I think we see herd protector burnout. I think it makes the world more of a dangerous place for people like us. I used to stop on the street and help people when they passed out. I’ll prob still do that, but its gonna be different now. I’m less likely to expend resources on strangers, if I’m honest. There are simply fewer resources to be had and WAY more demand on the ones that exist.
Actually, I’d be helping seniors in our condo complex more often, but my spouse is very protective, and her anxiety causes her to clamp down on us helping others, at least for now.
I do help older family in a variety of ways. I’ve been using TeamViewer and Chrome Remote Desktop to remotely mange PC’s, and do research and analysis on topics for them, as well as purchasing and delivery of supplies.
Then again, I am always sharing information, new ideas and insights, so that hasn’t changed, so I daily post on LinkedIn - I try to be life enhancing - and also post on my FaceBook pages. One page is looked at by people in India, so I drop in tech articles and links to free resources that might be helpful in developing their careers.
At work, I’ve volunteered to be a ‘buddy’ for new hires, as well as pitched a few ideas for summer interns, and if if they are accepted, I might be mentoring someone over the summer, two people if i am lucky.
For a variety of reason though, I don’t spread myself too thin…
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I can understand that.
Big interview scheduled, James. The environment will be increasingly competitive and less collaborative as there are fewer & fewer available resources. I’m not walking into a culture that is NOT going to be an easy fit for me, temperamentally - big players, guys who are used to being in charge. I’m gonna do my best, but I am not at all comfortable with my ability to pull this off. I need to self advocate differently than I have in the past. I’m trying to do some research…
We should probably make this a separate talk, but do you know the traits on your Big-5 (OCEAN) tests? Like the MBTI, but statistically more valid.
Free Big Five Personality Test - Accurate scores of your personality traits (truity.com)
What Are the Big 5 Personality Traits? (verywellmind.com)
Good luck. Curious, can you share name of company and role?
I’m too scared to even say it out loud. I’ll tell you after its over because I’ll be interested if you have any input about it. Another one called today, so maybe that takes the stress off a bit. The phone cut out so I don’t even know who that is with, but it sounds good. I’m scared it might be MT again. I’m too afraid to work for them. I’ll take a look at your links. The interview is with a person of a nationality that is traditionally not very impressed with me, lol. 
I tend to interview a lot better with Midwestern guys. In a state of growing terror. Resources need replenishment.
My gas station friend disappeared. She was awesome. She gave me a bag of free donuts once. She just disappeared. An elderly man asked me if I knew what happened to her last week. I didn’t. He looked concerned. Maybe she is dead.
Now I have a new gas station friend. She is also very nice. Type 2 diabetic. Overweight. 60 years old. She says she’s not gonna get vaccinated, but she’s wrong about that. Know why? She’s mohe’s new target and mohe plays the long game. I have at least a month to cook my secret sauce and no one sees it cooking until its too late. Then, BAM! All of a sudden they are sitting in a chair getting a shot in their arm and they have no idea how they got there. I haven’t failed yet. Take that, Covid! Take that, you Bastard!
Personally, it’s always a long game, at least for persuading people on contentious issues, unless you have some particular sway or charm with that person. That said, it pays to find ways to make quick wins…
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no one can know for sure what the consequences of using the vaccine will be in a year, 5 or 10 years. all this happened very quickly and we cannot know that scientists have identified and prevented the development of all kinds of diseases. so personally I will not rush to use it at all.
Sheryl says I am getting vaccinated as soon as she gets the word. How exactly will you get the word and I will not know I ask? Oh she says she has her ways.
Hmm I am getting notices form the state of Indiana all of a sudden telling me that my registration is progressing. I ask Sheryl because I do not not registering? No she says? Hmm must have been some mix up.
I fear someday i will wake up with a needle in my butt and her shouting your vaccinated your vaccinated.
That wife of mine is on a mission. LOL Oh dont worry, I took her name off the list. Trust me these kinds of mix ups have been happening for 43 years. Go figure?
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I understand. I don’t think anybody can ‘hash’ on you for feeling this way. Its a very personal decision involving risk and everybody gets the right to make that decision for themselves. Some people are fine with the risks of covid vs the risks of vaccination. And, some people do fine having had covid.
Even my friend’s uncle who had side effects is doing OK. He developed a covid side effect where he threw a bunch of tiny strokes. They can see them inside his brain. What’s odd about it, and why they attribute it to having had covid, is that its different than normal stroke. Its many, many little tiny clots in his brain, as opposed to one large one. That’s what they tend to see with covid. As long as the clots are small, people tend to survive. If the clots are on the larger side, then they see more paralysis. In his case, he just got some left sided facial paralysis (he can’t move the left side of his face anymore). They think that might get better over time.
