I’m Kirsten Benzel, a relatively new DBA-Developer, a voracious reader of science fiction and nonfiction, a car enthusiast, and a soon-to-be photographer. My free time is usually spent (reluctantly) at the gym, cooking, reading, playing piano, or playing Xbox (I’m particular and only play Portal, Fallout, or Borderlands).

I graduated with a BA in Philosophy from Northern Arizona University in 2006, while starting with a large internet company in December of 2005. I’ve been working in a SQL-centric environment for just under four years. I worked under the Business Intelligence umbrella for three and a half years writing T-SQL to pinpoint audiences for outbound email campaigns; this is where I learned T-SQL. In March of 2011 I accepted the role of DBA Developer with our Internal Tools team. Prior to thatI’ve dabbled in other areas (Linux and Windows server administration, PHP, CSS, HTML – even a stint as a NOC Analyst) but felt like I really found “home” when I became proficient with databases. I’ve also been a SQL PASS lurker for over two years.

I was so excited when I saw that kSQL.net was available to register! As you can guess, kSQL is short for kirstenSQL which I think is rather neat. Plus, 4 letter domain names are hard to come by these days!

On a more serious note, I consider myself unusually lucky to have fallen in with such a talented group of developers. I’ve  learned so much in a short span of time but am still new enough to think code is “cool” so this blog will be sporadic updates of the interesting things I encounter.