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government is a different type of stress. depends on what your goals are in life. I wanted a work/life balance and government gives me that. No 50-60hr weeks, no more than 37.5 hrs a week here. Pay is usually less unless you are in management.
 
government is a different type of stress. depends on what your goals are in life. I wanted a work/life balance and government gives me that. No 50-60hr weeks, no more than 37.5 hrs a week here. Pay is usually less unless you are in management.
yep! even in management, the pay is less. I made my money and set up my life with the private industry money. So this is strictly for the work life balance and a stable retirement plan. Between the pension and maxing out my 401k, I'm set. My husband is a government worker too. I'm in State/Local and he's on the Fed side.
 
I'm not sure the "grass is greener" on that side. My sister (Civil PE) works for the city as a plans reviewer. I feel like she has it made, since she never has to design, just review and comment on other people's mistakes. However, she always seems stressed with her job. Being her brother, I feel like I can attribute it to her bad attitude in general, but I could be wrong. I've also been told (from a well respected inspector) our city electric service is THE place to work at (low stress, excellent benefits), but then again, I could be wrong. My current company is relatively low-stress, so I'm gonna ride that until something changes.
That makes sense, and I know there are definitely issues on the govt. end that I don't experience in consulting. I'm glad that your company is relatively low-stress! I think for me personally, I'm just getting burned out by client project management.
 
Yeah, yall make consulting sound stressful AF! I've always worked for manufacturing companies, and yall make me not want to consider consulting, even though I'll probably never use my PE.
 
That makes sense, and I know there are definitely issues on the govt. end that I don't experience in consulting. I'm glad that your company is relatively low-stress! I think for me personally, I'm just getting burned out by client project management.
I'm in consulting and every firm is different. It all depends on management style and how the company is structured. My current boss actually worked for the government early in his career. He said, "My first day, my boss showed me his typical day. We went to the break room, had breakfast, drove out to inspect a meter, went to his house where he took out his dogs, hung out for an hour, then we went back to the office, turned in some paperwork, then went out for lunch. Then we went shopping for a personal errand he had to do. Then he dropped me off at the office so I could go home." He said this is where he learned his work ethic lol.

I've worked in consulting firms where a 60-hour work week wasn't enough. We were always slammed because we never said "No" to deadlines. We had slackers who would never put in an honest 40 hour week, and others who would put in 60+hours. I would put in 50+hour weeks, sometimes working weekends, and it didn't seem enough to satisfy my supervisor. And this was a private company. It seemed like no one could get fired. I worked at another firm where the environment wasn't stressful, but it was corrupt. I don't work more than 40 hours/week currently (and I don't know anyone else here who does), but we're a private firm and we work on similar projects I mentioned above. Like I said, it's mostly management. If I have an assigned project, and I get updated info from the architect and they want it returned in 2 days, my boss literally tells them, "Tell them they can have it in a week." even if it only takes me a day to finish. And the architect is ok with it, because he knows to expect that from us. Our management makes sure no one is overloaded and everyone has time to finish their work and the PEs have time to review it. And most employees have been hear 10 years or more, so that says something.

I can see if you're getting burned out, it might be getting time to look elsewhere. I know it's hard to do, though. I've been there.
 
Yeah, yall make consulting sound stressful AF! I've always worked for manufacturing companies, and yall make me not want to consider consulting, even though I'll probably never use my PE.
Depends on how much you like it. Stress affects us all differently. My dad was in manufacturing...hated it. I was in manufacturing (internship in college)...and few people there seemed happy, so that's part of the reason I went into consulting. I think it all depends on what kind of experiences we've had with different companies.
 
I'm in consulting and every firm is different. It all depends on management style and how the company is structured. My current boss actually worked for the government early in his career. He said, "My first day, my boss showed me his typical day. We went to the break room, had breakfast, drove out to inspect a meter, went to his house where he took out his dogs, hung out for an hour, then we went back to the office, turned in some paperwork, then went out for lunch. Then we went shopping for a personal errand he had to do. Then he dropped me off at the office so I could go home." He said this is where he learned his work ethic lol.

I've worked in consulting firms where a 60-hour work week wasn't enough. We were always slammed because we never said "No" to deadlines. We had slackers who would never put in an honest 40 hour week, and others who would put in 60+hours. I would put in 50+hour weeks, sometimes working weekends, and it didn't seem enough to satisfy my supervisor. And this was a private company. It seemed like no one could get fired. I worked at another firm where the environment wasn't stressful, but it was corrupt. I don't work more than 40 hours/week currently (and I don't know anyone else here who does), but we're a private firm and we work on similar projects I mentioned above. Like I said, it's mostly management. If I have an assigned project, and I get updated info from the architect and they want it returned in 2 days, my boss literally tells them, "Tell them they can have it in a week." even if it only takes me a day to finish. And the architect is ok with it, because he knows to expect that from us. Our management makes sure no one is overloaded and everyone has time to finish their work and the PEs have time to review it. And most employees have been hear 10 years or more, so that says something.

