Merry Christmas or Happy Christmas or whatever you might say in your neighborhood. Or not.
Those of us here in the United States have a way of assuming that folks everywhere do things in the same fashion that we do. And then we beat ourselves up for this notion. However, I'm thinking that this might just be simply human nature rather than American stupidity, because I think as a rule, we probably believe that everyone is going through the same stuff that we are.
For example, I have a couple of coworkers that (obviously) live in the same area that I do, except that they live to the south of me. We generally experience the same weather.
Last year, though.... One of our coworkers is originally from Russia. North of the Arctic Circle. Bloody ******* cold Russia. Chicago had experienced one of the worst cold winters on record. So cold, in fact, that it was warmer north of the Arctic Circle- where our coworker hails from.
Perceptions and your reality are not universal truth.
As John Lennon said, "So this is Christmas".
Christmas is most likely unknown in some parts of the world, and misunderstood or maligned where it is known. In the United States, which is probably the "Christmas Capitol of the World" (I just made that up, but it's probably accurate), Christmas has become so secularized and commercialized that, like Halloween and Easter, not much seems to be left of its real meaning.
Therefore, I've decided to make a sort of peace with the two versions of Christmas: the secular and the sacred.
The secular: I enjoy this simply because it is so joyful and peaceful on a number of levels. For starters, it's about winter in the northern hemisphere- something that is quite familiar to me. The scent of pine has always been pleasant to me, and the effect is compounded in the brisk, wintry air. I also love the music of Christmas- a great deal of it. There have been some real stinkers that have come out (Santa Baby, and The Most Wonderful Time of the Year come to mind immediately).
Folks tend to be a bit more divided about movies, though, because although its generally pretty easy to tell that a song is a Christmas song, the criteria for Christmas movies is pretty much a grey area. For example, apart from movies which actually feature the story of the birth of Jesus, we're left with a pretty large collection of movies which either deal with the secular version of Christmas, or merely occur around Christmas. I'm not a real movie fan, but two of my favorite movies fit into the latter category- they occur around Christmas: Die Hard, and Lethal Weapon. And for the record, I do NOT like Elf.
As for the real "reason for the season," I think the Bible explains it better than I can.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Sunday, December 27, 2015
Thursday, December 24, 2015
More "Pause" than "End"
Some years back, on a particularly busy night, a new hire rubbed eyes and blearily asked the Nightstalker crew, "Just how long DO you work?"
I answered in the only possible way: "Until the job is done."
That, truly, is what makes the overnight hours in Data Services interesting. I say "overnight" because my hours can be a bit fuzzy- and this is true for everyone in our department. Some folks come in fairly early, some come in around the traditional office start time of 0800, and some come in at 2200 or even later. We have one person who works a traditional second shift, and the remainder of the crew work something of a hybrid 3rd shift, starting anywhere from 1800 to almost 2300. I don't believe there's anything like an official policy regarding this; it's more of a rule of thumb: as long as one works one's 40 hours, everyone is happy. But, back to "until the job is done."
I think I may have previously mentioned that our plant can be considered a "job shop" or "contract manufacturer." In other words, the product that we manufacture- direct mail- does not "belong" to us. You will typically not see our name on it anywhere. We may have some involvement in the design process, and we are often involved in the postal and logistics components of a job, but at the end of the day, we're simply the folks who manufacture something for someone else.
Sometimes...
Sometimes things just need to get done. One of our top clients has a job that runs every month, and it keeps the programmer pretty busy for around a week. However, once the client approves the job, yours truly ("me") typically swings into action. This particular job requires a lot of hard copy: proofs for press and prepress, and tray tags for press. Printing, collating and marking up of this takes ~12 hours, and is best done when the office is empty. Why? Because one simply needs a lot of space to do the job correctly and efficiently, as well as tying up two printers.
So, the Friday before last, I came in with the expectation that I would be working on this job. I had put a dent in it when I left Saturday morning, and came back Saturday evening. I got home around midnight, and everything was done.
In a nutshell, my weekend was more of a pause than an actual end to the week. The obvious downside to weekends like this is that they are short. Jennifer and I got in a nice walk on the following Sunday- almost three miles. I did a bit of work in the Secret Underground Lair, as did Mr. T, and great progress has been made. My plan for the weekend, though, had been to get to the unused desk and hook up my Raspberry Pi. That hadn't happened yet, but we're on the cusp of it!
