20+ year Oracle DBA Mary Elizabeth stopped by the Data Bits virtual studio today!
Quotables: “Corona Curls”, “rolling around in the food” and “Capitalist Pirate”
You can reach Mary Elizabeth at the McNeely Technology Solutions website, on on Twitter
Career
Data Bits – Episode 6 – Peter Shore
SQL DBA Peter Shore (t) and I had a great time recording this.
Quotables: “Vehemently OK”, “Intentional Accidental DBA”, “Professional Nerd”, “Senior DBA as defined by AARP”
I cut a ton out of this…if you ever have a chance to meet, interview or hire Peter you will NOT be disappointed.
Data Bits – Episode 5 – Louis Davidson
Data Bits – Episode 2 – Andy Levy
Andy Levy was so excited about the Data Bits podcast I just had to invite him to be an early guest!
He was already on the list so I bumped up to vNext 🙂
Mentions;
SQL Saturday, #SQLFamily, Allen White, PASS Summit, SQL Cruise (now Tech Outbound), SQL Community Slack, dbatools.io, Chris Sommer, Kevin Kline
Completely forgot to Mention:
Data Bits – Episode 1 – Shane O’Neill
Introducing Data Bits – the podcast (ignore mentions of ‘Data Points’ – someone else already used that!)
First live guest episode – feel free to laugh at how hilariously bad we were at this 🙂 SQL Server, Surfing, Billiards, Beer…
Hopefully I will be able wrangle more people from all parts of the data world into being guests – SQL Server, Oracle, DBA, Dev, BI, industry legends and people just getting started!
Mentions:
Denny Cherry (b|t) / Alan Hirt (b|t) / David Klee (b|t) / PASS.org / DBA Fundamentals VG / SQL Bits / Steve Jones (b|t) / Matt Cushing (b|t) / Erik Darling (b|t) / NoColumnName / Pinal Dave (b|t) / Adam Machanic (b|t) / sp_whoisactive / DBATools
T-SQL Tuesday 121: The Gift of the Dream Job I Didn’t Know I Wanted
T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly blog party for the SQL Server community. It is the brainchild of Adam Machanic (b|t) and this month’s edition is hosted by Mala (b|t) who has asked us to write about “Gifts received this year.” One idea given to write about was “landing a job you never thought you would,” which is perfect for me.
If you’ve followed my story, you know that I’m pretty new to the DBA world. I’m a retired worship leader who’s lost his voice and went home to work side-by-side with his wife in a graphic/web design biz. As I watched that business go through an extended downturn, I attempted to add photography services and grossly underestimated how saturated the local market was. In desperation for meaningful employment I reached out to my friends for help and referrals.
Kevin stepped in and offered a trial period as a DBA apprentice at Dallas DBAs and I’ve never looked back.
Why has becoming a DBA been such an amazing gift? Here are a few of my top reasons.
- I get the opportunity to learn new things daily.
- I get challenged by this role a great deal. That makes jobs enjoyable for me.
- I get a steady income that brings stability and is allowing my family to build a new house in order to foster/adopt more kids.
- I get to work from home and share an office with my wife—my favorite person in the world.
- I get to work with my best friend, Kevin.
- I get to ride my bike way more often than if I worked out of the house.
- I got a new bike for Christmas as a direct result of this job.
- I get to ride bikes with Kevin.
- I get to continue working and serving at our church, which I love.
I could probably go on and on, and I fully expect being a DBA to continue to offer challenges and rewards in the year ahead!
