Cheryl’s List #152 – September 26, 2011

by | Sep 26, 2011 | Cheryl's List

1.   Tuning Letter Survey
2.   Personal Note & Next Tuning Letter

1.  Tuning Letter Survey

Recently we sent out a survey to our Tuning Letter subscribers. While our subscribers will be getting the full results, we wanted to share these with our Cheryl’s List recipients.

We were pleased that the response to “How satisfied are you with the Tuning Letter?” resulted in this cool Ms. Pac-Man pie chart:

piechart3

We asked readers to share their comments about the Tuning Letter. Here’s a typical response – this is from Dan Squillace of SAS Institute: “There are many excellent mainframe reference manuals and publications. But this is a most important one to me and the last one I’d want to be without! It is indispensable to z/OS and mainframe generalists.” Thanks, Dan and to all of you who conveyed to us how valuable the Tuning Letter is to you.

We were also interested in learning which conferences our subscribers attend. The next graph shows the results:

conf3

2.  Personal Note & Next Tuning Letter

In the last Cheryl’s List, I mentioned that I was scheduled for an outpatient back surgery. I thought I’d be up and about fairly quickly but due to an infection, it’s taken longer for things to get back to normal. As a result, 2011 No. 4 is a bit late. Look for it to arrive in the next few weeks.

All in all, this surgery was a life-changing event for me. The sciatica and back pain that I’ve had for over 30 years is now gone. The procedure is called a non-invasive lumbar laminotomy, and has become quite popular in the last five years or so. I had a 1.5″ incision to clean out the L3/L4/L5 vertebrae (due to spinal stenosis). Within a half hour after the one hour surgery, I was up and walking out on my own. It’s taken a few weeks but the old back pain has disappeared. I get to sit at my desk for the first time in almost eight months. Yippee! So for those of you who have been avoiding surgery, you should know there have been improvements in the technology.

Stay Tuned!

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