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Sep. 1st, 2008 02:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnpalmerSo... one good thing about Labor Day is places like Target stop selling Weber grills. So, the $80 Weber was selling 50% off, and I soon found myself in possession of grilling materials. I'm working on a set of ribs today, seasoned with crushed garlic, black pepper, and hickory smoke (plus barbecue sauce, added later).
My experiment with swimming is a half-success. I wanted to learn to swim for exercise, I wanted to improve my swimming ability and comfort in the water, and I wanted to be able to swim almost as easily as walking. I did almost all of that... the one thing I didn't do was continue to practice my breathing. Once I ended up buying a snorkel, I was doomed, doomed, I tell you, to take the easy way out and keep using it rather than practicing breathing.
Ah, but the reasons I did so was that it enabled me to work much harder, much longer. The reason I was having trouble learning to breathe while swimming is that I was getting out of breath too quickly. I started rushing through my stroke to get to the point that I could take a breath. That meant I was working harder, and thus getting more out of breath, and the feedback just ruined things for me.
So, I decided to use the snorkel until I could swim at a harder pace... and then ran out of summer before getting more practice in. Oh well. I know that I *can* breathe while swimming, just not very well. If I'm willing to swim slowly, and pause while taking a breath, I'll get a breath, and not swallow any water, and if I keep practicing long enough, I'll eventually develop good swimming/breathing patterns.
(BTW: if any swimmers read this, a quick question: should I just get used to the idea of ending up with water in my mouth/swallowing a fair amount of pool water? Or should I look forward to the day when I get it just right, and can suck in only air?)
Well, there's good news. I understand that I'll be able to keep swimming this autumn and winter, and without even having to pay for a gym club membership.
See, Microsoft FTEs apparently have access to a gym with multiple pools... and I'm joining the SQL support team.
Okay, I guess none of *you* need to wait while that sinks in, but I sure as heck had to. On the one hand, I was like *YES! I DID IT!*, and on the other it's like, "HOLY CRAP! When the best SQL brains in the business can't figure out why SQL is doing what it's doing, they're going to call *me* and ask *me* to fix it!"
And... and, well, I've been an ace admin for a while. This year, especially, I've been learning how good I am, helping to dig into some really tough issues during a really difficult time, and finding system improvements that helped dig a major application out of a very deep hole.
But I realized that I've never written a stored procedure. Well, never one that did anything meaningful. I've never written a function in T-SQL. I've never set up a connection between an ASP.Net application and a database. I don't know how to set up an application pool. I don't know how ADO.Net works with databases. I... I... wow.
A friend of mine helped, pointing out that, if I thought I was ready for this, I'd be an arrogant SOB, and probably exactly the kind of person they don't want. I know they expect there to be a steep learning curve. But it's still somewhere between exciting as all blazes and scary as all hell :-).
So, this Labor Day, I'm grilling up some ribs, making up lists of what I want to study prior to my start date (in 3 weeks!) and getting ready to watch some movies. I'm torn between some old movies I downloaded from Amazon, and cracking the seal on Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai.
My experiment with swimming is a half-success. I wanted to learn to swim for exercise, I wanted to improve my swimming ability and comfort in the water, and I wanted to be able to swim almost as easily as walking. I did almost all of that... the one thing I didn't do was continue to practice my breathing. Once I ended up buying a snorkel, I was doomed, doomed, I tell you, to take the easy way out and keep using it rather than practicing breathing.
Ah, but the reasons I did so was that it enabled me to work much harder, much longer. The reason I was having trouble learning to breathe while swimming is that I was getting out of breath too quickly. I started rushing through my stroke to get to the point that I could take a breath. That meant I was working harder, and thus getting more out of breath, and the feedback just ruined things for me.
So, I decided to use the snorkel until I could swim at a harder pace... and then ran out of summer before getting more practice in. Oh well. I know that I *can* breathe while swimming, just not very well. If I'm willing to swim slowly, and pause while taking a breath, I'll get a breath, and not swallow any water, and if I keep practicing long enough, I'll eventually develop good swimming/breathing patterns.
(BTW: if any swimmers read this, a quick question: should I just get used to the idea of ending up with water in my mouth/swallowing a fair amount of pool water? Or should I look forward to the day when I get it just right, and can suck in only air?)
Well, there's good news. I understand that I'll be able to keep swimming this autumn and winter, and without even having to pay for a gym club membership.
See, Microsoft FTEs apparently have access to a gym with multiple pools... and I'm joining the SQL support team.
Okay, I guess none of *you* need to wait while that sinks in, but I sure as heck had to. On the one hand, I was like *YES! I DID IT!*, and on the other it's like, "HOLY CRAP! When the best SQL brains in the business can't figure out why SQL is doing what it's doing, they're going to call *me* and ask *me* to fix it!"
And... and, well, I've been an ace admin for a while. This year, especially, I've been learning how good I am, helping to dig into some really tough issues during a really difficult time, and finding system improvements that helped dig a major application out of a very deep hole.
But I realized that I've never written a stored procedure. Well, never one that did anything meaningful. I've never written a function in T-SQL. I've never set up a connection between an ASP.Net application and a database. I don't know how to set up an application pool. I don't know how ADO.Net works with databases. I... I... wow.
A friend of mine helped, pointing out that, if I thought I was ready for this, I'd be an arrogant SOB, and probably exactly the kind of person they don't want. I know they expect there to be a steep learning curve. But it's still somewhere between exciting as all blazes and scary as all hell :-).
So, this Labor Day, I'm grilling up some ribs, making up lists of what I want to study prior to my start date (in 3 weeks!) and getting ready to watch some movies. I'm torn between some old movies I downloaded from Amazon, and cracking the seal on Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai.
