Verdancy, part deux... and Chicago!

Ever since watching Hot Shots Part Deux, I've love using part deux in appropriate situations. This post just might fill that bill. The original Verdancy was posted just a little less than two years ago. That one was about our yard, mainly, and so is this one, partly.

Very hot weather is predicted for the coming weekend. By hot, I don't mean so in a comparative sense. I mean a literal hot, Hot, HOT. We've enjoyed some very nice, mild 60's (~15-21C) the past week or so, but starting Friday temperatures are supposed to jump into the 90's to low 100's (32-40C). That's a huge 24-hour shift. Massive. Hyuge, even.

To give you an idea of how busy work has been: I started this blog ten days ago. It's officially Father's Day, and I will be going in to work today (Sunday) to finish up what I could not get to on Saturday. Jennifer and I have also been busy- and railfans might appreciate this. Jennifer has jury duty soon, so we did a "trial" run (pun intended) down to the Daley Center last week.

To be completely honest, I'm a Chicago boy when it comes to mass transit: drop me somewhere in Chicago- anywhere- and I can find my way back to my childhood home.

The 'burbs, though: BLECH!

In Chicago, when I get on a bus on Central Ave., that bus follows Central Ave. until Central Ave. ends. Not so in the 'burbs: a bus "route" may travel all points of the compass and several streets before you get to your destination. Off of the top of my head, this is the ONLY one of four things that Chicago does right.  Mussolini seems to have also gotten this right, according to legend.

The other three things that Chicago does right?

Hot dogs! Growing up in the South, my lovely bride had NO idea that hot dogs were an art form. Chicago-style dogs are truly an art form, and poppyseed bun or plain, if you've never experienced one, you need to.

Pizza. To be honest, I'm not quite sure as which variety of pizza qualifies as "Chicago-style" (I'm thinking its thin crust), but whatever it is, Chicago is a great pizza town. Like most Chicago-born pizza aficionados, I've experienced many, many varieties of pizza, and I've gotta say I love most all of them.

The Grid System (of streets). Chicago confuses Jennifer. She grew up in the South (Texas and Louisiana) where they do not apparently have grids or defined neighborhoods. Its really quite simple, but rather than typing a whole bunch, I found a neat website that explains it quite well.

Finally, I thought it would be fun to throw in some video I took of, and from, the L. Well, I thought I did, anyway. Here's a shot from the platform looking towards the city. I'm disappointed that the video didn't work.

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

A lamentation on tires

Lamentation is a pretty strong word, and not normally associated with tires. Actually, it isn't a very commonly used word at all. It's so uncommon, in fact, that on the first page of a Google search of "how common is the word lamentation", two results were references the the Bible's book of Lamentations, six were dictionary definitions. one was the pronunciation of "lamentation" in Spanish, and the other one just made me LOL IRL (a little interwebz jargon thrown in for humor!): the Afrikaans translation of lamentation.

In other words, it is not a commonly used word.

So, for all of my non-native English speaking audience out there, I would suggest not using "lamentation" when referring to a flat tire. "Sorrow" is probably not a good word either. "Upset" or "mad" would be good, polite words. I'm a bit ashamed to say that the best words to describe or talk about a flat tire are the ones I used this past Saturday night, and they were neither nice or polite. They're not what one would would consider polite words. They're words with an Anglo-Saxon origin and are common in Rap, Hip-Hop, and the collected works of Chris Rock, Denis Leary and most politicians. Yes, in the heat of the moment, I stooped down to the level of actors and politicians. I used asterisk words. Out loud.

****!

Tire being inflated

And why were these words deployed? Well, partly from a lack of self-discipline, triggered by the ridiculousness of the situation. You see, I've been driving for over thirty-five years. and prior to 2014 have had TWO flats. Period.  Since purchasing our Subaru in 2014, we've had FOUR flats on that car. Let me explain.

