Life this week is all about learning to be the system administrator for the main piece of software that my library uses.  And all of that learning is taking place in Syracuse.  Yesterday, I learned some big picture things about the software design and saw some demos of things I use on a regular basis.  I definitely learned, and it was a good day.

The best part of it wasn’t what I actually learned though.  It was awesome to spend time “learning” things that I’ve figured out on my own in the last three months.  The day-to-day at work can feel like one big stumble in the dark.  Figuring out that my stumbling hasn’t been so disastrous was nice.

Today was all about code.  There’s this one specific language–Structured Query Language–that is used left and right in the software in question.  It’s almost English, but it’s one of those things that requires commas in exactly the right spot and very specific commands and lots of other stuff that makes you crazy if you don’t know the rules.

I learned a few of the rules in grad school and a few more of the rules over the past months.  Mostly, it’s been more of the same stumbling.

Then there was class today.  I understood what the instructor was talking about.  I mean, I truly knew what he was doing.  Seven and a half hours into writing code, my brain did feel like it was going to explode.  But still.  I knew what was going on.  It was incredible.

Other stuff was good, too.  I got a whopping 9 hours of sleep last night, I plan to get 9 more hours of sleep tonight, and I’ve been hanging out in the middle of tons of snow for two days.  I’ve been eating tasty free (to me) food, and one of my favorite people got engaged tonight.  Her headline should really go way ahead of the happiness I derived from coding.  But I don’t know enough about her story to write 402 words about it.  I just know that she’s happy, and that makes me happy.

So on that note, I wish you a deep-seated kind of happiness tonight, too.  I wish you understanding at your job and rest in your non-job.  It’s a good combo.  And I wish you happiness via friends and loved ones.

In case you’re dying to see some of the awesome code I was talking about, enjoy this…

select
CIR.Barcode,
MT.Description as [Material Type],
I.Description as Status,
CIR.LifetimeCircCount as [Item Lifetime Circ],
PR.PatronFullName as [Last Use Patron],
Oz.Name as [Last Use Branch],
BR.BrowseTitle as Title
from CircItemRecords CIR with (nolock)
inner join MaterialTypes MT with (nolock)
on (CIR.MaterialTypeID=MT.MaterialTypeID)
inner join ItemStatuses I with (nolock)
on (CIR.ItemStatusID=I.ItemStatusID)
left outer join PatronRegistration PR with (nolock)
on (CIR.LastUsePatronID=PR.PatronID)
left outer join Organizations Oz with (nolock)
on (CIR.LastUseBranchID=Oz.OrganizationID)
inner join BibliographicRecords BR with (nolock)
on (CIR.AssociatedBibRecordID=BR.BibliographicRecordID)
where CIR.MaterialTypeID in (3,4)
and CIR.ItemStatusID in (7,8,9,10)
and CIR.LifetimeCircCount <5
and CIR.NonCirculating=0
order by CIR.Barcode