Stephen Leonard on STEM and the Frustration Inherent to Engineering

In this episode, Frank and Andy interview Stephen Leonard, Andy’s son, about his upcoming first SQL Saturday Talk, digital natives, engineering and STEM, and old movies like “Aliens” and “the Matrix.”

AI Generated Transcript (experimental)

Hello and welcome to data driven,

the podcast where we explore the emerging field of data

science.

We bring the best minds in data,

software, engineering, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Now hear your hosts Frank Lavigna and Andy Leonard.

Hello and welcome back to data driven,

the podcast or we explore the emergent fields of data

science machine learning an artificial intelligence.

If you like to think of data as the new

oil then you can consider us.

Car Talk ’cause we focus on where the rubber meets

the virtual road and with me on this epic journey

road trip down information superhighway.

Although I think we have to be sequestered because of

the pandemic is Andy Leonard,

how’s it going? Andy, hey it’s going well Frank,

how are you doing, brother?

You know I’m doing OK,

I’m doing OK, we’re in lockdown.

I’m in. My wife is actually on an important work

meeting and I have the kids.

In the room with me so you might hear in

a frequent interjection,

but I understand that Speaking of kids,

yeah, we have a very unique guest.

We do, we do have Steven Ray.

My older son is joining us for the first part

of this an we want to talk to him because

at least in this it is first part because he

is about to deliver his very first sequel Saturday presentation.

Yes Sir, very cool. So I know a little bit

about the back story to this so.

Steven, why don’t you, uh,

kind of do an intro to yourself.

You’re just. Quick bio I know and he probably knows

everything about you,

but most of the rest of his home.

Well, I’m for the uninitiated.

I’m Steven. I’m Andy’s son and or as I normally

refer to him.

Dad, I do stuff with small AI and neural Nets.

I also work with Raspberry pis specifically.

Sorry iot devices, specifically Raspberry pie.

Zan, Jetson, Nanos working a little bit less with the

latter.

Recently I’ve been doing more work with the pies.

And, uh, pretty soon on the 25th I will be

presenting my first sequel Saturday class and I guess I

just got lucky enough to do it on the first

several virtual SQL Saturday. Call it whatever you want,

lock or unlucky based on the world events.

I’ll be teaching class on how to install SQL Server

on a Raspberry Pi 3B and I’m working on a

solution for the four as well.

Very call and it’s my understanding that you actually you’re

actually studying.

Was it telerobotic? Not telerobotics but.

Was it? Does a really cold like $10 word for

it that Angie,

Oh, Mecatronics Mecatronics That’s it?

Yes, Sir. Cartoon yes it does.

I’m uh, it’s It’s, uh,

it’s really just all the I believe there are like

12 or 13 official realms of engineering,

or at least the ones that they teach in college.

And it’s sort of all of those mixed into one

like hyper focused,

really hard class and I really just chose it because

when I walk into the when I walk into a

room,

if someone has a question,

I just want to be able to answer it.

I want to be sort of the most helpful I

can be and I figure if I’m well enough versed

in.

As much engineering as much as much of the realms

of engineering as I can be,

I figure I can be pretty helpful.

That’s pretty, that’s the plan.

A chip off the old block there Andy.

Well, he, uh, you know his.

I’ll say Frank, he’s probably better at it than me

because his mom has a lot of background training in

multitasking type tasks.

She was 911 dispatcher for awhile and to graduate from

that course.

They they literally play five or six conversations at the

same time.

And she had to write down and track all of

the conversations and respond accordingly.

So it makes for a good project manager,

which is awesome because I have exactly zero of those

skills,

so he has. He has more of that than I

do,

but I think he definitely gets his ADHD for me,

which this is Frank. We’ve talked about this about weaponizing

things that maybe hindrances in some fields an you know

that I hear some of that in Stevie’s plans here

because rather than just go after one discipline.

You know, just pick up a discipline of engineering,

mechanical or electronics. You know he likes the idea of

kind of popping between disciplines and.

You know, I, I think that so he’s kind of

leveraging the ADHD there.