Flat #1 was from construction debris across the street from my employer. Flat #2 was from a Macy's parking lot- we will NEVER shop at Macy's again- EVER. Flats #3 and #4 were courtesy of the State of Illinois' I-90 expansion project, which has also killed one contractor. My flats are insignificant in comparison with the loss of a life, but speak volumes towards the lack of quality of the contractor. 

So, first thing Monday morning, I'll be on the phone with Subaru's roadside assistance program, getting a lift to Grand Subaru for a tire repair or replacement.

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

Tools of the trade

Quite some time ago (about 1.5 parsecs, to paraphrase Han Solo), I worked at an "action sports" company as a data analyst. In the case of this company, action sports == paintball. I don't believe I was compensated at the rate which I thought I "deserved", but that's just a bit of human nature, I suppose... like the famous quip about how much money is enough?

"Just a little more."

Right. I was doing a bit of data entry/collation early one morning this week, and had a flashback to that company and my tasks there. The flashback involved my Monday morning routine, and it was triggered by my mouse. The mouse I currently use for nearly everything is a Logitech Optical Trackman wired mouse. This mouse, or variants of it, have been around for ten years or more. Quite honestly, this mouse can be a data professional's (or dictator's) best friend.

Third World Communist Dictators also love the Logitech Marbleman Mouse

To the best of my knowledge, this is an unretouched (propoganda) photo of North Korea's glorious leader Kim Jung Un being shown the finer details of battlefield missile control. Ignore the guys in the Castro hats, they are political appointments- the true revolutionary is the guy in the Mao hat, pointing to the screen and indoctrinating the Glorious Leader in the use of the People's Sparc V7 clone. He is making sure that the Glorious Leader destroys Pinky three times before Uncle Sam is spawned. The guy in the background is the hacker that put the system together.

Back to my flashback... the mouse directly in front of the Glorious Leader is a Logitech Marbleman- my preferred weapon of choice for data work. I use it almost daily. 

One more flashback that might explain why this mouse is so valuable (I own four of them). Back when I was at Pursuit Marketing Inc., one of my tasks was to grab the Monday morning numbers from WalMart's RetailLink database. The problem I experienced at that time was that I could not always get all of my data on one Excel 2003 spreadsheet, which was artificially capped by Microsoft at 65,536 rows. Wal Mart data often exceeded this, so to compensate, I downloaded the data into an Access database, and then queried it out into the data I needed. As a final measure of email economy and job security, I made the files I emailed to the VP smaller by stripping out all of the formulae from the worksheets. 

At PMI, I had a Fellowes mousepad with an attached gel wristwrest. One of my coworkers insisted on jabbing this with her fingernail, which effectively destroyed it. I am in the process of replacing it- after all these years.

My last entry into Tools of the Trade is my Logitech G105 keyboard. A while ago, I was in search of a backlit keyboard. Amazon was having a closeout on the Call of Duty MW3-themed Logitech G105, and I grabbed a few. I'm not really a gamer, but this is a great keyboard for what I do! The action is nice, and it has a green backlight (the standard G105 has blue backlighting).

Data-

I've been hard at work getting up  to speed with the BrickLink database. I'm near the halfway point in my cut and paste operation, and I hope to be finished by month's end. At that point, I hope to start cleaning the data, and have a usable spreadsheet by the beginning of September. Time will tell.

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

A tongue-in-cheek look at Data Services.

It's a rare occurrence these days, but if one has been around an organization for a long enough amount of time, one may acquire a certain "long-view" of that organization. One becomes sort of an unofficial oral-historian, a keeper of the traditions or simply one who- like Roger Miller's famed "King of the Road"- knows "every engineer on every train, all of the children and all of their names... and ev'ry handout in ev'ry town, and every door that ain't locked when no one's around". In my organization, I fill this role. I'm also the department's Scrounger. If you've ever seen "The Great Escape", James Garner's character is my model. The interesting thing about our department is that although I've been there for ~nine years, I'm not closest to being the "old-timer".

That's me.

