[UPDATED] In March 2026, our production messaging-database cluster started crashing again. Same exception code as the incident we resolved last year (0xc0000005, Access Violation), but a different stack signature, different servers, different cloud, and ultimately a completely different root cause. This time the bug wasn't in SQL Server. It wasn't in the storage drivers. It wasn't in our queries. It was in something we'd never have suspected without comparing the crashing ser

On public speaking, the age of AI, and why I finally stopped making excuses. There's a photo of me on a conference room screen. Batik shirt, arms crossed, smiling — probably more confident than I actually felt in that moment. "AI-Enhanced CI/CD Workflow for SQL Server, Renz Bagasbas, Senior Database Administrator." I stared at that slide for a few seconds before I walked up. Took a breath. And then I spoke. That probably sounds like nothing. For a lot of people, it is nothing

[UPDATED] There's a principle that stuck with me recently. The core idea was simple: stop describing what you want to build — start building it. If you can explain what you want clearly enough, AI can build it. But the catch is that "clearly enough" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Without structure, AI coding tools produce confident-looking output that quietly falls apart. They ignore your conventions, invent patterns you didn't ask for, and generate code th