 258-70 – but the text always contained a “For HELP call 18888906150” part of the message.  I was worried to call the number, thinking I might get charged, and I was also worried about replying STOP, again because I’ve heard you could be charged (or worse – they find out they have a live person on the other end who they can spam more).

Unfortunately until this month, I didn’t pay this issue much attention.  My excuse?  When you’re woken up at 2AM – it is very annoying – but then by 6AM I’ve already forgotten that it happened or have other things to attend to.  In the meantime, the frequency of messages increased, and after getting spam texts multiple times last night, I finally researched the number and found out a few things. 

Turns out this was classic “cramming” – where a company places unauthorized charges on your telephone bill.  I reviewed my cell phone bill and found charges like the following:

8. 06/04 Multiple Types: 9.99 0.00 9.99
IQ30CALL8668611606
Short Code: 77050 ID: 35041
Provider: BuneUS
Contact: 1-800-331-0500
Renew Date: 07/03/2012

10. 05/18 Multiple Types: 9.99 0.00 9.99
MobibroAlerts
Short Code: 58497 ID: 36301
Provider: Mobibro
Contact: www.att.com/mobilepurchases
Renew Date: 06/17/2012

04/02 Multiple Types: 72139 9.99 0.00 9.99
gossiprage
Short Code: 72139 ID: 35821
Provider: Wise Media
Contact: 1-800-331-0500
Renew Date: 05/01/2012

Since March I’ve been charged by three different providers – $9.99 each for these nightly text messages.

Here is what I did, and we’ll see if it helps (and your method will vary, so I’m just sharing my experience so far):

• I called AT&T and they revoked the charges that were over the last 60 days.  We’ll see about the other charges, but I may be out of luck on the other months that I didn’t notice.
• I asked AT&T to block all third party charges.  They added a free service to block this from happening and gave me a PIN in order to authorize third party charges in the future.
• I asked AT&T to unsubscribe me from the paid services.  We’ll see tonight if that worked.
• I logged a complaint on http://www.fcc.gov/complaints (Jon recommended this)

My lessons learned?

• If I’m getting strange text messages – don’t wait FIVE months to research.
• Don’t assume that a spam text isn’t causing charges.  It probably is.
• Get the third party charge block on any new cell phone line.

Again, this post is off-topic, but hopefully it will help others who encounter similar issues.

The post Off-Topic PSA: Beware of Cramming appeared first on Joe Sack.

Jonathan Kehayias blogged about it extensively in his “Building a Completely Free Playground” series – and once I moved to SQLskills I felt less skittish about running a product that happened to have the big “O” word listed prominently on the application toolbar header.

I actually use VirtualBox for a variety of purposes – not just for SQL Server test environments. For example, if I need to connect to an environment that has conflicting (or unique) remote connectivity requirements, rather than risk clobbering my host VPN settings, I provision a clean, isolated guest environment that I use for connectivity and configuration instead.

Sometimes I’ll have a group of servers that I want to launch at the same time or I’ll want to put a group of them in a saved state at the same time (for example – when running a guest Failover Cluster).  In one case I have six different guests that I want to save or start at (nearly) the same time and I don’t like having to right-click save on each one – especially since my guests will quickly think something is wrong and when I bring them back from a saved state, it takes a few seconds to get them de-frazzled.

By the way – I’m using these scripts for test environments.  These are test environments that if I lost them, I’d be annoyed – but not devastated. 

Rather than rely on the GUI, I created a BAT file to save the guests in a batch:

cd /D "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\"

START /b VBoxManage.exe  controlvm "Node4_D2"  savestate

START /b VBoxManage.exe  controlvm "Node3_D2"  savestate

START /b VBoxManage.exe  controlvm "Node2_D1"  savestate

START /b VBoxManage.exe  controlvm "Node1_D1"  savestate

START /b VBoxManage.exe  controlvm "SAN_D1" savestate

START /b VBoxManage.exe  controlvm "Node_DC"  savestate

I use the START option so that I’m not waiting for the save operation in a serial fashion.  I use the “/b” so that six windows don’t pop up.  As for the Virtualbox command syntax – it’s pretty straightforward – I call VBoxManage.exe with controlvm followed by the name of the VM and the option to save it (savestate).

