I can't believe it's been 5 years... hello! (again)

Captain Jack Sparrow

Captain Jack Sparrow

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It's been a while, so it seems appropriate to re-introduce myself.

I've been a member for quite long time, but I took breaks from the forum. I remember a few names, like @Ian and @muckshifter. You guys have helped me massively in the past, and I am forever thankful for that! The most recent break was due to me attempting to exit the IT market, but here I am, pulled back into it after getting "head-hunted" internally. Perhaps this is my destiny?

Things have moved on massively since I was last here. I was always pro-on-premises with everything, but now it's all in the cloud! I have no idea how I'm gonna adapt, but I'll have to find a way. My new job is a full stack software developer, focusing on cloud native tools. It's a massive shift from what I'm used to, but this is the way it's going. AWS and Office365 will either be the making or breaking of me. Wish me luck!

My original gaming PC "The Black Pearl V3" still survives to this day. Yes, it's incredibly outdated, but the planned 2021-22 budget to replace my platform was diverted to other household expenses... everything now costs much more in the UK :cry:
But if I'm lucky, maybe Naughty Dog will fix The Last of Us - Part I, could a 2012 CPU actually run a 2023 game? I've been waiting 10 years to play this!

I'd like to think I've matured since I was last here, as I originally registered at a very young age. Outside of the technical stuff, I enjoy foam parties, marksmanship (with air rifles), and tenpin bowling. I'm not very good at the latter two, but I am the undisputed King of Foam in the south of England. I must have been to at least 30 foam parties in my 11 year clubbing career (and still counting!).

Well, I guess I've gotta get back into it. Thank you for reading. Also, if anyone else shares the same (weird) hobbies, let me know!
 
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Good to see you here again @Captain Jack Sparrow :D

Your PC has lasted well! I've still got a PC I built in 2012, which still works great for day-to-day stuff :).

How are you finding the transition to everything cloud? Do you work from home for the new job, or still have to be on site a bit?
 
Ian said:
How are you finding the transition to everything cloud? Do you work from home for the new job, or still have to be on site a bit?
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Very difficult to be honest. In my previous non-IT job, it was mandatory in the office. Now, I have the option to work remotely using a VPN. But for some stupid reason, I still feel voluntarily inclined to go into the office when possible. Probably to support my old team in person.

Cloud stuff is pretty foreign to me, as I built all my IT knowledge based on on-premises stuff. Call it silly, but I was really proud when I created my first ever PowerApps flow. It took 3h 30min to complete. I have managed to optimize it to 25min. Not ideal, but if it's good enough for the company, then it's good enough for me!
 
Yeah, I get that - nice being in the office sometimes too.

I've not used Power Apps before, but was just reading up on it and they've even integrated AI classification stuff in to it, so a little tempted to give it a go. Have you used the AI builder part before?
 
Ian said:
Yeah, I get that - nice being in the office sometimes too.

I've not used Power Apps before, but was just reading up on it and they've even integrated AI classification stuff in to it, so a little tempted to give it a go. Have you used the AI builder part before?
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Not yet, that’s way too advanced for me! My first PowerAutomate flow simply deletes everything from a SharePoint list, then gets data from an on-premises Oracle database, and writes it to said SharePoint list.

But there are nearly 12,000 records, and it was processing them sequentially. It took 1h 30m to clear the SharePoint list, and 2h to write the data back to the SharePoint list. Even if we scheduled it overnight, it just bugged me at how inefficient it was. I rewrote the flow to use batch processing, and got the time down to around 25 minutes for the entire flow, which is much more respectable.

With AI tools, I’m not sure if they would work very well with most of our data stored on-premises. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you have to design it with cloud components to fully take advantage of it.
 
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