Yeah, I, I mean I.

I think that if you can,

it’s one thing to kind of play to your strengths

and quote Unquote fix your flaws.

But I think there’s a whole new level of self

improvement that I’ve kind of discovered over the last four

years or so.

Is weaponizing your flaws. Yeah,

you know what we talked about this with anti fragile

right?

Antifragility and not seem to loves books on that.

you and I are both huge fans and I’m still

working on getting him to come on the show.

Frank I don’t know. I don’t know if we’re going

to be able to pull that or not,

but I have two goals here.

Is you’re well aware one is to make contact with

him and two is to not get blocked on Twitter?

Yes, so he’s although if you’re for the listener,

if you’re not familiar with the lab he’s been,

he’s been on fire lately with Twitter,

as well as his one of his big sticks is

risk prediction and risk modeling and risk management.

Although he would call it something else,

and he would probably smack me across the face for

calling it risk management.

But honestly, it would be an honor.

Do snack Crossface by to lab in my agree.

Agree yeah, but he’s on fire both on Twitter and.

He’s making crazy money on this on the fund that

he manage is.

Oh wow, OK, I didn’t realize he still managed to

find.

I didn’t know either, but somebody reported that he made

either 360%.

A three 3600% or 36 times I don’t know whatever

it is,

but he’s in March. He made a ridiculous amount of

money,

partly because I think he predicted a lot of the

long tail effects of the Cove in pandemic.

Wow, yeah, if you look at him on Twitter lately,

don’t get blocked for him though.

Please yeah, I’ll try not true.

I can live without kind of that pseudoscience biohacker knowledge

from his Twitter feed,

but I don’t think I could live without to labs

wisdom.

Yes, I’m here. Which again we will share that story

in full detail.

Later, you’re laughing. I am laughing now.

We were going through that phase of.

A kind of anger denial and all that.

Now we’re kind of laughing at it were accepting.

That’s where we have accepted it.

An yeah, so we’ve gotten over it.

But yes, we need your child.

We have. We have ignored him and we want to

talk about his product now.

You gave him advice that he should Chinese.

He combines the more likely his proposal to speak would

be accepted.

Yeah, and you know this Frank from our relationship and

I’ve been doing this for.

Along time when I get,

you know, once I got to to be able to

speak,

I started reaching out trying to help others do it.

’cause it was such a rush and I had.

I had a couple of of men tease,

I guess actually present at the pass summit 2019 in

Seattle back in November and you know,

that’s just a huge, huge,

great failing and you see the kind of picked up

on that as well.

You heard it when he was talking about his motivation,

part of it as he wants to be able to

help just as much as possible.

But yeah, it came to me.

I don’t know ten months a year ago he said

dad,

I want to. I want to do a presentation.

He’s been traveling with me to events over half his

life and.

He said, You know, the very first thing I told

him is,

I think that’s awesome. You’ll do a good job,

but here’s what we’re not going to do where we’re

not going to get you picked because you’re my son,

but I’ll do the same thing for you.

I do for everyone else,

and I did. That was my next piece of advice.

Was my first real piece of advice.

Was picked something shiny, and by Shawnee I mean you

know something new.

A little edgy an he picked 2.

Uh, an when he first told me about it inside,

I was thinking that’s a pretty big bite,

but I didn’t share that until just now with him,

but he jumped right in on it.

Franken, I would estimate in the first couple weeks.

He probably put 100 hours on this.

After that. You know he’s probably been averaging 50 or

so hours per month or so and I would say

he’s got a good solid 400 hours into it before

he got it to work.

And that was a couple months ago.

He actually got it to where he got SQL Server

running on one of our π three is.

So yeah, that was that was a very,

very interesting way that happened to.

I solved it while hanging out I.

It honestly looked like I was building a weapon in

a college that was that was really where it happened

is I was setting in the lobby of the college.

My mother works at. And you know the HD MI

cable was too short sided hanging out of the port

and everything.

But you know I just kind of threw my hands

up and laid back and the desk lady kind of

looks over me like are you OK?

