Harlan

I have asthma as well and have somewhat grown out of it except for dust/mold (usually happens when we close up the house for the fall and open it up for the spring). I was told many years ago that black coffee was a great go-to in an emergency (and it is, opens me right up) but now I drink it most days and haven't had to touch my inhaler except for a few middle of the night episodes (probably something to do with a dog in my face, dust, etc). Not sure if you're a coffee drinker but I tell all the asthma sufferers I come in contact with.

topflightpro

I have some flexibility like this, but not that much. We don't have comp time, and I'm expected to put in 40 hours a week, but it's more important that I hit an average of 40 hours over the month. So, if I do 38 one week and 42, that's ok. But, if I take a full day off, I have to use PTO hours, regardless of how many hours I've recorded for the week/month.

At my previous job, I accumulated comp time. I never used PTO as a result.

topflightpro

FF, I swap back and forth between Symbicort and Advair as my daily inhaler. I'm back on Symbicort because they are offering some deal where it is free for a year to use it. I don't really notice any difference between the two. I also have a rescue inhaler - Xopenex - that I sometimes use/during rides and races. It helps as well.

At this time of year, my biggest challenge is how dry the air is. If I'm on the trainer, I will often try to put a humidifier in the garage to make things a little better, but it's not a perfect solution.

Also, I've recently learned I have a massively deviated septum, to the point that it nearly touches one sidewall of my nose. I am looking at getting the surgery to repair it, which from what I've read, will greatly improve my sinus issues.

Flatballer

We don't get comp time for time over 40, just for working on the weekend basically. If you work a weekend day (not just coming into the office because you're busy, but out doing something for a customer), you get a day off at some point. And it's not official either, even though I think it absolutely should be. If you expect a salary employee to work 45 hours over 5 days, and then also be away from their families for 10 hours on a Saturday night, you should give them that time back someday, and make it official.

But yeah, generally at all my jobs if you took a full day you had to use PTO, 8 hours of it (which seems silly to me). I don't really understand why if I've worked 37 hours, and I take a day off, I have to use 8 hours of PTO, so that I end up "working" 45 hours, but whatever.

There are definitely times I wish I was in a union. The union guys we work with make absurd money.

Ygduf

I don't have to bill or log hours anywhere. I'm incredibly spoiled by my current flexibility, and honestly it's the only reason I have any fitness with the twins. I'm not hard enough to ride my trainer at 5am.

topflightpro

I do. In fact, we have to keep a detailed accounting of my time in 6 min. intervals - government contracting requirements are how I expect law firms operate.

I'm fortunate now that primarily work on one charge code. But for my first year here, I would touch 30-35 projects a month, and time had to be allotted correctly.

Ygduf

At her last job my wife had to do that and would be spread over 5-10 projects every week. It seemed as time intensive and wasteful as an entire separate side project.

If I had to try and account for my time "worked" it would have to be mostly fiction, fortunately. I get super busy for a few months, then it's mostly dead for 7...

furiousferret

9 out of 12 months asthma is a very minor issue for me (those months occurring the same time yours does, though our fall starts late). I drink a fair bit of coffee. Not sure if it helps, but I'll try to see if it changes things.

Advair was the one I had a bad reaction to; my asthma went from an 8 to a 1, whereas my old medication (QVar) only drops it to a 4. I may try Symbicort or Dulera. I've tried both a humidifier and dehumidifier and neither seemed signifigant; although that was over 10 years ago. The biggest thing for me was removing fabric (carpet, matress covers, leather furniture, etc).

carpediemracing 

My current job basically makes any outside activity virtually impossible. Sneaking in some FB glances and maybe (literally) 4 or 5 texts with the Missus is about it. Absolutely zero chance of me doing much of anything. Someone asked me if it'd be possible to do a Bethel series again. "Absolutely, but not with me" was the short version of my answer.

When I was in IT I could work the Bethel Spring Series, literally 5-6-7 hours a day, and still perform my job. I have no metrics of my job performance so it's hard to quantify what I did or didn't do. A lot of my job was building or testing and that meant a lot of down time.

In the hardware store they let me do something similar, even skipping Saturdays and Sundays for 6 to 8 weeks. There I had metrics to my job performance (I was about the only person that could even get to them). I outsold everyone but the owner of the store, and by a large margin. Although I did spend a lot of time on the Series, 2008-2012, I think it didn't affect my output too much. If I wasn't working hard enough I don't think they'd have let me leave early every Tuesday May-Aug there was a race.

When the Missus was in (false alarm) labor and on the way to the hospital (she drove herself from her office) I was fielding calls from racers asking about the Series while I was driving to the hospital. I even set up my "office" in the birthing and maternity room as the next race was less than 36 hours away. Most racers had no idea that we'd had that false alarm the week prior to the birth, the false alarm happening just before the first week of the Series.

hack

Used to do the whole bill to the 10th of an hour nonsense. It was terrible and time sheets looked absurd with 6 projects broken up into some 5 phases for each project. Felt bad for HR folk reviewing them.

