I had two SQL Saturdays this month SQLSaturday Cleveland (which was very cold) and SQLSaturday Tampa (which had very nice weather). Now for the adventurous parts of both trips. Well besides worrying about snow, Cleveland was in Hyland Software and there was the really cool slide that I may or may not have went down 6 times including head first and once sent my laptop bag down to get to my session. I mean seriously how else are you suppose to get to the first floor to the second floor. Tampa proved to be more adventurous.  Not only was I giving a brand new talk but the Airbnb I was staying in a bit on the shady side. As soon as I landed I got the customary text with instructions but they said to go to this address instead of the one Airbnb gave me. I was game and went there and instead of me having a room in a host’s house or apartment, it was an apartment where I had a room off to the side with at least two other beds being rented out in the living room. Not exactly what I signed up for. So during the speaker dinner, I got me one of the last hotel rooms available in Tampa. My presentation went well, first time everyone who filled out an evaluation gave me all 5-star reviews and I got ideas on how to make it better just be giving the presentation. I also got to learn about the Flat Earth theory at the after party. I attended both events as an Idera Ace.  Thanks, Idera.

I signed up to be a mentor last month and had been working on mentoring someone before the site was up for speaking mentors existed but I been working behind the scenes on trying to improve the website so check it still if you are interested in being a speaker at www.speakingmentors.com. So if you are looking for mentor checkout the site it has some great people volunteering their time to help others. I was already helping a new speaker via email with setting up his new talk and looking forward to the whole process.

This month I read a few books The Loyalist Team: How Trust, Candor, and Authenticity Create Great Organizations, Built for Growth: How Builder Personality Shapes Your Business, Your Team, and Your Ability to Win, and almost finished The Happiness Project (Revised Edition): Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun. I enjoyed reading The Loyalist Team and being able to identify how dysfunctional some of the teams I have been on in the past have been but being happy that I’m not on those teams anymore and seeing how lucky I am to be on a really good team of DBAs. The Happiness Project is interesting just in the small things you can do make your life I would say easier just by changing or doing small things. I may have to thing of some things I can do to change my life a little to make it easier

In my superhero duties, I had court last two weeks. I closed one case and one kid has a permanent home now. Can’t give out any details due to confidentially but it was what was the best in the end and made me feel good to know this kid would have a safe permanent home. And I attended on meeting to plan for one of the cases. That puts me in at two cases which is low for me but OK. Gives me more time to spend with the kids I have.

Also, this month I launched WeSpeakLinux.com to bring general Linux content to the Windows administrators and developers. Our first webinar is today. Come join us on Slack as we try to build a Linux community and don’t be afraid to sign up for our newletter we don’t plan on sending things but maybe once or twice a month. Hope some of you will attend. Hope everyone attended the HADR session that Michaela Belinda gave this week for the HADR group as well.

Working on my goals for the year. I started studying for LCFS certification. I created a new presentation and hope to create one more. I’ve signed up for SQLskills Azure training so I think my next presentation will be on Azure. I really need to start exercising I put that on hold to work on my new presentation.