It was it was. It was a very interesting time,

but when I finally got it was just like everything

that I had been waiting for.

Just kind of crashed down on me.

All the money we’d spent on replacing the walls.

I was hitting my head into,

it was just it was.

It was worthwhile. We’ve been there,

Stevie. I mean, Frank and I both done that an

I’ve shared this story.

In fact, this is completely unrehearsed

I I’ve I’ve shared with people on a bunch of

different times.

When I talk in class is about this.

You know I will. Failure is normal and my demo

for that is I will walk down stairs on a

break and you and your siblings are homeschooled here and

I’ll say guess what my code just did and what

is it that you reply in Unison user?

Exactly what you told it to exactly what I told

you right?

Not not what I wanted but exactly what I told

it to.

Yes. But you experienced that.

Go ahead, go ahead now.

You’ve experienced that, and what I shared with you as

we were going through,

and I do this with everybody that you know,

I have a opportunity and it’s truly an opportunity.

It’s an honor to mentor anyone when I have that

opportunity to share with them.

Listen failure. You gotta look at failure as the latest

step on the path to success.

And really, what you’ll see is when you succeed,

the number of times that you failed will actually kind

of set the bar.

How good it’s going to feel.

When you succeed. Was alright,

so yeah, no you were totally correct.

It was. It was the you kind of get to

a point where I explain this to it to my

best friend who was,

you know he works. He helps me work with this

as well.

And I explained it to him and the way I

kind of explained it was I reached a point where

jumping off a Cliff was preferable to continuing to work

on this. And, uh, you know,

I just kept pushing through it.

And finally, once you get to the end,

it’s just everything sort of it.

Just kind of collapses on you,

really. It’s like being in a building and it’s just,

it just feels so good,

just all the all the weeks of hitting your head

against a wall and being angry and not figuring out

not being able to figure out why it’s giving you

this error and that error.

And why is this breaking and why I can’t get

Docker installed after I’ve installed it 3 times before on

the same kernel?

You know, it’s just. It’s all these things over and

over and over again.

Just finally hit you and you just go.

Yes, it’s completely foreign to both Frankie.

Now we write code and it just works the first

time,

every time, right? Frank, Oh yeah.

No, it’s true. He’s never come downstairs.

I’ve never heard dead come downstairs and go Dang my

code didn’t work today.

It’s always just man that was perfect.

There’s actually a cartoon where it shows the same skeptical

look of a person in front of a computer.

And it says my code didn’t work and I don’t

know why that was the first captain.

The second one is my code worked the first time

and I don’t know why.

It again, if your code works the first time,

then either you forgotten something it didn’t work and it’s

just not telling you,

or you need to stab yourself with a fork and

wake up,

right, right? Or you kind of like something is bad,

so going something even worse is going to happen.

And what I anticipated, right?

Which I think a lot of folks,

I think you know. I learned this when I was

doing a couple of years ago.

This is back in the Windows 8 days when I

was in evangelism.

Uh, I spoke to a bunch of high school kids

and I kind of did this summer course on writing

apps and stuff like that.

And like I thought, I bombed it the first day.

Like really bad, because it just kept compiler,

kept happening problems and there were some driver issues and

I worked through it an I talked to kind of

like the coordinator with the local high school and he

goes no. That was awesome because a lot of these

kids,

they see how programming is represented on TV and it’s.

Everything works the first time and I’m like looked at

him like we both kind of set in Unison.

Nothing ever works the first time,

and if it does, I’m very,

very suspicious. Very sets to write a lot of folks.

They think that they get there,

they get their hands kind of dirty with code or

stem an the first time.

If it doesn’t work, they think it’s them.

But no. I mean that’s frustration is on Fortunately or

unfortunately a large part of engineering.

Right, and that’s that’s the that’s the issue I run

into when when I tell people that I run into

or people that I know that I work with computers

and you know, they tell me stuff like Oh well

that’s I’m not smart enough to that.

Or that’s too hard. I could never figure that out.

