My partner stresses too much with work and I wish I could help more. But all I can do is give comfort and urge to at least let things go when at home.
Any practical advice is always brushed off, which I can understand. Sometimes you just need to vent and I don’t mind listening about what happened this time. I just hate seeing them like this, it does make me worry a bit about their health.

PICO-8, though it’s more of an on-and-off again project of trying to teach myself to program again.
But I like the limitations you have to work with, and even I can create some crude 8x8 sprites :)

Maps and compass. I like the reliability of finding my way no matter where I am. Plus it’s fun!
Especially the trick of using two landmarks to pinpoint my location on a map makes me feel like an old-fashioned navigator :)

A slipknot works great! It’s done in a second and easily undone as well.

Yum, war fries :)

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.

I’ve taken up crochet for a while now and it seems to be a keeper (I tend to flit between hobbies a lot). I guess what makes this different is that a lot of the things I make are for others. My daughter loves the bracelets I make for her (the ones I’m not keeping for myself :) And recently I made a little bunny as a going away present. Having a goal like that is a great motivator.
I hope it’ll stick, because I do love it as a hobby. There’s still so much to learn.

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.

I generated it using Midjourney. I like the flowers :)

Oh and the wallpaper on my work laptop:

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! :)

Best of luck!
I’ll be rooting for you!

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 :)

Finally managed to arrange a babysitter, so we’re going out on a date night tomorrow!
I’m really looking forward to spending some quality time with my partner.

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.

Happy birthday! 🎂🎉

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 :)