Sabbatical

  • Ben Westfall (1/9/2014)


    Learn to fly!

    http://www.aopa.org/Pilot-Resources/Learn-to-Fly

    -Ben

    Afraid of heights. I don't like big planes, and don't get on little ones.

  • Steve Jones - SSC Editor (1/9/2014)


    Ben Westfall (1/9/2014)


    Learn to fly!

    http://www.aopa.org/Pilot-Resources/Learn-to-Fly

    -Ben

    Afraid of heights. I don't like big planes, and don't get on little ones.

    Hey, but maybe learning to fly would help with the fear of heights and dislike of planes.

    I can relate to the fear of heights. That's why I stopped growing, my brain decided that 5 feet was far enough off the ground :w00t:

  • Steve Jones - SSC Editor (1/9/2014)


    krowley (1/9/2014)


    No ideas on what you should do with your time but I would LOVE to see you solicit a bunch of editorials and articles from your community of readers to run while you are gone. I am sure there are at least 30 of us who would jump at the chance to write one editorial article for the newsletter.

    You are always welcome to write one.

    I'll put out a call

    If I am welcome to submit something maybe I will write it up and send it to you.

    I am really interested in the intersection of "data" and the "real" world. Ways of using small embedded sensors and network connected devices to improve our lives etc. Give the proliferation of this field at the recent CES there should be plenty of material out there.

  • hcDBA (1/9/2014)


    :arrow:Here's an idea for you that would benefit you, your family, and your friends as well.

    Learn more about taking good care of our bodies. I mean learning more about how much damage we cause our bodies because of the food we eat, the liquids we drink, and anything else that goes into our bodies, like the soap we use, the lotions, shampoos, conditioners, sunscreen, deodorants, etc. - literally anything that gets absorbed into our bodies. We SQL Server guys are always looking to improve our databases, servers, etc. - so why should we not want to improve our bodies and make sure they are operating as efficiently as possible, while minimizing the possibility of "crashes" or "downtime"?

    Our bodies are so amazing and complex, and they can overcome so many attacks by foreign substances every second of every day (kind of like how we try to prevent our systems from getting hacked). But what happens when our bodies are overburdened by all of the bad stuff out there?

    I've been doing a lot of research recently in my free time because my wife was diagnosed with something "with no known cure", but I have come across people who have recovered naturally, by eliminating toxins and allowing the body to heal itself because it was able to regain its normal function after the constant bombardment from these toxins stopped (because of the people changing what they ate, drank, and other things they put into their bodies).

    Leaning more about this stuff will really change your life as well as those you care about!

    So if you weigh this sabbatical option against others, ask yourself what would give you more benefit - learning something that can potentially improve your overall health (and your family's health as well, and whoever you wish to share this with), or some other sabbatical option that you are considering?

    (Even prior to my wife was diagnosed, my interest in this was piqued after watching a couple of documentaries on Netflix - "Foodmatters", "Food, Inc.", and a few others as well.)

    Best wishes on your sabbatical! 😀

    Hmmm, good idea.

  • dwhitley (1/9/2014)


    3) Build the next Candy Crush or Farmville to take control of people's free (work?) time

    LOL, if only I had a good idea here. I'd probably spend 4-5 weeks getting my C# skills back in order though.

  • hcDBA (1/9/2014)


    :arrow:Here's an idea for you that would benefit you, your family, and your friends as well.

    Learn more about taking good care of our bodies. I mean learning more about how much damage we cause our bodies because of the food we eat, the liquids we drink, and anything else that goes into our bodies, like the soap we use, the lotions, shampoos, conditioners, sunscreen, deodorants, etc. - literally anything that gets absorbed into our bodies. We SQL Server guys are always looking to improve our databases, servers, etc. - so why should we not want to improve our bodies and make sure they are operating as efficiently as possible, while minimizing the possibility of "crashes" or "downtime"?

    Our bodies are so amazing and complex, and they can overcome so many attacks by foreign substances every second of every day (kind of like how we try to prevent our systems from getting hacked). But what happens when our bodies are overburdened by all of the bad stuff out there?

    I've been doing a lot of research recently in my free time because my wife was diagnosed with something "with no known cure", but I have come across people who have recovered naturally, by eliminating toxins and allowing the body to heal itself because it was able to regain its normal function after the constant bombardment from these toxins stopped (because of the people changing what they ate, drank, and other things they put into their bodies).

    Leaning more about this stuff will really change your life as well as those you care about!

    So if you weigh this sabbatical option against others, ask yourself what would give you more benefit - learning something that can potentially improve your overall health (and your family's health as well, and whoever you wish to share this with), or some other sabbatical option that you are considering?

    (Even prior to my wife was diagnosed, my interest in this was piqued after watching a couple of documentaries on Netflix - "Foodmatters", "Food, Inc.", and a few others as well.)

