Between the Columns

What breaks, what holds, and why.

  1. Moving Data Across Clouds: A Practical Pattern for Multi-Account AWS to GCP Pipelines

    AWS DMS can't write directly to GCS. Here's the cross-cloud CDC pattern that works — DMS to S3 to GCP Storage Transfer Service — and what to know before you build it.

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  2. Luck Opens Doors. You Still Have to Be Standing in the Hallway.

    A music major, a PowerBook 1400, a COBOL job posting, and an AWS call that changed everything. An honest look at what luck and merit actually mean in a long career.

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  3. AI Is a Tool. Treat It Like One.

    AI accelerates output but doesn't transfer understanding. Four practical rules for engineers and consultants on what to build, what to ship, and what to never put in a prompt.

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  4. CockroachDB Is Not a Drop-In Replacement for PostgreSQL. But It's Not Trying to Be.

    CockroachDB speaks the PostgreSQL wire protocol — but wire compatible and drop-in replacement are not the same thing. Here's what that distinction costs teams who skip it, and what it takes to run CockroachDB the right way.

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  5. SQL Server DBA to Cloud DBA: The Mental Model Shift Nobody Warns You About

    Moving from SQL Server to cloud databases like Aurora PostgreSQL or Cloud SQL requires more than technical skill — it requires a shift in how you think about performance, cost, and control.

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  6. We Cut Aurora PostgreSQL Cost by 78%. Not by Tuning Queries — But by Changing the Pricing Model.

    A high-throughput Aurora PostgreSQL workload looked healthy, but ~75% of cost was driven by I/O. Switching to I/O-Optimized reduced daily cost by 78%.

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  7. When Disaster Recovery Fails: A Lesson Every DBA Learns the Hard Way

    A real-world disaster recovery failure that exposed untested backups, missed RTOs, and the hard lesson that backups are not the same thing as recovery.

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  8. Why You Should Be Testing Your SQL Server Backups (And How to Do It)

    A backup that has never been restored is not a backup — it is a hope. This post walks through a practical approach to verifying your SQL Server backup strategy before disaster strikes.

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