Still in addition to that, I have a few odd things that distinguish me from everyone else in the department.

First, I'm the only person in our department who was rehired after a RIF (reduction in force- and to be fair, our facility has only has one RIF). Next, I'm the only one who was hired without a background in our industry or experience in the job. Finally, I'm the only person (quite possibly in the entire plant) who has worked almost every possible shift: 1st (~0800-1700), 2nd (1600-0000) 3rd (2000-0500) and 3 day/4 day (nights 1900-0700 three days per week with alternating Sundays).  In other words, I've been around. I'd like to introduce you to some of my coworkers- past and present.

Now, before I begin, I have to say that not everyone has a nickname, and not all nicknames will be universally recognized, even internally. Also, not all of the names are real... some have been changed to protect the innocent- and the guilty! And, to completely protect everyone, there will also be a few dummy coworkers and nicknames.

For starters, there are Papa and Auntie. This pair is not related in any way, except possibly for their nicknames. Then there would be The Princess, E-Man and J.R.- their connection is their school. And then, there's Banana, The Colonel, The Dancer and the Man with Three First Names, along with The Golden Child, the Gnome and the Fresh Prince of Data Services. We also have The Lurker, the Latin Lover, Cube, Z-Man, Chaz-Baby, My Bookie, Buttercup and Nameless.

And, The Mole.There are several others, but decorum and space prohibit them being discussed.

In conclusion, I apologize for saying next to nothing about anyone, but please consider this whirlwind listing something of a dramatis personae of  my department. I think I have a bit more license than Nameless gives me, but just to be safe, I'm respecting their wishes. Keep this handy, though: in future blogs, you might want to refer to it!

I'm betting YOUR organization also has a similar group of individuals- friends, coworkers or associates- who make or break your day. Mine have been more blessing than challenge. I'd love to hear about yours.

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

Dude, you're getting a Dell, or, Resistance is futile.

We don't have many Dell computers in our home. Longtime readers may nod in agreement at this statement, but for the benefit of the uninitiated, we have many computers in our home. And while not all are in service, all ARE serviceable; that is, with just a bit of TLC, I believe we could have no fewer than thirteen PCs online simultaneously.

Granted, I would NOT do this for a number of reasons.

Firstly, most of these boxes were "designed for Windows XP". Now, I have nothing against XP- I have one machine that is an XP machine- and it's physically OFFLINE.

Next, most do not have green power supplies. Although all of the monitors in the SUL are now energy-efficient flat panels, the power supplies aren't really worth upgrading, as most of the PCs that are not in service are pretty much waiting to be cannibalized.

Finally, it's just not practical. Four individuals running 13 PCs in a SOHO environment?

The reason Dell came up is that a certain Dell PC crashed one of my external HDDs recently. I know for certain that it's a particular Dell because every time I plug the external drive into this Dell, it asks if I want to repair the drive. Mind you, this drive normally is hooked up to another Dell or a Lenovo or an HP or Compaq machine with no problems. This particular Dell has issues, though, and the last time I use the drive, I ignored the repair message, and in turn it made the drive unusable. I don't know why or how, but this machine is now persona non grata.

End of story.

Lego data news-

I'd been using Peeron's database for some time, but recently it came to my attention that BrickLink has a more complete database. Not only does it seem more complete, but the part numbers are properly formatted, they are already in a separate column and the descriptions do not succinct and do not seem to require editing. The data will still require a bit of formatting to fit my particular usage. That's the good news.

The bad news is that unlike Peeron's single page text file format, BrickLink displays its data on webpages. Not bad, as its still copy-and-paste. What's really from my perspective is that each page displays fifty part numbers.

There are 837 pages... a relatively small price to pay for superior data.

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

Men Without Hats, and Data.

"In other data news, I've got what appears to be a workable solution for my internal Lego part number. It's fairly lengthy at seventeen characters, and from all appearances, this should be sufficient. I've begun the data entry on this, and tried a few trial sorts. So far, everything looks good, and this is officially stage 2 of the Peeron normalization."

