David Gardiner - Health

STEPtember 2022

2022-09-13T15:00:00.000+09:30

For the second year in a row, along with some of my SixPivot colleagues, I'm taking part in STEPtember. STEPtember raises funds for people with and research into Cerebral Palsy. I'll be aiming to walk at least 10,000 steps each day in September.

To sponsor me, head over to https://www.steptember.org.au/s/157783/383539. In Australia, donations of $2 or more are tax deductible.

STEPtember 2021

2021-09-30T08:30:00.000+09:30

It's the last day of September and also the last day of "STEPtember"!

STEPtember is a fundraiser to support people with, and research into cerebral palsy. Participants are asked to take at least 10,000 steps each day of the month of September.

I found out about STEPtember through my colleagues at SixPivot, and signed up with a team to participate this year. Since I've been working from home I do try and take a regular morning walk before starting work - but I found that I needed to do a bit more than that (like cycling, gardening or other kinds of exercise) to make it over the 10,000 threshold. I do hope the extra steps are benefiting my health, as well as any donations going to a great cause.

If you'd like to sponsor me to help me get to my individual fundraising target, head over to my STEPtember profile page (donations are tax deductible for Australians).

You're in control. Farewell 2020

2020-12-31T16:30:00.000+10:30

It's New Year's Eve 2020. This year (and what a year) is almost done. Tomorrow we start over with the start of 2021!

One thing I wanted to talk about as we finish up 2020 is 'taking control', specifically with social media.

It is easy to coast, to be just a passive consumer. I know I often find myself doing it. But I think that can be risky. One day you discover you're completely swamped, maybe even drowning with all this stuff. That's not good!

Social media is a tool. It can be great - keeping in touch with friends and conversing with people you might otherwise never have the opportunity to meet in real life. But it can also be misused and be a negative, destructive influence. Not to mention the agendas and commercial of the social media platforms themselves. Remember nothing is free. There's always a cost. Someone always ends up paying.

Be deliberate

Be intentional about what you're sharing and what you're consuming. I know it's easy to just post whatever comes to mind. Maybe before you hit Post, take 5 minutes, then come back and review it with fresh eyes. Do I really need to post this? Is this constructive, helpful, building people up? Great! No? Maybe there's a better way to express yourself. Are you (or your current/future employer) going to be comfortable re-reading this in a few months or years?

Be careful

Do you really want to share your location/GPS coordinates? Most platforms do a good job of stripping these from photo uploads, but I know with my own blog I need to do that manually.

Are friends ok with being tagged or shared in a photo?

Delete

Is a particular social platform causing you stress? Deleting your profile (or even just taking a break for a few days) might be helpful. If you do choose to delete, it might be worth downloading all your data first.

Remember, this is social media - not real life! Real friendship exists beyond any particular technology platform.

Block

Sometimes you follow or friend someone who turns out to be a bit of a 'froot loop'. There's no rule to say you have to keep following or stay connected. Delete the connection. If they're pestering you, block them.

Mute

Maybe they're not a complete froot loop, but going through an odd phase. Many social platforms allow you to mute someone. You can still stay connected, but you won't see their posts.

Filter

Some platforms allow you to define keywords that you want to exclude from your news feed. If there's words you find offensive or topics you don't care about, use this feature.

Take control. Make healthy choices. Stay safe. Happy New Year and all the best for 2021!🙂🎆🧨🎇

Work from home update

2020-06-25T13:00:00.000+09:30

I started working from home back on March 16th, so it's been around 14 weeks since I've worked in our office in Adelaide CBD.

My normal weekday routine is getting up (usually earlier than I'd prefer), breakfast, shower and some stretches and exercises. The exercises were given to me by the physiotherapist after I injured my back last year playing basketball. While I haven't returned to playing competitively, I figure it's worth it for my own health to keep them up. A friend on Facebook was challenging folks to try and do 30 push ups a day for 30 days. I usually ignore these kinds of things (and don't repost them), but in this case I figured it was worth adding to my list. I've slowly been building up and hope to keep doing it for the long term.

Around the time of the school run (or a bit before) I head out for a morning walk. Most days I've been doing a 5km loop around the neighbourhood (weather permitting), which takes around 60 minutes. It takes the place of my walk to the bus and commute into town that I would previously have done. A great chance to get some fresh air and get the blood circulating, listen to podcasts (Daily Audio Bible followed by various technical podcasts), and prepare for the day ahead.

