Soreness and poor database design

The last couple of days have been pretty good. I’m still a little sore from the wreck but thankful that I got out with just a few bruises. I spoke with the other guy’s insurance company today and they hope to get me a check by the end of the week. The claims adjuster was very friendly but I’ll stay skeptical until the check clears.

Work was hectic today. A server at one of the elementary schools went down and we had to get it going ASAP. One of the files used with the Active Directory service had become corrupted due to an abrupt power outage. The initial fixes from MS, tried out by another tech, didn’t work. I knew he was getting frustrated with it so I went out with him to look at it. The first thing I did was run checkdisk on the boot drive (C:) with the repair flag (chkdsk C: /r). That fixed some file corruption and made it so that the other steps MS was giving us worked. The server was back online after about 4 hours. It would have been a lot faster if the server wasn’t as old as it is. Thankfully, it’s being replaced with a brand new Dell server (hopefully soon).

All hail the power of checkdisk.

Today was my first full day in my new position at work. The database is a complete disaster. The person that setup the database has everything (grades, test scores, student names, etc.) dumping into a single table. The table is huge! There is no normalization at all. Plus, to top it off, the previous person left no documentation what-so-ever on how they imported data or how they ran reports against the database.

I’m going to talk to my boss tomorrow morning about the database. I’m going to need a few weeks to normalize it. This, for those that don’t do database work, means I am going to split the one massive table into smaller, more manageable tables that can actually be indexed and are relational with little or no redundant data. With the tables smaller, and indexed, queries will execute much faster. It will be hard because we are talking about a little over 2 years worth of data that will have to be moved around. Of course, this will all be done on a test database, not the live database.

I am also going to need a good week to figure out how to get the new data, sent by the state, into the table correctly. That part would be easier if the database was normalized because the test scores would go into their own tables. That’s where step one (above) will help out.

All of this will take a little time but it will be well worth it. I will also be sure everything is documented.

Speaking of documentation, this quote sums it up quite well:

Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing. – Dick Brandon

25.Oct.05 General, Life Comments (0)

Face vs. air bag

I was driving home, after picking up some food at Sonic, and a guy driving a full-size, extended cab pickup pulls out in front of me. The car I was driving was a 1999 Chevy Malibu and I was going 45 m.p.h. (speed limit) when the guy pulled out of his driveway. The last thing I remember before hitting him was seeing that he was not even looking in my direction. He was looking in the opposite direction.

The air bags deployed and smacked me square in the face. My forehead is killing me where it rubbed some of the skin off. Other than that, my wrist being sprained and a couple of bruises on my knees (hitting the dashboard), the bodily damage to yours truly was minimal. No trip to the hospital was necessary.

I’m going tomorrow to get a copy of the police report and to talk to the other driver’s insurance company. I need a rental until they either repair or replace my car. Hopefully, they won’t be one of those “Are you sure you weren’t driving too fast? We think you are at fault…..” kind of companies.

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society. -Theodore Roosevelt

23.Oct.05 Life Comments (7)

Seeing red

I love both of my little girls. They can make some random line drawing, tell me it’s a dog (“doggie”, in their words) and I’ll think Picasso himself would be proud. Other fathers know, or will know, what it’s like to get those little gifts kids make and how happy you are that they put so much effort into making it. They are what motivates me to do the best I can so that they can have a childhood that doesn’t end up on Oprah.

Well, my youngest gave me a gift that I would gladly give back. Pink eye. She had the viral form of conjunctivitis (pink eye) and I was giving her eye drops three times a day for the last week. I thought I took every precaution to not catch it myself. I washed my hands as if I had OCD and went through a bottle of hand sanitizer but it just wasn’t enough.

Now I get to make a trip to the doctor in order to get prescription eye drops. My eyes are killing me because they itch like crazy but I can’t rub them or I might spread it more. At least I’m off work tomorrow so I don’t have everybody staring at me. It was bad enough when I went out and saw my friend at CompUSA (picked up a hard drive). It’s great how friends can make you feel so much better with the words, “Man, you look like sh*t.”

Fear not death, for the sooner we die the longer we shall be immortal. -Benjamin Franklin

10.Oct.05 Life Comment (1)

Procrastination at it’s worst

My weak point seems to lie in the fact that I basically quit working on something right when it is almost complete. I will work on a project, get through the hardest 999 steps, and then almost come to a stand still when all it takes is one more step. It’s the same way when studying in school. The only exception to that was when I was studying for my MCSE & MCDBA. Money motivated finishing that out (much better job/pay).

Take for example my current project of reloading all the computers in the schools I’m in charge of doing. I should have finished them up last week. Yet, I all I have left to do is join about 30 computers to the domain (out of 400+) and I didn’t do it. This should have been done either Thursday or Friday but it didn’t get done. It’s like I found something “more important” to do, even though those things could easily have waited until this week.

I’ve got to find a way to get focused on normal task. I just don’t want this to affect my reviews at work and keep me from possible promotions.

It is not the strength, but the duration of great sentiments that makes great men. -Nietzsche

04.Jul.05 Life Comments (3)

Winners

For a while now, I have ended my post with a short quote. Some are funny, some are inspirational. This post will just be one long quote. The quote comes from Vince Lombardi, one of the greatest coaches football has ever known. His words are very motivational.

A warning for those of you in the “We shouldn’t keep score” crowd: You will not like this. For the rest of us in the real world, that realizes there are winners and losers, enjoy.

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What it takes to be Number 1
by Vincent Lombardi
(June 1913 – September 1970)

Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while; you don’t do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.

There is no room for second place. There is only one place in my game, and that’s first place. I have finished second twice in my time at Green Bay, and I don’t ever want to finish second again. There is a second place bowl game, but it is a game for losers played by losers. It is and always has been an American zeal to be first in anything we do, and to win, and to win, and to win.

Every time a football player goes to ply his trade he’s got to play from the ground up – from the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of him has to play. Some guys play with their heads. That’s O.K. You’ve got to be smart to be number one in any business. But more importantly, you’ve got to play with your heart, with every fiber of your body. If you’re lucky enough to find a guy with a lot of head and a lot of heart, he’s never going to come off the field second.

Running a football team is no different than running any other kind of organization – an army, a political party or a business. The principles are the same. The object is to win – to beat the other guy. Maybe that sounds hard or cruel. I don’t think it is.

It is a reality of life that men are competitive and the most competitive games draw the most competitive men. That’s why they are there – to compete. To know the rules and objectives when they get in the game. The object is to win fairly, squarely, by the rules – but to win.

And in truth, I’ve never known a man worth his salt who in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the discipline. There is something in good men that really yearns for discipline and the harsh reality of head to head combat.

I don’t say these things because I believe in the “brute” nature of man or that men must be brutalized to be combative. I believe in God, and I believe in human decency. But I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour – his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear – is that moment when he has to work his heart out in a good cause and he’s exhausted on the field of battle – victorious.

23.Jun.05 Life Comment (1)