In this episode, Frank and Andy talk with the legendary Bob Ward.

Links

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Notable Quotes

On playing the “plague or pollen” game. (02:30)

Regarding sportsball… (05:30)

Virtual is the new norm. (06:30)

Bob and Azure (07:30)

Frank caught Bob in person at Microsoft Ready (08:15)

On sharing code…(9:30)

Bob on SQL Server 2019 Big Data Clusters (11:00)

… and PolyBase (12:30)

“Keep the data where it lives, access it through the language you’re familiar with.” – Bob on PolyBase (13:48)

Regarding Synapse (14:48)

…even for AS/400… (18:20)

PolyBase as an incremental migration strategy… (19:30)

COBOL, and more COBOL, and Y2K (20:30)

“Buck Woody works with me…” – Bob Ward (21:00)

An aside about NFL Football teams and rivalries. (23:00)

We all miss baseball. (23:50)

“Did you find data or did data find you?” (25:00)

How Bob was recruited by Microsoft 26 years ago (26:45)

Anna Hoffman… (28:15)

Bob’s Book: SQL Server 2019 Revealed (31:00)

“So this Bob Ward guy… he’s kinda a big deal…” – Frank (32:45)

“I have people like my wife to keep me humble.” – Bob (34:00)

“There’s always somebody smarter…” – Bob (34:45)

“The Silverlight apocalypse…” (35:30)

“When I’m not working, I enjoy ____.” (36:30)

Some Good News (37:30)

A Quiet Place (38:15)

“I think the coolest thing in technology today is ____.” (38:45)

Bob started at Microsoft in 1993. (40:15)

“There’s no way somebody is going to put a SQL Server in the cloud.” (42:00)

FranksWorld.com (42:40)

On remote training (44:00)

“I look forward to the day when I can technology to ____.” (45:30)

“IoT-ness” – Bob, circa 2020 (46:40)

“Share something different about myself.” (48:00)

“We’re all screwing up!” (49:30)

Grace is Greater, by Kyle Idleman (50:20)

Bob on LinkedIn (51:30)

aka.ms/bobwardms (51:45)

aka.ms/sqlworkshops (52:30)

Tom Clancy series (53:00)

Sherlock Holmes series (54:00)

Sherlock – BBC (54:45)

“John Krasinski is a great Jack Ryan.” – Bob (58:00)

Transcript (AI Generated)

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 emerging fields of data

science,

machine learning and artificial intelligence.

If you like to think of data as the new

oil,

then you can consider as well like Car Talk and

with me on his epic road trip down.

The information superhighway is Andy Leonard.

Although. I think we are now currently in lock down

so that road ship and has been postponed.

It has and wow what a you know

what an interesting time to live in right Frank.

Right right, we are recording this on April 15th.

You know it’s serious when even the government postpones tax

collection.

True, yeah today would have been the day that your

taxes were doing US,

but they pushed it back.

I forgot three months for

months whatever. Yeah, yeah, three months,

but it’s in Julies coming up on my birthday.

That’s how I remember it.

Like I need another paper.

They give it kind of.

Yeah exactly, but you know it’s been an interesting day

here.

This I live in Virginia.

You know? This uh, FarmVille,

VA Ann. I imagine you may have gotten different weather

than I did,

even a little more odd for this time of year.

This late in spring. It is extremely odd to have,

uh, you know, an overnight temperature in the 30s.

Not only that, but we saw flurries this morning.

I believe this is the latest I’ve ever seen.

Snow flurries. Just crazy.

Well, you’re at a higher elevation.

I think I know. Western Maryland had some snow overnight

too,

so.

It could be definitely could be,

yeah. It’s hilly here where I am.

I’m a little little East of the

mountains. OK, but it is

allergy season so we’re having just loads of fun here

with that.

How’s things going with you Frank?

How’s the family well? Well,

we’re

doing good. We’re all

sequestered together, and Fortunately I don’t live in New York

City anymore.

In a small apartment. Otherwise,

I think I probably would’ve lost my mind by now.

Wow, yeah we my have allergies,

and I think my older son is developing allergies,

so we’re playing the plague or pollen game.

And so terrible

game to play, isn’t it?

Especially when you’re outside.

It’s like, although I found that wearing kind of like

face masks and stuff does help the sneezing and actually

in watery eyes.

So yeah,

actually does so.

Yeah, I I.

It’s funny like I watch TV now and they show

old clips or something and

I’m like they’re sitting too close together.

And that’s the truth. I’ve seen it.

I’ve

kind of noticed that too.

So

enough about enough

about the stuff that’s

going on with that. I have an announcement,

Frank.

What’s your nationality? I am

so excited about this. My 17 year old son Stevie

Ray has been selected to present at SQL Saturday.

Richmond is going to be a virtual event at nearly

the last Saturday of April to 25th.

He came to me about a year ago.

He’s been going to these things with me for over

half his life and he came to him 10 months

a year ago and says I want to do one

of these. I think I can do a presentation.

How do I go about it and I said,

well? You know, pick something shiny as a topic.

And he actually doubled up on that.

He is presenting on how to install SQL Server 2017.

On on Linux, running on a π three a Raspberry

Pi 3.

And I was like, you know,

you could have picked something harder

maybe. No, but he worked on this and it’s been.

I would

estimate he’s got 4 or 500 hours on it.

I helped him out as much as I could with

you.

Know like technical stuff, but I was mostly kind of

standing back just to see if he was going to

do this and he beat through it.

Frank and he got it to work nice and right

after that he put together.

I think so too and I’m so excited we’re I’m

presenting in the first slot a week from Saturday.

He’s presenting in a second right behind me and in

that same channel so.

I just I’m so proud of him.

You know these proud Papa moments,

right? You gotta eat.

These are totally, totally. I’ll

never forget the day my.

He was nine at the time he went.

He was over to play date a friends house and

he fixed their router.

So yeah,

now so

proud that’s awesome. Well, Speaking

of Speaking

of being Super Smart

and probably at a young

age to we are we are very honored today to

have.

I’m going to say the Bob Ward on the show

today as our guest.

Bob works for Microsoft. He doesn’t awful lot of speaking

at the major major conferences is usually on the big

stage and in the big room.

And doing keynotes and stuff.

The only bad thing I think I can say about

Bob is I’ve seen him at the past summit a

few times wearing a Dallas Cowboys Jersey.

Goodness, gracious Bob. I don’t know what

to say about that, but.

Will will let you select.

I’ll confess, I’m a

Redskins fan an you know,

understand because I’ll

admit it now. On

recording, you know at least you’re not an Eagles fans.

I

can, you know, Redskins. Was this rivalry from years ago

in the 70s right now?

Not so much for us.

It’s the Eagles pretty much so.

If you’re an Eagles fan,

I might have to

drop off the call right now.