The mornings can be chilly when I'm out walking, so my pullover with these sleeves that let you put your thumb through the collar are handy. I originally thought the hole was a defect, but later I realised it was intended all along and is a handy feature!

Work follows mostly business hours, though a few weeks ago we did have a number of evening conference calls and training sessions. That is an ongoing challenge working for a global company - finding a time that's convenient for most people to attend.

I usually take my own lunch to work, but it is extra nice to be able to put a bit of extra effort into a homemade sandwich! Yes, that fruit is home grown too.

Being able to focus with less interruptions is a big bonus. I can also choose to put some background music on. Double J Radio is my station of choice.

Wrap up the work day around 5-6pm and then see what's happening with the rest of the family. It is nice to be home when they all get home from school. Sometimes there's some hot chips as an after-school treat so it's nice to be around to enjoy that!

There's been some discussions about returning to the office in the future. South Australia has had a total of 440 cases of COVID (with just 4 deaths) and no new cases in the last 4 weeks which is very encouraging.

I'm in no particular rush though. I've generally enjoyed my time working at home. I don't miss the 2 hours I was spending commuting each day. I feel like I think I'd like to keep doing it going forward (maybe going in to the office 1 day a week)

COVID-19

2020-03-18T14:00:00.000+10:30

Wow, that escalated fast. In the space of just a few weeks:

The MVP Summit trip to Seattle and Redmond was cancelled (and replaced with a virtual conference).
My daughter's school long anticipated school trip to Spain has been cancelled/deferred.
Massive government interventions.
People are dying.
Many people (particularly those in service industries) are (or soon will be) doing it really tough.
Our family is increasing our social distance as much as possible.
I'm planning to run the next few months of ADNUG as online virtual meetings.
I'm now working from home for the forseeable future. I appreciate that my job allows me to do that - not everyone has that option.

To avoid being cooped up in the house the entire day, the last couple of mornings before starting work I've gone for a short walk around the neighbourhood with my other daughter. It emulates my walk to the bus stop. Hopefully we can make it a regular thing.

Apparently my legs are a bit longer than hers, so a short break on a seat in the park along the way is required :-)

This is going to be a very disruptive time. Things aren't too bad (yet) where I live, but the stories from overseas are quite scary. Take care of yourselves and your loved ones.

March update

2020-03-06T15:00:00.000+10:30

January and February have come and gone, and March is now well underway. Autumn seems to have definitely hit Adelaide, though I wonder if there might still be some warmer weather around before Winter arrives? Time will tell.

Out of the ordinary

This year was the first in a long time that we didn't take part in the Tour Down Under community ride. The route wasn't particularly inspiring this year, so we gave it a miss. Hopefully 2021 will be better and the Gardiner boys will be back in lycra, raring to go!
I was all booked to fly over to Seattle/Redmond to attend Microsoft's annual MVP Summit, but it was announced this week that it has been cancelled, and an online/virtual event will be run in its place. Thank Coronavirus for making this one of many large events that have been impacted. So, I'm staying in Adelaide instead of cramming myself into an international economy seat for 24 hours (plus the return flight home). As I said on Twitter, it is disappointing but I think Microsoft made the right call considering the circumstances.

Also interesting to read about Microsoft asking their Redmond-based employees to work from home (if possible) for the rest of March.

ADNUG

The Adelaide .NET User Group is back for 2020. There's been huge interest in next week's meeting, which is great to see. I'm hoping to fill out the speaker schedule for the next few months. Do get in touch if you'd like to present to the group (and that can be in-person, or remote via Skype/Teams).

If I have one wish for the group, it's that I could find someone(s) to share the organising with. It would be good to have some load balancing (or at least a fail-over cluster!) Related to that, we've actually launched the ADNUG 2020 Member Survey. Please share your thoughts (and be in the running for a $100 book voucher).

I must say it's been really great to have Simon and Kristine from Encode Management on-board as both sponsors and supporters - and I know they're also working with other meetups in Adelaide too. It would be easy (and I think it has happened in the past) that sponsors just give some money, or might just pop their head in, but the folks from Encode are regular attendees and are often one of the last to leave after helping pack up. That sincerity and encouragement count for a lot in my book. And speaking of books, it's Encode that are putting up the aforementioned book voucher. Awesome!

DDD Adelaide 2020

I caught up with Andrew this week to kick of planning for DDD Adelaide 2020, with our traditional 'DDDumplings' lunch meeting. We should really get Dumpling King on board as a major sponsor :-)

Game over

2019-08-11T16:30:00.000+09:30

This year I decided to return to playing basketball socially after a break of about 5-6 years. Like most other sports I'd tried, I didn't have much natural talent, but enjoyed participating.

