T-SQL Tuesday #134 – Give Me A Break

Introduction

This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is being hosted by James McGillivray (blog|twitter). The subject is Give Me A Break. As James describes it, “Write a post about relaxation techniques, dream destinations, vacation plans or anything else relating to taking a break for your own mental health”. This post will be my contribution for T-SQL Tuesday #134 – Give Me a Break.

Once again, this is a pretty wide area, that gives everyone plenty of possibilities for topics. This is good, since I think it will encourage more people to actually write a blog post. Just writing a useful blog post, and getting quality links back and forth from other related blogs in the community is good for everyone who participates!

BTW, reading and then commenting on the T-SQL Tuesday blog posts of other participants helps both you and the other blogger. They get views and comments, and you get backlinks to your blog.

In my case, I am going to discuss a few things that help me relax and a dream vacation I hope to take in the future.

T-SQL Tuesday #134 – Give Me a Break

Here are some things I do to relax.

Get Away From Your Computer!

I have a Fitbit Versa 2 watch that alarms every hour at 50 minutes after if I haven’t done 250 steps during that hour. This helps remind me to get up and take a break and at least get my hourly steps in. It also gives my eyes a break from staring at my monitors.

I make a point to play with my two miniature Dachshund puppies, Chorizo and Andouille (Andie) during these breaks. Don’t worry, they get plenty of other attention too.

Having two puppies definitely changes your life. It causes some stress and lots of happiness!

One silly thing I do just about every day is watch a soap opera called “The Bold and the Beautiful“. This particular soap opera has been on since 1987, and it is only 30 minutes long. It comes on at 12:30PM in my time zone, so I eat lunch while I am watching it. As a soap opera, it has a ridiculous plot, but it often makes me laugh and it takes my mind off of real life. I’ve been watching it for a while, so I know way too much about the characters!

World of Tanks

Another silly diversion I have is playing World of Tanks. I’ve been playing World of Tanks for over seven years, and I still enjoy it. It is a somewhat realistic game that lets you play many different historical and “paper” tanks from the 1930s through the late 1950s.

The rig I use for playing World of Tanks is described here, My Current AMD Ryzen 5 5600X Gaming Rig

I’ve always been interested in military history, and I was a real tank commander of an M60A1 RISE/Passive tank while I was in the Marine Corps. BTW, RISE stands for Reliability Improved Selective Equipment and the “Passive” is referring to passive night sights. I have seen several M60A1 model tank kits that think RISE/Passive means the Explosive Reactive Armor (ERA) that was fitted to the tanks in the 1990s.

When I was in the Marines, the tactical thinking was that a platoon of five tanks would be attached to an infantry battalion (and some other assets) to form a Marine Amphibious Unit (MAU). If the Soviet Union had ever decided to attack NATO, one plan was to send U.S. Marine MAUs to Norway.

Unfortunately, if a MAU ever had to fight against heavy Soviet tank units, we would have gotten decimated. The Marines were essentially light infantry, with very little mechanization or organic anti-tank weaponry.

At the time, we tankers felt that our M60A1 tanks would have done well against Soviet T-62 and T-72 tanks. We were told that we had better optics, better ergonomics, and better training, so that we were likely to spot and engage the enemy first, and hit them with the first round. Thank goodness we never had to find out!

Dream Vacation

Because of my interest in World War 2 tanks and tank battles, I would love to visit and revisit some tank museums and famous tank battlefields. One place I have been to before is The Tank Museum in Bovington, southwest of London. I was there over twenty years ago, but the museum has changed a lot since then. Going during the annual Tankfest in June would be a lot of fun!

I would also like to visit the German Tank Museum, Deutsches Panzermuseum Munster (DPM) in Munster. Another connected item is doing some WWII battlefield tours, such as in the Ardennes or even the the Battle of Kursk! Personally, I would love to reread some of my favorite books describing these battles, and then actually visit the battlefields. In reality, this might not be as exciting as I would hope though.

Final Words

I hope that these ideas have been interesting and useful! I also want to thank James for hosting this month.

If you have any questions about this post, please ask me here in the comments or on Twitter. I am pretty active on Twitter as GlennAlanBerry. Thanks for reading!