Puzzle Friday: Duke Nukem Style!

It’s puzzle Friday.  You’re here to kick butt and chew bubblegum.  You are all out of bubblegum. What do you do?

So, an esteemed colleague of mine, Jamie (Blog | Twitter), sends out a puzzle every Friday.  It’s usually some type of logical/math puzzle.

Here’s this week’s puzzle:

John lives in a house that has the reverse numbering to Jane’s house (so, for example, if John lived at number 56, Jane would be at 65).  The difference between their house number ends in 2.  Neither John or Jane live in a house numbered between 1 and 10, nor in a house number over 99.

What are their house numbers?

So, I think I was able to solve this using some T-SQL, but I won’t find out if my answer was correct until next week.  Jamie likes to keep us in suspense. If I’m correct, I will post my answer.   Ok, even if my answer isn’t correct, I’ll put something up about it.  My query only returned one set of numbers that matched the requirements, but you never know.

How would you solve this? Send me your answers and we’ll see if you’re right!

So, without further ado:

Give at least one technical presentation.

I hate to talk to front of people.  Really I do.  That’s one of the reasons that I wanted to be one of the leaders of our local user group as that forces me to get in front of people to a degree.  So after three years of doing that, I really wanted to push myself further and give a technical presentation.  I’ve already committed to speak at the Lincoln .NET User Group and the topic is “10 Things the DBA Wished You Knew”.  I’ll blog about the process that I went through to develop the presentation and the lessons learned after I give it.

Expand the Omaha SQL/BI User Group

Our local user group has been doing really well over the past couple of years.  Wecontinue to maintain our level of attendees.  However, I’d like to expand it even further in terms of membership and the type of meetings we have.  I don’t know if that means different sponsor’s or speakers, different topics, or just expanding the group’s brand, but I know that I want to see the group even bigger and better!

Obtain a Deeper Knowledge of SQL Server

Deeper into the SQL abyss we go!

This probably isn’t a goal that is measurable, but nevertheless it’s a goal. I have a couple of deep dive books that I want to read and try to get that better understanding.  I’m going to start with Grant Fritchey’s book “SQL Server 2008 Query Performance Tuning Distilled”.  As a side note, his book would be one that I recommend any SQL DBA to pick up if you have to do any type of performance tuning.  I’m only a couple of chapters in but it’s very insightful.  After that, I’ll probably dive into one of the internals books.

Pass MCITP SQL Server 2008 Upgrade Exam

I already hold a MCITP certification in administration for SQL Server 2005 and I want to upgrade that to SQL 2008.  I plan on taking the upgrade exam with one of the free shot offers from Microsoft.  Just in case I don’t pass it on the first go around.

Obtain MCITP Developer in SQL Server 2008

I’ve being saying that I wanted this certification for some time now, but never really got around to getting it.  Well, now that it’s down on paper and out to the world, I guess I had better start to work on it.

Renew My National EMT-B License

This one has a deadline of 3/31/2011.  To maintain this national license, it requires a number of continuing eduction units (CEU’s).  I don’t have to renew my license at this level if I didn’t want to as I can renew my state license and continue to practice as an EMT within the state of Nebraska.  I choose to renew at the National level as it keeps several doors open in the event I want to work in Iowa or any other state as an EMT.  I have to take a 24hr EMT refresher course plus another 48 hours of education.

I’ve already submitted my renewal application, so we’ll see if it gets accepted by the federal government or not.  I should receive an answer within the next couple of weeks.

Update:  It must be the luck of the Irish, but I just checked my application status and I’ve been approved for renewal!!  So my National Registry EMT-B license is good until 3/31/2013!!

and finally,

Blog More

Pretty simple and straight forward.  Nothing really more to it.  However, I realize that I don’t have a quantitative “blog amount” in mind.  I just know that I want to blog more about SQL Server and my experiences with it.

So Where Is The Goalie?

No, not that kind of goalie

Goals are only good if you track them and provide some sort of feed back on them.  If you don’t own up to your goals, regardless if you publish them to the intertubes or not, they are meaningless.  Just empty words that don’t hold any real meaning.

Thus I am going to implement some sort of methodology to manage these goals and to review them from time to time.  Not sure what that is going to be yet, but when I decide on a path, I’ll probably blog about it.  I’ve read various reviews on “Getting Things Done” so I might go down that path.  I’ve also looked at some various applications/sites that will help me to track things so maybe technology will help me out.

What goals do you have?  How do you track them?

Feel free to leave me your feedback!