One other huge thing that happened the previous week was the Great Book Cull, during which time a few hundred books were donated to our local library. Although both Jennifer and I hate getting rid of actual paper books, there were a few compelling reasons for eliminating these particular volumes from our collection:
1) They were classics (Shakespeare, Tolstoi, etc)- these are readily available online and downloadable as plain text files
2) Cold War fiction- entertaining reading when it was written, but no longer plausible.
3) Out of date software texts- bye, bye, Windows 95 For Dummies, etc... I kid you not.
So that was the two weekends ago. I visited the opthamologist for the last post surgery follow up for my right eye. (all is good- come back in a year). Don't get me wrong- if you're in the Des Plaines area, Dr. Winkler is the best. I'm just ready to get on with my life!
Pause, continued... this past weekend (Dec 19-20): I got out on time on Saturday morning for a change, but I knew I'd be coming back on Saturday evening. I figured a few hours would take care of a few quick production QC's- boy was I wrong.
The first job went smoothly, and it was done fairly quickly. The second, though, took much longer, as some paperwork was missing. It's not unusual for this to happen with this particular job, though. The third job was unexpected, but pretty easy- especially since the lead programmer was also in the office to explain a few things. The last job, though.
In a nutshell, it was programmed correctly but the output was set up incorrectly, and consequently compiled incorrectly, and the output was just plain wrong. As it was late and hadn't brought my meds to the office, I remade the files and recompiled the job, but did not perform the production QC.
Finally, data.
I need to say something about my writing process, which will eventually relate to data. I promise.
When I write a blog, I generally have an idea of where I want it to go. Sometimes it goes there, sometimes it doesn't. This blog is a case of: IT DOESN'T CARE WHERE I WANT TO GO.
Point: my idea for this blog actually had to do with a concept for music opinion data analysis.
Way back when, in my college days, I started my music database. It was on looseleaf paper, and it was unwieldy and incredibly difficult to update or edit. At some point, I decided I'd create something of a personal "Top 40". Only looking at my stats was somewhat biased, I quickly surmised. Undaunted, I expanded my pursuit to include what others were interested in. When I shared my results, however, some (many) of the participants were upset when I told them the results were weighted. That is, their top votes received 10 points, and their bottom votes received one point. Huh?
Participants in the survey were asked to vote for up to 10 of their favorite albums, and 10 of their favorite songs. I asked that they please put them in order of preference. When the results had been tabulated, I shared them. In my circle of friends and acquaintances, no one could believe that "Bread's Greatest Hits" was more popular than "Barry Manilow Live" (joke).
I did it this way for a couple of (what I thought) were very good reasons. First: everyone probably has a favorite song. Hey, if its YOUR fave, why not weight it? Second, I wanted to be able to track which songs were actually more popular than which songs were most often voted for. Taking the two most "popular" songs of this era (from my polls), the hands-down winners were The Beatles' "Hey Jude" and Led Zepplin's "Stairway To Heaven". As my survey was quite small, let's say I had 10 voters: 4 went with the Beatles, and 4 with Led Zepplin. Let's say the other two went with Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird" as their favorite. If Hey Jude == 1, and Stairway == 1 and Freebird == 1, then we have 4 to 4 to 2. What matters next is what is the next greatest song. So, two of the "Beatles" guys vote for "I Saw Her Standing There", and a couple of Zepplin fans vote for "Rock and Roll". After that, each of the other Beatles and Zepplin fans votes for Hey Jude and Stairway, furthering the tie. Then, we factor in the Skynyrd fans, who generally might like the Zep guitars, but can sing to Hey Jude. So, the final score ends up being Beatles: 5.8 (among Beatles fans), Zep: 5.8 (among Zepplin fans). The two Skynyrd fans, though, both vote Hey Jude #2, and Stairway #3, giving the Beatles a total of 6.6 and Led Zep 5.8. Therefore, in this tiny, theoretical sample, "Hey Jude" is the greatest rock and roll song of all time.
Sorry about the length of this... I told you all of that to tell you this: I have a new data project which is based on my previous data project.
I know what songs I like and those which I don't like. I plan to quantify this data and publish my findings in a new format.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to,
I answered in the only possible way: "Until the job is done."
