RE: Cary's book - Waxing philosophic

Since everyone is jumping on this non technical thread I thought I would too...

Certainly the first chapter was fresh and brought some aspects of performance tuning into perspective. Specifically keeping a "big picture" perspective....how true...

in that vein I ask..

Why do we do the work we do...??

Is it because you are good at it and pride yourself on being the alpha-geek?

Do you use it as an excuse to hide from society behind a curtain of arcane technology?

Are you in it for the money and bennies?

The power. Holding all the keys so to speak...

Something to keep you busy?

Free trips to go to training...?

Tote bags, t-shirts, candy and fancy pens from conferences....? (My daughter's favorite)

Or as Mayo said...."I got no place else to go!"

Whatever the reason "Important facts about IT work" remain...

1. What you know will be mostly useless in five years.
2. What you are working on now will be mostly replaced or scrapped in five years.
3. You aren't mostly sure if you will still be working here in five years.
4. If you look back at yourself five years ago, you laugh at how silly you were.
5. Five years from now you'll look back and laugh at how silly you were.
6. In five years today's new IT books can bought for 1$.

Despite that you get up each morning, go to work, tune SQL queries, set up databases, file TARS, bitch at oracle, bitch at Microsoft, argue with developers, management and run ragged to keep the users happy because heaven forbid if their crappy queries run a second or two slow. We do it because it is good work, for the most part, if we keep things in perspective. (that is my struggle)

As Robert said...some battles are best left unfought (or at least given some attention)

For me, the most important struggle to remember is the one that defines your life. At the end the worst thing imaginable is to realize a wasted life, one that only enriched your pocket book rather than enriching the lives of others. Experiences passed by because of "priorities" and some misplaced loyalty to someone or something that makes you work weekends or travel 80% of the time is not healthy.

In the end no one will really care or remember that you or I was a DBA. They will remember who you were as a person. Completely understanding the intricacies of database performance rank rather low on my priorities in life
(when 80-90% of performance problems are caused by something other than the
database).

It is refreshing to hear people defining themselves as something other than a DBA...a parent, spouse, friend of cats, dogs and little pigs...

Brad O.

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