A1c Report 6 months

I see them on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/A1CNow-SelfCheck-Analyzer-Test-Strips/dp/B07FMLTTH6/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=home+a1c+test&qid=1600535847&sr=8-3
I have not heard of any in clinics here. But we do see kids and four wheelers gathering with no masks,etc. I am sure we will spike at some point . Lucky we have more trees than people. Nancy50

I just checked my a1c with it. The temperatures that it will operate within are very specific, so you need to watch that very closely. I had failures do to this.

I was 5.7 = lowest a1c ever. Warning sign for me

Don’t beat yourself up! I’ve been inactive on a broken foot and quarantined so it’s been rough. I’m also changing careers and working on my masters so here we go!

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Good timing for a masters. I just finished. Bad timing to have just graduated.
What are you doing your masters in? What do you think that labor markets are doing?
I’m really concerned, but I’m hoping biz explodes into a bull market once the vaccine is out.

I was watching Capitol on Netflix late last night and it got me all worried and in a tizzy, lol.

I haven’t seen it, I hate when those shows get you hooked and you seriously start questioning who’s running this place and who goes to counseling together and what not but that’s a rabbit trail I can’t go down. :joy: I got an undergrad in Mass communications and English Lit. I was hoping to be a news broadcaster until I found out the pay and hours were bad and how you have to turn into a puppet to work for any of them. I’m now getting my masters in Theology and Christian Leadership. I’ve considered a doctorate after that. With my English background I might teach in another country or provide clean water wells to countries in need. I have connections with the well peeps! If not that I’ll be doing something in women’s ministry helping abused and addicted women like I once was myself. Wow, I feel like I just spilled my guts out. Haha I need to think of a way to condense that.

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The bull market idea is likely overly optimistic, and in fact, there already is a bull market in the financial world, but it has little relationship to jobs. A sober analysis doesn’t think the world getting back to semi-normal until sometime into next year, and one wonders if that is also too rosy a view. (see below)

For work, the social merit of it is up to who you choose to work with, but the technology areas can make sense. Finance, the real bull run, wants software developers. The cancer center I work with is hiring, and although hurt by the pandemic, still working and spending on people for innovative technologies, but if not technology, that means people with healthcare backgrounds and/or educations that can either work with data, managing projects, design, or communications.

My take is that almost any degree you choose, if not in academia, needs to overlap and include technology. As an anecdote, my spouse’s cousin has a son getting a Ph.D. in anthropology and a medical degree and is not thinking of working for corporations, so I assume his target is academia or private practice. Shortly after learning this, I was working/socializing with a design team and found out that a senior design person had the same background, but at some point, transitioned to design. She now manages/leads teams that research and develop processes and technologies in medicine.

A sober analysis, and even this is predicated on the idea of a vaccine this year:

Americans are also overestimating what a vaccine might do. Many are focusing on whether approval is being rushed as a campaign ploy, but that’s almost beside the point. It seems likely that a vaccine will be approved this fall and that it will be “effective.” But it’s very unlikely that this vaccine will be a game changer.

Because of all these unknowns, we will need to continue to be exceedingly careful even as we immunize. Until we see convincing evidence that a vaccine has a large population-level effect, we will still need to mask and distance and restrain ourselves. Too many of us won’t. Too many will believe that the vaccine has saved them, and they will throw themselves back into more normal activities

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Good luck in jobs! I am retired. Crazy COVID times. My kids all work in jobs that are very secure, so far. Nancy50

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When my brother graduated during the last big economic downturn, he was able to get a job in China (which was booming). He worked there a while and then someone gave him a job as a news broadcaster. That was not what he intended to do and he had no preparation for that job, but he did really well. I’ve watched the show. It was ok. All we could figure out was that they wanted a tall, white, English speaker for the job and he was the only one around. A lot of American kids over there were given jobs on TV. Strange, eh?

You just never can tell whose gonna give you a job and what you will be doing.

Me and my dad replaced my well recently. It was not an easy job. We used an engine hoist to pull it out of the ground and dropped a waterproof camera down into the hole to see what was wrong.

LOL, welcome to grad school, eh? All any of us can talk about is our research or our work because that’s all we do is work. I’ve had to stop asking other grad students what they are working on because its always a 20 min spiel. I do the same thing. I hate myself. I’m so tired of my own thoughts and work that I could scream. Its nice to hear what someone else is doing.

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Ahh, James. I’m clinging to vaccine hopes as the next stepping stone, now that we are close. But, things will get worse here before they get better. Covid is circling us like a shark. Its coming and its going to be bad. The data looks bad. WI is in trouble. My only hope is that it is a cold winter and that keeps people home. It begins soon…

I won’t do finance out of principal. I’m holding a 20 year grudge over what they have put us through. My brother got his masters in finance from a pretty prestigious University and not even he will work with them. I think Gen Y is holding a grudge. Finance is weird. But, I notice that the IRS is hiring like crazy here - they prob want COBOL programmers. IDK.

