May 4, 2024 at 1:00 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Take Care
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
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May 4, 2024 at 2:25 pm
This will be pretty personal but I'll share with you for what it's worth.
In 1973, my first wife discovered a breast lump and we went to our local doctor. He said 'We'll watch it for a while'. I lost her to metastatic cancer in 1978.
About 1996 I volunteered for a clinical study of treatments for prostate enlargement at the University of Iowa. The study included treatment with various drugs, annual biopsies and PSA tests. In 1998 my diagnosis was positive for prostate cancer. Within a few days I had an appointment at Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN. They monitored my biopsies and PSA tests for a few weeks and shortly recommended surgery. Twenty-six years later, I'm still clear.
Around 2003-2004 my second wife discovered a breast lump and we were right back at Mayo. The lump tested positive and was promptly removed. She has been clear since. She does have a blood protein anomaly, but it is monitored annually and so far is benign.
The past few years there has been some questioning of the value of PSA testing. I have four sons/stepsons in their 50's and am constantly pushing them to do the PSA testing. So far no problems.
So my advice is 'Get 'er done!'.
Rick
Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )
May 4, 2024 at 2:55 pm
Right there with ya, Grant, on the situational awareness training. For about 15 years, my husband and I were in the County Sheriff's Posse and we received a lot of training in situational awareness, observation, tracking, shooting, and other law enforcement related training. It has definitely helped us many times in our private lives ~ having a sense of "don't go down that street" probably protected us more times than we will ever know. The easiest way to win is to simply not be there when things go bad.
May 4, 2024 at 3:37 pm
I think one of the side benefits of our occupation in IT is that we do in fact depend on 'taking care' of things because we constantly deal with the cause and effect of things we do. On the light side, I constantly move my wife's wine glass back from the edge of the table...
Rick
Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )
May 5, 2024 at 1:52 pm
Very good advice, Grant. It is something I've tried to do whenever I can. I do my best to not work anyplace that has on-call. That's not always possible, but if you can it helps.
I'll say that sometimes it is harder to take care of yourself, then at other times. My work situation is going to change drastically very soon, as my supervisor will be leaving soon. He has acted as a buffer between my coworkers and myself, and very unreasonable upper management. None of us are looking to that supervisor leaving. Upper management has unrealistic expectations of everyone which first line supervisors have done great jobs acting as buffers. I foresee difficult times ahead.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
May 5, 2024 at 3:24 pm
From 1975 through 1986 I was the IT manager for a start-up shop that ran 24 hours a day Sunday night through Friday night. In the early days I was the only tech savvy person in the company and had five Teamsters union data-entry operators on staggered shifts. Besides a regular 8:00-5:00 schedule, I was on-call around the clock when anything failed or broke. If I got a call I would try to walk one of the operators through the problem, but often got the 'not my job' response. (This was before the days of internet and remote connections.) In those cases, I had to drive 15 miles through three municipalities to get to the shop to restore production. During some of those years I was a single parent with two young sons I would often have to take with me and they slept on the floor in my office while I fixed problems. Finally after a couple years I was able to get a retired lady as a live-in aid to care for the sons. Unfortunately after a short while this lady passed away and I was again without child care. Later in this position when I had remarried and after a major project one of the company owners did give my wife and me an expense-paid trip to Hawaii. But this situation taught me I never again wanted management responsibility, so I went back to being a techie.
Rick
Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )
May 6, 2024 at 12:10 pm
Thanks everyone for your stories. And yeah, none of this is necessarily easy or doable all the time. However, through lots of personal experience, I believe this stuff is important.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
May 7, 2024 at 6:00 am
Thank you Grant for bringing up the important subject of self care. There are numerous youtube videos that you can find on the subject. But they all seem to converge to the same basics : Sleep, exercise, diet, social connections and yes caring for yourself first so that you may well take care of others.
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May 8, 2024 at 5:57 pm
Thank you Grant for bringing up the important subject of self care. There are numerous youtube videos that you can find on the subject. But they all seem to converge to the same basics : Sleep, exercise, diet, social connections and yes caring for yourself first so that you may well take care of others.
Thanks!
I know I'm not saying anything that others haven't said, and better. It's as much a reminder for myself as others.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
May 21, 2024 at 4:52 pm
I foresee difficult times ahead.
Definitely time to GTFO as soon as you can find a new position without red flags. I'm sorry you are having to deal with that.
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