But it it please I if you do not know

who

Bob Ward is Gogo, checking out,

popping his name into you know into your favorite search

engine and check him out in my favorite search engine

actually is is Bing so I can say that,

but he’s a lot of talks about data you do

a lot of free webinars.

You do a lot of speaking an you know you

do more than just talk about this.

I know you’re engaged with the future of SQL Server.

And the data products I want to Azure and we’re

just honored to have you here Bob.

Welcome today.

I’m happy to be here.

Thanks for thanks for inviting me

today. Appreciate it. While we sure appreciate your time.

Tell us a little bit about what you’ve been working

on lately,

what, what’s

cool, what’s going on? You know?

Of course, these are interesting times as you guys started

off the call,

so a lot of the things that I’ve been doing

in terms of showing up at a big event personally

have altered and changed obviously quite a bit,

so there’s a lot of pivot within Microsoft and even

outside of Microsoft.

But how do we do things more virtual and digital?

I spent over the last year and a half leading

up to the end of last year on SQL 19.

Our latest release of SQL Server.

I mean, I was just immersed from this from the

beginning.

Uh, an, which again landed ultimately in launching of the

product last November,

December. Over the Holidays, I’m up in Redmond when I

could travel back then the Redmond and I’m with my

boss,

but I’m talking about, you know,

what should I focus on in calendar year 20 and

he’s like you know what?

It would be really cool if you could spend some

time in Azure,

which I had done a little bit in the past,

but not near as much.

So lately I’ve been spending a little bit more time

on that space on the Azure Sequel space.

Still doesn’t mean that I’m not doing SQL Server,

that’s still my my pride and joy.

My passion, right? So I heard you talk here at

the beginning about doing your son doing SQL Linux on

a pie.

I mean, that’s amazing. I spent a lot of time

on the Linux side with SQL,

spent a lot of time doing things with Linux from

containers and so forth.

But yeah, doing little cloud work right now actually kind

of a little bit of my focus in the last

few months,

so.

Very. I’m sorry, go ahead friend.

So I may

have the distinction of attending one of your last public

in person talks,

Bob. I was in the session you did delivered it

ready.

Oh

OK it ready. Yes in February?

Well it’s funny because I did the ready thing and

that was when the virus situation was all kind of

just just starting a little bit internationally.

And so I was pretty comfortable that ironically I went

to Charlotte,

NC at the end of February and I also went

to Charleston up to that.

’cause my son lives in Charleston,

SC. So I was there in Charlotte.

I did a little bit of an event there in

Charlotte and I did cover sequel 19 in Azure sequel

and so forth.

But yeah, it’s it’s interesting.

You are ready. When

I was there, OK?

Yeah, great session, great session by the way I I

so for those who don’t know ready is on.

I think if they’re if they’re an active listener of

the show that I did a couple of live streams

from ready.

Outside the building, ’cause it’s you know,

super secret of course. It’s an internal event for to

get field people ready for technologies that are coming out.

Yeah we even did a workshop there on if you

got a chance to be part of that but um

one of the things I’ve pivoted on over the last

year and doing more of it again this year as

well is making sure not just doing a talk where

I’m up there just bloviating on slides and just talking

about technology and so forth but some real hands on

stuff so you know we did a sequel 19 workshop

at the past summit last year it all on GitHub

it’s all out there and so we kind of did

a mini version of that ready very very popular ’cause

we were teaching people hands on like how to use

the new sequel 19 features how to deploy your own

container was the container what is all this kind of

stuff right.

Um, so we did all sorts of things like that,

and that’s a big pivot.

Now for me is to make sure what I’m doing

anything publicly or even internally.

You know, can I get that stuff on a GitHub

site and make it readily available so people can try

it?

That’s a fantastic idea and absolutely love all of these

ways.

We can now share code,

especially those of us who’ve been doing presentations for years.

It’s it’s awesome when you could stand up there and

talk like you said you could talk about it for

maybe 75 minutes.

There’s not usually enough time in a 75 minute slot

to have everybody open their laptop and work through this,

but it’s awesome, especially when you can put it on

these markdown sites like GitHub,

an Azure Azure DevOps. I’ve been using that a lot

now to kind of.

I’ve got some code in one location,

summon another. Love is that they can go through an.

I’ve started sticking the slides up there,

Bob Even so they can walk me through.

My slides are for me right?

All the notes are about say this then say this

then do that.

But it’s it’s incredible that we could do that.

and I know from experience just an watching you speak

at events like to pass on it that you did.

It seemed to me maybe I’m maybe I’m out of

line here but tell me it seemed to be you

focused a lot on.

On the clusters of the big data clusters in 2019,

yeah. I mean, it’s obviously

one of the hero capabilities

of SQL 19, so I talk about SQL lighting all

up like I’m one of the few people in the

team to just cover everything we do in the product

in 19, right? But one big folks have that in

my colleague Buck.

Would you spend a lot of time in this as

well?

One big focus of 19 is this big data cluster

technology.

This is radical stuff. This is like you know,

people are used to the SQL engine,

which is great obviously. But then all of a sudden

now we’re installing Hadoop,

were installing spark. We’re combining it with big data technologies

all in a Kubernetes cluster,

and people are like. I’m sorry,

what did you say? Hadoop spark Kubernetes that’s not a

sequel thing like?

What do you mean? So for us to come out

there?

And by the way, if you got a sequel license,

you just get this thing like we just allow you

to install this.

So that’s that’s one of the things I focus a

lot of time on is try to make sure we’re

still doing that.

We’re still trying to make sure we get the word

out that if you want to start building kind of

your own data Lake within your environment and incorporate these

big data technologies with SQL things like machine learning as

well big data clusters,

this is probably a good solution for you.

So yeah, that was, uh.

Big focus of 19.

Yeah, I will say

this is that I’m really impressed with the kind of

the thinking.

Is it in order to adapt to kind of the

big data world?

How much engineering is got into updating and improving?

Uh, and adapting to kind of this new,

bigger data world that SQL Server is done.

You know that big data cluster technology,

one

thing about it, the heart of it,

is that this technology called Poly base.

You probably heard of right?

And this? This is really us just kind of looking

at the landscape of the industry and realizing,

hey, we’d love for everybody to store data in SQL

Server like right ETL jobs and do all the converted

from all your data sources.

But the reality is customer saying I can’t do that

like there’s some reasons I really let it really can’t

even move the data.

So Poly base which started in 16 we just took

that thing exploded it.

We’re like, OK, now you can use Poly based access.

Anything you want. Literally with an odbc driver,

let the day to stay where it is,

but access it through like external tables in SQL as

that hub and then you know quite frankly customer said

like well,

I like that Hadoop thing,

but I don’t have a hoe to cluster laying around

were like OK,

will just install one for you.

You know, listens to do for you.

You just copy files in there,

like even petabytes of files.

And you just access them like tables and will just

make it scalable and

queryable. Pretty cool. Yeah, that’s awesome.

