However that is not universally true (though I think it was more true a while back).

In the Denver area hospitals are frequently understaffed, but the hospitals refuse to hire many of the available nurses.

In particular the problem is that a significant percentage of new nurses can't get hired because there are policy (and regulatory? dunno) reasons that you can't have too high a percentage of staff being new graduates, due to their lack of experience. So new nursing school grads have a tough time getting hired around here.

My wife (a nurse) is involved in the training and orientation of new hires at her hospital, so she's relatively up on the issues. Also related is that there are some hospitals which are hurting financially due to the current general economic issues - a lot of that depends on the mix of patients and how they pay (insurance, if any, Medicare etc.)

There is also age discrimination for nurses in the opposite direction - my wife has been refused jobs because she's 'too old' or 'overqualified' etc. Not as bad as in the software world but it does exist.

Actually one of the biggest eye-opening shocks of my life was in the 70's when I was an American student in Germany living with a German family. They were quite adamant that Hitler had done Germany a lot of good throughout much of of his tenure as their leader.
Remember these were people who had lived through the economic nightmare there after WW-I, then the 30's and 40's. They said Hitler had brought them out of the economic mess, put food on their table, made jobs available etc. etc. And all that is true for the most part.
We tend to focus on the seriously bad things he did... like I said it was a massive shock to me at that time, having been taught only a subset of the entire set of historical events.
Do NOT view this as me agreeing with their viewpoint, merely pointing out that it existed, and in some sad forms still exists.

/F

Not wrong in my neck of the woods. I'll admit that it was a period of transition, so perhaps drugstore chain X kept them around longer, while drugstore chain Y disposed of them sooner. There could well have been regional components as well, local economics, etc.

I didn't attempt to correlate when they disappeared from where with any other factors etc.

Tube testers were pretty darned hard to find almost anywhere in 1977 (you could find them in old-used-electronics stores). I do recall testing tubes in drugstores in the early 70's.

Solid state, and even (*gasp*) integrated circuits were in widespread use. Why, by gosh by golly, we even had *8080*'s then.

I was a senior in college in physics+EE; I and a handful of my fellow students managed to coerce one of the EE profs to take a few hours and teach us about tubes (they had been removed from the curriculum). For the most part the interest was for us audio-nerds... tubes had that nice desirable sweet sound... (but I digress)

/F

Sounds great, but...
Cologne? You may want to reconsider that one. How much? If the cologne bottle will last you a period of years with daily application, maybe OK. If it only lasts weeks, or days, that's at least as bad as never showering.
Then there are people with varying degrees of sensitivity or allergy to scents. Some are obvious about their displeasure, others will just think you're a dick.

Nah, I'm as healthy as an ox. I feel just grea...&*)( ^ wgha'ts thayt opain in my armm ow...

60 hours is no big deal, when you love what you're doing. I have had a few times when it was real torture to try and appear to be busy for 40 hours though.

Mistakes, as in hitting 'Submit' before you're finished...

The other point worth making is code quality. My code tends to have less than 10% the average error rate (big company, we track such things). Again, it's all that experience.

Enough yapping, back to slaving (and loving it).

Yes, thinking matters big time. Other elderly colleagues of mine can generally code circles around the young whippersnappers, as we've been there, made the mistakes, and know not to make most of them. (Sadly we do repeat them sometimes). Too bad so many young'uns already know everything and don't want to learn from others, and prefer to learn by making the same mistakes others have made a zillion times before.

/F

Long term average is about 60 hours per week. I've gone to about 106-107 for some periods, 3 months in one instance, but I was a bit toasted by the end of it.

I'm referring to combination thinking/designing/coding, not counting breaks etc. (We were required to track our hours, what a pain). I'm also mostly autonomous and don't have to go to too many meetings.

For you young weenies, I'm 54. Most of you kids can't keep up. (I did once meet a young kid who could wear me out time-wise).

It helps that I've changed industries and roles several times, keeps things fresh.

Hmmm, I wonder wonder why I sometimes get burned out?

/F

Slightly OT:

My mother was one of the people rescued by the CG in the 1937 floods referenced in the CG article. You can be sure that *I* am glad that she was... I sure wouldn't be here if she hadn't been rescued.

/F

I worked on the same system for 15 years. More than once I saw some code and said "what idiot wrote this!?" ... only to realize it was me, 5 years ago. Yes, that did indeed lead to me becoming a) much less prone to "clever tricks" and b) much much better at explaining what (WHY) I was doing whatever it was.

I must respectfully disagree. I happen to be an airgun nut, and have airguns in my collection that run in the $500 range - and there are plenty that cost a lot more. I don't have a a Red Ryder because I collect shooters, not collectors items, but there are plenty of folks who would and do purchase such items as the 'original' and modern replicas.

/F

Integrated circuit 1958.

You kids these days.

In theory that's the way it is, but in practice, most of the time you need a lot of money to deal with legal matters.

Too bad that lawsuits and prosecutions are about winning and losing, not about finding out the truth.

/F