Tuesday, June 10, 2008
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Happy birthday Dad. I miss you terribly.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
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I mentioned in a previous post about my "magic fertilizer" and what a great job it did on my lawn. Well, here's a before and after set that shows what it looked like last year when no one lived here and what it looks like today. The before picture is from a Google Maps Street View image.
Before...
And After...
Can you say "magic fertilizer"?
A couple of weeks ago "The Kode Man" and I were out front checkin' out the lawn, watchin' the sprinklers (I know, shut up), and having a beer after a long day of working in the yard. Sitting in the front yard by the way, is now Kody's absolute favorite thing to do. He actually comes to me and begs to go out and sit in the driveway! Strange.
Anyway, it was a pretty decent day but we were due to have some storms because of a cold front that was coming through the area. I snapped these pictures as it came through.
It's getting windy!
Kody's new favorite thing to do
You should have seen the yard last year when no one lived here! My "magic fertilizer" really did its thing.
Here it comes. This is supposed to show how windy it was but you can barely see the wind in the trees.
Kody's gettin' nervous! He hates storms.
Cool rainbow pics!
"As you were people. Nothin' to see here. Move along now." All clear.
I created a maintenance plan for our warehouse management system SQL Server database that included a rebuild of the indexes on all the tables. All went well except that the size of the database file just happened to triple after my plan ran! Not good. Since I'm learning to be a DBA by the seat of my pants it took me a while to figure out what was going on.
Before implementing the plan, I spent a lot of time researching the correct way to rebuild the indexes. I wanted to make sure we were doing things the way they should be done. I found an blog post about rebuilding the indexes with the correct Fill Factor so that the performance wouldn't suffer due to page faults and such. So after doing a little analysis and asking some questions to the boss, I came up with a Fill Factor percentage that I thought was suitable for the indexes on our tables.
Using the built in tool in SQL Server Management Studio to create my rebuild task I entered the percentage of free space that I wanted in my index pages just like the dialog says. THE AMOUNT OF FREE SPACE which to me means that THE FILL FACTOR WILL BE 100 MINUS THE VALUE I ENTER. Makes sense yes?
So I enter 30% because I want a Fill Factor of 70%. Well, that's not what happened! The T-SQL that was generated when the task ran gave me a Fill Factor of 30% and a free space of 70%. That made the size of the database file grow! I looked in sysindexes table to confirm my findings and saw that the OrigFillFactor values were indeed 30. I'm not sure what happened but when I checked the T-SQL myself by clicking the View T-SQL button on the dialog it showed a Fill Factor of 70. Because of this, I no longer trust the tool so I decided to write my own SQL to rebuild the indexes.
So I guess the purpose of this post is to help anyone else who might be having trouble with this. It took me quite a while to find the answer to this problem so hopefully this post will get picked up by Google and help someone out.
My code to rebuild the indexes is listed below. I ran this manually in SQL Management Studio and then had to shrink the database to get my database file size back to normal. Now, I know that shrinking the database fragments the indexes I just rebuilt but I'll do another rebuild after shrinking to get rid of the fragmenation.
USE [DatabaseName]
GO
DECLARE @currentTable VARCHAR(50)
DECLARE @cmd VARCHAR(1000)
DECLARE tableNameCursor CURSOR
FOR SELECT [name] FROM sysobjects WHERE sysobjects.[type] = 'U' ORDER BY [name] ASC
OPEN tableNameCursor
FETCH NEXT FROM tableNameCursor INTO @currentTable
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
SET @cmd = 'ALTER INDEX ALL ON [' + @currentTable + '] REBUILD WITH (FILLFACTOR = 95, SORT_IN_TEMPDB = ON, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = ON)'
EXEC (@cmd)
FETCH NEXT FROM tableNameCursor INTO @currentTable
END
CLOSE tableNameCursor
DEALLOCATE tableNameCursor
Make sure you type the database name in the first line and enter your own Fill Factor. I have 95 which equates to 95% and leaves 5% free space.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
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The plane reservations are set and it's official, I'm a goin'. To Tianna that is. I will be leaving on August 7th and returning on the 11th. Four solid days of golf, golf, and more golf. Oh yeah, and a beer or two. Did I mention that will be playing some golf? I'll be playing in the Northern Minnesota Indian Golf Classic. Should be a load of fun. I have to start practicing though because I'm tired of giving my money to these guys.
Friday, May 09, 2008
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Saturday, April 26, 2008
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Well my first week at Belle Tire is over. I have to say that I really think I'm going to like it there (fingers crossed!). It's pretty laid back and I can pretty much make my own hours. So far, I've been going in early so I can leave early. I was home by 5:00 every day last week and that was sweet!
Another thing that we don't do there that I'm really happy about is keep track of our time. I know that sounds like a trivial item but at my last employer we had to track EVERY 15 MINUTES of time we worked and it was really horrible. At least for me it was being the OCD freak that I am.
My first assignment was to create a report detailing an estimate for work to be done. Not too bad even thought it took me pretty much all week to get it done. That said, I had a pretty big learning curve with the database (Informix - which I've never used) and Crystal Reports (again, I've never used). But, I got it done and even added a nice little feature that allows the customer service rep to email it right to the customer. All in all, a productive week.
My friend and former co-worker has started blogging. He started a technology company named Hybrid Technology and Training Partners (HTTP for short) after leaving The Solutions Group where we both worked. So far, most, if not all of his posts are about the daily activities and growth of his business. I read nearly all of the posts today and I have to say it was pretty interesting. It doesn't hurt that Jeff has an incredible vocabulary and is quite the wordsmith.
Anyway, Jeff does some great work and will treat you right. You should give him a call if you have computer problems. And don't forget to check out his blog and company web site!
http://hybridtraining.net and http://salinehttpblog.blogspot.com
Monday, April 14, 2008
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It's been a crazy week/month/year! Besides buying a new house and trying to get it the way we like it, I've been job hunting, found a new job, will start my new job next Monday, been working on a web site for my daughter's company, and starting to work on a web site for my daughter's volleyball team. Oh and, not to mention working every damn day! Whew.
Speaking of my new job, I'll be working for Belle Tire at the corporate headquarters as a developer in the IT department. I'm really looking forward to the change. It's been needed for a while now.
If you're from the Detroit area, Belle Tire should be very familiar to you and I'm sure you're saying "Belle Tire!" in your head like the little tire logo says way too often! :)
Belle Tire!
Friday, March 07, 2008
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