DevOps can mean a lot of things, but I find in practice that this results in a team using Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment/Delivery using automation to check and evaluate your software in some way. This should result in quicker delivery of updates and changes to customers, better agility, and higher quality of code.

That last one only comes if you use testing and try to ensure your code is well-written. It's easy to just use DevOps to throw out more poorly written code that doesn't perform well.

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The other day, I asked my daughter if she wanted me to make her some eggs. She responded with a "Yes!" in text and came to sit up at the counter while I cooked for us both. We chatted a bit, and at one point she said, "Thanks for cooking, but it's not that I can't cook."

I laughed a bit and responded with "this isn't a can/can't situation, it's a do/don't or will/won't one." I know my girl can cook; I made sure all my kids learned how to cook. It's that they often choose not to, hunting for leftovers, going for takeout, or skipping meals.

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I fly a lot, as you might have guessed if you read my blog regularly. In 2025, I've been on 56 United planes as I write this, with about 10 left to go before the end of the year. One of the things United does is sometimes send out a quick "survey" after a flight, checking to see if everything went smoothly. I don't always fill these out, but recently I decided to give some feedback as I had a great experience.

I really wanted to just complement the onboard crew, but the survey was quite a few pages (10?) and a lot of questions. I started to try and fill it out, but lost focus after a few pages. This felt like a chore, and I started to just randomly click some of the selections asking me to rate things 1-10. I wasn't really rating the items; I was trying to get done. Eventually, I bailed on the survey and didn't complete it, but that got me thinking about the data from these surveys.

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Most of you reading this work in technology, and I assume that you've had to learn something new on the job. Technology is constantly evolving, even on our existing platforms. On top of that, we are regularly given tasks that are outside of our current skill sets. Maybe not far outside, but to meet the changing demands of our jobs, we need to learn new things.

I ran across an interesting post (on a new site) from Brent Ozar. I think that guy writes as much as me, but he wrote this one: Why I Started Using Postgres (And You Might Too). It's a little provocative, but there are good posts on the site about things Brent learned in PostgreSQL. I won't go into whether learning PostgreSQL is a good idea.

Read the rest of The Journey to PostgreSQL (or anything)

I ran across an interesting open letter. Most of these are from individuals, often complaining or lamenting on the way something in the world works, or maybe doesn't work.

This latest letter was from the Chief InfoSec Officer at JPMorganChase, a large worldwide bank. This open letter was written to the software suppliers looking to do business with JPMorganChase, especially those in the SaaS area (Software as a Service). The letter opens by noting that SaaS is enabling cyber attackers and asks for three things: prioritize security over features, modernize security architecture, and work with security collaboratively to prevent abuse of connected systems.

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I caught a short post from Gary Bargsley on LinkedIn that had this quote: "Many people do not believe this is true. If there isn't a fire to put out, then you are not doing a good job." He included a repost from Shaik Ashraf with that quote and an image that explains better what things a DBA is doing because they aren't always busy.

I would say that by busy we think of a DBA as rushed and always trying to fix something that isn't working well. I've certainly walked into operational positions where this was the case. Things weren't working smoothly or breaking regularly. My phone was always ringing, as I moved from crisis to crisis. For some systems, rebooting them regularly was the fix, not because I didn't want to determine a root cause and fix them, but because I had too many other priorities. A reboot at least recompiled plans, cleared caches, and got the system working for a few days.

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Recently, I got a bill from Azure. That's not an unusual thing for many of you, but for me it was a surprise because it said I was late paying. I've had a number of services running, and I thought at first that I had left something running too long, like a VM. As I checked, most of the things were paused, even the expensive ones like a Synapse workspace. Instead, I found that my free credits were not being applied. Fortunately, I had changed credit cards or I might have been billed for a few months before I noticed.

This was a change in how Microsoft managed benefits, which is fine. I opened a support call and someone helped me, but it took several days to get a response. I was slightly worried about the bills, so I decided to audit the things I had running.

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I've spent quite a bit of my career as a DBA/sysadmin/Operations person. However, I've had my share of development positions as well. As I work with customers who look to mature their database development to be more like other software development, I've noticed that PRs sometimes don't get handled as smoothly as we might like. In some sense, they are like help desk trouble tickets that never get closed.

One of the first things I caution people about is specifying specific reviewers, especially DBAs. There are often DBAs who are the gatekeepers for code, but if we require them to be the only ones to review code before a CI or test process, we really slow things down. This often happens in smaller environments where one DBA wants to avoid anything impacting their job. They want to review everything before it commits.

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Some of you out there are positive about AI and looking to use them. Some of you aren't too thrilled with the tools and might avoid using them. I think that not learning to harness the power of an AI is a mistake. This technology is going to change the world in many ways and you need to learn how it can help you.

You also should learn where the sharp edges are as there are some very, very sharp edges.

Read the rest of Choosing an AI in Sept 2025

I get a regular email from Quora, with questions that I might be able to answer or might be of interest to me. There are some database questions, some Tesla ones, and others, but recently I caught an interesting one that asked: why are most people broke? To be fair, there are a lot of questions that appear to be trolling, not people seeking answers, but this one caught my eye. This isn't very data-related, but it is a bit of advice from someone who is getting older.

As I look towards retirement in the next decade or two, part of my planning is ensuring that finances are in order. Once I stop working or slow down, the economics of my family change, and we need to be thinking forward to ensure that we have enough funds for our daily living. This can vary in different parts of the world, but I'm surprised at how many people don't really think about covering their daily expenses without a salary.

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