That mean that excites me,

because that’s, you know. As a data scientist Emil engineer,

you know, whatever you know,

you want to call Maine.

Although

keep it PG. Uh, you know.

I mean that excites me.

That kind of that beyond kind of the Relational Datastores.

And you know that SQL Server is definitely catching up.

One point is for those who are not familiar with

Poly base,

what would you be? Your kind of your elevator pitch

for Poly base?

Keep

the

data where it lives, access it through the language,

or use 2T SQL. That’s really what it comes down

to.

You know leverage or T SQL skills go access this

data.

Keep it where it lives.

Run SQL queries. Looks like a table results.

You know, brought back to you.

That’s really what it’s about.

Awesome,

that’s a great description.

I would also want to.

I want

to ask you a question.

How does this relate to what we’re seeing with synapse?

It’s a great question. Synapses,

a complete platform as a service analytics service.

There’s a lot of functionality that you see in synapse

today.

Looks similar to what you might see in big data

clusters,

right? But synapses just it’s completely in Azure Azure Service.

There’s also the power of SQL Server.

One thing about a big data clusters.

By the way, synapses, amazing.

I think that’s going to be really a powerful technology

for customers.

But one thing about SQL Server big data clusters is

it is SQL Server.

So like at the heart of this is called the

master instance.

So you can do OLTP on top of this thing.

So imagine OLTP hitting the SQL Server but at the

same time you running analytic queries on this thing against

all the Poly based data.

So it’s kind of a combination of the best of

the sequel engin and the best of Analytics.

An of course since it’s with Kubernetes we can support

this on premises for any customer environment they want to

be.

That’s one, that’s how I would kind of view it

a little bit.

That’s a good description. That’s good description.

’cause again at ready, I kind of took a closer

look at what synapses is doing and what it’s going

to do,

and it’s very impressive. It’s mind blowing in a lot

of ways.

Is that, you know, because in the traditional kind of

world you know you had your RDBMS World and you

had kind of your big data,

unstructured data world. But what I like is the engineering

thing about it was that it doesn’t have to be

that way,

right?

Well, synapse, it definitely is this.

It’s the next evolution of Azure Data warehouse,

right? So it is a warehouse analytic solution that’s it’s,

you know, hero, Target, and it’s all platforms of service.

So if you’re willing to move to platform service with

the cloud with large amounts of data and you need

an analytic solution,

it’s a great way to go.

I would recommend anybody go do that right,

but we had customers say like I’m not ready to

move to the public cloud.

I need to stay in my data center.

Plus I still need that SQL Server OLTP functionality along

with the analytics that you’d like to provide.

So so I definitely see them as complementary products,

but you know. Customers might have choices in both those

environments that may make the difference in which one they

would do.

But you know,

it’s interesting you describe it that way because I have.

Yeah, I’m a consultant. I have customers that are working

in the public cloud like you just described.

I have some that are working still running in datacenters.

I have some doing Azure stack and I have some

doing azure.gov.

So there’s, uh, as you are well aware,

there are subtle differences between all of those and Azure

proper.

Azure.com seems to be literally changing daily.

These updates that are coming out in new functionality and

what you described with even with Poly base.

I like the way you you know,

the way you put that.

Leave your data where it is because trying to move

petabytes of data right now.

and I know you have a new Microsoft has an

appliance to do this,

but the joke is what’s the fastest way to get

petabytes of data into the cloud?

And the answer is something like FedEx.

Exactly, just you load it onto these large disks and

ship it over,

and that’s awesome. That that’s an option and you know

the the major clouds all have something something like that.

My background is largely data integration,

data engineering, ETL, and you know I get clients that

approach me.

If it doesn’t know how do we lift and shift

our data an it’s often at least a two step

process if not three or four where you do the

big dump, you move it.

However, sometimes FedEx is the answer.

And then you set up these processes to slowly trickle

things in.

But my gosh, you’re right polybase just exploded and it

just gave us a whole slew of options.

Now for for moving data and it actually it made

my job.

It actually took some away from my load.

Bob because I don’t need to transform and structure data,

apply a structure or schema on,

read two data that was unstructured previously just to get

it into a relational database.

So that then we can use that for.

Microsoft analytics anymore you can hit that data like you

said in Poly base right where it sits in the

format it’s in I just said I just

had a customer reach out to me not long ago

saying look I saw your presentation on Poly base I

get the concept like the idea we have to go

hit an AS 400 that’s legacy in our company that

we can get rid of like AS 400 man I

remember those and so yeah I’m like he’s like How

do I do this that I go find a driver

and so he found it odbc driver and he’s got

it working so he’s using SQL.

As there in the cool thing about Poly base being

since their external tables is that your securables,

your security policies, your users,

they’re going up the SQL Server you set up control

to say is 400.

In this case they don’t even know they’re going.

It’s 400 and so well,

and so imagine this incremental migration strategy.

Now I told this person like,

hey, why don’t you do this?

You set up Poly base to this and then when

you’re ready to migrate,

put a view on SQL on top of your external

tables.

So whatever you call it,

right? So they’re accessing reports,

even power BI reports against the as 400 through SQL.

And then you could incrementally,

you know, move tables across so that at some point

the views just point to the local SQL tables.

But it’s an incremental migration now,

so we’ve seen customers consider Polybase as an incremental migration

strategy. Interesting, it’s just amazing that AS 400 is still

crucial to so many businesses exactly.

Yeah, even even in the private sector.

Or, you know, there is an instance of one governor

of the state asked putting out a plea for

Cobol developers. Yeah. Natural stopping grounded Frank.

It is it

is. It was

up your New

Jersey. I will make any negative.

I won’t make

any remarks at this point.

I’m an old Pascal, Fortran,

C++, C programmer from

the early days with Linux Unix,

so I will make any cobol comments here like I

took a global class in college because I had to.

I Luckily pass the course without getting kicked up by

my Professor,

’cause I made fun of this language so bad,

but. Ironically, my wife was a cobol programmer,

so we met at General Dynamics and so to this

day you know,

occasionally in a party she’s like.

Well, what do you? What did you use to do?

How to cause? Why did cobol programmer like?

I don’t. Ginger don’t admit

that. Don’t don’t don’t. And then

she laughed at me and said,

like hey man, during Y2K that was,

you know, that was a great job that people made

millions of

dollars.

programmer

Being

during those

a

time

cobol

frames, right?

That’s true, but there’s a lot of old code out

there.

We’re all friends with friends and acquaintances.

I don’t know Frank knows,

Buck Woody, but he’s a friend of mine and I

know he’s a friend of yours as

well. Bob and he has.

I don’t admit that publicly.

Oh OK, sorry,

sorry yeah that

out. He works with

me though. He is the I will

admit that he does work with.

Mike has a

He put a post out not long ago and it

maybe it.

Maybe it was long ago now I can’t remember,

but he said what’s another word for legacy code?

