FAQ

Here for your reading pleasure are answers to a few of the questions that people occasionally ask of me or Sean.

Who are you?

Hi, I’m Jen, and The MidnightDBA Star-Times is my blog. Here I talk about SQL Server and other tech topics, plus MidnightDBA news and SQL community updates.

I’m a SQL Server Microsoft Certified Master, consultant, and DBA. I own MidnightSQL Consulting and MinionWare, and am Senior Editor at MidnightDBA.com, where we create technology tutorials, articles, and the DBAs@Midnight webshow. In 2013, I formulated and produced the community-written book Tribal SQL. I’m a member, volunteer, and speaker for the Professional Association for SQL Server. I have presented at numerous SQL Saturdays, conferences, and online training events worldwide.

You can see my About page for more.

How do I become a DBA?

I’ve got a lot to say about that, so you’d better hit the “How do I become a DBA?” page.

So, like, you do a podcast or something?

Actually, we’ve got several things going on (see the About and Pubs page for more details on my stuff):

  • First off, we make training videos and publish them on MidnightDBA.com.
  • We also do a weekly webshow (excepting August) called DBAs@Midnight. Season 1 ended in July 2010, and Season 6 ended summer of 2015.   We live stream the filming  and host a chat at 11pm CST, Friday nights, on webshow.MidnightDBA.com.
  • We have a YouTube channel now – www.YouTube.com/MidnightDBA – that’s primarily for our Minion videos. But you’ll find some other things out there.

What’s up with the podcast not updating on iTunes? The videos are up on your website, but the last one in iTunes was from a month ago.

Well, the short answer is that Sean does ALL the video production, and he’s not very good at keeping up with updatin the iTunes feed. That’s actually the long answer, too, and it involves our podcast simply not showing up in the iTunes store. We’re sorry, we know it’s inconvenient…want to volunteer to fix it?

So, like, how much money are you making off of this whole MidnightDBA thing anyway?

Well first let me say I’m glad you consider us close enough friends to ask…I feel the same way about you! But the answer is $0.  We don’t have sponsors, we only sell swag through the Zazzle store, and any profits from that go to more site giveaways.  In the interests of transparency, I will say that we have good relationships with publishers and product vendors, and we often get books or items to review. Some we keep, and most we give away to you and the North Texas User Group.

We do make a living from our consulting business, MidnightSQL. And from our software company, MinionWare.

What IS “MinionWare”?

It’s our software company. We’re making stuff for data professionals. Like, Minion Backup (free), Minion Reindex, Minion CheckDB (free), and the SQL Server Management solution Minion Enterprise (90 day free trial).

Oh, okay. So why are you doing all of this MidnightDBA stuff, then?

Well first, there’s great value in teaching. We say, you don’t know a subject until you’ve taught it. Working through the wording and the details of even a basic topic enough to put on video or blog really flushes out what you do or don’t know. Plus, we’re creating an online knowledge store for ourselves; I can’t count the number of times I’ve gone back to look up something I blogged a few months ago, or pointed a co-worker to one of our videos.

Plus, you know, someday someone will offer us $100mil for the site, and we’ll totally be in the money.  Yeah, that’ll happen…

What’s up with Twitter? There’s a @MidnightDBA and a @JenniferMcCown…

I know it’s a little confusing. MidnightDBA on Twitter is always me. Sean is now on Twitter as KenpoDBA.  I made the MidnightDBA account originally just as a place to send out updates on blogs and videos, then I quickly realized that the Twitter SQL community is about much more than that. We update, we retweet, we joke, we Rickroll, we talk #bacon.  If you’re not there, you should join us.

Oh, and the @JenniferMcCown account is more my personal account. The two aren’t strictly separated, but I try to generally keep home life there.

The @MidnightDBA Twitter photo looks like a two headed person, is that really the case? Are you aliens?

Wouldn’t you like to know. (Question courtesy of @LadyRuna)

What’s that song you used to use in your blogcast, again? Is there a link?

The song is  “Crackalackin“, by Al Phlipp and the Woo Team. Unless you’re listening to one of the first few BlogCasts, in which case it’s “You Don’t Need an iPod” by Uncle Seth.

In Season 7, we’re using Jonathan Coulton’s Monkey Shines.

More questions?

Ask me: Jen@MidnightDBA.com

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