As noted over a year ago in this space, No plan of battle survives first contact with the enemy, the best plans often don't get past the first round or two of testing. It's unfortunately true, and I'm referring here to the Lego portion of Forty-Two. I'm sitting on a challenge right now that's more conundrum than impasse. 

With only sixty-five entries, I ran into one of the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back" records. My format had been "ANNNNNNNN.XXXXXXX", where A=alpha character, N=numeric character, the "."is a placeholder, and X=alpha or numeric character. It's large and unwieldy, but that doesn't matter, as I only need it to force order onto the Peeron data. So, I need to add a few more characters to the right of the "." placeholder. Still, I hate to redo stuff I've already done. So now, it appears that I'm up to nineteen bytes for the primary key. Hopefully, it doesn't grow more than that.

Before I forget, the Men Without Hats reference is, of course, to The Safety Dance, which I was humming when it looked like nineteen would, indeed, be a safe number. I just skimmed the entire list, and I'm fairly certain I can stick with nineteen.

As far as the rest of the database is concerned, I've been pounding away at my least favorite activity- data entry. It's still a really small database, and not even relational as yet. Three tables, containing in total 753 records.

I think that's a wrap. The internal issue I always have when doing these types of updates is keeping this more blog than change log. Oh well, speeds and feeds are gonna be speeds and feeds....

Lastly, a big shout out to my friends in Russia and Portugal- I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoy writing it. 

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

Richard Strauss, and Data.

This past week, I've managed to get in to work fairly early almost every day so far (Monday- Thursday); I think Wednesday was the only day I came in later, and that was intentional. I've also been getting up earlier, and the time before work has been used to work on the database. I've made some good progress on the few boxed sets of audio CDs that we own, which is where Richard Strauss comes into the picture.

Before I go any further, I should give you a bit of my musical backstory, kind reader. You may have surmised from previous posts (especially the most recent one, Axl Rose, and Data,) that I'm more Rocker than Opera-Goer. This is 100% correct. However, my musical tastes are fairly diverse... Yo-Yo Ma, The Beatles, Chevelle, C.W. McCall, Air Supply, Deep Purple, Newsboys, Sibelius, 80's hair bands, choral, etc. I firmly believe that any music that is good should be played loud when possible.  I like some blues, classic Motown, and a smattering of jazz. I'm okay with the various forms of trance, and dance music- if it's something that catches my ear. I can even deal with disco these days. Things I pretty much have no interest in are rap, hip hop, opera and death metal.

So, what's with Strauss?

Well, the album pictured above is a boxed set I picked up at a library sale for a solitary U.S. dollar. Cheap-value-SCORE! It's a three disc set, with a booklet nearly as thick as the CD case. The 330 page "booklet" has all sorts of details, not merely about this opera, but about this particular recording, its cast and conductor. It also has the complete text and lyrics of the opera in French, English and German. When I purchased it, I had decided that the weight of the boxed set alone made it a good buy... little did I know that this was a "reference" recording, one by which all others are to be judged. Its also conducted by Herbert von Karajan, a legendary conductor.

Still, what's with Strauss?

Data entry, pure and simple. As this past week has seen a renaissance of Forty-Two, I decided to tackled boxed CD sets. The problem is that this particular set has sixty-two tracks, all of which have German titles. I'm slow enough at data entry without having to import special characters, so I did what any reasonable human being would do: I looked up the recording on Amazon, copied the track list and pasted it into Excel. From there, I copied and pasted each track into Access. That's where I stopped with music- I still have three boxed sets to go, and then it's on to albums.

In other data news, I've got what appears to be a workable solution for my internal Lego part number. It's fairly lengthy at seventeen characters, and from all appearances, this should be sufficient. I've begun the data entry on this, and tried a few trial sorts. So far, everything looks good, and this is officially stage 2 of the Peeron normalization. I still need to add dimensions and clean up the text descriptions before importing it into a table.

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