I have been wondering whether my blog site issue posts should have had different subject lines:
“The Day after Tomorrow”
“Pride and Prejudice”
“The Abyss”
“The Temple of Doom”
and the final one: “The Great Escape”
I have fixed numerous problem along the way, all with no prior experience with Docker, but the main ones have been:
Obtaining a static IP address from my ISP.
Conversion of my server functions into separate Docker containers.
Building a user-specific Docker image with Apache2 and Perl for the “other” folders outside of WordPress.
Adding DNS server addresses to Docker.
Removing access restrictions to the /tmp areas of the databases.
I think I can say with more confidence that my blog site is becoming robust enough to be able to support my retirement next week! Yes, by the start of April 2025 I will have officially retired, but this site will still be up-and-running!
Yes, I am retiring from paid contracts on 31Mar2025, and my company (Holland Numerics Ltd) will be closed in a few months time.
However, retiring will never be as stressful as the blog server downtime (now resolved!) I experienced this weekend! I have been trying to create a “low maintenance” environment for my blog and ancillary activities, and I want to leave my blog members and clients still able to:
As Programmer and Recruiter members you can post programming questions (including interview questions) in the paid-for SAS Programming Forum, which includes the SAS course.
You can ask single, or subscribe monthly for unlimited, commercially-sensitive questions in the paid-for Premium SAS help desk service.
All this will continue, but will be supported by just myself, and not my company, after my retirement.
My current SAS contract will end on 11Apr2023, but my SAS Software licence will expire on 31May2023. The second date is probably more pertinent, as, without income, I’m not prepared to finance an annual software renewal without a very good reason (or a sponsor!), and the lack of that licence will necessitate me retiring from the SAS world!
Let’s be absolutely clear at this point in time, I’m not worried about retiring, but I said many years ago, when I passed the UK pension age, I will leave the final decision to my clients!
After 36 years in the SAS world in 2017 I received a Lifetime Achievement Award from SAS UK, which prompted my wife to suggest that I should retire immediately, as, she said, SAS UK now reckon I’m not going to do anything more! However, at the time I felt I had so much more to do!!
Now after 42 years in the SAS world I’m not sure now whether you are shouting “Don’t Retire Now!” or not, but, if you still need to ask me SAS-related questions, you will have to let me know soon, and the best way would be to subscribe to [sas.answers @ Holland Numerics] before the end of May 2023. This permits multiple SAS-related questions to be asked using up to 5 email addresses for a calendar month. Response times are guaranteed within 48 hours. If just 5 companies subscribe for a single month, or a single company subscribes for 5 months, or some combination in-between, then I’ll be able to continue for another year. It is that simple.
I’m currently working on my last(?) SAS-related book with the provisional title of “Memoirs of a Power SAS User”, detailing important SAS and more general software-related facts I’ve found useful during my 40+ years working with SAS software, but this will, of course, be made more difficult without an active SAS licence.
My final, and important, fact for potential subscribers and employers is that in several previous SAS contracts I have been budgeted, when working off-site, at 1.5 FTE (full-time employee), because I can get SAS work done with fewer delays!
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