Happy Birthday!
Sorry to hear about your birthday money, I hope you’ll still get to have nice day in spite of it!

I crochet little animals for friends and family.
Unasked, most of the time :)

Worrying what other people think of me.
I know I shouldn’t care, but it’s hard not to.

“Political ideologies, an introduction” by Andrew Heywood, is available for free online.

It was required reading for my history study in uni about ten years ago. This seems to be a newer edition. It’s quite a read, but it covers a lot of isms in a generally unbiased manner.

No, I’m sorry. I wish I could help but I’m a bit out of my depth with this one. You might try a local career counselor, but that really depends on where you live and who’s available.

I wish you the best of luck though, I hope you’ll find what you’re looking for.

My first computer was our family’s 286 Wang pc. I used it mainly to play Sierra games. It’s how I learned a lot of my first English words.
I got my first cellphone, a Sony-Ericsson, around 2003 and only because my brother gave it to me. I was a staunch hater of cellphones but too Dutch to pass up on a free thing :)

Writing, it allowed for knowledge to travel across vast distances. And for that knowledge to remain available and accurate for far longer than any oral tradition would be capable of.

No, I got a permanent contract for a well paying job in the public sector. The job security is great and there’s a solid pension plan.
It’s what my partner likes to call an “iron rice bowl” :)

Oof, I wouldn’t know about that. I was purely talking from personal experience. I don’t have a good picture of the job market in total, let alone in whichever country you live. If you want to get into the data-related IT fields (data analist, data engineer, business intelligence specialist, etc.) then SQL and data modeling skills are a must-have. But it’s just a small part of a much bigger discipline.

If possible, find some professional career counseling. Someone with better knowledge of the job market where you live might give you some good advice on which steps to take first.

For the better :)
I haven’t been active in online communities for over ten years. It’s been fun to contribute with comments and posts and I feel like I’m finding my voice again.

I’m still waiting for my $1000 from Bill Gates for passing on his e-mail :(

To my eternal shame, that really happened. I was young, gullible and stupid…
I guess there are worse ways to learn not to be so trusting.

Well it kind of is, isn’t it?
At least, I like to pretend it is :)

My work is similar to that of a librarian, except the library I work with is invisible and can contain more books and scrolls than any normal library ever could.
My invisible library has information about all kinds of things, the weather, the money earned and spend, and other things that are important for merchants, scholars and leaders to know.

It is my job to make sure the information arrives and is stored properly in this library. Also I have to make it easy for others to find and retrieve the information they need from this library.

Learn SQL and data modelling. The Data Warehouse Toolkit by Ralph Kimball is a good introduction to data warehouses and dimensional modelling. It’s not a universal model for data warehouses, but the core concepts remain the same among different implementations. This should give you a good basic understanding of the basic concepts of data warehousing.

I know Reddit isn’t exactly popular here, but their business intelligence community is quite active. It might be a good place to lurk and gain some insights.

Best of luck! :)

My partner has an Instagram account and I sometimes look along over their shoulder (with their knowledge!). It feels a bit weird though, because the algorithm is not in tune with what I like and to me it just seems like an endless list of similar videos. Yet my partner can easily spend an hour just scrolling through all of that stuff.

Personally, I had a Facebook account when it was still newish, but I got rid of it. I was just getting more and more depressed wondering why my life wasn’t as great as that of others. It took me a while to realize that, of course, they were just trying to show off to keep up with others showing off.
Other than that, I lost some really good long-distance friends to Facebook. One of my best friends went from fun exchanges over long e-mails to only wanting to post on Facebook to her followers. Still hurts when I think about it.

So no… I am not a Facebook or Instagram user, and never will be (again).

Aw, thank you!
That’s so nice to hear :)

Stability. Not having to worry if my job is still secure by next year is such a sweet feeling.

I might not earn as much as I could, but knowing that I have secured a good income all the way to my pension (barring any calamities) is definitely worth it.

It really depends on where you’re coming from. I’ve known several people who made a rather successful transition from a more business oriented position to business intelligence. It’s like data science’s older and less sexy brother :) General domain knowledge of business processes and finances are always a positive and IT knowledge for a junior can consist of as little as SQL knowledge and experience with a reporting and ETL tool.
You don’t get to do a lot of programming, but there’s always demand for people capable of building a proper data warehouse or able to translate an information request in a properly build report. Internal positions are often an option because companies like to retain people with expert knowledge of the inner workings of their information systems.

Source: I used to be a BI specialist for ten years or so :)

As someone else mentioned, Intermittent fasting helped for me as well. I eat from 12:00 - 20:00. I was never really obese, but my weight was definitely heading that way if I didn’t take action. Been on IM for a year now (with some cheat days here and there due to social obligations) and my weight dropped about 7 kg. That doesn’t sound like much, but I was only a little overweight and I’m still a lover of sweet foods and other unhealthy things :)
This in combination with adding 40 min walking to my commute and a weekly Pilates session (for all those important core muscles) seems to work for me. Oh and taking the stairs whenever possible. I work on the 7th floor and like to climb the stairs instead of taking the elevator with the rest of the lunch crowd.
Basically I managed to turn an upward trend into a downward one, and in the long run that’s what’s most important to me.

Are you kidding? Mr. Sweet sounds like some kind of professional hitman. I do not want to meet with any Mr. Sweet :)