Only Focus on A, B, and Z
I was listening to the “excellence, actually” podcast recently, and one of the co-hosts mentioned an idea that I recognized but had not heard termed in such a way before. The idea was from author James Clear and suggested that to prevent yourself from becoming overwhelmed, only worry about A, B, and Z. What Does…
T-SQL Tuesday #196 – What career risks have you taken?
This month’s T-SQL Tuesday invite comes from James Serra. James asks to write about a career risk and how it panned out. Click the T-SQL Tuesday logo for the full invite. When I think of risks associated with major career changes, one that comes to mind is my risk of staying with companies following acquisitions.…
Software Facing the Final Curtain
Technology moves fast. It’s what makes it fun to come to work every day. There’s always something new, and no day is like any other. Along with the new database-related releases in the last few weeks and months, there are also a few solutions that are winding down. I thought it would be worth taking…
T-SQL Tuesday #195 – How Has Your Code Aged
This month’s T-SQL Tuesday invite comes from Pat Wright, who asks us to reflect on how our code has aged. Has it aged gracefully? Poorly? I’ll go with an example from early in my career that lands somewhere in the middle. To read the full T-SQL Tuesday invite, click the T-SQL logo to the right.…
Don’t Update Your SQL Server
If you’ve downloaded SQL Server 2025 CU1 or SQL Server 2022 CU23 and plan to apply these updates, postpone that work. It’s been confirmed that these updates have some issues, the most significant being an issue that breaks Database Mail. Each release page has a note at the top stating that the update is temporarily…
T-SQL Tuesday #194 – Learning From Mistakes
The first T-SQL Tuesday invite of 2026 comes from Louis Davidson, asking to share a mistake others can learn from. We all make mistakes. Some have an immediate impact, and some creep up months or years down the road. I’d like to touch on an mistake from long ago with script versioning that wasn’t critical…
Is Needing a PC a Sign of Aging?
When it comes to making “big” purchases, I have to do it on a PC (desktop/laptop) rather than a phone. I thought I was weird in this way but recently saw this Reddit thread about other millennials having this problem. I don’t know if it’s the smaller screen that makes me feel like I’m missing…
A Quick 2025 Review
It’s the end of 2025, so I thought I’d give a short yearly review of the blog and what to expect in the future. In 2025, as of 12/24, the site has had 55.7k page views. That’s about the same number as 2024, so not as much growth as previous years. I can’t say I’m…
T-SQL Tuesday #193 – A Note to Your Past, and a Warning from Your Future
Where did the year go? It’s the last T-SQL Tuesday of 2025. This month’s invite comes from Mike Walsh, who asks us to write a note to our past self and another note from our future self. The invite doesn’t reference A Christmas Carol, but I can’t help but think of writing these notes as…
Brainrot While You Wait
I had this article catch my eye based on a partially good name (the Chad part) about what could be the next evolution of IDEs. An upcoming vibe coding IDE, Chad: The Brainrot IDE, is being developed that will do its best to keep your attention while you wait for AI to complete your coding…
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Chad Callihan 