It has been a while since I have participated in a T-SQL Tuesday but I felt the urge to do so this month because of the host – Shane O’Neill (a good friend) and the topic of cookies (not the edible type).

The actual topic being “ Find those memories that they can think back on for sustenance. Like the humble cookie, I want a humble brag.” I am going to keep this work related. Many years ago I was actually a Junior level / entry level DBA. Due to the way things worked out after a couple of weeks I was the only one left to run a ship of hundreds of SQL Servers. If this was now, not a problem but back then it was quite frightening. So imagine looking after tier 1 / mission critical servers (multiple node clusters too), staying up late patching and releasing code, balancing BAU and performance tuning opportunities during the day, meetings with business stakeholders and developers blaming configuration (smiley face) at a young stage of your career with only forums to help when things got really complex? Like I knew what the tipping point was back then?

I remember driving home one day actually realizing that I was getting a “buzz” from this experience and I knew I was surviving at the deep end. So when things get tough now, I am never fazed, some say I am a little too calm and cool but that’s because I went through the fires and lean on the past experiences for knowledge that I can do what is thrown at me now. If I don’t know, I ask Shane.

Do you remember that guy that gave up? Neither does anyone else.