It’s been a little over 6 months since I left .Net and one of the personal concerns I had with Postgres/Ruby was how long it would be before I started getting complacent and taking everything for granted.

Always Be Coding

To counteract this concern, I made a little database full of projects and people I’m thankful for. You’ll see projects like sidekiq, hstore, pg_stat_statements, sinatra and you’ll also see people like Josh Berkus, Ryan Bates, Demis Bellot… It’s become a pretty big table because I’m thankful to so many. I also made a little console app to pick a random row and email it to me once a week because what good is data if you don’t use it?

It Passes in a Flash

The past few months have been amazing. The team I work with at Raisemore is top notch and it is an incredible feeling to be working with and helping non-profits every day. Tekpub got acquired by Pluralsight. That experience has been a lot of work and an absolute blast building videos with them. I’ve also helped reboot our local Ruby user group with 2 other friends and spoke to that group today on two topics I absolutely love - Sequel and Postgres.

For Whom The Phone Tolls

We just got back from dinner and I’m checking my usual blog posts and nightly reading when I get the familiar email every Friday at 00:00:00 UTC:
Subject: Be Thankful
Body: 1 - Rob Conery

I don’t know if it gets anymore serendipitous than that. Rob is the first entry I put in the table. Since I’ve met Rob, he has challenged me to be a better DBA, challenged my comfort zones and to be an overall better person. Some of the above he’s done directly, some of it indirectly and I’m thankful for all if it.

perspective.empty?

I can’t wait to see who/what shows up in my inbox next week. I can’t wait to reflect on what is was that connected with me. When I get the next mail, I don’t know yet if I’ll take the time to personally thank them or the project. What I do know is that between now and when I get my next mail, I hope that I can have the same effect on others my list has had on me.