My uncle also had covid. He’s 10 years younger than my friend’s uncle (he’s in his late 60’s) and is super athletic. It’s nothing for him to ride his bike 100 miles per day. He has no known side effects from covid.
I just don’t think I would get that lucky. I have a feeling about it. I would turn out more like my friend’s uncle with physical damage. I just wouldn’t be able to live with any additional medical problems. Things are too difficult for me as they are. Its possible that having more illnesses makes me more pessimistic about where I would fall on that spectrum.
Everything is on a spectrum. There are people who get Alzheimer’s and do just fine. You would never know that anything was wrong with them. They loose 20 IQ points, and they just seem like a normal person, instead of a ‘bright’ person. They are fine. But, if I got Alzheimer’s, I don’t think that I would turn out that well. I just have bad luck with chronic medical conditions. I know I would turn into a violent A-hole if I got Alzheimer’s. However, after a couple strokes, my Grandmother became a much kinder, happier person. So, you never know for sure how things will turn out. I think that the strokes made her forget all the years she spent serving in the Pacific and she was finally happy. Sometimes a little disability is good for people, overall.
You never can tell…but, everybody is gonna have choose if you want to dance with disease or dance with vaccine. One way or another, your gonna dance.
P.S. @JamesIgoe, your right about posts being too long. Me and James disagree about EVERYTHING. But, its just personality. James likes bulleted lists. I like paragraphs. When someone hands me a bulleted list, I throw it immediately into the trash and assume it has nothing worth reading on it. But, some peeps prefer bulleted lists. So, I am attempting to highlight summary sentences. Maybe that’s better and makes it more like a bulleted list. Happy medium in communication preferences, maybe.
I agree with this. I’ll dance with a vaccine that’s gone through clinical trials, has been widely distributed, and is incredibly effective. Honestly, if people want to wait to get the vaccine, that’s their loss and everyone else’s gain. There’s just not enough vaccine to go around right now.
I’m annoyed by the vaccine rollout going so slowly. I’d prefer that they start delaying the second dose so more people have some level of protection before the variants cause another surge.
As for writing style, I use different techniques for different audiences and purposes.
I started using bullets three (3) decades while as a project manager working in tech departments, diverse environments with many foreign-born, and typically disproportionately non-native English speakers. I strive for clarity in those situations, and with technical details, clarity and precision matter. Writing paragraphs in those situations can easily result in poor, muddled communication.
On the other hand, when it comes to posts of a more reflective nature, maybe requiring some influence and persuasion, more often directed at educated and/or management-level readers, I’ll write in paragraphs, but even then, for business, I usually make sure it is consumable and easily digested.
My favorite style of writing is complex and long, more often in NYT’s article forums, often when it is an abstract discussion of a topic, and if done well, in a long flowing style, similar to David Foster Wallace (DFW), of Infinite Jest fame, a personal favorite. He’s a wonderful writer.
As with some writers, I find long meandering posts, that don’t make much sense, or don’t make solid points, irritating. It depends on my mood and my purpose in reading. If I am reading for information, I like it clear and to the point. Other types of writing I can appreciate for their beauty, but again, it depends on the context and purpose. Also, I perceive some long posts as attempts to overwhelm, and will disregard those. I won’t give my time to garbage.
BTW, this post started in the style of Kurt Vonnegut, one of my high school-era favorites. I’ve read almost everything by him, but over time seems to have evolved into one of Edgar Allen Poe, and then eventually DFW. For myself, when the classifier I use thinks it’s like DFW, I am pleased.
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I think I got burned out on bulleted lists once power point presentations came to exist. I’ve always loathed power point presentations. Bullet lists are guilty by association, somehow, lol. Its from sitting in school and hating it.
Hehehehe, that badge is hilarious. Wallace is from Wisconsin, ya’ know. That’s why he was so crazy, lol. I’ve always thought he was kinda cute, tho’. Insane, but cute. https://www.wpr.org/listen/799721
What do you think of this? Just came across it while doing research for an interview on Monday…
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Nowadays, DFW has a reputation as a ‘bro’ writer, and there are stories about him abusing a girlfriend, so his reputation is a bit diminished.
As for the watch, not a big deal for me. I use Google Fit, along with a Carlyle Gen 5 running Wear OS, aggregating much of my health data, sleep, glucose, BP, weight, HR, activity, and fitness. Apple watchOS is considered better, and the watch more accurate, although Wear OS has been great for me.