Been in an exempt position for a while and greatly prefer it. Some weeks light some weeks heavy. If I “need” to leave early to make a ride it’s not a problem.

Harlan

I have a pretty deviated septum as well. Can barely get air through one side. Kindly share your experiences with it!

Also my resting breathing patterns are stupid from working with diesel boats for years, I learned to breathe very shallow and infrequently. It certainly hinders me on the bike and there are spurts where I remember how to belly breathe and I can do much more ftp climbing for example. I remember someone here having one of those masks that people say are for elevation but they are really for teaching you to breathe. I should look into that.

topflightpro

Will do. The doc said that for me, he would not only straighten my septum, but also reduce the size of these sacs in your nose, open my sinuses, and strengthen the outer walls of my nose, so that they don't dip in. The result would be like wearing a breathe right strip all the time. Right now, I am trying to determine when to do it. It's going to take at least two weeks off the bike to recover, and then another two weeks or so of very moderate exercise, so I'm looking at 4 full weeks of little to no training. Given my 2018 plans - which are really big for me - I may have to wait a year to do it.

Harlan

Wow I had no idea it had so much recovery time. Have you done any other research about insurance/cost?

himespau 

On the other hand, getting all the extra oxygen might be worth it for those big plans.

topflightpro

There are two different versions of the surgery. The basic one, which just repairs the deviated septum, requires only a couple of days for the recovery, then about two weeks of limited activity. It's a much less invasive procedure.

The one I am looking at is a lot more intensive, as he would not only be repairing the septum, but also removing some sinus sacs, expanding my sinuses and then rebuilding the exterior walls of my nose, which have insufficient cartilage in them and collapse. It's more akin to a complete nose job than anything else. I think they even have to basically open half my face to do it. (I haven't looked into that part too much as I am incredibly squeamish.)

I haven't looked into the insurance and costs, but I suspect it would be a few thousand dollars with my deductible and out-of-pocket costs with my insurance plan.

I've thought of this as well.

furiousferret

I never knew the nose was so complex! I hope it gets better soon @topflightpro.

Matt2.8NJ

I had a version of this done, although it did not require fully opening my face. My ENT surgeon called my nose "the worst he's ever seen". It was done in July 2016, and I was only off the bike about 5 days. It was done on a Friday morning at 7am. I was home by noon.

I had chronic sinus infections lasting 90 days a pop, 2-3 times a year, that would only get cleared with a massive dose of antibiotics. The sinuses couldn't drain, so they'd get infected real fast. And I'd get an infection, even when fully healthy, from simply riding outside in the cold.

Things are a lot better now, less frequent and more mild infections when they do come. And I can actually breathe. I do however, severely limit my riding outside during the cold, for fear of getting sick. I'll probably get 5k miles+ on the trainer this year... but what are you gonna do?

As far as a list of what was done in my surgery, deviated septum + a half dozen other things.

himespau 

Did you feel like you were getting more air into your lungs?

Enthalpic

No difference in VO2max between nose clip, normal nose, and externally dilated nose.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10949017

Matt2.8NJ

Yes, but only in the situations where I was totally out of breath, like the end of a race or killing myself up a hill.

Ttoc6

All this talk of deviated septums means I should go get mine checked out. I get so many damn sinus infections and I'm only 22 years old. my dad gets them bad too. I should probably just schedule a routine visit with the doctor before my insurance changes in January anyways..

Ttoc6

I work for a government contract so I deal with the ridiculousness of charging my time across many different chargelines. If I'm working in my office on one topic or on the same project in the lab I have to use a different charge line about 50% of the time. I keep daily logs of (generally) what I do (ie, 7:30-8:30 worked on setting up Django..) which helps a lot when it comes time to fill out the logs. But yeah, no possibility of sneaking out during the day. I amallowed to flex my time which is super nice, but on 10 hours days staying any extra time after that leaves little time after work to get a ride in..

jsk

To me this is completely to be expected, and I've never understood why anyone would think otherwise. Think about it, if you're at or near a VO2Max effort, are you going to be breathing through your nose or mouth? (If nose, you're doing it wrong).

Flatballer

Alright, I'm a mouth breather on the bike, why is that bad? I've heard it forever, but it's just really uncomfortable for me. Isn't air, air and I want to get in a bunch of it? My nose isn't great either, which I assume is why I'm such a mouth breather at anything above like Z2 (and I'm fat and slow and don't even ride bikes right now, but whatever).

furiousferret

Since I'm a server admin I don't worry about that but our developers have to do that and its wildly inefficient. Our teams are based on customer, which means we can have 5 mainframe developers on different teams writing roughly the same code and not communicating. Its frustrating for me, and just one of those things you bring up and the standard answer is, 'that's how we've always done it...' which I may be in the minority but that doesn't make it the right way.