This season did not start out well. The first game back, I was enjoying being back on the court (if also realising how unfit I was!). But as the match progressed, my heel was getting sorer and sorer. Later diagnosed by the Physio as tendonitis - probably caused by going out way too hard after such a long time of not running at all.

A week off and some daily stretching (that I'm still doing months later) and I was feeling ok to get back again. A few more games and then more problems..

My back had been feeling a little uncomfortable earlier in the day, but I figured lots of stretching and I'd be fine. I played with out any issues and then drove home. But as I got out of the car, I felt my back go!

Some Chiro on the Monday, more stretching and trying to stand (instead of sitting down) at work meant, after another week off, I thought I'd be ok to come back again. I played last week without incident, though I was a little sore the next day.

Yesterday, my back was still not 100% but I figured I'd see how I went. That was probably a mistake. Part-way through the second half of the game, I went to chase the ball and felt my back go again. I took no further part in the game. Time to listen to my body and give it a proper rest.

And that's how my 2019 basketball season unceremoniously ended. Maybe I can give it another go in 2020, but if I do I think I'll need to invest in a lot better preparation. It would be disappointing if it turns out that I can't play again, but that's also a possibility. And better to retire my basketball boots and still be able to do other things, than really injure myself badly.

Tour Down Under 2013

2013-01-25T16:10:00.001+10:30

For the past few years I've always taken part in the community challenge ride which is part of the Tour Down Under. Sadly it wasn't to be this year. A couple of weeks ago I was out with the Mud, Sweat and Gears guys on a training ride and somehow managed to injure my back on the final ride home.

While not as bad as when I quite badly hurt it a few years ago, it still has meant time off work and a fair bit of lying down to give it a chance to improve.

It was great weather for riding today. I'm disappointed I missed out (not to mention the Tanunda bakery too), but hopefully I'll be in a healthier state for next year's ride.

Asthma First Aid–Windows Phone app

2012-05-16T06:49:00.001+09:30

Asthma First Aid is a free app I've developed in conjunction with Asthma Australia. It informs you of the recommended first aid steps for someone experiencing an asthma attack.

It features a one-click phone dialler to call '112' – the international standard mobile emergency number.

Everyone should know Asthma first aid, so if you have a Windows Phone, install it today

Download from the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Antihistamines

2009-12-07T01:43:00.001+10:30

I've been a long-time hay fever sufferer. I also had a fair bit of allergic conjuctivitis in my younger years which I seem to be growing out of (finally!), though for the last 6 or so years dermographism has been a challenge too. You can just call me "Mr Healthy" :-)

Because of this, I have developed a more than average interest in antihistamines, and done a bit of research on the various "non-drowsy" over-the-counter products available in Australia.

The products are grouped by active ingredient, and then ordered by the most familiar brand name with that ingredient. As a rule, the best known brand is usually the most expensive – presumably you're paying extra for all the marketing and colourful packaging.

Brand	Active Ingredient	Size	Dose	Price	Cost per tablet
Zyrtec	Cetirizine	30	10mg	21.95	$ 0.73
Zodac	Cetirizine	30	10mg	9.95	$ 0.33
Alzene	Cetirizine	30	10mg	17.95	$ 0.60
Telfast	Fexofenadine	30	180mg	22.95	$ 0.77
Xergic	Fexofenadine	30	180mg	21.95	$ 0.73
Fexotabs	Fexofenadine	50	180mg	26.45	$ 0.53
Fexal	Fexofenadine	30	180mg	15.95	$ 0.53
Xyzal	Levocetirizine	30	5mg	22.95	$ 0.77
Clarityne	Loratadine	50	10mg	36.95	$ 0.74
Lorastyne	Loratadine	50	10mg	21.95	$ 0.44
AllerEze	Loratadine	50	10mg	27.95	$ 0.56
Chemists' Own Loratadine	Loratadine	50	10mg	32.95	$ 0.66
Aerius	Desloratadine	28	5mg	24.35	$ 0.87

Note also, the prices I've quoted here are from online pharmacies based in Australia, such as Pharmacy Direct and Pharmacy Online (don't forget to allow for postage). Buying the same identical product from a non-discount pharmacy may cost up to a 1/3 more.

I've tried all the main kinds, with varying degrees of success. I do think it is a good idea to swap products every few months as in my experience extended use of one specific antihistamine reduced its effectiveness (as though the body became desensitised to it).