I can see if you're getting burned out, it might be getting time to look elsewhere. I know it's hard to do, though. I've been there.
Oh boy...your boss' experience is definitely one of the downsides I've heard of for working at the government. That would drive me nuts. It would be nice to have a break from the constant worry of being billable, but that's on the other end of the extreme!

60+ hour weeks doesn't sound sustainable. I'm glad you're not in that position any longer! I'm fortunate that my work hours are usually 40 hrs/week (definitely work more hours if there's a deadline). But yeah, definitely getting tired of some aspects of consulting I've been dealing with lately.
 
Back onto more important topics of blenders; Costco just threw out their coupon book for this month and it has the bigger Ninja Foodi power blender for $30 off (so $100 vs. $130). I'm just gonna buy it.

Does anyone know of good/simple smoothies for me to start with? I have frozen strawberries, greek yogurt, and ice. Can I just mix those together? Please be nice, I have literally never made a smoothie before.
 
My Ninja blender came with a little recipe book at the time. Yes, you can just mix those together. Start it up with a bit of added liquid at the bottom, and then add milk/ice/juice/whatever liquid you want a little bit at a time through the top until everything starts to incorporate/blend together. Even a good blender sometimes takes more liquid than you'd think depending how much stuff you put in there.
 
Yeah, yall make consulting sound stressful AF! I've always worked for manufacturing companies, and yall make me not want to consider consulting, even though I'll probably never use my PE.
Go with a company who takes work-life balance seriously. I worked for a fortune 500 consultant firm for a long time and I loved it! Great work life balance.
 
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Wait. Guys. Can I use an immersion mixer to make smoothies? AM I LOOKING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION? I'M GONNA TRY IT.
Don’t do this!! A friend of mine lost her blender in a move, and did this instead, and it got old after a while. I guess it depends on how often you use your blender, which she did fairly frequently. Keep the immersion blender for tomato sauces and soups, though!

We also used to have a ninja blender, and it was fine, but literally sounded like an airplane was taking off every time we would simply be trying to make a smoothie.

Now we have a Vitamix blender, and are still basically only using it for smoothies. I love it. I never want another blender! It definitely gets a better texture than I feel the Ninja ever did. But that’s something that matters to me, as I have a smoothie for breakfast 6 days a week. Ha!
 
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Don’t do this!! A friend of mine lost her blender in a move, and did this instead, and it got old after a while. I guess it depends on how often you use your blender, which she did fairly frequently. Keep the immersion blender for tomato sauces and soups, though!

We also used to have a ninja blender, and it was fine, but literally sounded like an airplane was taking off every time we would simply be trying to make a smoothie.

Now we have a Vitamix blender, and are still basically only using it for smoothies. I love it. I never want another blender! It definitely gets a better texture than I feel the Ninja ever did. But that’s something that matters to me, as I have a smoothie for breakfast 6 days a week. Ha!
Lol, I was thinking of the immersion blender, but the Oster I have is def not strong enough to get through ice. Maybe room-temp fruits, but I'm only using it for soups. I'm hoping this Ninja blender will be a little quieter, since it's part of their Foodi line (Idk what that means, but I guess it's their nicer line), but we'll see. I've heard the Vitamix blender = the best, but it's sooooo much more money (like, minimum $300 more) and I'm just using it for smoothies once in a while when I remember and want something cool vs. a smoothie for breakfast. Maybe someday I'll make the jump, but it'll probably be when I have all my loans paid off and I'm trying to be an adult.

In other news, this is oddly accurate:

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Hey now! I’m a Californian but spent 8 years living in VT, and definitely didn’t die in any blizzards!
 
This is the second article on this I've seen in the last week. The first one was written so poorly and contained so much WRONG information (roughly the nuclear equivalent of claiming that rubber is an electrical conductor) that I stopped reading and dismissed it entirely.

This one was written better, but it's still confusing certain concepts. A nukee obviously didn't proofread it. The net effect is that it makes it difficult for me to to know what is fact and what is misinterpretation. The article doesn't really provide any useful numbers for reference. Saying a 40% increase over a year is meaningless if the baseline is a trivially small number. It would help to know the measured neutron energies too. Big difference between fission neutrons, (a,n) neutrons, and decay neutrons.

What I will say is that, assuming the neutron yield is legit and it's not a minor bump above background then it is something that needs to be investigated more thoroughly. I agree with the quote that is is "cause for concern but not alarm".
 
And so it begins....

For those that don’t have the pleasure, this is the year for the big cicada uprising. They’re 2-3” long and look creepy as f-. Despite the look, fortunately, they’re harmless. We had a chilly spell for a while so they’re a little late coming out, the ground temp has to get above 65, but now that their coming we’ll have millions. At my old house 17 years ago with postage stamp sized yards they were deafening when you were outside so I can’t imagine what it’ll be like now that we’ve got a couple acres.
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