And you are Speaking of Cobol in the,

uh, the Fortran languages that you mentioned as well past

him.

Another name for

that is code that works,

and he’s still

working. If it works right.

If it

works, right, that’s right. Yeah,

my

I took a

cobalt class and it was not required but I took

it because I was in 1994 and it wasn’t too

hard to read the tea leaves that Y2K was going

to be a big deal but I never.

I never. Fortunately I never had to actually use it

professionally.

Wow,

that is good

for you. Yes, that’s good.

I too have I take a took a dim view

of the language.

It was just kind of like.

I mean, like you

know, I guess at one point,

when it was the only game in town,

it was

the best language there was.

No, it’s got a great history.

There was a great purpose behind why it existed and

where it exists and so forth,

but I just, you know,

and in college you know starting to already do like

Pascal and C and so forth.

I would look at this thing going.

There’s more comments than the code.

I mean, what the heck?

I could go write a piece of Pascal Code and

two lines and do what it took.

100 lines in Cobol

like this crazy, but anyways.

Well, I dream of

documenting code nightmare. Yeah, so Bob,

we have a list

of questions we like to run through with

every guest wear their cowboy Dallas

cowboy trivia is that

you’re going to its close.

OK, close. Really, I’m good at

that. I’m gonna del cowboy

trivia. By close, I mean now I’ll share this.

I have a lot of respect for the Dallas Cowboys.

Are the Redskin fan I liked.

And that fantastic coaches and the Redskins had Joe Gibbs.

And yeah, it just, you know,

there’s a lot of

mutual respect. Respect

big respect for

joke, exactly, and Tom Landry.

Oh my God, Oh yeah,

you know tremendous. The giant of there,

but that’s really it. I was just

throwing that out there. Not

my birthday since we’re talking trash about the Redskins,

I’ll say

two things, one. I know I I don’t have

skin in the game, my in laws are all Steelers

fans an I don’t really follow the NFL.

She’s a lovely lady anyway.

I really care about baseball.

That’s really my stay do too,

and

I’m missing it. Oh my gosh,

we have a brain stadium here.

We have a brand new stadium sitting sitting right now.

There’s a brand new stadium sitting 15 miles from my

house.

I grew up in Arlington where the stadium is so

this I could,

probably Kentucky. I went to the very first Texas Ranger

game ever played ever so 15 miles away.

Is this new stadium? It’s empty.

It’s just tragic. Yeah, we’re just dying to get into

it to see it with tractable roof.

We’re all going to survive during August when it’s 120

degrees.

We can go watch baseball.

And, Uh, Yeah. It’s just a tragedy.

With all of this that we can’t get into that

stadium.

But I’m a big

baseball person. Two huge into basement.

OK, cool, but you probably won’t like to hear

that. I’m a

Yankees fan, but I’m using this.

OK, OK, I would if I was

a Yankees fan. I admitted to man.

There’s no just like so.

I’m holding

up my hand representing

the Braves Atlanta Braves here.

There was OK. There you go,

yeah?

Well, we used to have

the love you

anyway here in Richmond. Thanks,

thanks Bob, I appreciate

it. I love you too man.

But yeah,

we no longer have the,

uh, the farm team, so that’s disappointing.

No, that’s a bummer. But yeah,

again, right now I’m like you,

I want to go see a AAA game,

Anita bad

hotdog. Go to a high school game I don’t care

what the game is,

I just want to go to us and look again

across the street right now.

Man, I tell you it’s the same here,

same. Right there and we have,

uh, I’m gonna jump

in our questions. Let’s see her have number one is

how did you find your way into data?

And would you describe it as you finding data or

data finding you?

I think data found me.

I mean, I took college courses,

you know, database systems, all that kind of great stuff.

Third, normal form of CJ date.

All those kind of fun things.

When I was out of college.

Not long out of college I work for.

I moved to a job for a local hospital chain

called Harris hospital chain here in the Dallas Fort Worth

area and they had this major project with IBM.

And my boss came to me and said Hey,

we think you should be the database guy.

So they through and get ready for this.

They threw inggris inggris. Was the database system in those

days with Unix said hey learn this inggris thing and

you’re kind of our DBA?

Like what types of

TV now? So

all of a sudden I was

like the sequel person for inggris systems.

Back in those days. So then I transferred to American

Airlines,

which you guys have heard of.

Obviously that company and they were like oh,

we heard you have this database background.

Can you go be the Oracle guy?

So all of a sudden inside mix both those like

can you kind of do Oracle and Sybase?

I’m like yeah I think I learned in those days.

Uh, but it was more of development work than DBA

were.

Of course we’re using Unix,

so weird everything, but I kind of picked up my

Oracle skills an my C and those kind of type

skills with database systems back in those days and in

the early 90s of I was kind of thinking about

a new career in the new gig an I happen

to be crazy enough at a couple’s baby shower.

I know this sounds crazy for my first son and

this lady who is a friend of my wife walks

up and said I heard your database guy.

I mean, that’s what I’ve been told.

I’m like, Yeah, well, there’s this company that I work

for called Microsoft and we’re looking for some people in

the Texas area that no databases.

And I’m like, yeah, I kind of know that,

but Microsoft are you kidding me?

It’s like a PC company.

I’m a Unix guy, not anything to do with this,

but that’s how it started.

So that’s how data and Microsoft found me at a

couple’s baby shower party.

And before you know what I’m interviewing,

I’m hired. And here we are 26 years later.

That was the big the big appeal.

Some Microsoft to me was hey,

you know programming. You know how to do development.

You know Unix, you know Oracle in these databases and

really well we need that kind of skill set.

We have this SQL Server product that runs on OS2

and I’m like Oh S2 what that’s for like my

PC.

What do you mean? And I’m like OK,

but that’s how I got my start.

So yeah data kind of found me.

I think a little bit.

Wow, yeah I saw that you been at Microsoft for

26 years.

That’s last October

by selling my 26 year anniversary.

I know it’s it’s really,

really, absolutely funny. One of my colleagues that works with

Buck is Anna Hoffman an you know every once in

awhile she throws in that gym when somebody says in

our will be in a meeting and so it says

Bob how long you been here in like 26 years

and it’s like yeah,

that’s longer than I was born.

Like I was born after you started oh so I

keep telling her you know that’s where

an old on me. No,

but even at the

Microsoft Office. At the Microsoft in Texas,

I run into that when we were in the office.

I’d be in the break room and somebody walked up

and they look really nervous to meet me.

Like do I even ask this guy like Bob Ward?

I’m like, hey, what’s your name?

You know there’s such and such and I’m like,

hey what’s going on there like I have heard you

been here for awhile like yeah 26 years like oh

that’s interesting they walk off I’m like son of a

gun. It’s ’cause they’re like 24 or

something, right? Wow.

Yeah, Anna Hoffman has some great videos on

SQL Server on. She’s good.

She’s Super Smart, Super Sharp and but yeah,

yeah. She unfortunately was born

after I started with the company.