And then there’s two kind of groups and that’s the

first group is well,

you’re so smart an my answer is no,

I just spent a lot of time in it and

the other the other group that I run into is

that like are the people who have seen.

What’s the movie called? The oceans,

movies and there like in.

They asked me how nice you know how it feels

when you finally hack the mainframe and get through the

Firewall.

And it’s really just like the reality that you run

into when you start getting into doing programming and engineering

of any sorts really,

is that? It’s nothing like what it’s portrayed in the

movie.

In the movies, in the general consensus of how it

works is nowhere near how it actually works.

Right, right? I mean it it to everybody,

it almost seems. It’s almost it’s almost synonymous to rocket

science.

I’ve seen to the at least of the general public

that I’ve talked to is they think it’s some sort

of thing that you have to go to college and

get a degree for, when in reality you can learn

it in your Mother’s basement in six months.

Now that’s true. Patience is under rated,

I think in our society and this and a lot

of the folks that what differentiates kind of someone who.

Is good at, this is just the patience.

The tenacity. I mean you’ve demonstrated this.

I think you’ve internalised it now,

right? But you know a lot of folks,

I think in result of this pandemic are going to

start pondering new careers as they should,

right? You know, just. It makes a lot of sense,

and I think a lot of folks have to realize

that.

Programming is frustration.

Yeah, it’s it’s definitely. It’s definitely not a career that.

4. Uh, what’s the word I’m looking for?

Not short minded, but sort of short sighted people who

look for instant gratification,

right? Although I would say that.

As someone who, as someone who has been,

I’ve never been formally diagnosed with ADHD.

But you know, people close to me have said I’m

high functioning ADHD.

Uh, which is? You know I’m not going to argue

with that,

but there’s a lot of folks who were quote a

quote on the spectrum or on a spectrum of some

sort who who do work in Tech.

Which is interesting because I think part of it is

part of ADHD is.

I’m not an expert on this,

but is the ability to focus on one task for

a very extended period of time,

yeah? Yeah, hyperfocus, yeah. So if you are listening to

sorry,

go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say I

completely agree with you.

That’s that’s really how it is,

at least for me. I’m not sure how it is

for other people with ADHD.

I can’t speak for everyone right,

but how it is for me is if there’s a

task that I’m just set on completing.

I just do it. I mean,

it’s it’s hard to really explain.

I just have an idea and I want to do

it and I go and do it,

and I do it until it’s done.

That’s how it is. Yeah,

I think its tenacity is the real skill tenacity in

patients.

I like that and having an end in mind like

for me when I first learned programming,

this was. Steve, this is like probably Stone Age for

you.

I mean there was no Internet.

I didn’t even have a modem,

but she probably even know what a modem is.

Oh, so, So what did you name your Dinosaur?

The one that you wrote to school?

Obviously. I know you had some for cleaning the house

is right,

but what was the name of the one that you

wrote to school back on I we called him Rodney.

I don’t know why. Oh OK,

cool because my dad was Rodney Dangerfield then.

Which is probably another name you don’t know.

I was gonna say. Yeah,

hold on 1 second.

Look that up in the Wikipedia.

Yeah, it’s like it’s like the Spiderman movies again where

he’s talking about.

There’s really, really old movies like back to the future

and aliens,

right, right? Yeah, that was,

uh. Now give me homework.

You’ll experience this when you’re when you’re as you get

older like 20 years now is like in an unfathomable

amount of time,

right? But now it’s like I look back in like

it was the year 2000 when it was 20 years

ago and I’m like that wasn’t that long ago on

my head right now for us.

So you’ll experience that. I was told that I didn’t

believe it,

but. Here we are. Uh,

no, but I think that I think that’s key.

I know. I think a lot of folks they isolate

themselves from stem an you hear a lot about people

who were,

quote Unquote, encouraged or not encouraged to get into stem.

This is back before stem was an acronym when I

was a kid.

I was not encouraged. I grew up in a very

blue collar neighborhood.

And it was kind of like you are wasting your

time on a computer and how I got into computer

programming was my family had enough money to buy a

computer, but not for the games for said computer.