As for starting them up from the saved state, I do stagger things a bit.  I use startvm instead of controlvm, followed by the VM name and I don’t use the START keyword for anything I want to ensure is executed in order (I also use the TIMEOUT option to wait a few seconds before launching other VMs):

cd /D "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\"

VBoxManage.exe startvm "Node_DC" 

VBoxManage.exe startvm "SAN_D1"

TIMEOUT 10

START /b VBoxManage.exe startvm "Node1_D1" 

START /b VBoxManage.exe startvm "Node2_D1" 

START /b VBoxManage.exe startvm "Node3_D2" 

START /b VBoxManage.exe startvm "Node4_D2"

Even with these scripts I wouldn’t call this an orderly and synchronized save and start.  A Windows guest cluster may sometimes catch on to something being amiss – but often it does not.  Sometimes I’ll have to wait a few seconds for the nodes to start talking to each other again.

Anyhow – if you also use VirtualBox and have any tips you’d like to share when it comes to coordinating the guest launches, please post here as I’m definitely curious to learn about them.

The post VirtualBox Script to Batch Save and Start Multiple Guests appeared first on Joe Sack.

In addition to socializing with folks, I also got a chance to watch some great talks, including those from Tim Ford, Grant Fritchey, Jim Murphy, Jason Strate and Karen Lopez (and the tail end of a talk from Chris Randall which – although I was late, was really enjoyable and I wished I had seen the whole thing).  While the technical content is interesting, I also liked watching the different presentation styles.  For example, I liked Tim Ford’s easy (and subtle) sense of humor and creative visual layout of the DMVs that made a dense topic more easily accessible.  I also took note of Grant Fritchey’s energy and topic focus (drilling down on parameter sniffing), Jim Murphy’s ability to manage multiple moving parts in a smoothly presented AlwaysOn demo, Chris Randall’s clarity of examples (and he’s got a great sense of humor), Jason Strate’s approachable speaking style + Zen-like PPT format and Karen Lopez’s ability to “own” the room and get people actively engaged in the presentation.

SQLSaturday 104 was also my first chance to present “Performance Issue Archetypes” and I really enjoyed the experience. Plenty of suspense since it was a 2:30PM session.  My session was scheduled at the same time as some popular sessions (like Thomas LaRock’s well-received “Choose Your Own Adventure” session and John Morehouse’s “10 Things That Every DBA Should Know!”)  So even with the concurrent sessions, I was thankful to still get an audience.   I do think I jammed way too much material into one hour.  I think my session could easily have fit into 3 hours with some additional demos added – and that was after some heavy cutting I did a few weeks beforehand.  I’ll likely calibrate this presentation over time – but I did get feedback that folks got actionable value from the talk – so that made me happy (especially since this was the whole point of the talk).

Speaking of which, you can download the PDF of my presentation here.  Just note that there were some twists and turns “off deck” and that the presentation deck itself was the launching point.  Hopefully you can see the presentation in-person someday. 

SQLSaturday 104 was a great way to kick off what promises to be a year of new experiences and a significant workload. Coupled with a full plate of ongoing consulting engagements, I’ll be teaching modules alongside Paul, Kimberly and Jon in the IE2: Performance Tuning and IE3: High Availability & Disaster Recovery Immersion Events.  This means I’ll be heading to Tampa, Chicago, London and Bellevue at minimum.

On a somewhat related note; it’s been about 4 months since I joined SQLskills.  A few people have asked how it’s been so far – and here are my general observations:

·        Bottom line is that it going really well.  With any big move, it’s easy to second guess yourself – particularly since I was leaving a job with plenty of opportunity and 6 years of accumulated benefits and relationships.  I haven’t regretted it though.  Quite the opposite, the last four months have just felt “right”.  I’m working just as hard – but working on the areas that put me in the “flow state” (talking about Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s flow) for a good majority of the day.  Consulting/writing/teaching/learning.  All good.

·        Of course a major aspect of it is getting the chance to collaborate with Kimberly, Paul and Jon.  It is great to be able to share ideas and brainstorm on tough or interesting scenarios.  The energy level they have is mind boggling.  There is so much to do/learn/investigate that the toughest part is choosing where to focus next.

·        Since October I’ve worked with 24 different customers on various types of engagements. This is by far my favorite aspect of the job. The engagements have covered performance tuning & scalability, health checks, security, benchmarking, high availability and disaster recovery.  I’ve also been involved in some writing projects and will likely have more IP related work throughout this next year interspersed with the Immersion Events.  Regarding events, I do hope to attend and speak at more events, schedule permitting.

·        Paul and Kimberly have also let me get involved in the business side of things (for example – pre-engagements and scoping calls). I appreciate this since I like meeting new people and listening to new problem scenarios (it’s like getting a new puzzle to work on).   

So thankfully, it’s all good.  I hope not to kick the bucket any time soon, since I’m enjoying this.  Lots of work ahead this 2012, but its meeting my initial aspiration I quoted from NYT last October to “make progress in meaningful work every day.”

The post SQLSaturday 104 recap and an update on how the new job is going appeared first on Joe Sack.