August 24, 2017 at 9:06 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Career Bucket List
August 25, 2017 at 5:25 am
Awww, thanks sir!
Yeah, mine changed over time too. When I was in high school, I only had two written goals: own a 28' sailboat by the time I turned 28, and a 45' sailboat by the time I turned 45.
As I got older and sailed more, I realized...I love being on boats, but I don't really like the act of sailing/managing/owning a boat. I don't even wanna charter one - the responsibility is the opposite of what I'm looking for when it's time to unwind.
Same thing with owning the Audi RS6, too. Bought that and realized, "I really have nothing to do with a fast car right now." Downtown Chicago makes fast car ownership no fun whatsoever. (That doesn't mean I'm giving up the fast car ownership dream - I just need to change cities.) Hopefully we'll get out to San Diego in 2018.
August 25, 2017 at 6:26 am
Brent, I wouldn't put the "owning a fast car" in the no fun category. Go looking around there's probably small race tracks where you can take it to do laps on the weekends. There's one near me I keep intending to take my "budget mid-life crisis car" to, but I've just not gotten around to it (Metro Detroit area.) I know at the one out here, they forbid *racing* the other cars on the track, so it's like a nice twisty freeway with courteous drivers, I would think.
As for the boat, the old saw applies:
The two happiest days in a mans life are; the day he buys his first boat and the day he sells the boat.
As for me, after reading the editorial I realized I'd hit one of my early years bucket list items without even realizing it, when I went into the $100K/yr+ salary range.
Maybe it's time for me (and the wife) to actually sit down and codify our bucket lists, both individually and as a couple.
August 25, 2017 at 6:34 am
Yeah, a friend of mine has a garage at the Autobahn Country Club here in Chicago, and he offered garage space. I'd be much more interested in that if I was just a little further out of town though - it's a solid hour each way, and I'm not a fan of driving in traffic. (sigh)
August 25, 2017 at 6:57 am
When I was young, my goal was to get a new fast sports car. Now that I can afford it, my priorities have changed, I favor the older stuff. I have a few old Jeeps including a '47. Given a free choice, I'd still like to have a Morgan Plus 4 (any year), or even the retro Morgan three wheeler.
The career related 'bucket' items were projects that just happened to fall into my lap. I wound up designing and building components for the Chandra X-ray satellite and the Mars Phoenix lander scientific package. Looking back over my varied career, those are the two things that I am most pleased with.
...
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
August 25, 2017 at 7:01 am
jasona.work - Friday, August 25, 2017 6:26 AMBrent, I wouldn't put the "owning a fast car" in the no fun category. Go looking around there's probably small race tracks where you can take it to do laps on the weekends.
Yeah, a friend of mine has a garage at the Autobahn Country Club here in Chicago, and he offered garage space. I'd be much more interested in that if I was just a little further out of town though - it's a solid hour each way, and I'm not a fan of driving in traffic. (sigh)
I understand that, having had to drive in Chicago traffic a couple years ago (once out of Chicago from near Union Station, then back in)
The track near me is also about an hour to get to, but the route to go is generally light traffic, compared to if I were going through Detroit to get to it.
August 25, 2017 at 7:29 am
jay-h - Friday, August 25, 2017 6:57 AMWhen I was young, my goal was to get a new fast sports car. Now that I can afford it, my priorities have changed, I favor the older stuff. I have a few old Jeeps including a '47. Given a free choice, I'd still like to have a Morgan Plus 4 (any year), or even the retro Morgan three wheeler.The career related 'bucket' items were projects that just happened to fall into my lap. I wound up designing and building components for the Chandra X-ray satellite and the Mars Phoenix lander scientific package. Looking back over my varied career, those are the two things that I am most pleased with.
Wow, very cool. I think anything working with science and software is pretty neat.
August 25, 2017 at 7:31 am
I like driving, not racing. Punching the throttle and getting some acceleration, playing on curvy roads when I'm going somewhere. I wouldn't likely take hours at the track with a car, nor would I want a car just for that. That's why I sold the 911 and moved on. More interested in getting a couple cars and tinkering right now.
I do slightly regret not trying to drive in India. Those drivers are amazing.
Now to dig out the bucket lists and chat about them with my wife.
August 25, 2017 at 7:41 am
One of my Jeeps gets used for challenging my skills. Negotiating a steep ravine can be adrenaline pumping at 4 mph. When I was out in Colorado, I took the "road" over Hurricane Pass -- white knuckle when you get to the part where the trail is a narrow two-track with mountain on one side and lots of open air on the other. Met a vehicle coming the other way, my wife had to stick her head out the window to let me know how close my tires were to the cliff.
...
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
August 25, 2017 at 8:05 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor - Friday, August 25, 2017 7:31 AMI like driving, not racing. Punching the throttle and getting some acceleration, playing on curvy roads when I'm going somewhere. I wouldn't likely take hours at the track with a car, nor would I want a car just for that. That's why I sold the 911 and moved on. More interested in getting a couple cars and tinkering right now.I do slightly regret not trying to drive in India. Those drivers are amazing.
Now to dig out the bucket lists and chat about them with my wife.
I believe most of these track days are no racing, so it's legal driving fast on twisty routes.
