{"id":168,"date":"2017-04-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sqlhammer.com\/ding-level-4-epic-life-quest"},"modified":"2026-03-18T21:52:51","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T21:52:51","slug":"ding-level-4-epic-life-quest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/2017\/04\/03\/ding-level-4-epic-life-quest\/","title":{"rendered":"Ding Level 4 in My Epic Life Quest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sqlhammer.com\/mvp_logo_horizontal_preferred_cyan300_cmyk_300ppi\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.sqlhammer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/MVP_Logo_Horizontal_Preferred_Cyan300_CMYK_300ppi.png\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I am extremely excited to announce that I have achieved level 4 in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sqlhammer.com\/my-epic-life-quest\/\">My Epic Life Quest<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p>Over the last year I had been reminding myself about my own epic life quest. I felt like I had drifted from my path and need to reevaluate my quest. I never got around to readdressing my quest because I was so busy running the <a href=\"http:\/\/fairfield.pass.org\/\">FairfieldPASS<\/a> SQL Server user group, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sqlhammer.com\/community\/\">speaking<\/a> at SQL Saturdays and other user groups, blogging, and working to elevate the Database Operations team I run at Subway Franchise World Headquarters. I cautioned myself with the words of Ernest Hemingway.<\/p>\n<p>> Never mistake motion for action \u2013 Ernest Hemingway<\/p>\n<p>And then\u2026\u00a0I was granted\u00a0the <a href=\"https:\/\/mvp.microsoft.com\/en-us\/PublicProfile\/5002574?fullName=Derik%20%20Hammer\">Microsoft Data Platform MVP Award<\/a> and was reminded that I was not spinning my wheels.<\/p>\n<p>I thank the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/search?q=%23sqlfamily&#038;src=typd\">#sqlfamily<\/a> and everyone who has helped me grow. Those who taught me that teaching was an essential part of the learning cycle. I look forward to many more years of sharing and learning from my brothers and sisters of the SQL community.<\/p>\n<p>It is easy to see that there are not five bullets, the required amount for me to level up. I felt that the MVP award was large enough of an achievement and required a large enough piece of myself that it merited a level.<\/p>\n<h2>Level 4\u00a0Quests (Completed before Apr. 1st, 2017)<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Be granted the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Award for the Data Platform. (Completed on April 1st, 2017)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Hit 150,000 life time views to my site. (Completed before Jan. 1, 2016).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This goal was achieved and then, while I was not looking, the site reached 280,000 life time views by April 1st, 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am extremely excited to announce that I have achieved level 4 in My Epic Life Quest! Over the last year I had been reminding myself about my own epic life quest. I felt like I had drifted from my path and need to reevaluate my quest. I never got around to readdressing my quest [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,6,7,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tsql2sday","category-administration","category-career","category-community","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":430,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions\/430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}