That, truly, is what makes the overnight hours in Data Services interesting. I say "overnight" because my hours can be a bit fuzzy- and this is true for everyone in our department. Some folks come in fairly early, some come in around the traditional office start time of 0800, and some come in at 2200 or even later. We have one person who works a traditional second shift, and the remainder of the crew work something of a hybrid 3rd shift, starting anywhere from 1800 to almost 2300. I don't believe there's anything like an official policy regarding this; it's more of a rule of thumb: as long as one works one's 40 hours, everyone is happy. But, back to "until the job is done."
I think I may have previously mentioned that our plant can be considered a "job shop" or "contract manufacturer." In other words, the product that we manufacture- direct mail- does not "belong" to us. You will typically not see our name on it anywhere. We may have some involvement in the design process, and we are often involved in the postal and logistics components of a job, but at the end of the day, we're simply the folks who manufacture something for someone else.
Sometimes...
Sometimes things just need to get done. One of our top clients has a job that runs every month, and it keeps the programmer pretty busy for around a week. However, once the client approves the job, yours truly ("me") typically swings into action. This particular job requires a lot of hard copy: proofs for press and prepress, and tray tags for press. Printing, collating and marking up of this takes ~12 hours, and is best done when the office is empty. Why? Because one simply needs a lot of space to do the job correctly and efficiently, as well as tying up two printers.
So, the Friday before last, I came in with the expectation that I would be working on this job. I had put a dent in it when I left Saturday morning, and came back Saturday evening. I got home around midnight, and everything was done.
In a nutshell, my weekend was more of a pause than an actual end to the week. The obvious downside to weekends like this is that they are short. Jennifer and I got in a nice walk on the following Sunday- almost three miles. I did a bit of work in the Secret Underground Lair, as did Mr. T, and great progress has been made. My plan for the weekend, though, had been to get to the unused desk and hook up my Raspberry Pi. That hadn't happened yet, but we're on the cusp of it!
One other huge thing that happened the previous week was the Great Book Cull, during which time a few hundred books were donated to our local library. Although both Jennifer and I hate getting rid of actual paper books, there were a few compelling reasons for eliminating these particular volumes from our collection:
1) They were classics (Shakespeare, Tolstoi, etc)- these are readily available online and downloadable as plain text files
2) Cold War fiction- entertaining reading when it was written, but no longer plausible.
3) Out of date software texts- bye, bye, Windows 95 For Dummies, etc... I kid you not.
So that was the two weekends ago. I visited the opthamologist for the last post surgery follow up for my right eye. (all is good- come back in a year). Don't get me wrong- if you're in the Des Plaines area, Dr. Winkler is the best. I'm just ready to get on with my life!
Pause, continued... this past weekend (Dec 19-20): I got out on time on Saturday morning for a change, but I knew I'd be coming back on Saturday evening. I figured a few hours would take care of a few quick production QC's- boy was I wrong.
The first job went smoothly, and it was done fairly quickly. The second, though, took much longer, as some paperwork was missing. It's not unusual for this to happen with this particular job, though. The third job was unexpected, but pretty easy- especially since the lead programmer was also in the office to explain a few things. The last job, though.
In a nutshell, it was programmed correctly but the output was set up incorrectly, and consequently compiled incorrectly, and the output was just plain wrong. As it was late and hadn't brought my meds to the office, I remade the files and recompiled the job, but did not perform the production QC.
Finally, data.
I need to say something about my writing process, which will eventually relate to data. I promise.
When I write a blog, I generally have an idea of where I want it to go. Sometimes it goes there, sometimes it doesn't. This blog is a case of: IT DOESN'T CARE WHERE I WANT TO GO.
Point: my idea for this blog actually had to do with a concept for music opinion data analysis.
Way back when, in my college days, I started my music database. It was on looseleaf paper, and it was unwieldy and incredibly difficult to update or edit. At some point, I decided I'd create something of a personal "Top 40". Only looking at my stats was somewhat biased, I quickly surmised. Undaunted, I expanded my pursuit to include what others were interested in. When I shared my results, however, some (many) of the participants were upset when I told them the results were weighted. That is, their top votes received 10 points, and their bottom votes received one point. Huh?
