Saturday, October 15, 2016

Forecast for tomorrow: sore everywhere, with scattered achy

There was one thing that I had hoped to get done on my vacation, and that was yard work. We're officially in early autumn here in greater Chicagoland, but the casual observer or visitor would not have surmised that based on the temperatures, it was late August. According to some websites, the area averages nine days per month with high temperatures over 80 degrees F (26 C), but this year we had fourteen. Only the last three days of the month saw highs below 70 F (21 C). We also had thirteen rain or thunderstorm days. So, not a lot of yardwork got done in September.

Earlier in the week, I mowed the front yard, but it was hot so I left the back for the following day. The next day, it rained. Of course. I swear I cannot make this stuff up.

The following day was warm and breezy. I did the back. Yay... the first part of my work was done. The next part, though....

Today, Saturday, started off as the perfect autumn day for yardwork. While Jennifer prepared a much anticipated breakfast of pancakes, sausage gravy and effs over easy, I made a cup of tea and got out of the way. Schwarz came out and sat down on the picnic table. I savored the moment, taking in the cool humid air while catching up on Words with Friends and sipping my tea. The local high school (American) football team was at home, and occasionally I'd hear the spectators cheer or the band strike up a tune. As I'd completely caught up my games and the tea was gone, I went back in and had the most incredible breakfast!

The next hour or so was taken up by a long overdue project: removing a line of concrete blocks I had installed many years ago to separate a narrow strip of garden from the lawn. Once they were removed, I backfilled the resulting trench with compost. Which means that... most of the yardwork is done!




In Lego/data news, the Ferris wheel is moving along slowly, as I had anticipated that it would. I experimented last night with creating supports for the spokes, and I have a promising system... pics to follow if it works!



In other Lego/data news, Sensei Wu has an upgraded Bō. Astute observers are probably wondering at this point why I'm messing with Minifigs when they are clearly not an area of interest for me?

Well, for starters, Wu is a cool-looking character, and his hat is a fairly rare part (yes, I'm one of those AFOLs [Adult Fans of Lego] that will buy a set based on parts rather than the model). Wu seemed to beg for an upgrade, though, and the best one I could think of was to turn the Bō into a scythe. No problem- Mr. T and I eventually came up with the True Neon Green x346 part, but the process of finding the part was tedious. I probably have somewhere in the neighborhood of 50-100 of these in various colors, but none of them are in a dedicated parts drawer.  We located the green one in a drawer dedicated primarily to Bionicles, but with so few Bionicles currently assembled, the drawer needs to be sifted through. An inventory and better parts organization would have probably saved me ten minutes.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

Friday, October 14, 2016

The Lego MOC, and inventories

For those not involved with Lego, I present a cautionary tale of despair and hope. I've taken this week as vacation (Mon, Oct 10 through Fri, Oct 14). I had a few ideas for some things I might like to do, but for very good reasons most of them did not happen.

The one thing I did get working on, though, was my Lego Ferris Wheel (its a MOC, pronounced "mock"; MOC is the acronym for "My Own Creation") .

Let me say that a Ferris Wheel is not a Lego project to be undertaken lightly. For starters, Lego and circles are not natural pairs. Still, as in real life, a Ferris wheel can (and is) made out of things which are not naturally round.

For the record, this is my second Lego Ferris Wheel. I can't claim with any certainty that my first one predated any "official" Lego sets, but that first one was a very large, motorized and chain-driven model. Fairly conventional, actually.

I want my new wheel to be a bit more visionary, cutting edge- but to still be a traditional Ferris Wheel, adding a bit of fun that might be doable in real life: contrarotating sets of wheels. I'm still working this out, and believe or not, the biggest challenge out of the gate is designing the hub for the wheels.

These photos show a very rough mockup of what my original idea was. My biggest concern when I first conceived the idea was that I would not have enough parts for the hub(s). And herein lies the data part of my problem.

I believe I have often mentioned that I was working on a Lego inventory. While this is true, a project of this scope requires a somewhat more complete inventory than I have ever had. Fortunately for me, in lieu of a complete inventory, I have some pretty nicely organized parts drawers. Parts drawers?