Oh so my mom said to Maine after getting it

was actually 1984 in April it was Easter Sunday,

April 1st, 1984. I got a Commodore 64.

Oh wow, not crazy. I still have it.

I still have the original converse before in my basement.

Home Office and I remember saying like hey,

I want to get this game and it was like

$40 which $40 was closer to $80.00 today and my

mom’s like just turned to me and said well why

don’t you write your own games?

I think she realized like what events she said in

motion.

’cause right Peter programming was not a viable career or

perceived as one clearly.

Clearly it was, and Bill Gates is billions kind of

point to that right?

But you know, even when I switch my major from

quote unquote real major like chemical engineering to computer science,

it took it took my family,

took a lot to convince my parents that it was

worth.

It was worth the risk.

Right now, and that wasn’t that long ago.

Kurt Cobain was still alive an again.

Yes, another name. You might want to look up.

I do recognize the name.

Yeah, it it feels like,

um, it feels a lot like even now.

Still, I can’t speak for how it was before I

was born,

but even now, still today there’s still a bit of

a almost an inversion like there’s obviously now because we

spent more time with technology.

It’s been sort of baked into how our society runs,

but there are still like the higher fields.

I guess you could say of technology like.

Fire in relation to the base stuff that we already

use as in like coding and programming,

an mechanical and electrical engineering.

All of those are kind of seen as.

I don’t really know how to explain it,

but like almost a versions from what we should be

doing.

I think somewhere some places you see some resistance to

it,

but it’s nothing like what both Frank and I experience.

When we were younger. I mean,

Oh yeah, people didn’t have computers in their homes.

Worse? Well, they didn’t have computers in their home,

so there was no idea about how that how pursuing

that as akarere it was,

I would make the illusion today.

It’s kind of like going into game development or something

like that.

You think you’re going to make $1,000,000 or a billion

bucks and Game Development and it does happen.

Today it does, but and I encourage people to encourage

you.

Go ahead and jump into it,

but just realize that the skills you’re going to learn

while you’re getting into that is probably going to be

where you land somebody you know in a one to

a million ratio, there’s still a one somebody is going

to be that one,

and it, but there’s going to be a bunch others

who aren’t,

but you could. Still you can still benefit from pursuing

that so,

but. What Frank’s talking about.

You’ve never seen an you probably won’t ever see and

I ran into the exact same thing.

You know, it’s like why don’t you learn something useful?

Well, I remember I remember the look of horror on

my parent my mom’s face when I said I want

to switch to computer science and this actually had to

do with. Uh, a scheduling conflict because at the time

I was in Navy ROTC and at the time

They didn’t have it on campus at my college,

so I had to go to Souni Maritime,

which was on the other side of the Bronx.

Oh wow, so I went to Fordham,

so I had basically in order to be there for

PT and muster.

I forget the words now.

In order to be there after I had to be

there at,

I might have to take the bus at like 4

in the morning.

Imagine from going from one part of Fordham in the

Bronx to the other side of the Bronx.

What the public transit system look like at 3:34 AM.

And. That that played a large role in believing the

program.

Uhm, but uh, the you know I had.

There was a chemistry lab I couldn’t make so I

had to take another requirement.

Such of computer programming and which was PL-1,

which is probably in language you haven’t heard,

but essentially based on Pascal,

which is maybe a language you might have heard.

I’ve heard of that. Uh,

the I remember switching and I was like yeah wait

a minute and the professor was saying like you know

he was retired IBM person and he’s like Oh yeah,

like you can have a total great career in this

field unlike Watt.

Right and then at the time they used to do

this thing called newspapers where they would actually print on

paper weight.

Watt crazy, right? But the New York Times used to

have this thing every Sunday they’d have the job section

and it would be a pretty beefy like thing and

you could just search for different types of jobs in

the time the technology section was just exploding with like

you know,

kind of like C programming jobs on Wall Street and

stuff like that and.

Startups or not? In the vocabulary of anyone,

I think on the East Coast.

Certainly not the New York City.

Everything was focused on Wall Street.

