the 3rd member of the staff, hired by a friend who was the second member of the staff. Eventually we wound up with nearly 2 dozen people, many better than me or my friend.

But even when I was Application Development manager, I designed table structures and wrote custom queries to reply to FOIA requests for data.

I took some graduate school classes after getting my BSCS, so as to have access to a computer while looking for my first job, which tells you something about when this was. The best class was Relational Data Base using "An Introduction to Database Systems" by C. J. Date. ISBN 0-201-14471-9.

Mr. Date, along with Mr. Codd, invented relational calculus, including normal forms. In later classes at work we were strongly advised to use 3rd normal form, as even mainframes of the day couldn't really support 4th or 5th. That instructor had participated in a project to rebuild a 5th normal form system into 3rd for Westinghouse, whose mainframe choked on the small (low column count) tables
and huge keys required by 5th normal form.

The book covers other styles of databases, network and hierarchical, but both are antique now. So I'd skip or at most skim those chapters. They show how Relational DB design grew out of experience with shortcomings of Multics and IMS, early network and hierarchical DBs, respectively.

Other commentors are correct, which DB software you use isn't terribly important for good table structure design. Learning how to select keys for uniqueness and design tables to be non-redundant are not database-specific solutions.

Do good backups, and practise restoring from them regularly, it doesn't matter how well-deswigned a DB is if the hardware fails and you can't recover the data.

It only takes a geologist or a google to show this has been publicly known for decades. Google "Afgan mineral specimens" and add -ebay for better results. The gem minerals being sold from Afgan locales are primarily those found in lithium-rich pegmatite deposits. The gems are worth from $100-100,000 for something that fits in a ziplock baggy. Raw lithium is valuable, but in rail-car amounts. I'm just an amateur geologist and if you had asked me I could have listed 3rd world countries with rich undeveloped minerals.

The same is true of Pakistan. Neither country has heavy rail. Bolivia has rich mineral deposits and mines, and the natives are dirt-poor and poisoned by mining related pollution, so don't hold your breath for the Afgans/Pakis to become developed countries.

people with depression, even deep depression, can smile, laugh, and be outgoing right up until the moment they commit suicide.

It's part of the syndrome that they want to act like a natural, happy person, even if they're on a brink - no matter what. Many won't admit they're ill until fatal results happen.

Insurance companies shouldn't have anything to do with diagnosis, they aren't qualified (not being doctors), and they have a conflict of interest, making money by denying illness. Frankly I think making money by denying health care to people is nearly as unethical as just shooting them up front.