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Today we have a guest editorial as Steve is on vacation.

I live in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The state of Minnesota is in the mid-west on the northern border of U.S. and Canada. It is a beautiful place to live, but there is a lot of changes from season to season. The summers are hot and humid, but there are a lot of trees with lush green leaves. Fall (autumn) is a beautiful time of year, with the blazing yellow and orange leaves. Winter is nice with a white blanket of snow, but it is a stark difference with no leaves on the trees. In the spring, it is amazing to see all the green grow back, as everything comes back to life.

The temperatures vary wildly as well. In the summer the temp can get over 100F (38C). In the winter the temps can get down to -15F (-26C) and with the wind chill it feels even colder. Change is a constant here and we constantly need to adapt to it. How do we adapt? Well, we wear more clothes in the winter than in the summer. We spend more time outside when it is nice and sometimes not as much when it is cold. We do fun things in the winter like ski, snowmobile, hunt, etc.

Change happens in our personal lives as well. We get married, have children. We change jobs. We move, or get divorced. A loved one passes away. Some of these changes are good. Others are bad and they are things we would rather not experience. It is often hard to have a good attitude when we are going through some of these experiences.

Change often happens in our workplace as well. We can move our desk or office. We can change departments. Co-workers come and go. We can get new team leads or new manager. New technology comes out. A new version of SQL Server gets released. Some of these changes cause more work to fall on our plate. That can be a good or a bad thing.

Sometimes we have a hard time with change. We miss old co-workers that have left. We don’t appreciate getting more work dumped on us. We don’t get along as well with a new manager. We don’t understand why we need to learn new technology when the old works just fine. Change isn’t always good, but it does always seem to happen.

I think it is important to realize that in life change is going to come. I think we need to just embrace the truth that: change happens, whether we want it to or not. We cannot control the change we experience, but we can manage our attitudes. The ability to adapt our attitude can be paramount when we experience change. We should recognize when we are in a good situation and have a thankful attitude for it. In the same way when our situation isn’t the best we can still be hopeful, knowing that the change we that we desire, may not be that far away. Share some changes in your life / work place and how you adapted to them.

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The PASTE() function is used. This will combine the elements from each vector into a single vector. The results will be:

 > paste(First.Names, Last.Names) [1] "Steve Jones" "Andy Warren" "Brian Knight" 

Ref: paste() - click here

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