Ann right, I was like,

well, there’s my ammunition, so I my parents came over

to visit me and I remember being in like this

big common area and I was talking to them like

I want to switch majors,

and my parents were like,

Oh God, it’s going to be basket weaving or some

BS like that.

And you know, my dad’s computer science and they were

like OK.

Is that a real thing?

And so I showed him and at the time like

the salaries were like 6 figures in.

In the early 90s, which was wow,

a lot of money. That yeah,

yeah. And you know my father kind of thumb through

it just like these are not entry level and it

goes no.

But you know, 510 years later you could be making

that absolutely is.

I’m on the phone. Sorry.

OK right now. So. An alright so the little one

just stormed off so I remember my dad kind of

come through.

the IT was like 5 or 6 pages of jobs

for computer programming and stuff.

Nice and my dad was like OK I’m sold in

my mom.

Just looked at me like almost here full like you

don’t want to be one of those weird people in

the basement do you?

Which is why. Literally. Are you ended up being aware

you were already weird?

Frank, I know I’ve never been here 15 years.

He was at the time ’cause she was a secretary

and they were.

They were the quota quote,

High Priest and priestesses that in the basement with the

mainframe right and they kind of had the role for

the world.

So I mean, it was definitely.

It was definitely not encouraged.

Now I say that and if you hear in the

background ’cause I gotta keep it in for two reasons.

One it’s funny and two it makes editing easier is

the one kid is on the iPad playing a Roblox

game and the other kids on his laptop.

His laptop let that sink in.

Uh. Playing the same game in Roblox and they’re fighting

over something that happened in game that one did to

the other,

so I think. Going from that conversation of of not

being encouraged into stem too.

Right here. They are five and 10 years old and

they’re both technical,

legal, technologically literate, and they’re fighting over a virtual piece

of toy or something.

I don’t know well. We had this conversation with Mark

Tab Addio a couple years ago when he was on

the show and he talked about his concept of digital

natives versus digital immigrants and you and I are immigrants,

right? Stevie, an your kids.

I have grown up with screens in the house from,

you know right before they could remember they were there

when they were born and their digital natives and one

of the things I find funny and related to what

you just described. Frank is when when my younger children

who are here now at the house still even when

they were young,

especially when they were younger,

they were playing Minecraft and they would get hit by

someone or some non non personal player there.

What are those called Stevie?

MPC non playable character in MPC would hit him,

they would say Ouch. Oh yeah,

they would say I still I still do when I

get you know,

say I’ll get shot or something an rainbow 6 or

CS go.

Something like that, I’ll still say Ouch because to me

I’m just immersed.

That’s just how it is for Maine.

It is fascinating and I would also say that if

there’s to tack onto marked abadios comment of digital natives

and digital immigrants just because someone’s a digital native doesn’t

mean that they are well versed in engineering around this.

And I think that with my older son who’s 10

we were before the school actually gave him school work.

You know we were kind of.

I was trying to keep his brain moving.

So what we ended up doing was I picked up

a book of how to write your own first person

shooter in unity and I’m like I will pick it

up and then it’s really.

It’s really cool. Book an.

He It was very frustrating because two things.

One the Screenshots in the book are woefully outdated and

it’s only six months old.

Just that’s just the way things are now,

it’s crazy. And we had to kind of figure out

the documentation versus.

We had to figure out the documentation versus what the

reality was.

An and then he was frustrated because sometimes the code

didn’t work or did compile or it didn’t work the

way or expected and he was really getting upset and

I was like 2. This is my.

This has been my life.

Anne Anne Anne Anne. He was he really was down

on himself and I’m like I was like listen dude

I’m like I started programming when I was 11 1/2

that’s when I got the Commodore an it.

I don’t know how many years it is now.

30 six years later, still the same story,

right? Well, also, another thing that I know now from

working with unity that’s not just his fault.

That’s also unity, no, absolutely well enough,

and I’m looking through. I’m looking through and I’m looking

through the documentation.

I’m like, yeah, you know,

and he’s a trooper. I mean,

once this school started giving schoolwork,

we prioritize that. But he was a trooper like he

wanted to go through it.