I have 20 recruiters working on drumming up a tech job. We shall see if they can come up with anything. I’ll give them until the new year. I had hoped that publishing in our industry’s most prestigious academic journals would score me something. So far, no bites. Not even 1 interview since March. I got 1 call to spray pesticides. I dunno what to think about it all.

Maybe the whole idea of labor is dead. The young are starting to turn on “the system,” after 20 years. Its a large contributor to the rioting. This is the mood of the young, lol. There will be trouble ahead if the markets dont rally.

You hear people talking about it more and more. It will be bad for society if Millennial’s get on the Gen Y bandwagon. This woman is my age. There is no one my age who doesn’t talk about this. There is a genuine smell of revolution in the air. No one agrees on what to do to fix things, but there is widespread despair in people 40 and younger, which is the most dangerous age to have a discontented population because they are still young enough to physically tear things up.

Living with ones parents at age 30 is enough to put anyone on a path to massacre and mayhem, lol. If the labor markets don’t perform, we got trouble ahead.

I worked in finance for 25 years, but started when I was struggling, willing to work anywhere, and when the industry had glowing press, back in the early 90s. I even did half an MBA, with great scores and great grades, but soured while midway through. The ideology is just crap.

As for the market, much of the actual market was driven by low Fed rates, and in fact, still is. The Fed props up the banking industry, even buying bad debt created by banks’ bad decisions.

One way out of the debacle, what should have been done back in the last market crash, was to finance infrastructure (roads, buildings, housing), development (solar farms, technology), and service (healthcare, social services) with government debt. Political fighting prevented it from happening in 2008, so the Fed was the only source of respite, with cheap debt and debt buys. The cost of debt is so low, and will be for quite some time, that the multiplier on the expenditure is large. It will return more than it costs.

I wanted to publish on inequality back in 2003, and that is much of the problem or an indication of what the problem is. Everyone suffers under a plutocratic system, except the wealthy. Not that my spouse and I live poorly. but one can see how much suffering there is, how much lives are limited or even ruined, in our current political situation. The young, the old, the poor, minorities, and women suffer in particular, but even the average white is really no better off, and some are killing themselves in what has been termed ‘deaths of despair’.

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Its getting ugly, James. People are starting to cheer for the death of the Boomers with flu coming. That’s ugly. But, that is where things are. The young view the Boomers as having a lock on all the wealth and jobs into their 70’s. They believe (and they might be right) that its morally unconscionable that they have not yet stepped aside to make room for the next generation. Its because we were told at a young age that eventually the Boomers would retire and there would be a wealth of jobs…finally.

I think Boomers will retire as a result of flu. But, the question is if enough of them will retire to allow a foothold by the next generation.

Yes, they are retiring, but it is placing the blame on the wrong people. Our government policies, that create these outcomes, have little to do with Boomers, and more to do with the capture of the political class. A focus on fairness is what matters, across the board, not blaming people that themselves are suffering under the same system.

Many of those people can’t retire. They need healthcare. They need money. They themselves are subject to a particular form of discrimination. Many are subject to losing their jobs abruptly. Of those, most have trouble finding new ones. Did you read of the recent decision against IBM, and even then, realize that it came from a political administration that more often sides with employers?

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I think the overreaching view is that the Boomers created this fiscal and political environment. Right or wrong, it is what it is. There is inter-generational conflict that has appeared (not out of nowhere), but it sorta popped up. Like, it was always there, but now it is burning in a way that I haven’t seen before. I think we have trouble if the markets don’t rally when the vaccines comes.

Holders of real power, the economic upper one tenth of one percent, deliberately set one social class against another. That tactic has served them well and provides the basis for the corrosive racism that besets us. Don’t fall for that misdirection!

Even if all the Boomers died today and passed on their jobs and wealth to the the next generation, it would not relieve the fundamental unfairness in our economic system. People with real power find this inter-generational social tension amusing.

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What did you get your masters in? My friend who’s a nurse can’t get a job with the degree anywhere now because no one is even hiring him for THAT. The most important thing right now.

OOOhhhh no. I feel so bad for the nurses. That’s been the one thing that was super secure for soooo long until covid hit. Its so strange. Tell him not to feel bad about himself. Its like that everywhere - the Mayo clinic here had gigantic layoffs. So, even people at the top of their field with experience got cut. Nursing school is so tough and competitive, too. Its the worst.

I did software engineering. I had to go back because I couldn’t get anything with a math degree. I’ve put out over 1,000 resumes. I think we just have to wait this crisis out, maybe.

Word on the street is that he is doomed, until covid is over. They will make him work for $15/hr at a group home or a nursing home until the economy comes back. He will barley be able to survive. He might have to move back with parents. What a nightmare. My heart goes out to him.

I’m watching a lecture that makes me think you might have picked a solid major. I’m researching the economy. This is one of the creepier things I’ve seen. :grimacing:

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@Terry4
Time to split this to new topic ??