So right, right. Crazy here

that with pride, wear with pride yeah,

wear with

pride exactly. Yeah well I computer name is going to

be

on the wall I

get it. Put it back on her she’ll say like

Hey Bob didn’t you forgot about this?

I’m like hey senior moment when I get to

use it all the time.

You know it’s gotta be

like the like. The Spiderman dialogue and in The Avengers

movie where he’s talking about these really old movies

like aliens. Oh, that’s right.

Right, that’s right, that’s right,

that’s right. Well, I’ve done

that to her before. Like hey,

what about the matrix and was

like what’s The Matrix?

Oh Oh wow, she’s finally starting

to watch some of them that we’ve kind of pushed

her a little bit to start watching these

these older movies, right? Well,

you gotta catch her up.

I mean, yeah, exactly. She won’t get the references

if she had watched

the movies, that’s true. Uh,

so, uh, what’s your

favorite part of your current gig?

That’s our next question.

Oman, uh, well, part of those meeting people at events,

right? You know? Honestly, it all comes down to translating

knowledge.

I love doing that. I love taking something really complex

and translating that in a way to somebody else can

understand.

And so I find myself working with so many different

skilled people.

You know, there’s so many people at Microsoft smarter than

me.

I’ll take my colleague Robert Door the other Bob.

Who’s been at Microsoft? Just as long as I have,

he could be the smartest people in the planet.

And when we get into a room in a white

board,

I’m like penny from The Big Bang theory.

Like he’ll get up there

and start drawing something and I’m like 5

answer. I’ve told this sort of people there like wait

a minute.

There are people smarter than you.

I’m like, Are you kidding me?

There’s lava Oaks. So many people are so smart,

but they love the fact that I will take the

work that they do and then translate it down for

the rest of us.

Like oh, this is what that meant,

right? and I love doing that.

We look at a sequel,

server 19. I wrote this book that came out last

year.

Sequel 19 revealed, and one of the things I love

doing was interviewing people on the team and then putting

them in the book.

OK, I’ve entered this person.

I would interview person about a feature we did going.

Hey, where did that start from and why did you

do it?

They’re like Oh well, OK and so then I put

that story in the book like here’s the origins of

why we did this and then talk.

And then I would translate,

you know again, what’s the feature or how do you

use it?

Why do we use it?

So I would say translating knowledge is something that I

just still just.

Whether it’s digital or being

in person, I really still enjoy doing that.

Frank were talking. Sorry, that’s OK.

Go ahead.

I always like those origin stories for features.

I think that’s one of the things that enamored me

with channel 9 when it first started was you would

get to meet the people like,

well, that’s why we made that decision.

Even if you didn’t agree with it.

You’re like, yeah, that makes sense.

I’ve gotta make it up at

anytime I write a book,

I always put those like whenever the Linux book did.

Same thing. I sat down with Lava Oaks,

the father of SQL in Dickson said why did you

do this?

What was the history here and he told me all

these fun stories which I put all that stuff in

the book and that is fun to do.

But it also gives somebody it’s not just to put

a story in there right is to give a perspective

on what was the thinking like.

Why did why would I use this?

Like why did you do it?

Did you just sit in a corner somewhere and thought

it was a good idea?

Like no no, we actually had feedback from people that

this is the right thing to do.

So polybase good example, right?

Like why do we do Poly base?

Well, there was thinking behind that people were telling us

I can’t spend all this ETL money anymore.

Like can you find a different way so I love

telling those kind of stories.

But again it translates into real value like why?

Why would you pick something?

Yeah, it certainly does an an.

I was going to share that Frank and I were

talking prior to you joining our session here.

An I was proud. Spoiler Frank.

I’m going to tell it tell which is just.

Frank says to Maine. Kind of in Jesse.

So this Bob Ward Guy is kind

of a big deal. And I don’t.

I don’t know when Frank learner

may have been at the ready where he you know

it’s ready conference internally where he realized that you were

who you were and we already we already been talking.

We’ve been talking for months about setting up this recording,

but it’s like, absolutely. and I was sharing,

you know, just my experience of showing up to the

room.

Summit, the largest room we have and you know I’m

5 minutes early,

which means I’m too late as a fire Marshall won’t

let me in.

There’s just too many people.

These rooms are packed an you do that very,

very well I I think that’s a That’s a gift

of being able to do that translation and be being

a good interpreter of taking these highly technical concepts and

breaking them down so even I can understand him when

I do get in the room so.

That’s just

one. Appreciate that. Well, I appreciate that.

One thing, though that does keep me going is to

keep the appreciate.

I’m humbled by those comments you just made and so

forth,

right? But I treat I’ll talk to two people with

the same as 1000,

right? I mean, for me,

I’m just like you. I’m just like everybody else.

I’ve been doing it for a long time now and

sometimes I have a name recognition thrown out there and

so forth,

and that’s all lovely. But I have people like my

wife to keep me humble.

Like nothing I don’t don’t get too big for your

britches here.

You’re not that good. But yeah,

I I really try to make sure I keep that

added to a healthy attitude that no matter who I

meet,

it’s a quality interaction with somebody to talk to.

Weather be on the phone or in person and that

person’s got skills that I don’t have,

that’s for sure. So yeah,

I appreciate all those comments and I love doing it.

But I always try to make sure I keep myself

grounded like there’s always somebody smarter than yourself right in

life.

Experience mine too.

I won’t speak for Frank’s Franks pretty smart.

Got you like you? Go to LinkedIn and Frank Scott

like I don’t know how many certifications are you up

to Frank, I’m gonna put you on the spot.

56 was earned last week.

57 is about an hour

away. I was going

to say you’re getting close to 50 right?

And here you are pushing 60.

Sort of. Yeah, Frank is very smart and he he

finally listened to me Bob about getting into into data.

I beat on it. It only took me about six

or Seven years talking in it.

It took the silver

light apocalypse in the Windows Phone apocalypse for me to

be

looking for a new home.

Yeah, we are dating ourselves

now around me. Frank

has a real knack for visualization.

But I’m I have a.

I have a real deficit for that.

Like if I walk into the room and there’s somebody

there that’s good at visualization.

I’m like a black hole.

I’ll suck some of their

power away. I’m that bad at it,

but

the moving data that’s funny.

That’s my thing. Data pumps atls ISD TS dating,

and you’re probably extremely good at it,

right?

Well, I enjoy it. I’ll

say it that way and I’m still employed doing it.

So I know about good.

I don’t know about you,

but I enjoy it so it works.

It kind of works out,

so we have three complete this sentence questions.

Kind of

this is PG though, right?

So yes,

please. What is that rating?

Frank Frank knows all of these things.

Clean, clean ratings on iTunes.

We want to keep that.

Yes, please. I’m not worried about that with you when

I’m not working I enjoy blank.

So

it’s got to be sports.

Um, Gosh help my wife’s not listening to this.