He wanted to go through it even though he was

frustrated and I was like I was like he’s got

the knack.

If you, if you’re familiar with Dilbert,

right, right? Yes, Scott Adams,

Yes, mom’s an engineer too.

So it’s kind of natural for him.

So I mean, it’s just one of those things where

I guess it’s OK to be frustrated.

’cause That’s kind of part of it.

Then, you know, sometimes the build something great.

You have to go through frustration cycles.

Actually, alright. That’s how it works for Maine.

Yeah. So cool man I’m I’m excited about this project.

Where can folks find since this virtual?

I guess you don’t have to be in Richmond.

Two it right? I don’t Saturday.

Issqlsaturday.com is the site you want to go to,

and we’re recording this on the 16th of April 2020,

and so that’s going to be.

Since it’s a virtual event,

there’s a possibility that it will be recorded.

I’m not sure what their plans are for that.

I was going to say I’m sorry to jump in.

They actually said that it’s all going to be live.

They tried to workout something with pre recording it and

pass didn’t prove it.

So it’s going to be alive.

So once we get this up it’ll be the 25th

of April 2020 so you can catch that.

But what will likely happen?

Frank, if people wanted to catch this presentation is that

you and I and our families have access to.

Web and are sharing Technology.

I know Frankie do a lot on LinkedIn and you

know it’s up there forever.

Will probably do a web and are just let Stevie

run it.

You know from go to webinars.

The platform I use these days and will get a

recording up.

If you want to watch my blog andyleonard dot blog

and my social media feeds,

LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter I’ll have an announcement up there

when that recording becomes live.

So I fully understand. Why passes?

Making the decisions that they’re making for the stay on

the SQL Saturday brand and you know it’s it’s their

show.

They can do it however they’d like to,

but we can also do whatever we’d like here and

will get it up there.

Remind You know, I mean,

it’s their show, it’s their house,

their rules. They can do that,

and a lot of things with pass.

I’m going to step in a big pile of I’m

gonna try not to step in a big pile,

but with a lot of things with passes first.

Plus it doesn’t make a lot of sense,

but when you kind of think through it,

yeah, it does make sense.

It’s huge, it’s a global organization and you know,

there’s, uh, it’s they have a lot of different issues

to make.

Happy exactly. Yeah, so we’re OK with that and we

can work around it so that folks could hear Stevie

present an that was in my plans already.

I hadn’t told him about it yet,

so now you know, act surprised when I tell you.

You can hear it. It’s right if you could see

my face.

Right now, I’m just so surprised.

If you can see it through the Rose Asia of

how hot it is in my room,

’cause I turned off all my fans you couldn’t hear

in the background noise.

So we’ll do. That will get it up there.

Frank, I’m gonna let him focus on just this delivery.

It’s his first delivery. We all know how that you

know that first time presenting goes.

And my my experience first time presenting.

Actually I presented first too.

It was it Virginia. Be actually it was down in

Jacksonville is one of my very first presentation.

What happened? But what I consider my very first one

was that from Virginia Beach in 2006,

right after the first SSI S book came out that

I got to work on that rocks book.

And two people showed up,

so you know I practiced.

I’ve done all of the things you know followed all

of the advice,

and two people showed up,

so I had another one scheduled for the Northern Virginia

SQL Server users group,

and I thought nobody’s coming.

And 125 people showed up.

Including Eric Berman who was the architect on the I

forget the name of the project real.

I think it was called which it during the betas

of the 2005 reporting services analysis services and integration services,

he was the architect for all of that where they

took some data you’re very familiar with.

Frank’s used to work there,

Barnes and Noble. They they took Barnes and Noble data

and they built a data warehouse.

They built reporting services off Devil running off of both

relational and Analytics.

Sorry analysis services, cubes and they loaded all of that

with SSI is so he’s in the audience,

mind you. And yeah, so I was.

Needless to say it was different than the presentation.

With only two people in it and you gotta have

that Stevie.

Just like just like we talked about the engineering part

of this.

