Life Changes – 2 For The Price Of 1

Why make one major life change when I can make two within weeks of each other??? This will be a busy June for your blogger. Busy for the normal summer time fun and family activities but even busier because I embark on two new noteworthy journeys in life.  What are they??? I’ll start with the more important (by orders of magnitude greater than I can describe 🙂 ) of the two:

Samuel –

Our second boy and third child, Samuel was born this week. He decided to show up 9 days “late” according to our timing but I know he was right on time in God’s schedule. I told my wife she’d be a great Project Manager, though – over budget and over schedule. No scope creep (unknown twin hiding in there), though.

We have been blessed (and I really do mean blessed) with two great children already. Healthy, loving, fun kids. They’ll make great big brothers and sisters (though our daughter, the oldest, will certainly be the big boss of the three) to our Sam.

My wife and I really just like the name Sam or Samuel but the meaning of the name in Hebrew and the part that Samuel played

in the Bible are definitely neat stories. It can mean Name of God; asked of God; or heard by God, and like all of our children we certainly asked God for Him. Samuel‘s life was an interesting one. It began before he was born with a praying mother and a father with a servants heart; and ended with God, through him giving the clamoring people of Israel what they asked for – a kingdom like other nations. A life worth looking into with lessons and warnings through the people he dealt with and interacted with.

My Samuel is a beautiful (I can say that now, he may not like that I said it in 13 years but I said it) child. You can see for yourself over there on the right somewhere. Welcome to the world! What an amazing blessing.

A Newwwwwww Job!

(said like Rod Roddy talking about new cars)

That’s right. I am leaving “A global insurance company” that has renamed nameless to protect the innocent (or not so innocent?). I don’t know why I haven’t shared their name, I think I am allowed to but I wanted to play it safe and I don’t get a lot of “community involvement” support. Not that I should necessarily, I am there to be a Database Administrator not give to the SQL community.

Why?

A neat company that has solid growth contacted me about a fun sounding opportunity. I hemmed and hawed (spell check didn’t yell at me for the word hawed, didn’t realize it was a word, it is. ) about the opportunity for a couple months and decided the chance was too great to pass up.

What?

The title is simple, “Database Administrator” but the role sounds like fun from the interviews and discussions. It is basically a Sr. DBA role on an IT Engineering team. I’ll still get to get my hands held to the fire helping out the operational teams but I’ll hopefully be focusing more on patterns, practices and architectures. I’ll be on the team that helps bring the new architectures and ideas to fruition and helps get the operational teams ready to support them (while still backing them up as needed). On call is currently shared by all of IT so it will be awhile before I have to have my week to have the after hours buzzing. I’ll also get the opportunity to work across a lot of teams in the best practices and performance tuning areas. I’ll definitely be moving from a tactical role on a tactical team at a tactical company towards a more strategic and “architecturey” role.

I’ll be working with some great folks who asked some good questions in the interviews. It sounds like I’ll have plenty of opportunity to learn new things as well as teach and mentor folks on what I’ve learned along the way.

Where?

I won’t say yet. No… I’m not going to make you play a guessing game like our @SQLRockstar friend, Tom LaRock was doing. I just don’t know where they stand on blogging and all that. I know they were at least interested in the fact that I am starting to speak more and I think they’ll want to encourage that. They see the benefit of community involvement and “recognition” for their employees (not that speaking here and there makes me an expert, I’ve never claimed that status I likely won’t). Seems like a neat company with a good story, lots of A players and good growth.

I think this role should allow me to really use my skills, really engage in mentoring and teaching (which I enjoy as much as getting my hands dirty with the technology) and give me more weekend and night free time with my family. At the end of the day it was a no-brainer.

Sabbatical

I didn’t have any blog entries in the hopper and with the upcoming birth I didn’t have time to prepare any the past week or so. I have some blog post ideas, had a few inspirations while here at the hospital so I’ll have some soon.