From hacker to hospice in seven weeks

I only skimmed the piece, but it has a self-contained TL;DR at the bottom ("morals").

If I were to make my own abridged TL;DR, it would be "aging is a human tragedy that we can and should fix"

Site is down. Anyone have a cached version?

This post really hits home for me. My dad is in a similar situation as Steven after a sudden diagnosis with a very aggressive form of lung cancer. Despite a growing brain tumor, he was still tweaking database reports and writing SQL queries from home up until a few weeks ago. He made sure his coworkers were watering his plants even as he started chemo and went through full-brain radiation. He's not some startup guy and was never a workaholic, but I think working -- and the idea of returning to work -- was something he really needed. I regret not reaching out to his coworkers sooner, though. He's too sick to have any visitors now and for a guy with a reputation as a curmudgeon it seems he had a lot of people who cared about him.

I think there isn't really a lesson at all.

It's like if a meteor falls on someone walking through town. Is there really a 'lesson' you can take from that? Sure, you could dig into the person's life and try to find some underlying meaning, or something important this person should have said or done before said meteor came shooting through the sky. But in the general scheme of things, we are tiny ants crawling over the dry parts of an ant-hill floating on a small blue puddle somewhere in the backwater bayou of the universe. Our lives amount to the goings-on of ants, and we can be squashed at any moment by unseen cosmic feet.

The truth of this - that life, and mortality, and our existence, is a fleeting and inconsequential part of everything in the universe - really puts into perspective getting pissed off at immigration reform, or the barista that didn't make your coffee right, or not making enough money, or not getting to see that one movie before it left theaters. We're so unimaginably lucky to be wandering around this ant-hill, and meeting other ants, and getting to start a tiny little ant family. When it ends, it ends.

You should also probably get regular checkups with your doctor, and exercise regularly, don't smoke or drink to excess, and try to get 8 hours of sleep each night. That won't stop the meteors from crashing down on you, but it might help you walk around the ant-hill a little bit longer.

I have absolutely no words. My heart goes out to Steve's wife, family and friends. I think many of us can relate to the long hours part of the story, the strain that it puts on relationships is real. We have all been there at one stage or another, the inevitable you are always working late and I never get to see you call/in person conversation. Not to mention the effects of sleep deprivation can be serious, there have been quite a few studies that have linked sleep deprivation to a lot of things including serious disease, reduced cognitive ability and even kill brain cells.

If there is one thing we can take from this it is: you don't know how long you have got in this life. Family is always more important than work, I think we should all remind ourselves every once in a while we have a husband or wife at home, possibly kids, who love seeing us and need your time just as much as your employer does. Jobs come and go, family is for life.