01 Dec 2021
By Allen
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Retire Early, Find Purpose (Part 2)

Retire Early, Find Purpose (Part 2)

Featured, Ministry, ,
In Part 1, I talked about retiring early. It is a matter of planning, math, and a little psychology of delayed gratification.  Now, the work of finding your purpose takes some introspective digging with questions like: If you knew you could not fail, what would you do? If money was no object, where would you invest your time and energy? What accomplishment are you most proud of and why?  How or where could you do that again? What is the one thing you cannot NOT do? Each of these questions is a variation on a theme of finding what drives…
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12 Mar 2021
By Allen
3 Comments
From Software to Seminary

From Software to Seminary

Featured, Ministry, , ,
It started in 1979 with "Hello World." I was a kid learning Basic to program a text based adventure game on a TRS-80 and I was hooked.  I wanted to take a game apart and make it better, so I did.  I learned programming and ended up having a pretty good career in IT, focused on database systems and business intelligence.  Now, 42 years later, it is time for a new adventure. The industry has changed a lot in those years.  Back then we learned programming BASIC by buying magazines at Radio Shack.   The magazines were full of pages of…
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11 Oct 2019
By Allen
Rowing as Teamwork in Action

Rowing as Teamwork in Action

Featured, Uncategorized
I just completed 12 weeks of rowing with the OU Corporate team 'Row U' which culminated in a 2 minute, 500 meter race. While I did learn a lot about rowing my first crew season, I learned even more about teamwork. The twelve weeks were spent teaching the basics of rowing. For me as a landlubber, that meant starting with terminology like what is 'port' and 'starboard', 'bow' and 'stern', and seating order in the boat. Rowing is more than just arms rowing a boat.   Our coach, Carolyn, helped us each learn and work on our personal rowing technique.   She…
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28 Apr 2015
By Allen
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Want to Be a SQL BI Consultant?

Want to Be a SQL BI Consultant?

Business, Downloads, Featured, , ,
  At the February meeting of the OKC SQL User Group, I presented a session on what it takes to become a consultant. After having done consulting for 8 years, I've learned a few things the hard way and still made a good go of it. Here is that presentation for download. [download id="870"]   This download does not constitute any legal or accounting advice.  By downloading you assume all risk for yourself getting into business, after all, that is part of being an entrepreneur. Best wishes in all your endeavors. Allen
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08 Oct 2014
By Allen
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Time Value of Data

Time Value of Data

BI/DW Projects, Featured, , ,
The concept of 'Time Value' of data and the associated costs of data are a segment of the 'BI Basics' session which always brings up a lot of discussion at SQL Saturday.  Here, I will expand on the discussion and hope you will join in below.  This session was given at SQL Saturday in Oklahoma City and Kansas City and can be downloaded here. My background is in economics with a good bit of finance thrown in. In Economics, we often look at markets in terms of supply and demand curves. In Finance studies, the 'time value of money' is a…
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