    Best wishes on your sabbatical! 😀

    Thumbs up from me on this hc. I, too, have seen some amazing things that people were able to accomplish when they cleaned up their diet, drank plenty of water, organic coffee enemas to cleanse the liver (lol, yep, it works), etc. And I'm not talking about just feeling better and losing weight. I'm talking about reversing serious diseases. Everyone else won't even believe the people I've seen walk away after they were given 3 months to live, so I'm not even going to talk about it.

    More people should be involved in self-medical care and alternative/integrative medicine IMO. It's really about taking better care of yourself. There's *way* too many people living a difficult life and/or dying these days because they simply don't know what to do to help themselves. And they don't believe it when they hear it. It seems that the medical community is all about promoting medicine and not health, and unfortunately they have most people convinced they are always the first stop to health. It seems you have to go around them if you want to break the chain and status quo that is the current US-based "health care" system. I also have a major concern about the whole for-profit model and consider it to be a serious conflict of interest. We are not going in the right direction here.

  • Steve -- your personal profile says you live in Coloroda.

    (Hmmm, that State has been in the news quite a bit recently...)

    Seems to me you could attempt to grow a new business with some sort of recreational "herb". (Ha!) I don't know if that means you'd be growing as a person, though.

    Seriously, a sabbatical sounds fantastic. Full of opportunity. Man, your situation makes me think about your recent editorial about becoming good at something in 20 hrs vs. 10,000 hrs. What would you like to learn and perhaps become somewhat good at? What would benefit you or even benefit others? Heck, a sabbatical can serve as the starting point for something, not necessarily the start-and-end. So many possibilities...

    --Pete

  • Do the inward journey. Start with something like Siddhartha (the book by Hermann Hesse). Check out some of Joseph Campbell's work (Power of Myth, Hero With a Thousand Faces).

    You won't regret it...

  • Also, there is an excellent exercise in Covey's "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" that I would highly recommend to put you in touch with things that are important to you (as in your values). You imagine that you are attending a funeral in the future and it turns out the funeral is yours. You then visualize significant people from all the roles in your life (employee, husband, father, etc) standing up and talking about you. But you don't imagine what they would say today, you imagine what you would WANT them to say at that future point.

    What they say is what you value.

  • Hi Steve,

    If it were me, I would do a combination of things focused mainly on giving back: Take the time to stop and pick up some trash in my neighborhood, volunteer with a local non-profit or two, do something with family that I previously didn't have time for (volunteer at school, afternoon activities...), take that web-based course I always wanted to take... and maybe catch up on my Sci-fi reading.

    We're so fortunate, and I think that charity and humility are very important if for no other reason than they help us reflect on that.

    Thanks for all of the Voice of the DBA posts!

  • ferrijd (1/9/2014)


    Hi Steve,

    If it were me, I would do a combination of things focused mainly on giving back: Take the time to stop and pick up some trash in my neighborhood, volunteer with a local non-profit or two, do something with family that I previously didn't have time for (volunteer at school, afternoon activities...), take that web-based course I always wanted to take... and maybe catch up on my Sci-fi reading.

    We're so fortunate, and I think that charity and humility are very important if for no other reason than they help us reflect on that.

    Thanks for all of the Voice of the DBA posts!

    You are welcome, and thanks for the thoughts. A combination is something I'll probably do of something for myself, and something for others.

  • jshahan (1/9/2014)


    Also, there is an excellent exercise in Covey's "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" that I would highly recommend to put you in touch with things that are important to you (as in your values). You imagine that you are attending a funeral in the future and it turns out the funeral is yours. You then visualize significant people from all the roles in your life (employee, husband, father, etc) standing up and talking about you. But you don't imagine what they would say today, you imagine what you would WANT them to say at that future point.

    What they say is what you value.

    That's interesting. I'll have to think about that.

  • jshahan (1/9/2014)


    Do the inward journey. Start with something like Siddhartha (the book by Hermann Hesse). Check out some of Joseph Campbell's work (Power of Myth, Hero With a Thousand Faces).

    You won't regret it...

    Thanks for the suggestion.

  • I don't know the ages of your children that you have, and your distances from major metropolitan areas so some of this is going to be thrown out on the junk pile list.

    If your children are old enough take them along with you to a habitat for humanity stuff.

    Another one is to take them along and volunteer at a soup kitchen. I used to volunteer at a soup kitchen and one of my dives was to come up with soups that would essentially fill a person up with just one bowl and some crackers or bread.

    If your interests don't necessarily bring the kids forward all the time, I know most WoodCraft stores do a weekly seminar on woodwork classes.

    Here is a selfish idea: Do you need a standalone office? Do you have one? Build a small house from foundation to rooftop with the idea that if one of the kids doesn't go to college you can rent them the house. Or make it the in-laws or guest house.

    And then since it sounds like you have have some land maybe join the IDPA[/url] or become a 3 gun competitor[/url]. You could probably set up your own ranges.

    Just throwing out some ideas.



    ----------------
    Jim P.

    A little bit of this and a little byte of that can cause bloatware.

  • Train for a marathon and get a bunch of people to sponsor you for charity. Then run it about a week before you have to go back to work. Blog your progression through your training regimen and then post pics from the actual event.

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