You Take The Good, You Take The Bad

Hello everyone! I’m waiting for my flight home after my vacation in Japan. It was exactly the break I hoped it would be. I was also glad I got to catch up with a good friend who has been living in Japan for awhile. It’s the little moments in life that make it all worth living. I spent the entire time in Tokyo and got to cross a few things off the proverbial bucket list. It was funny getting off the plane here at O’Hare. The USA has a different vibe – that’s the only way I can describe it. The people talking loudly on cel phones, not caring who hears you … those kinds of things. When you go abroad you get a different perspective on things. I love living here, but I wish a bit more civility would sometimes creep in back on these shores.

Believe it or not, I really didn’t work on vacation. Well, that’s not 100% true – I did answer a handful of e-mails, but that was it. And I looked at my scores from my two PASS sessions. I will just say I was disappointed in myself and leave it at that. It was definitely an off year. The last time I had an off year I believe was when PASS was at the Gaylord in Fort Worth, TX. I could sit and make excuses – like literally having less than a week (more like a few days) to get the demos up since I was using a later build and that the Jewish holiday was right in the middle of that – but I’m not. Any problems fall squarely on my own two feet, and I already know what I’d change in retrospect. All this proves is that no matter how long you’ve been doing it, you can take a lump.The only real comment that surprised me was one basically wondering why I was showing how to set up Windows Server Core when someone else would do it. That’s why many DBAs have issues – they have SQL blinders on. But that’s besides the point.

The question then becomes: how do you deal with that? For me, I’m going to just get over it and move on. No need to dwell on it. Take your knocks, read the feedback, and improve. Next year will be better, and I’m actually excited about a lot of stuff coming up in 2012. More on that in a few days.

In the meantime, I’m going to readjust to the time zone here and get back to work. Hope to see everyone on the Quest webcast this upcoming Thursday.