Participants in the survey were asked to vote for up to 10 of their favorite albums, and 10 of their favorite songs. I asked that they please put them in order of preference. When the results had been tabulated, I shared them. In my circle of friends and acquaintances, no one could believe that "Bread's Greatest Hits" was more popular than "Barry Manilow Live" (joke).
I did it this way for a couple of (what I thought) were very good reasons. First: everyone probably has a favorite song. Hey, if its YOUR fave, why not weight it? Second, I wanted to be able to track which songs were actually more popular than which songs were most often voted for. Taking the two most "popular" songs of this era (from my polls), the hands-down winners were The Beatles' "Hey Jude" and Led Zepplin's "Stairway To Heaven". As my survey was quite small, let's say I had 10 voters: 4 went with the Beatles, and 4 with Led Zepplin. Let's say the other two went with Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird" as their favorite. If Hey Jude == 1, and Stairway == 1 and Freebird == 1, then we have 4 to 4 to 2. What matters next is what is the next greatest song. So, two of the "Beatles" guys vote for "I Saw Her Standing There", and a couple of Zepplin fans vote for "Rock and Roll". After that, each of the other Beatles and Zepplin fans votes for Hey Jude and Stairway, furthering the tie. Then, we factor in the Skynyrd fans, who generally might like the Zep guitars, but can sing to Hey Jude. So, the final score ends up being Beatles: 5.8 (among Beatles fans), Zep: 5.8 (among Zepplin fans). The two Skynyrd fans, though, both vote Hey Jude #2, and Stairway #3, giving the Beatles a total of 6.6 and Led Zep 5.8. Therefore, in this tiny, theoretical sample, "Hey Jude" is the greatest rock and roll song of all time.
Sorry about the length of this... I told you all of that to tell you this: I have a new data project which is based on my previous data project.
I know what songs I like and those which I don't like. I plan to quantify this data and publish my findings in a new format.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to,
Sunday, December 6, 2015
The State of the Blog, v.03
If it's December, then it must be time to...
Celebrate. Commemorate. Conjugate...?
Well, maybe not conjugate, but it's the THIRD anniversary of this blog! I'm somewhat e-excited about this. I can honestly say I never expected it to go this long, or have so many entries. Here's the quick recap, from the 1st blog The Final Frontier to the still strangely most popular one Why, 2K to the one that slipped through the proverbial e-cracks A Red Letter Day In History.
The unifying theme of this blog is data. A casual observer might not notice this, but I did say "unifying theme". So, if you're looking for the golden data nuggets of wisdom check out the twitters or websites of my good e-buddies Kirk Borne Ph.D. Lee Baker Ph.D. or Gregory Piatesky Ph.D.
For those who think my data science is a bit sexist, please check out my good e-buddies Diego Kuonen Ph.D., Carla Gentry and Carol Lynn Curchoe Ph.D.
(In the FWIW column, these folks are some of my followers on Twitter). Not to drop names, of course! :)
In any event, I did drop a few names there, so I should probably clarify things a bit. Some of my more recent posts have been of a somewhat personal nature, and not much data was presented. For the (I'm sure this is a very small percentage of my) readers who were expecting some data in those posts, I apologize.
In actuality, most of my "data" occurs on Twitter, with some on Pinterest. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure what my most impactful social medium is these days... Twitter is the easiest, Blogspot is the deepest, and Pinterest is the broadest. And, most importantly, it's hobby, so I'm not paying for analytics!
I suppose I enjoy blogging the most, as it is the most creative. Pinterest is lots of fun- and easy. However, there's very little original content. Twitter is fun, but once again, not much original content, as I'm generally more of a repeater rather than an original content contributor. Blogger... this is my "original" e-home. To quote AC/DC- "No stop signs, speed limits...." Not that I'm an AC/DC fan.
An update on the SUL (Secret Underground Lair)....
This is my corner of the SUL. If you're curious, the two leftmost PCs are Win7 machines, and the other is an HP workstation running Ubuntu 12.10, I think. There's actually a 4th screen (which is off camera to the right) for Raspberry Pi use and testing), and there are two additional PCs- one of which is another Win7 box, and the last one is an offline XP machine. In fairly big SUL news, we've been getting rid of old tech boxes (those of the cardboard variety, to clarify), and have reclaimed nearly a square meter of floor space.
That's all for now. Oh... still hoping someone in Antarctica will pick this up!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
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