No obviously lot spend time with my lovely wife Ginger

which was amazing but sports is just part of my

nature and that’s why it’s killing me right now.

It’s like where are you going to watch reruns of

everything right?

But yeah, it’s sports playing it,

watching it, keeping up with it and I’m really,

really blessed. My wife played basketball so she loves basketball.

Both my boys were college baseball players,

their huge into sports so we talk about it all

the time.

But yeah it be sports.

So there is

a just while the pandemics going on in sports or

put on hold for now.

Watching John get his name wrong.

John Krasinski. I

think his name his daughter.

Yeah,

and he’s doing a YouTube show right now.

It’s only about 3 weeks old at the time of

this recording,

and in the third episode of this he had some

like sports substitutes,

annetts YouTube video clips from people.

Oh my goodness, just like us were all were all

into sports and they’re trying to make up for the

sports deficit.

And it’s some of it’s really funny and all of

its cool.

So it’s called softly reviews.

Yeah, will put it in the show notes and will

send you.

I’ll send

you a link.

I love that actor because,

you know, he was in the office,

which is one of the greatest shows of all time,

and he’s lately doing these Jack Ryan Series on Amazon

Prime.

So yeah, I really like that

after a lot and so

often they check that out.

I appreciate

that I learned watching this.

He’s married to Emily Blunt.

I did not know. Just you know,

have you seen the movie?

Gosh, what is it called with them together?

Not the

silence, the quiet, quiet, quiet.

Oh my goodness, I haven’t seen it yet,

but I’ve heard of it.

I did not totally. I will not tell you,

but I

highly recommend that movie. OK,

I’m gonna check it out.

Cool. So our next question is complete,

this another complete the sentence.

I think the coolest thing in

technology today is blank.

You know appropriately it has to be cloud,

because Can you imagine? Uh,

ten years ago, if we had this problem going on,

um, you know, I’ve got my wife who’s become like

this online guruve now helping she like on a daily

basis.

My health like 30 people in her church group and

so forth.

Do online things. Uhm, I don’t mean just like Azure

or even Microsoft or whatever.

But Internet and cloud technology.

I, I think people we’ve just taken it for so

much granted an and here we are in this situation

now where it is literally powering part of the economics

of the world. So to me,

that’s gotta be it, hands down.

Not totally agree this this would be a much deeper

economic impact.

It still bad.

It’s still awful.

It still crazy bad. It’s a crisis,

right? But if we didn’t have this,

I can’t even imagine 10 years ago being at Microsoft

and having this problem right,

where we’re all now at home.

It’s hard, it’s difficult, right?

But wow, I mean, yeah,

right hand and I would’ve.

I would’ve probably. That would have been my answer even

without this problem though,

because I think about my career.

Microsoft in the days of 0 Internet speed and zero

cloud type based things where I was working,

these massive lab systems all the time I would put

my boys down for dinner.

I would go back to the office at 9:00 o’clock

and work till midnight ’cause I didn’t have any access

to get to that stuff back then.

And you know, now I I just working from home

is kind of like a take for granted thing for

many people actually.

So I think that’s what’s amazing.

You know, it occurred to me as you were saying

that Bob,

that you started right around it must have been

around 1994. Is that 20?

Three was my Microsoft when

I started. Yeah, and I don’t want this is not

meant as a throw off on anything or anyone,

but I remember that I was working with Microsoft Tech

at that time too.

and I remember Bill Gates speech at the end of

twenty 1994 I believe.

Was mid December where it was.

He said something like, you know,

we’re going to focus on the web all of a

sudden.

If it wasn’t that you weren’t but that that kind

of started this whole Microsoft all in on the Internet

which emerged.

You know, that was kind of the great great grand

father to where we are with

Azure. Now if you even look back to the days

of the mid 2000s,

right when Bill Gates was stepping down as our chief

technology officer,

you know, basically, president of the company.

You know, Ray Ozzie. We hired a guy name Ray,

Ozzie and he came in,

and I’m other forget. I remember as an employee seeing

this email saying hey,

the future is we’ve been doing cloud services to email

and web browsing and that’s what I thought of it

back then,

right? But it’s like no,

no the future of Cloud Services is hosting things and

databases and web apps and so forth.

And this is pre Azure obviously.

But I remember hiring this person in this email and

I’m certainly like,

yeah, right, like anybody is going to get their database.

In a cloud, in what and so even back then

being huge seek I’m 10 years into the job 10

plus years.

I’m a SQL Server guru,

blah blah blah. I’m like you know what?

There’s no anybody going to SQL Server in a cloud.

An look at where we are right?

So yeah, it’s just going to continue.

But yeah, I I I gotta admit you know people

bash technology and rightfully people should be very skeptical of

technology using it the right way.

But if we didn’t have what we have right now.

It would be a very different story.

I totally agree with you.

You know we’ve had. You know,

things have significant things happened significantly in our lives.

I think I think back to where they are.

You know, early 2000s. I think back to 911 and

Frank if you if you get a chance Bob go

to franksworld.com.

Frank was there when that when that happened and he

has some amazing photographs he has.

He tells his story and.

I just applaud, frankly, we’ve been friends for how long

have we been friends

for 15 years? I

think something like that. Yeah,

that seems long. It seems like it’s been

15 years. It says you’re saying it

out when you sure when

you workout the math you’re like,

you know, do this minus this.

Carry the

one like yeah it is 15 years.

Back then, even you

know we talked about how we got through that time.

You know I lost the job as a result of

that and it was hard.

It was months before I could find it on the

job.

I know you’re right, Bob,

we could not, you know.

Certainly back then that was almost 20 years ago.

We certainly couldn’t couldn’t have done what we’re doing right

now.

I’m I’m working. I’m one of the fortunate people that

is actually still working.

I’ve got clients of I’m selling training.

In fact, I got a huge hit.

On on training in mid March I had more requests

for information about my training in March and probably the

second half of March that I did the entire 2019

year and that’s just leaving people were making that transition

and they were trying to figure out.

I think. OK, well, we’re going to send everybody home.

We got that and we’re going to do this remote

in.

We’ve got that, but for folks who were brand new

to this UI,

Frank, we’ve been doing this for years now so the

companies where it was brand new.

They had to kind of figure out what they were

going to do an.

A number of them at least reached out to me

and said I this week we want to do some

training and it actually worked out ’cause I was supposed

to be traveling the last week of March.

I was going to SQL bit the first week of

April an so I had time.

It just, you

know, I never have time in the next

2 weeks and all of a sudden I had two

empty weeks so it was just amazing that we could

do that.

And the truth is it’s almost the same.

As being in the room,

they can see me. If I want I can see

them and you know we can.

We can interact that way.

I can watch for facial.

I kind of watch for tuning out.

You know this, your presenter.

You watch for people to know you try to get

that group back ’cause you’re always going to lose this

group when you bring this group anyway.

