Daily Coping 6 Apr 2022 | Voice of the DBA

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

Today’s tip is to mentally scan your body and notice what it is feeling.

I’m writing this just under a week in advance, but this is good one for me today.

We had a hydrant fail in a field. It really just rusted out, but this is a metal tube with a valve at the top of bottom, which self-drains to prevent freezing issues. Here’s an example of what I have.

What that image doesn’t show is that the frost line for me is about 48”, and in my case, we needed to dig a hole down to about 5 feet (60”) to find the pipe. Actually the plumber offered to dig for US$80/hour and expected this would be about a $1000 hole for him to dig.

My two sons and I went out and did most of the work. Not enough, as the plumber had 3-4 hours of digging to do still, but we saved likely $700-800 in doing some of the work. Here’s us about halfway into our work. We were deep, but had to widen it quite a bit.

The worse part, for me, was the day after the hydrant was replaced. The hole was unfilled and rain was forecast. I got out there early one morning, listening to a couple MVP Summit sessions on headphones as I tried to fill in the hole before the light rain turned heavy.

It’s the day after. How do I feel?

Not too bad. My core and lower back are sore and ache-y, but not too painful. My forearms are definitely tired and sore, and typing is a little difficult. My legs are doing pretty well.

Overall, I feel like I worked hard, but didn’t overdo it. I’m paying for my mostly desk job life turned dirt worker, but I kept within my abilities and am using a little ibuprofen to get through the day.

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