If you’re going to start speaking,

you gotta have those kinds of failures too.

And you gotta treat him the same way.

Just the right experience. And it’s honestly like the sooner

you learn.

The sooner you learn how to present your ideas and

get comfortable public speaking,

the better your life will be.

I was told that in high school we were forced

to present to our peers.

First time it was horrible and then overtime it became

less horrible and then it kind of became enjoyable.

Yeah right yeah you get comfortable with it.

It definitely is and see Frank,

nobody told me that. And how different would you know

how different would my life have been if I recognize

that early on?

I don’t know, but I see you and I as

dads encouraging our kids to move in these directions that

we’ve learned later in life.

This is, it’s a good thing to do.

Get this skill put this tool in your toolbox.

And you just like every parent on the planet trying

to make a better life for our children.

Then then we’ve had not there.

Like bad, you know, so to,

so to speak. I’ve had my moments where it was

bad.

I’m sure you have as well.

But that’s our goal. Make our kids lives better than

ours.

Yeah no, absolutely so. We are almost at time I’m

I’m looking forward to having you back in the show.

Steven and I think you’ve got to go,

dad, who’s who’s encouraging your,

you know? It it don’t.

Don’t don’t get too excited.

Alright you got it right.

But I always tell my kids they should write out

their complaint to child services on their iPad.

Awesome.

But so yeah with that,

and I think that things have been a great kind

of.

Conversation, and I think it’s always good to inspire the

next generation of Engineers,

and, uh, I think you’re doing some awesome work and

you’re really getting a handle on how frustrating this field

can be.

Yes, Sir, because I’ve worked with a lot of civic

organizations in and around DC and where they want to.

They want to portray the stem field as this wonderful

landfilled of Unicorns,

Bitcoins and Lamborghinis. But. There’s a big.

There’s a big uhm. I want to keep our clean

rating.

Plus you’re his kids so.

But there’s a big sandwich you got to compile up.

There isn’t always necessarily the tastiest.

Right? No, yeah no. I I totally agree it’s it’s

like really with any field there are.

There are the ups and the downs and it just

happens to with engineering.

Just in general it just happens to be that the

downside is nigh constant frustration.

That’s just that’s that’s the art of how it is.

That’s true, that’s that’s how it’s always going to be.

That’s how it is. If it wasn’t like that.

If it wasn’t hard, this is something dad has told

me my whole life.

If it was easy, everyone would be doing it,

and it’s not easy. That’s why not everyone’s doing it.

No, that’s true. I mean,

it kind of leaves room for.

The people who are really meant to specialize in that.

In that field to shine through.

Now that’s true. Alright, so I’ll stay tuned to Andy’s

blog.

Will find out more information about that.

Andy and I are also you’re doing a lot of

free webinars.

Andy and I am in the midst of organizing a

virtual summit called lemons to learning which it lemons to

learning.com the number.

Cave Johnson School of Business was about say yeah we

need to get.

We need to get JK Simmons in here to do

the voice for that please that would be astonishing if

you miss the references from portal and it’s great.

I do want to print up T shirts that say

Cave Johnson School of Business.

Don’t fighting lemons. Wow, that’s amazing.

I need one of those so badly.

I need that shirt so bad.

I don’t care if nobody else gets the joke,

I need it. I will put it.

I have to put it on T spring because the

Amazon merch program is on hold because of the pandemic,

right? Makes sense which I did have a run in

with a lawyer for a design that I did post.

Um, Oh, although said lawyer one day this will be

one of those stories that we will laugh about one

day.

And it’s not like it ended poorly,

like it was just kind of like right said lawyer

actually introduced himself nicely and kind of politely meda,

meda, very polite request that is uncharacteristic of trademark lawyers,

and I was like you know what since you asked

Nicely,

I’ll comply. And I actually put that so that load

that let me save face and kind of be a

little bit of snarky,

but also do kind of what I thought was a

better thing.

He made a good case was gotta stay on character.

Gotta stay in character of course.

So with that will look nice.

British Lady and the show.

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