Memo to myself: Do the dumb things I gotta do.

[gement]

I was in continuous motion for over 12 hours yesterday, 6:30 to 6:30. I seem to be getting an awful lot done. I know some of that's hypomania from adrenaline, but I hope some of it sticks. I even bought foods and a vegetable steamer! More running like a mad thing today. I won't touch down at home until bedtime.

So it turns out I'll be significantly more employable at what I really want to do if I become brilliant at SQL. (This is not actually new news.) Unfortunately, I am pretty crap at the usual programmer development path of "just pick a project you feel like needs doing and start doing it." I need more structure, and other people with user demands, and I'm much more inspired by fixing and optimizing than starting from a blank slate.

So! Ideas about how this could work:
I could find an Open Source project and actually provide work on it.
I could find an Open Source project and make a copy to poke around at in a noobish fashion to see what happens.
I could start on something that someone needs from scratch, but that they already know what they need.*

The problem is, the phrase "find an Open Source project" involves learning the language of a whole new community before I even know how to look for projects. So I could use the following sorts of pointers:
Specific possibly useful projects
Where/how to surf needy projects
Some kind of community (blogs, message boards) where people talk about the nuts and bolts of participating in projects, so I can surf from that knowledge to better options
Quick advice on how not to piss people off like a noob.


*I should not be used for anything critical, as I have a whole 40 hours class experience on SQL and related things. I'm really good at it within my limited experience, though; it's exactly my kind of logic problem. I could at least get you some kick-ass qualitative diagrams of how a good system should be structured down to the field level, even if I don't have the hang of all the implementation.

Now off to PT and then a networking lunch and then an interview workshop and then a date and then home, with stops in coffee shops to find three jobs applicable to my experience. Current count: 0. Argh.

On the bright side, yesterday I had a chiro appointment and a shrink appointment and visited the WorkSource office and hit Goodwill and Ross for scads of clothes (16 lovely collared shirts, 3 slacks, and a tie, plus under-tees and socks) and had lunch downtown and worked in coffee shops twice and scheduled to see a bunch of people and bought a vegetable steamer and had dinner with sistawendy and bought grains and scouted a pet store.

Comments

[tylik.livejournal.com]

You might also look into volunteering at an academic lab - a lot of them use SQL, and generally need more geeky folks to keep it in line.

Hm... BHI might be a decent point of contact.

[gement.livejournal.com]

If BHI is an individual, I'm missing the reference. BHI at UW? Neat. If you have any particular contacts you'd recommend I talk to, rather than cold-calling the front desk, I'd be grateful. (Contact info in my top post if you don't already have it.)

[tylik.livejournal.com]

Well, for certain sure don't just call the front desk. Go to the web pages of various faculty members and see if they're doing something interesting and sound like people you'd want to work with. Then write them directly. (And don't be shy - you're basically saying "hey, I'm a person with real world skills, and I'd like to work for you for free" - labs love volunteers.)

I'd be happy to introduce you to Valerie, the PI of my former lab - don't know where they are on SQL projects right now. They have a huge database. If Andrew is still there, they have a SQL demi-god - but he might be finishing up. It's a pretty solid group, generally.

(I'm also wondering about the clinical side... y'know, biomedical informatics might be a pretty useful area to get acquainted with careerwise generally.)

[gement.livejournal.com]

Thanks. This is a new skill set for me, so thanks for explaining it in small words.

[gement.livejournal.com]

Cool! I'll probably have a surf through the lab pages and then inquire with you. If you know a particular group that could use me, of course, I'd also appreciate a more direct pointer.

[gement.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much. I was hoping you would ring in. What you're saying all matches what I'd expected.

So the things people like me do with SQL are either:
1) Design a system from scratch because holy crap we've got stuff and need to be able to find it, or
2) Take our existing heap of data and refine or maintain it.

The bare bones would be the ability to query the existing database directly instead of flapping my hands at an engineer every time I need a new cross-section of data. Predictably the bare bones of what is easy to *learn* is exactly the opposite.

Currently I have rudimentary write-only knowledge of SQL. I can set up fields and hook them together, and I understand about keys, and I know when something's normalized or not, and I might even be able to set up a form that you use to enter stuff in fields. (I also have similar experience with Access.)

Aaaand I might be able to manage a basic union retrieval command.

[nindar.livejournal.com]

I can recommend "The art of SQL" as a really good book to get you thinking about databases. It isn't good for "here is how to write a select statement" but it covers a lot of the meta stuff very well.

You are welcome to borrow my copy.

[gement.livejournal.com]

That would be appreciated. Could you email me with when might be good to get together? Also with how I know you? :D

[eeyorerin]

Touch the puppet head!

[annissamazing]

I know nothing about SQL, but I wanted to tell you the check's in the mail and I'll see you in church and don't you ever change.

[artdreams1.livejournal.com]

I'm with 'nissa on this.
I would also ask, "is that pronounced 'skewel' or do you throw an 'r' in as well and make it 'squirrel'?

you're sounding good, kid.

[gement.livejournal.com]

Sequel! And thank you!

[caladri.livejournal.com]

Most open source projects are pretty bad at offering structure in general. The big exception to this is when projects participate in the Google Summer of Code, where Google mandates a set of deadlines and metrics to be used to measure success, and success determines how much Google pays out to the host organization and to the student. (And in turn mentors tend to mostly self-select for being able to provide that kind of structure.)

Do you want to find a project where you're doing standalone SQL work, or is there a particular programming environment that you would like to use SQL with?

As far as structure and having clear user demands, I've always found doing projects for friends pretty helpful. I might never finish, but I'll probably get at least something done.

If you can find a research group or something like to work with, that might be even better, as large numbers of scientists know how to gather lots of data and maybe even look at specific properties of data, but know little about information management and working with databases, and so it's easy to have a big impact there. I wish that corivax's old lab still had funding, since if those projects were still ongoing, I'd have some pretty concrete suggestions of easy SQL things you could help with that would contribute to fairly groundbreaking research.

[gement.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'm starting to see a trend in the advice here... I think that's a good thing.

My programming experience consists of being able to squint at C++ and at Ruby. (I've done some rudimentary stuff in both, as well as some C derivatives like Matlab.) I am not the go-to person for creating the interface to the web app or whatever, but I'm very good at providing input specs for the person who is, and apparently have a knack for asking the right questions.

Boo on Corvi's lab losing funding. Can you think of any other sexy researchers I should contact? I'm spitting distance from UW, in particular, but would happily work with people remotely as well.

I Haz a Prawjekt!

[tcepsa.livejournal.com]

I'm kicking around a project in the back of my head that I could use some help with getting the database set up; I have a fairly good idea of what I want as a big picture, but I'm still fuzzy on the specifics of how many tables and which fields would go in each one, etc. If you're interested, let me know!