Author: Hettie D.

My name is Henrietta (Hettie) Dombrovskaya. I was born in Saint-Petersburg, Russian (actually, back then – Leningrad, USSR) in 1963, and immigrated to the United States in 1996. I love Saint Petersburg, the city I was born and raised in, and I think it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. Similarly (but differently) I love Chicago, and can’t imagine myself moving somewhere else in the observable future. I have three children, Igor, Vlad and Anna, all adults living on their own, and one (so far) granddaughter Nadia. I also believe that my children are the best thing that happened in my life. As for my professional life, I am working in the field of Information Technologies. When I was twenty, I’ve declared that the databases are the coolest thing invented and that I want to do them for the rest of my life. Thirty plus years later, I still believe it’s true, and still, believe that the databases are the best. These two statements together imply that I think a person can have it all, and indeed, I think so! Keep reading my journals to find out how I did it.

Warm Weather Is Back, And Lots Of Work

I found one more biking opportunity – after the evening rush hour. Now, and for the next two months, there will be enough daylight to bike after 6 PM. Yesterday, I left the house at 6-15, and the traffic was much better than it is between 4 and 6, and probably even better than during lunchtime.

And today in the morning – the sunrise from the same place 🙂

I am almost sad that I have breakfast and lunch at work and do not have an opportunity to eat breakfast outside. The closest I can get to it – sit by the window at the cafeteria:

The weather is amazing, and the whole city seems to be outside. I took a stroll after lunch, and everywhere on the Riverwalk, there is people ]sitting, eating their lunches, and enjoying the weather.

And there are so many things I need and what to do that they hopelessly do not fit anywhere, and I do not even have time to write down my to-do lists :). So instead of blogging about what I didn’t do or do not have time to do, I should better tell what I’ve actually done!

And it was this beautiful morning bike ride, and an exceptionally productive day at work, and a walk along the river, and dinner at the ODS (only a partial success since most residents were somewhere outside :)).

Mom’s SSI

That’s something I completely and entirely don’t understand. For the longest time, whenever I talked to the people from the Social Security Administration, they told me that Mom could apply for SSI after she lived in the US for five years, regardless of her citizenship status. When I called to inquire about the same thing in April, a person with whom I talked assured me that it was all fine and signed us up for the phone interview.

When we got on the phone for the interview last week, the lady who was talking to us told us that my mom is not eligible because although she lived here for five years, she didn’t work, and she is not a citizen yet. Then she said that my mom can apply when her citizenship is approved. I thought that that was the end of the story, but she collected all the other information and said that my mom can’t have that much money in the bank as she has in our joint account. So I was like: should I remove it? And she was: I am not saying that, but…

So again, super annoying, but I thought: oh, well, we will restart the process when mom is a citizen. And then on Monday, she received a letter stating that her application will be reviewed.

There are sever minor inaccuracies there, so it looks like we will need to call there anyway, but this all is very confusing. And takes tons of time.

Mom is freaking out that she won’t understand the questions on the citizenship interview, and I am freaking out that she is freaking out. On the brighter side, she really likes my physical therapist which is not her physical therapist as well, and she says that she sees slow improvement. That’s great; merely the fact that she says this 🙂

My New To-Do List

  1. Work, wor,k and work
  2. Vlad’s wedding: menu for Family lunch, and all other details
  3. Chicago PUG meetup – less than ten days away, and I didn’t put any effort in organizing it
  4. Submit proposals for PG Conf NYC
  5. Performance book
  6. Next article for RedGate
  7. Plant the annuals
  8. Vegetable garden
  9. New fridge
  10. New oven
  11. Kitchen painting
  12. Windows washing
  13. Mom’s citizenship interview
  14. Mom’s occupational therapy
  15. … and live my life 🙂

The Last Post About Ireland – Megaliths

I know you can’t tell it from the pictures, but by the time we left Trim Castle, the weather was horrible. We discussed whether it makes any sense to drive to the site of the oldest remains of civilization in Ireland – the Megaliths. Finally, we decided that we’ll make our way to the Loughcrew Cairns and then decided whether we felt like getting out of the car.

We did, and I couldn’t be more thankful to my friends who brought me there! Yes, muddy and rainy, and we had to climb the hills in the pouring rain, but it would be unforgiving if I would not use a chance to connect to these pieces of history,

Everything about them is unknown: who, when, and why put so much work into bringing the stones from all over Ireland into one place and worked so carefully on positioning the whole structure in accordance with the movement of the sun.

Standing there, I felt the presence of unknown forces, both empowered and humiliated simultaneously…

Trim Castle

This post was sitting in the drafts for almost a month. So many things happened after I traveled to Ireland! However, I still wanted to show the pictures of the city of Trim and its amazing Castle!
The city is very beautiful and very Medieval (I believe it is considered a city with the most Medieval building in Ireland.

Continue reading “Trim Castle” →

Should a consultant know everything?

Originally published in The World of Data, but I think it goes beyond PostgreSQL

Hettie D.'s avatarThe World of Data

Although I am often asked to do some consulting and like helping people, my two consulting jobs left me with a strong opinion that I do not like to be a consultant.

Recently, I mentioned this fact in a professional conversation, and the reaction was somewhat unexpected. The conversation went like this: yes, some people feel uncomfortable consulting because you are expected to know everything, and then they are afraid that they will get a question to which they do not know the answer. But if you work for a consulting company, you do not need to worry about that because there are always others you can ask, and somebody will know. And the customer does not need to know that you used other resources.

I never thought about consulting that way because I never saw it as a problem that I might not know something. It is perfectly normal…

View original post 197 more words

Spring Arrives For The Second Time

The Lake, And Again – The Lake

I know that I won’t stop posting pictures of the lake now that I can bike early in the morning, and I know that all of them look the same. But every morning is a new morning, and sometimes, the lake is stormy, and sometimes – calm, and each time – beautiful.

Women Impact Tech Conference

I week ago, I attended one more conference, Women Impact Tech. Before the pandemic, I tried to attend similar events, mostly to support the movement. This was the first in-person post-pandemic event, and I was offered a free registration, so I decided to go and see where we all as women in tech stands, and what people are doing not only to attract more women to the tech industry, but also to support them at the workplace so that they won’t have to be “ten times better than any male applicant” to get the job, and so that they fell comfortable at the workplace.

I won’t say I had all questions answered, but I it was very refreshing to see so many women in leadershop positions and to hear their keynotes!

Continue reading “Women Impact Tech Conference” →

May 1

I went to the new plaque dedication at the Haymarket Memorial. The weather was miserable, so unfortunately, it was hard to feel May-Day-like. Probably, a part of it was that I was not that much in the May Day mode because of a conference and all other professional things going on. So, there won’t be a proper MayDay post, but at least some pictures of this very rainy event are here!