This past Sunday we observed Father's Day here in the United States. As I understand it, a very well-meaning young lady had an idea that Mothers should have a special day set aside for them, and Mother's Day came into being. After that, greeting card companies caught on, and then (I'm OVERSIMPLIFYING here and probably making a ton of assumptions)... and then came Father's Day, Grandparent's Day, Mother in Law Day and Law Day, just to highlight a few of the myriad of (fill in the blank) Days.
Now, before anyone gets all upset about my seemingly callous position, let me backtrack just a bit. If someone wishes me a happy Father's Day, I'll gladly accept it. I really think its neat to have a special day to honor Moms and Motherhood, and Fathers and Fatherhood, and you can probably extend that a bit in a lot of different directions. According to Wikipedia, though, Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mother's day was concerned about the commercialization of the holiday not long after it had become established- and I think she and I might have some similiar thoughts about what are now known as "greeting card" holidays. Jennifer and I have three kids, and I can't remember the last time I got a card from any of them. And honestly? I could care less. I think Jennifer feels pretty much the same way. We generally try to do a little something special on these days (meals, mostly), but its more about family time than spending money on cards and gifts.
I think one of the best gifts one can give is time. This past Sunday was hot AND humid, so Jennifer was in no mood for going outside to do much of anything. On the other hand, it was not raining, so I thought it would be a great opportunity to go out and take some photos of the tollway expansion. I asked her to be polite, pretty much expecting what her response would be. She did not disappoint, but suggested Mr. T be invited. Much to my surprise, when I told him where I planned to go, he cheerfully accepted. When the spare batteries for my trusty Nikon D3200 were charged, I grabbed the backpack and we were off.
Mr. T was quite interested in the construction. What's happening is somewhat out of the ordinary: this is not a new highway. It is the widening by one lane in each direction of an existing highway. We were probably out for two hours or less, but had a blast! He's not a photographer, but has a bit of graphic design experience, so he makes a great assistant. And, he was ready for a bit of adventure. As my gear is really lightweight and all fits neatly into a small backpack, I kept it with me on my back. There were one or two shots where the tripod would have been nice, but in the end I had ~140 frames, several of which were very nice.
We also had the opportunity to climb up hill and down dale, so to speak.
And lastly, as I am fond of saying in this blog, we come to data. Except today, I don't want to talk about data per se, but rather data handling.
As frequent readers may be aware, the Secret Underground Lair (SUL) is in the midst of a major overhaul. Furniture has been moved out, and furniture has been moved in. Up until now it's been something of a minor disaster (think S.S. Minnow rather than R.M.S. Titanic). Still, it's been quite the challenge as displaced items seem to occupy more space than they used to. So, I suppose it isn't so much data handling even as it is data display: we've eliminated al of the CRTs in the SUL and now only have flat panels. This means we'll soon be goint to visit our local Goodwill donation center with eight monitors- the oldest one was manufactured in 1990!
I still need to hook up the Raspberry Pi- we might be back in programming mode soon! Also, with the new setup, I can easily jack my work laptop into one of the new monitors and work effectively from home. There's also room on the desktop for my personal laptop, so I can get back to the Arduino as well!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
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