It’s just been amazing. You’re absolutely right,

and I know. I I I I totally agree with

that.

The technology is good as it you know and I’m

sure it’ll get better.

But it we needed what we have.

I mean every every ounce of it.

We need all of the cycles and so thankful for

that.

Alright, one more thing. Another fill in the blank last

one I look forward to the day when I can

use technology to blank.

OK um

PG PG yes yes yes yes yes.

I don’t know if my wife will like this one.

I would say automate everything about my home.

And what I mean by that is I live in

three acres here.

I’m very fortunate to have some land here in Texas

where I live.

I still kind of in the suburb of the city

of three acres,

so have a home. I have some land and so

forth,

but have all this stuff and I realized that there’s

some of this does even exist today,

but it’s just not uniform.

I just want anything that has that has electricity or

an appliance to just have iot on it.

Man, like my phone. Like I’ve got I’ve got.

I’ve got lights down in the front of my property

down here I’ve got a little photocells sensor on it

so that they will go off during the day and

come on at night it’s not working correctly.

And you know, and it’s granted it still electricity.

You gotta wired and everything like that.

But why can’t the lights just come with that?

And maybe they do nowadays,

right? So I just want everything to have this uniform

iot nastu to it.

and I don’t want to be lazy about it.

I just wanted I just want to.

I want more sensors. I want more automation to help

me make things more efficient,

whatever that may be, right?

So I think that’s probably what I

look forward to seeing now I.

I concur on that one.

I would love the ability to.

Remotely check in on stuff and I mean a lot

of this stuff.

You can kind of build,

but I have reservations about

security. I

want affordable. Like Texas, you need air conditioning,

right? You have to have it so affordable.

Air conditioning units that literally have built in iot sensors

sensing before they go out with machine learning like it’s

all just built in.

So that way you get a little warning saying hey,

by the way, your AC unit is at a level

where normally what we’ve seen within two months it has

a problem.

That way in July it doesn’t go out at 110

degrees and I have to call somebody and pay millions

of dollars to fix it.

It’s like no no. Fix it now.

So what you do today is you pay somebody in

a predictive maintenance schedule.

They always just come out at the same time and

they look at it.

But but what if it was OK then?

But a week later it’s not something with your car.

Same thing with all sorts of things that you live

in your life.

Like I want more productive machine learning iot sensor type

technology built into all these kind of things.

Cool. Alright, so for let’s change it up now we’re

going away from the fill in the blank

model. OK, share something

different about yourself, but

once again remember it’s a family podcast different about myself.

You know what? I’ll just

say it and I’ve set up my books.

I am just a deep believer in Jesus Christ.

I mean, Christianity is a massive part of who I

am and my personality an what Anna code by live

by.

I’m not the kind of person to throw that heavy

on somebody.

I was just offered to talk about if somebody wants

to.

But my faith defines me.

It’s not just like a characteristic.

It’s like a foundation thing.

And so you know that is something that I’m proud

and happy to tell anybody about.

And it’s funny because I’ve met people before that have

seen me and met me personally and said,

OK, well, I can kind of get that.

And then I’ve got some people say like I didn’t

think you were religious person.

I’m like, well, that’s not it.

That’s not what it’s all about.

So I always just be transparent.

Look for those opportunities to share that message with anybody

I can,

but in a way that is,

you know. Reasonable and not overbearing,

but that’s I would say that’s number one thing I

would tell somebody about

myself. Cool, I think

that’s awesome. I mentioned that to Frank as well when

we were in the kind of the pre show.

I said I notice that in your kind of the

about me,

part of the book the 2019 books.

So an I didn’t it didn’t shock me but I

didn’t know and it wasn’t because you’re like

being a bad Christian. Well,

I’m I’m just saying it.

I

know that you know that’s the message the message is

is that the message of being a Christian is that

we’re all screwed up,

man. We all fall short so if anybody is out

there that is telling you that and putting themselves on

a pedestal,

that’s the opposite of the message.

So the messages is that it’s all for everybody.

We’re all screwed up’s. And I’m right there with,

uh, believe me, I get reminded all the time from

everybody I know you are a screw up.

I

don’t know I don’t know if

we’re connected on social media,

Bob, I’ll make sure we at least get on Lake

down after this.

But OK, yeah, sure. On LinkedIn,

I don’t usually share messages of faith,

although occasionally I do, but Frank can vouch for me

on Facebook and Twitter and now one of my kind

of repetitions things as I’m the worst center I know

and I got that from a a Kyle Idleman book

and it really helped me.

It’s called Grace is greater,

by the way, that’s awesome.

Yeah, he’s he’s a great writer I think.

Can you know lots of lots of cool information in

there to share,

so I’ll share

one other little fun little tidbit about me.

I am a college athlete from long ago.

An and people that see me,

although I’m trying to still lose weight these days.

I have run 2 marathons,

actually did one when I was 16 years old.

I was a cross country runner so that when I

was 16 when I was 19 and dumb so he

asked if it’s kind of a little proud fun moment

to have

is that it runs out of that.

Those are hard

so hard it was very hard.

That was going to die when I was done,

but I have a 16 and 19 back then right.

I recovered very easily. I couldn’t even come close to

doing that today,

but those are some fun moments back

in the past. That’s awesome.

So where can people learn more about you,

Bob? I don’t really advertise myself that much.

I am on Twitter. I really don’t want to be

on Twitter to be honest with you,

but it is a great neck.

I really just don’t like it,

but it is a great mechanism to promote what happens

at Microsoft and technologies.

So at Bob Ward, Ms is the Twitter handle and

then I’m on LinkedIn.

You can just look at Bob Ward,

Microsoft. I do like LinkedIn.

I do like sharing things.

I’ve tried to use LinkedIn is such an easy way

to do things right,

so I’m even trying to use LinkedIn to write articles

versus blog post sometimes require view,

review processes and all these kind of things.

So I’m even trying to use LinkedIn as a mechanism

to share technology information.

One thing I would promote that you can find information

about what I do if you look at AKA dot

Ms you may have heard that kind of a user

how Monica at Microsoft so AKA dot Ms.

Bob word Ms. You’re not going to believe this,

but if you go there,

it’s a one drive with presentations I’ve done for the

last 10 years.

My really whatever you can find you can go back

and find like inside memory talks.

You can find anything you want.

Is there all free just pull it and use it.

In fact I’ll make this bold statement.

Reuse it. Like I tell people that I’m I’m an

open source presenter.

So if you want to take a slide that I

built last year and a talk you don’t need my

permission,

just do it. Just go right,

just use it right. The other thing is AKA dot

Ms SQL workshops.

This is the brainchild of Buck Woody,

Scary thought, I realized. But if you go there,

if you go to and he’s the one that put

the HTML page together.

If you go there, it’s a link to it.

Would point to my presentations on there,

but it’s a link to our workshops on GitHub.

And so, how literally for free?

