Yesterday was an all-day rehearsal for the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus. Our spring concert, Outside the Box, is in three weeks. This is incredibly exciting news. The show is coming together, and we’re sounding good. Heck, we sounded good singing in a church basement yesterday, so one can only imagine what we’ll sound like in Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory of Music.

If you live in the metro Boston area, I strongly encourage you to get your tickets now at http://bgmc.org. We’re only doing two shows, Saturday night and Sunday matinee.

We’re doing a set of Rufus Wainwrigh pieces, and a set of Billy Strayhorn pieces. Some of the Strayhorn pieces are simply amazing. On top of that, we’re paying tribute to our lesbian sisters with three pieces, including Come to My Window and Big Boned Gal. And then there is a piece called I Am in Need of Music. We’re also doing a piece called Love My Sweet Rain. It’s stunning. My two favorite pieces are A Love that Will Never Grow Old from Brokeback Mountain and Take Me to the World/Never Get Lost.

I’m excited about this concert. Come see us. You’ll enjoy it.

I read a blog post from Brent Ozar, talking about lessons learned throughout his career. Here is my take.

Consistency is your friend.

When I was doing Lotus Notes consulting, I had a client with virtually zero downtime. They never had the connectivity and replication problems I had seen in other environments, including my own. Their secret? It was consistency in versions. All of their Notes/Domino servers ran the same version, and the clients ran the same version. Today, it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but back then, when you had to upgrade everybody via a CD, that was a revolutionary idea. I had always thought that you should install the latest version. My world changed that day.

Today, in my role as a SQL DBA, I try to keep as much consistency across my database servers as possible. When I started at my current employer, we had eight different versions and service pack levels of Microsoft SQL Server. Today, we have two, SQL 2000 SP4 and SQL 2005 SP2. When I upgrade my SQL 2005 instances to SP3, they’ll all go in a very short window.

All of my database servers are backed up using the same methodology and a consistent backup script. If I get hit by a bus, a replacement could come in and quickly figure out what’s going on.

Seek out a higher power.

I was an arrogant kid when I first started. I thought I knew everything. What I didn’t know, I thought I could figure out. Working with me had to have been hell. I’ve learned that not knowing something isn’t a sign of weekness. It’s an opportunity to learn.

People are incredibly willing to help you out when you acknowledge their expertise and approach them with a “help me understand…” attitude. In today’s world of technology, one can’t know everything. I try to be good at my stuff and get help from people who know more about something than I do. Besides, saying you don’t know something makes you look human.

Write early. Write often.

In the world of technology, your work is crap if people can’t understand it. I hate writing documentation, but I have to do it. I’d like to think that should I get hit by a bus, a reasonably skilled DBA could come in and figure out my environment rather quickly. Unless something is documented, it didn’t happen.

The more I write, the better I seem to get at it. This isn’t a bad thing at all.

Know your audience.

I hate reading e-mails I don’t understand. I work for a high tech company, and our engineers talk about networking and TCP/IP using language that goes right over my head. I appreciate reading things in language I understand.

When I send out a notice that we’re upgrading a server, people in this company appreciate knowing that we’re upgrading the firmware on all of our IBM x346 servers. That makes sense to them. At my last employer, a construction management company, all our user community cared about was that a system was going to be down for maintenance. If I had sent out a message stating we were upgrading firmware, my inbox would be flooded with messages asking what the hell I was talking about.

I sing with the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus. Our Spring concert, Outside the Box, is rapidly approaching. Tickets are on sale at http://www.bgmc.org/tickets_individual.php.

As the promotional material states, “This is not your father’s choral concert.” This concert is going to be a lot of fun. It’s music you wouldn’t expect the BGMC to perform.

Several pieces pay tribute to gay and lesbian composers, including Rufus Wainwright, Melissa Ethridge, and Billy Strayhorn. You may not have heard of Billy Strayhorn, but if you’re a jazz fan, you may know his work. He wrote several pieces for Duke Ellington.

We’re doing a piece from the Mel Brooks musical, Young Frankenstein. That’s potentially my favorite piece in the whole show. And in typical BGMC fashion, the finale will leave you in stitches. I’ll only tell you that it comes from a Monty Python film.

Have I mentioned that tickets are on sale at http://www.bgmc.org/tickets_individual.php?

I’m making a very brief trip to Pittsburgh this week. I’m flying in Friday evening and back out Sunday afternoon. It’ll be one of my shortest trips to date. It will also mark my first trip where Reggie doesn’t come along.  I got a really good deal on Southwest, $182 round trip from Manchester, NH to Pittsburgh. Manchester is more convenient to my office than Boston. It might take a little longer, but it’s a better drive. I actually found the same fare on a few airlines, but Southwest had the best times for me.  I have to stop in Baltimore one way and Philadelphia the other.

Reggie will be staying here with Jason upstairs. I think it’ll be easier for all of us that way.

The purpose of my trip? Well, it’s two-fold. First, my parents’ anniversary is next week, and this is a good way to help them celebrate it. Second, I need to go see my grandmother. Her health has been on the decline the past year or so, and she had another mild heart attack last week. I made my peace with Grandma’s health over the summer, but it’s still not easy. Grandma is in a personal care home now, which will certainly give her better care than she was getting living at home? And you know those horror stories you read about personal care homes? I’m not the slightest bit worried here. My sister’s fiance’s family owns this personal care home, and my sister lives on “the compound.” What makes it even better is that Sarah can go visit Grandma every day, and that will make it easier for her to adjust. My dad said that the kids have been reading to Grandma.  Anyway, I need to make the trip.

Oh, and it’s snowing again. Great.