Yup. Most of my Lego collection is currently housed in one of two types of plastic cabinets. There are nine small ones, which are highly organized (generally one or two parts per drawer), and also nine large ones. The large ones tend to be much less organized, with the exception of the drawers which house basic pieces, which end up in quart or gallon-sized Ziploc© freezer bags.

That's all for now. Hopefully next time I will have more Ferris Wheel progress to report.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

    

Monday, October 10, 2016

Vacation

As I write this, it is Saturday, October 8, 2016. Not exactly the "traditional" time to start one's vacation.

In our office, it it something of a tradition for certain folks to take their vacation at certain times of the year. One of my coworkers, who I count as a friend, always takes her vacation during the first two weeks of January. She and a few girlfriends go up to Michigan and do whatever girlfriends "of a certain age" do in January in Michigan. A few years back, I shared with her my theory about her vacation: every year the girls would gather at the rustic cabin on the northwestern shore of Lake Michigan, and for whatever reason, would dance around naked under the moon. Mind you, my friend is neither young or slender... we shuddered in unison at that thought.

Another coworker is a biker.This guy is probably the last person in the world who one would imagine to be a biker, but its true. His heritage is at least part Pacific Islander, and he is totally prim and proper. But... he is a dyed-in-the-wool Harley rider. He takes his riding quite seriously, too- he has a slightly darker skin tone than most of his coworkers, yet after a weekend ride, he still comes in with a "raccoon" tan from his goggles! I think he plans at least part of his vacation around a visit to Sturgis.

The majority of my coworkers take their vacations at "normal" times for Americans- sometime during the summer. There are a few of us who take vacations as needed, or before they expire. Jennifer and I generally do not take a "traditional" travelling vacation, so as it is policy to not book vacation days more than 90 days out, I generally hold most- if not all- of my days until the last quarter (the end of the calendar year).

The past few years, I've taken a few weeks around Thanksgiving. This year, I bunched most of my days off around Christmas. However...

One of my coworkers uses ALL of his vacation at the end of December (remember, we have some traditions!) As I had nowhere planned to go, I figured I'd take everything in December. But... Jennifer mentioned that our anniversary was on Sunday this year, I moved a few days from December to October, and sent an email out to let management know I'd updated the vacation calendar.

I received a quick response from our supervisor about my intended vacation, along with an attachment that had the department's vacation guidelines. Remember the coworker who take his entire vacation in December? Well, he also blocks off time on the vacation calendar in VERY LARGE LETTERS. So large that I did not notice the other initials on the calendar when I put mine up.

Not a big deal. As usual, Jennifer and I had no travel plans, so instead of three days at the end of December, I have a whole week in October. Win-win.

In closing, it is Monday, October 10, 2016

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.





Monday, October 3, 2016

Oh hey dere!

This September has pretty much been THAT sort of month for me- and while I was worrying about September, October rolled in! And if you're wondering what "THAT sort of month" means, nearly every word in these first two sentences needed to be corrected BEFORE the proofreading stage of posting this blog.

FRACK!

For those long-suffering, loyal readers who might have been wondering where this blog had gone... rest assured, it is still here. Obviously.

What's been going on in my life?

Well, for starters, I'm still butting heads with R. For those unacquainted, ""R"  is a statistical programming language.

EH?

My main Twitter account, @cjoelharrison,  deals primarily with data: Big Data, the Internet of Things, Statistics and Mathematics. Now, before you write me off as a propellerhead with no foundation in the real world, let me explain what I do on Twitter.

My main twitter account exists primarily to gather and repeat information and news about Big Data, the Internet of Things and anything related to these topics. Lots of verticals, especially ag, petro, transport and health, and the IoT/IoE applications therein. (And for those who know me IRL... WTF???)

Yes, I actually think about these things.

Anyway, moving right along- I finally installed R and RStudio on our Windows 10 machine... somewhat  successfully. R is okay, but the 'swirl' library is not working,  so I made a post on the R Studio forum, and hope for a fix.

That's all for now, I suppose.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.