John Sterrett

One of the coolest things I learned is that only YOU define what success is for yourself. No one else’s definition of success matters. How others define success is worthless and has no merit. Just follow your own dreams and find your own success and happiness!

Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of our democracy. But right now, they’re under attack. Several Republican-controlled states have redrawn their congressional maps to give themselves an unfair advantage in the midterm elections. Now Virginia has a chance to help level the playing field. If you live in the Commonwealth, early voting begins March 6, and Election Day is on April 21. Vote YES.

@TheCUTCH22 If you start the season in Round Rock this season we will show up and root for you. Yinzers will always have love for Cutch.

💯Facts

Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees. $30 per seat per month. $1.4 million annually. I called it "digital transformation." The board loved that phrase. They approved it in eleven minutes. No one asked what it would actually do. Including me. I told everyone it would "10x productivity." That's not a real number. But it sounds like one. HR asked how we'd measure the 10x. I said we'd "leverage analytics dashboards." They stopped asking. Three months later I checked the usage reports. 47 people had opened it. 12 had used it more than once. One of them was me. I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds. It took 45 seconds. Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations. But I called it a "pilot success." Success means the pilot didn't visibly fail. The CFO asked about ROI. I showed him a graph. The graph went up and to the right. It measured "AI enablement." I made that metric up. He nodded approvingly. We're "AI-enabled" now. I don't know what that means. But it's in our investor deck. A senior developer asked why we didn't use Claude or ChatGPT. I said we needed "enterprise-grade security." He asked what that meant. I said "compliance." He asked which compliance. I said "all of them." He looked skeptical. I scheduled him for a "career development conversation." He stopped asking questions. Microsoft sent a case study team. They wanted to feature us as a success story. I told them we "saved 40,000 hours." I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up. They didn't verify it. They never do. Now we're on Microsoft's website. "Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with Copilot." The CEO shared it on LinkedIn. He got 3,000 likes. He's never used Copilot. None of the executives have. We have an exemption. "Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction." I wrote that policy. The licenses renew next month. I'm requesting an expansion. 5,000 more seats. We haven't used the first 4,000. But this time we'll "drive adoption." Adoption means mandatory training. Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches. But completion will be tracked. Completion is a metric. Metrics go in dashboards. Dashboards go in board presentations. Board presentations get me promoted. I'll be SVP by Q3. I still don't know what Copilot does. But I know what it's for. It's for showing we're "investing in AI." Investment means spending. Spending means commitment. Commitment means we're serious about the future. The future is whatever I say it is. As long as the graph goes up and to the right.

In all seriousness, this is the ideal outcome. Major League Baseball needs a salary cap system. For those who don’t know, ALL cap systems come with a ceiling, a floor, a tight range between the two, and, to ensure it works, expanded revenue sharing. Just like every other sport.

@_NoahHiles Nope, not even close. Only one World Series has a game 7 walk-off home run to win in the 9th. This isn't it. #MLBPlayoffs #mlb

This might go down as the best World Series ever.

Side bonus to Halloween. You get a yearly review on how the neighbors are raising their kids.

@way0utwest @redgate I ❤️ those legos. I am looking forward to seeing y'all at PASS

The @redgate office in the Redgate office

Happy birthday to 5x All-Star and 2013 NL MVP Andrew McCutchen! 🥳 To celebrate, we’re giving away this @Topps card! Repost and reply for your chance to win.

📢 SQL Saturday Pittsburgh is less than a month away! Join us Oct 18 to hear from experts like John Sterett, Leslie Welch, Kevin Feasel and more. Friday, Oct 17, catch a pre-con with a Data Witch on becoming a Microsoft Fabric Analyst. Register: sqlsaturday.com/2025-10-18-sql…

@MLB @Topps That Roberto card is 🔥🔥🔥

In honor of #ClementeDay, we have a Roberto Clemente @Topps Gilded card to give away! Repost and reply for a chance to win.

8/22 🤔’s from the Burgh 🖤💛 Thank you Pittsburgh! 🏴‍☠️⚔️🏴‍☠️ I woke up this morning with a strange feeling I’d been here before. 🤔😎😂 I was cared for and challenged in my 9 years here in Pittsburgh. It’s a city built on hard truth and trust. Pittsburgh has uncompromising standards and warmth. It’s built on challenge and care. Hard truth needs to be shared. Hard truth may not always be easy, pleasant or convenient. That’s what makes this city “Worth it!” We did not get to where we wanted to go however we’re able to rebond a city with its baseball team. It was an honor to be your Manager. Thank you to all I was able to work with in my years here. Thank you!🙏 Love Clint

I'm opening the availability for house concerts again for a few months! If you've been ever thinking about hosting one, now is the time to reach out! Send me an email using the link below to let me know that you're interested. I'm excited to start the conversation! I look forward to sharing my heart and music with you! Email me: beckah@beckahshae.com

My motivational tip of the day - to achieve success you must have confidence in yourself! ⁦@ESPNPR⁩ ⁦@TheMontagGroup⁩ ⁦@WSB_Speakers⁩

The problem really was DNS, this time.

Talk to people whose ideas you don’t understand. Take them seriously. A fool relies on straw man caricatures of their opponents’ arguments so they never have to feel seriously challenged, so they are never faced with the confusing possibility of having to consider two things that might both be true.

@Travis_Sawchik IMHO, a salary cap with a floor and ceiling like all the other professional sports have would make the MLB 100 times more competitive than any possible realignment.

Polling + Geography = a compelling MLB realignment

I've been pushing for radical realignment since Jan. 2017. Let's make it happen MLB: blogs.fangraphs.com/what-would-a-p…

@drsql I have included it a few times in my weekly newsletter at @procuresql but I am sure you can thank @BrentO as he showcased you in his newsletter today.

I don't know who opened the floodgates, but yesterday I was getting excited that after 2 months, my drsql.link site was going to hit 1K views. Less than 24 hours later, 2 of my posts (including an editorial about why I blog) hit > 1K and 6K for the site. Crazy!

Who knows MySQL? Is this still a thing?