Probably not as nice as taking a fun car and hitting something like the Tail of the Dragon in North Carolina (much nicer scenery there, I'm sure,) but less likelihood of having to deal with chowder-heads and police...
August 25, 2017 at 9:08 am
This is a fun topic for a Friday. And its a pretty wide open one, too.
In a way, I've already achieved some of what you In my previous job it was spent primarily to "help others". The agency I worked for before helped people with substance abuse problems, get off of their addictions. I can remember, early in my time there, going to a social event where former addicts were that we had helped. Several thanked me for doing what I could to help them get "clean", as they put it.
But both in that previous job and my current job, I don't feel like I'm as appreciated as I'd like to be. That I'm more of a burden than a necessary part of what we do. Don't get me wrong, its not that they're being nasty or anything. In my current job they do best what this state agency is for, but I am not a primary person in that. So, for me one of the things I'd like to do is work for a technology company, where what I do is one of the primary products, rather than some supporting role.
I'm going to bookmark this topic and come back to it.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
August 25, 2017 at 9:16 am
I would like to get involved and contribute to the SQL Server community, earn and keep MVP status, and be a solid resource for SQL Server professionals who are just beginning, or who have been in the industry for quite a while who stumble across something puzzling. That's my current bucket list goal. I'm sure there are others, but that's the one I'm focused on achieving presently.
Alan H
MCSE - Data Management and Analytics
Senior SQL Server DBA
Best way to ask a question: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/
August 25, 2017 at 11:17 am
I remember a while ago, Steve mentioning that he takes his kids on individual one-on-one vacations.
That's something I aspire to being able to do. Indeed, I took my oldest (7) down to Missouri to see the total eclipse with me. Despite clouds, and 15hrs in the car, he had the time of his life.
Leonard
Madison, WI
August 25, 2017 at 11:44 am
phonetictalk - Friday, August 25, 2017 11:17 AMI remember a while ago, Steve mentioning that he takes his kids on individual one-on-one vacations.That's something I aspire to being able to do. Indeed, I took my oldest (7) down to Missouri to see the total eclipse with me. Despite clouds, and 15hrs in the car, he had the time of his life.
We did that for a few years. One parent, one kid. Each got that for their birthday instead of a party. They all enjoyed it.
August 25, 2017 at 12:06 pm
I've hd a few odd bucket lists over the years, and some of them have worked outwhile others haven't. They were pretty bizarre mix, lmost mutually contradictory.
The early bucket lists were strange mixture of things; the most important one was to carry on learning new things for as long as I lived, and the next most important was to see a lot of foreign lands. One item in my early to mid teens was to study modern languages at Oxford or Cambridge or St Andrews (but I ended up doing maths at Oxford) instead and another as to become Director of the UK's National Physical Laboratory (somewhat contradictory with wnanting to be linguist; anyway that got dropped because I didn't want to be a civil servant - an employee of the UK government - so the nearest I ever got to that was a few weeks as a graduate assistant at the Rutherford High Energy Laboratories (where I had my first experience of real computers s opposed to the old spaghetti-board ones) in between universities. Another was to become fluent in French and I hit that one quite early on, but it was inevitable because I preferred French singers and novelists and playrights and poets to most English ones. When I was in my early teens I wanted .
In 1966 I wanted to do maths research, so the 1966-7 academic year was a one year MSc by Research at Bristol U, but I decided not to appy to stay on for a PhD - research students in the UK, even if those of us who got some paid work assisting with teaching undergrduates, were extremely impoverished, so I went into the computer industry instead. So during the next 18 months I grew a new bucket - to design at least one computer language that was actually used for real industrial work, and found that the Nelson Research Laboratory (where I was working) was going to be scrapped as part of the aftermath of English Electric being taken over by GEC, so looking for something interesting to do next ended up at the University of East Anglia, but soon realised that being at the top of the junior lecturer scale was another form of poverty (leading to another bucket - get paid a decent salary) and winters at UEA were colder than anywhere else I'd ever been, so after a year I took a job in industry again (achieving the newest bucket) and in the course of it achieved my design a really used computer language bucket. But now I started forming a different sort of bucket - marry and take my wife to live in Scotland, have children, own a big enough house to hold a large family, build a up a big enough pension to keep us happy and comfortable when I retired and to help with grandchildren. Those all happened over the years - 3 sons and a daughter, never stopped learning (I guess I was mostly lucky in my choice of employers because I got sent on plenty of intense training courses at various universities), spent time working in France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, the USA, Denmark, India, and Lebanon (always while employed in Britain, although some years I didn't spend much time here and sometimes I was working directly for the CEC) as well as in Scotland and England, and visited Israel, Egypt, the Czech Republic, and Cyprus, and now split my time roughly 50-50 between Britain and Spain (and hope that the lunatics demanding a "hard" Brexit instead of an economically viable one won't put an end to that).
Oddly enough I never had much interest in climbing up management trees (as long as I had control of my own work and anything else I was responsible for), so no career buckets of that sort; but somehow I ended up being a long way up the tree; I think that was partly a result of always learning and partly a result of having more interest in being a leader and a mentor than in being manager.
Tom
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