Things I did today

Chapter 14, Hack Back Work Interruptions Eyal opens the chapter discussing hospital errors, especially in wrong medication or dosage supplied. It turned out that nurses were interrupted multiple times while dispensing medication, leading to errors and adverse effects to patients. To solve the issue, one hospital instituted a vest that a nurse would wear to signify that he or she is dispensing medication and is to not be bothered. The new program didn't have many proponents, as the vests were uncomfortable and often, doctors that didn't know about the program often would interrupt the nurses, asking about the vests. However, over time the nurses didn't get interrupted and the hospital saw 88% fewer errors over three years suggesting that rough start didn't deter actual results. My workplace has something similar - signs at the entrances of cubicles that signify "Please come in" which is colored green, "Busy" which is colored yellow, and "Do N

I slept poorly again - slept from 11:30pm - 3:30am, then 5:30am - 7am. Definitely not enough, as evidenced by the headache and sleepiness I got in the afternoon. I found a half bottle of hand sanitizer, and some Clorox disinfectant wipes, so I'm hopefully good until the grocery stores start stocking those items again. They're still all sold out, here. I'm going to do my own self-quarantine this weekend even though I'm feeling fine, and stay in. It'll be nice and quiet and warm and no one will cough at me or sneeze in my general direction. I've been watching the changes in the Coronavirus map, provided by Johns Hopkins since the first US case. It looks like South Korea has over 6,000 cases and is now just off the coast of North Carolina !!! I must watch out!

I'm sure the following weeks won't be as painful as this week, because I'm an optimist. But I am also exhausted after working almost a 12 hour day trying to solve issues. The coronavirus is popping up in more states and I wonder when hand sanitizer will ever be back in stock. I still have my normal stock, but I'm unsure how long it will last. I've been washing my hands more often, like as soon as I get home, instead of just before cooking. I also have some Lysol wipes from my Amazon order in June that I use for cleaning, and I can use that if the virus continues on when I start traveling. Tomorrow, I am looking forward to sleeping in, coffee, the gym, a wonderful lunch with two dear friends, and reading and writing and the last of the laundry tomorrow. I know I usually do a review of timeboxing on Sunday, but it's not looking good for a continued tool thus far...

Today was not as ridiculous, but I still had plenty of urgent production support issues to resolve, as well as several meetings. We had a few candidates for a position we're trying to fill, and it's tough finding the right person. There were people who were a great for personality but light on technical skills, and people who had great technical skills but lacked soft skills and acted like a robot. We made a great pick at the end. I don't know exactly when she's coming on, but I'm sure it's soon. We are looking for a Business Analyst now, and hope to find someone with both great technical skills and people skills. It's a hot market for people looking for jobs. We'll have tough competition here. I ended up reading a bit more than I expect this evening and didn't get to studying for the exam. At least the laundry is done, and I'm feeling relaxed. I'll be heading to bed early as I didn't get enough sleep last night.

Monday and Tuesday at work have been non stop-production issues. I made sure to get out for lunch today so I wouldn't work straight through and start making errors due to hunger. Last night, I did some studying for my exam, and several bodyweight exercises. Tonight, I went back to the gym, and it was great! The rest of the resolutionists have gone, and now there's enough room for everyone, and places to park. I went through one of the strong curves workouts and felt rather, well, strong. I increased the weight a bit, and still felt my form was consistent and correct. I didn't get home until a little later than I had planned, and was rather tired by that point, so I just talked with one of my friends and then called my mother to tell her that the coronavirus is now in my county. They were planning to come see me in a few weeks, but might change their plans and make the trip in the summer. As for me, I'm washing my hands every time I'm going from a place with peop

March showed up and I was unprepared! I wrote about doing some sort of challenge of getting through the exam material for the exam I have slated for April, and might push back to May due to my slower start. I'm diving into the book and think I'll have to do more reading and practicing than I optimistically expected. My goal is to get through the book and requisite information in March, run practice tests in April, and sit for the test in May. This means I'll slow down on weekly social gathering and do them twice monthly at most for this month and next month. I'll also suspend weekly piano practicing and anything other than the minimum workout in the gym. I want to make sure I'm giving myself enough time to read and prepare. February's sleep challenge crashed. I couldn't sleep. I didn't find a good set light alarm time that didn't wake me up too soon. I would wake up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep. If I took Zzzquil I

Perhaps this isn't the system for me. I did worse this week than I did the week previous! I didn't get to the gym at all. I was injured for the first half of the week, then worked late and chose to do other things. The last time I went to the gym, it was crowded in the parking lot and the gym and I had to fight traffic to get there. Spent a half hour going roughly 5 miles. It's getting less fun to go to the gym, but this week I will head back in and just know it'll be a slog to get there, and hopefully it won't be as crowded. And if it is, oh well. I can't get any fitter by not going to the gym. I also didn't get to any exam material until Saturday. While I didn't expect to spend 2 hours researching database restore errors, at least it did teach me more. So, here's last week with things I didn't do colored in red: Friday, I went out to vote early, and cleaned up my place and did the laundry, so at least I didn't just sit in a cor