Since I have Google Fit tracking my activity and aggregating my data, I put together a Jupyter Notebook in Python for analysis. I shared that in the forum, different thread, and someone with an Apple Watch, but less of a developer, had issues getting Apple data in any form he could use. It was easy to use Google Fit, as it provides a summary CSV file that can easily be sliced and diced.
The thread I started about diabetes tech, in which it was discussed:
What Tech Do You Use for Health Monitoring? - Diabetes Technology - TuDiabetes Forum
The Jupyter Notebook is on GitHub, by now modified so it is only good for Google Fit data, but at one time I had written it generically so that any data could generate a correlation heat map:
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Hope you don’t mind that I am butting in here, but I really found this test interesting with good explanations. Thanks for posting it James. I learned something about how I see the world compared to others which is helpful.
Free Big 5 Personality Traits.
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Thanks, I’m glad it was helpful.
For me, It’s useful in thinking about people and how they respond, and unlike the prior MBTI which still has a lot of value, it is statistically validated, although, as with anything, it is based upon self-reflection, but even that has shown to be fairly accurate for these tests.
The primary flaw with the MBTI is that people clustered traits, and then made overly broad generalizations about personalities, what they were like, their flaws, what types of jobs they’s do best in. The Big 5 / OCEAN inventory actually does have clusters in personality types, and one can likely find objective correlations, but the researchers I’ve read didn’t go into the deeper clusters, numbering 13, but grouped them into just 4 basic ones. I haven’t thought much in these findings, although it would group me positively, as a Role Model type.
Study: people tend to cluster into four distinct personality “types” | Ars Technica
BTW, I will try and dig up all the studies regarding A1c that I mentioned. It is a bit of work, but it is worthwhile…
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Also, you’re not butting in at all. Although I responded to @mohe0001, if it was private I would have made it private.
This is the most recent result, but I do know that these numbers can vary,. For myself, there were periods I scored extremely high on conscientiousness, lower on neuroticism, middling on agreeableness, or a bit more introverted. More and more I’ve come to realize how my work role as a software developer requires me to be more introverted, since my real inclination is more toward leadership and interaction in an extroverted way.
This articles goes into more details about personality clusters, as well as the caveats from taking it too literally:
I am going to take this test again later on today. I think the test helps explain why I keep such a tight grip on my diabetes. The only personality test I have taken in the past is Myers Briggs.
I am interested in seeing the studies you have read about non diabetic A1c’s. I definitely believe that people with diabetes who keep a low Alc have fewer complications. I know that for the past 20 yrs I have had no more frozen shoulders, trigger fingers, carpel tunnel, and I haven’t had to have needle aponeurotomy for dupuytren’s contracture in 20 yrs. I had the procedure performed 3 times in different parts of the US when my A1c was in the 6’s. The only time I had retinopathy is when I was 30, was urine testing, and had an A1c of 10. I was fortunate that my eyes cleared up once I lowered my A1c and have been fine since then.
I can understand that dealing with hypoglycemia could be more difficult as one ages which is why I try not to test lower than 60. I am interested to see if non diabetic A1c is harmful physically for someone with diabetes. Even though I have had my share of low blood sugars, I haven’t lost IQ points.
I also believe that some people with diabetes don’t have complications for some unknown reason and some folks do everything right and still end up with complications. I am only speaking about my own experiences with my 63 yrs with type 1.
And I do have one huge complication of diabetes. Heart Stents aren’t fun and are very worrisome. Maybe if I hadn’t had an A1c of 10 when I was young, I wouldn’t have them now, I have no idea. Going 51 yrs with no major problems with my diabetes, and then suddenly getting stents at 60 was devastating to me. I wish I could make the arteriosclerosis disappear. I feel cheated. I will do anything to not have more or worse complications.
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@JamesIgoe, You don’t think the app has much value for our diabetics on Apple with covid, then? Just marketing?
I think that’s a really interesting topic you raise, @Marilyn6. Let me know if you uncover anything. I suspect that there might be something to do with someone’s industriousness and conscientiousness (which is not well understood, in general). So, your ideas might pave some path forward on this issue.
What’s confusing is that, like, me and James are pretty different personalities, but we are both proactive patients. So, I can’t identify any 1 factor anything in particular.
I think that, for myself, diabetes management has something to do with pain avoidance and building an environment around myself that is less hostile and unpredictable and crappy. The Canadian discusses it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q15eTySnWxc
I was born low on neuroticism and super high on the agreeableness and I lean extroverted. Very low on orderliness. Very high on openness. But, I don’t need a test to tell me that, lol. People tell me that stuff all the time.