This isn’t built like a separate training team.

This is built by us in engineering.

There’s workshops on SQL 19 on big data clusters on

Azure on Buck.

In our data scientists and data science workshops.

So you just go up there and get her pull

this down for free and just do it.

We even told trainers when we would meet with them.

You’re allowed to take this and go charge people to

train with it.

If you want to, you can do that.

We don’t care, we just want people to use this

stuff right?

So if I had to pick two resources,

those would be things that I would ask people to

go look at an yeah.

Use him to your heart’s

content. Now that’s awesome. That’s awesome.

Will definitely have that in the show notes.

We we have a sponsor excitable,

and if you’re if you’re into audio books,

if you could recommend a good one or if you’re

into books aside from the course,

the ones who

have written.

You know, if you have any recommendations.

Reader, although I’ve had a little more cycles on my

time here since I’m not traveling so I can it

be any kind of book does it does have to

be a technical book or it could be any kind

of OK?

I just love the Tom Clancy Series.

Man I don’t know, I just I’ve always been a

big fan of the Tom Clancy Jack Ryan.

That whole kind of type thing.

And so I had read most of the older ones

when Tom Clancy was alive and so other people have

picked up that moniker.

I guess they’ve been allowed to do that and so

I started.

I started back again to go read.

The Tom Clancy Chronology of Jack Ryan.

When he was president and he had these other people

with him and so forth,

I don’t know. I just get I get a kick

out of those.

The other one that you’ll probably be surprised by is

there is nothing better in my opinion then going back

and Reading Sherlock Holmes.

I just think Sherlock Holmes can be the funnest thing

to all these little short stories of him solving mysteries.

And if you want to compliment that,

I would recommend watching the BBC.

A series called Sherlock. There’s many different Sherlock Holmes things

have been out there for awhile,

but Sherlock is Benjamin Cumberbatch,

famous actor and Marten, which Martin Freeman’s,

doctor Watson, and it’s a modern day.

Sherlock Holmes, right? So if you kind of into Sherlock

Holmes and you kind of like those mysteries and so

forth,

read the books and then go watch the BBC series,

which you can probably get on Netflix or wherever.

But yeah, I’ll ever every once awhile just kick back

and go read a Sherlock Holmes story and it just.

I love those

things. Very cool,

that’s cool. Well,

I know. So

if you go ahead. Sorry,

Andy Frank, I think you didn’t Tom Clancy live in

Maryland.

I think he

did live in Maryland, but I do remember reading the

hunt for red October and there is a whole section

on Fordham University. Oh, really,

is that where you at school?

Yeah, that’s why would

night, yeah? You know, I just probably about an effect.

I’m sorry what I remember that in the book ever

before him.

In the book, yeah, yeah,

yeah yeah, I was like I was.

Coming freshman, I’m reading

it like holy cow like this.

Avery

Dulles, who,

who, which Dulles Airport, is named for,

and he was. He was one of the early members

of the CIA.

His son converted to Catholicism and became a Jesuit priest

and taught it for him.

While I was there, right?

That’s interesting, wow, I mean he didn’t convert while I

was there.

I’m sure he was teaching

while I was

there. Did you take a class from the

world? No, I did not.

And you know, which is probably one of my many

regrets in my college years,

but we

don’t want to keep the Spanish.

Well, that might be one of them.

I’m a fan also

of Clancy’s books an I have not read the newer

the newer stuff,

but I was enough of a fan to remember executive

orders when Jack Ryan became president.

Yes, So what I’ve done is I’ve

gone back out on the Internet and read OK,

what’s the order of the books now that are there?

And my Public Library you can check out the E

books for free.

So I’ve got my little Surface tablet.

Then I’m gone back to executive order.

That time frame is kind of when I stop reading.

And I’m pulling down those and starting reading again and

they did their fund their entertaining fun.

They’re very, you know, action oriented and he tries to

give this behind the scenes of how the military and

the CIA and the government work and so forth.

You know people may not agree with some of the

stuff in there and so forth,

but it’s not too over the top,

and it’s kind of entertaining and fun.

But so. Totally agree, love

that I do recommend the

John Krasinski Jack Ryan series that he has done on

Amazon Prime.

He spent two seasons of them now and he’s an

excellent Jack Ryan.

Probably, I’ll probably get a lot of feedback.

Probably a lot of feedback from that now.

People will hear that like he’s not terrible.

Jack Ryan.

I think he’s really

good. I thought so too.

Was it you know the first one?

Of course Alec Baldwin played the first Japanese curvy and

he was he was raised a fantastic actor and did

a great job of that.

And because of that, you know it’s kind of like

anchoring when you talk about bias in machine learning,

right? Everybody like Baldwin. And shortly,

though I loved all the Jack rise,

I think

all of another job.

I mean, yeah, I’m not.

I’m not a huge critic.

I’m not a big movie critic person.

I just like to I’d like to be entertained,

right? Same here. So I can’t think of a single

Jack Ryan movie,

no matter who played it.

That I was entertained by I mean overall entertained by

them so that’s all I really care about

those OK I gotta ask this this off script who’s

your favorite character in those books.

In the books in the

book, there’s a Jack Ryan.

Or is

it another color? Stephanie Jack Ryan.

I love the Jack Ryan,

the kind of the kind of non please.

Kind of like a nonpolitical,

no nonsense hardnose guy who’s he’s smart.

He’s a very smart person but also not afraid to

get his hands dirty.

You know, kind of type

person. I mean I really resonate with that a lot

so that I of course I think I would put

Clark John Clark School.

He should be super cool.

Incredibly, super cool it is,

but my goodness and what was it without remorse?

Will they look just passed and he was he was?

He was a pretty

interesting, amazing and mean. Hombre.

Right? Yeah, you don’t wanna mess with that guy

absolutely well. Frank, Bob. I think

this has been a fantastic show.

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you and

I’ll speak for Frankie.

I know Franco back me up on this.

We we thank you so much for taking this time

out to come and be on our show.

My goodness, thank you. My

honor and pleasure.

Awesome absolutely. It’s funny. When I was in the audience,

if you talk it ready.

I was thinking to myself he would be great on

the podcast then I’m like.

Wait is that the guy

and he was talking to?

That’s funny, that’s why I didn’t come

up at the after your talk

and be like,

hey. I’m glad

you guys asked. I’m very happy to be on this

and I love getting a chance to again,

you know, communicate with the community,

talk about the community and I said I’m a normal

person so it’s kind of it was fun to be

on here and give

some interesting information about who I am personally.

So cool awesome, well you have a great day and

stay safe in pandemic and I will say now this

is the part where we say let the nice British

lady in the show unless Andy has any profound thoughts.

And now me profound. No thanks.

I want to I want to jump that today,

but I wear under

Bobby was our honor to

have you on

the show. Thanks again. Thank you.

Absolutely thanks Bob. Thanks. Thanks for listening to data driven.

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