C# Course - day 1

So last night was the first lesson of my C# programming course. So far, so simple, everything has been very basic and I've been cheerfully playing around with the stuff we have been given to do so I can investigate how stuff works. Slightly depressingly the teacher and I spent a little while together remembering how the increment and decrement operators work as she couldn't remember, and she seems a little vague generally on how things work - when asked about stuff thats not exactly what shes teaching shes not too sure about the answers - which isn't overly encouraging. Its only lesson one though, so we will see how things move along. Nothing I couldn't probably have worked out for myself yet, just simple take input display output kind of stuff, just working with the console. The interesting bit will hopefully come later, when we actually make a program that, well, does something interesting, as thats the part I'm just not sure where to go with.

Other things continue well. Wonderful fun day reminding me why Red Gate is awesome on Monday, and now only a week to my holiday. Getting quite excited now!

Progress

I have my own SQL server on my machine now. Frustratingly I don't really have the tie to try to do much with it as Zara is off and I'm covering her work. Managed a bit of a fiddle today and a small play with the Data Mining addin for excel which was the reason I got it in the first place. Tomorrow hopefully I will have time to try pulling a suitable data set from our sales db to see if it can tell me interesting things.

In other news, my budding acting career has died before it began as the filming I was supposed to be an extra for tomorrow got rearranged so they needed people today instead, which I couldn't do. Poo.

Have had some dashboard building successes over the past week though, developing both a new calls widget to give a breakdown of call status after downloading, and then a complete re-work of the sales activity stats and creation of a spreadsheet where the guys can see how they are doing. The sales activity one was pretty easy and is almost entirely built off the cube, aside from a couple of bits I have to enter manually (bits from systems that are totally separate and with the access I have now I can't integrate them - I think....just had a thought on that one). The calls widget has to come from the db via powerpivot as the calls data isn't in the cube. At the moment it doesn't really do anything special, but I'll see if I can improve this going forward. At the moment the manual link via the call generation is the only way to try to track downloads start to finish, so I'll be having words with the boys to try to see if I can get any halfway respectable data.

Current status

Just a quick one tonight, going over where I feel I currently stand with all the stuff I am trying to learn.

Excel - Very strong, though I would like to learn more about coding in VBA to make better macros

PowerPivot - So-so, I've got the hang of pulling data in from cubes, doing OK with calculated fields, though I am sure there is a lot more to learn. 

SQL - Have started to learn, and with it being a fairly high level language its generally not too hard to work out what a query does from looking at it. Able to make basic edits to queries created by powerpivot. Really want to improve this one.

C# - Currently no clue. Course starts next week.

Testing - even less of a clue. Have some books to read.

Business Intelligence stuff - again, have books. Have not started to read books. 

Tomorrow hopefully I will (finally) get a SQL Server installed on my computer. Soon I should get my replacement PSU so I can get my home PC working again. At that point I'll probably need to start setting an alarm to get myself to bed, as I forsee me getting way too absorbed in learning stuff and missing the fact its now 3am and I really should be asleep.

In the beginning...

So, I've decided I fancy keeping a blog to talk to myself about how things are going as I throw myself in at the deep end of learning new stuff. So, for anyone who comes across this and has no idea whats going on, or for myself in the future who has actually had a brain meltdown and forgotten, heres where I am now.

I started working for Red Gate Software just over 4 months ago as a Customer Service Rep. Since then I have discovered the wonders of PowerPivot, started to investigate into the intricacies of SQL and signed up to learn C#. I have the opportunity to choose between learning to be a tester, or going into Business Intelligence, which is, I think, the side that now appeals more to me (hence the blog title). Or, being Red Gate (who are awesome) I could probably decide to learn to do both.

Except my brain might explode.

Might be a risk I'm willing to take though - could be interesting along the way.

So, at the moment, I am collecting an impressive number of books on my desk, and at some point I even have vague plans to read them. I have been watching a series of lectures from Stanford University that will hopefully teach me the basics of Databases (and if I keep up with the actual course that the uni is running I can even get a little statement saying I did it, which would be cool - and hopefully not overly taxing). In 2 weeks I start my C# course, and a week after that I go on holiday, where I think I will not allow myself to look at any of this stuff. Its the first holiday I've had in 6 years, and I intend to spend it relaxing.

As a CSR, things aren't hugely interesting, I keep an eye on what the sales guys are up to, I put information up on the whiteboards, and I spend a lot less time doing it that I think they expected me to. This means I have plenty of time each day for more interesting projects, so I think a run down of what I have at the moment might be cool. Here it is:

• Develop a dashboard that provides at a glance information about the sales activity and results
• Analyse the sales figures over the past couple of years to try to find out what works and what doesn't
• Try to establish the sales patterns and how downloads then process through to become income.
• Learn SQL
• Learn C#
• Learn about databases
• Learn about Testing

So I have a fair bit on. I don't mind this at all, as its great to be learning stuff, and its wonderful being in the sort of environment where they encourage this.


I am getting really positive feedback and I think I have some amazing opportinities here, and hopefully will have moved into a Business Analyst role pretty soon. Theres one currently advertising, but I understand they are wanting someone who knows what they are doing, however after that they will be looking at getting a graduate in - which I could easily be in spite of lacking the degree part, thanks to being an internal candidate. That would be dinstinctly awesome. I feel like I'm suddenly starting to have career options opening up to me which I never really considered before, and its a really good feeling!

Enough for today. This week I've not got any major things to get done, but Zara (my counterpart) is on holiday so I'm keeping an eye on her stuff too, which is a little distracting. On Friday I get to be a film extra for a company ad campaign, so that should be pretty interesting too. Maybe they can manage to get a half decent picture of me!