I've been following Tesla Motors (NASDAQ:TSLA) with a bit of interest lately, as have many market watchers and potential investors. For those who are unaware, Tesla manufactures luxury electric vehicles in California, which is also currently their primary market. Tesla has been in the news recently (hence, this blog) because of their very positive sales numbers. According to a USA Today story, Tesla's solitary product, a luxury performance sedan, outsold Porsche, Lincoln, Land Rover, Jaguar... in fact, the first half of 2013, the Model S even outsold the Audi A6 and Lexus GS in California, beating Tesla's sales target for the entire year, and turning a profit.
I'm pretty impressed, but there is not enough here for me to invest. Here's why.
Like most investors of any size (and I'm definitely in the small category), I'm pretty careful about where my money goes. Also, like most investors, I've had my share of hits, misses and "woulda, coulda, shoulda" investments. I looked at Tesla, much like everyone that has an interest in "The Market" when that story came out; at that time I think the stock closed just under 132 USD per share. Today it is around 167 USD per share. When Tesla was an IPO (initial public offering) it was offered at around 37 USD per share. So as of today, this stock is essentially a "four-bagger"; that is, it has quadrupled in price. If you had purchased it at the IPO, you'd be sitting on a pretty profit.
Of course, if you had purchased Ford (NYSE:F) in the dark days of 2008, you could have had a share for less than 1 USD, I believe. It closed today just under 16 USD per share. A 16 bagger.
When it comes to investing, one of the greatest voices I've ever heard was Peter Lynch. Lynch was the first fund manager to take a mutual fund over the 1 billion USD valuation. I've learned much from his book One Up On Wall Street and I highly recommend it to all investors. Lynch said he learned much from watching his wife: while he concentrated on the "gee-whiz" high tech stocks of the era, she would continuously shop at the same stores and purchase the same brands. Of course, she was not an investor- she was a consumer. But, when he started observing her behavior, he ran the numbers on some of her favorites and had one of those epiphanies: these companies were not merely solid investments, but were growing! After some time, her purchasing patterns changed, and he asked her about this. She gave her views and then he checked the numbers. Sure enough, they were no longer growing and he saw "sell" written all over their balance sheets (figuratively speaking).
So, my takeaway from Mr. Lynch regarding stocks is this: more than anything else, if you can't explain what a company does- no matter how good the fundamentals look- walk away, McFly. These equities are not the equities you're looking for. My extrapolated corollary is this: if you can't see, feel, taste or touch it, walk away.
And so it goes, sadly, with Tesla Motors. I really like the story: an efficient, high performance, high-tech automobile- even made in the United States! But after that, it goes south for me really fast. First, there's the ~90K USD entry price. The company has announced more models are in the pipeline, including a more down-to-earth ~30K USD model. That's good. However, even though I learned today that Tesla does have dealerships outside of California (in several parts of the world, including two in the Chicago area), I have never seen one, nor do I know anyone that owns one, nor have I ever seen one of their charging stations.
So, although this may be the next Google or Apple, it just isn't a good fit for my investing style, and I'm going to take a pass.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Monday, August 26, 2013
Pop flops
I've been promising- well, threatening... no, alluding to an upcoming blog for a bit that would actually talk a bit about music. Music, of course, it a natural tie-in, as my original analog (pen and paper) database was all about my music collection, which at that time consisted of LPs, singles (both 45s and 78s- my grandfather worked for Rock-Ola, and we had a juke box in the basement), cassettes and eight tracks. I also used to do music popularity polls among my friends.
Having said all of that, I want to say that the opinions expressed here are entirely my own, and the reader is free to disagree- I can promise I'll probably make someone at least a little angry, and that someone will probably think, "Hey, he can't say that about (fill in the artist)". It's okay- feel free to continuing to like the artist or song- these are just my thoughts.
I'd like to say that there are rules to this little rant. Firstly, it's about big stars that released crummy songs, which went on to become big. The big stars also have to normally put out quality music (Bob Dylan and Alanis Morissette may be able to turn a clever lyric, but they can't sing... and Alanis is not even in the same league as Dylan). It's also not one- or two-hit wonders that produce music that is quirky, or odd or just plain bad (Alanis) music. It's also not about one- or two-hit wonders that odd, quirky, or bad music that I happen to like- Robert Hazard's Escalator Of Life, Escape Club's Wild, Wild West, The Jim Carroll Band's People Who Died. It's also not about odd, maybe even good songs by artists I don't like- Neil Young's Hey, Hey ,My, My (Into The Black). No- the rules are simple- big artist, bad song, commercial success.
In researching this blog (yes, I do research), I found out some interesting things about the songs: two of the three were written in conjunction with death- one by a writer with a terminal illness, and the other as a memorial to a child. The other one was claimed to be autobiographical by the artist, but the writer (not the same person) said it definitely was not. So, without further ado...
#3- Leaving Las Vegas by Sheryl Crow. I'm not a huge fan of Sheryl, but she has produced a couple of songs that I really like which I can only classify as "slacker" songs (if you know Soak Up The Sun) you get the idea. This was the song which was claimed to be autobiographical. I don't know- she just slumbers emotionlessly through this thorough waste of 5:10.
#2 All Of My Love by Led Zepplin. It was written in honor of Robert Plant's son, who died of a stomach infection at the age of 5. It's just a horrible song.
#1 The Greatest Love Of All by Whitney Houston. I like most all of Whitney's work, but this song is horrid. Composed by a woman with a terminal illness, it should just never have been recorded. Whitney sings it badly, the video is ...odd, and the verses just fly in the face of my beliefs: the greatest love is not self love. We have a word for that in English- it's narcissism. It is unholy and unhealthy.
And that's a wrap for now. Comments are welcome, especially if you know of any other flops- just keep to the rules: big artist, commercially successful song, bad song.
No data tonight!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
*Around every five entries, I provide links to some older posts you may have missed- here's today's crop-
Having said all of that, I want to say that the opinions expressed here are entirely my own, and the reader is free to disagree- I can promise I'll probably make someone at least a little angry, and that someone will probably think, "Hey, he can't say that about (fill in the artist)". It's okay- feel free to continuing to like the artist or song- these are just my thoughts.
I'd like to say that there are rules to this little rant. Firstly, it's about big stars that released crummy songs, which went on to become big. The big stars also have to normally put out quality music (Bob Dylan and Alanis Morissette may be able to turn a clever lyric, but they can't sing... and Alanis is not even in the same league as Dylan). It's also not one- or two-hit wonders that produce music that is quirky, or odd or just plain bad (Alanis) music. It's also not about one- or two-hit wonders that odd, quirky, or bad music that I happen to like- Robert Hazard's Escalator Of Life, Escape Club's Wild, Wild West, The Jim Carroll Band's People Who Died. It's also not about odd, maybe even good songs by artists I don't like- Neil Young's Hey, Hey ,My, My (Into The Black). No- the rules are simple- big artist, bad song, commercial success.
In researching this blog (yes, I do research), I found out some interesting things about the songs: two of the three were written in conjunction with death- one by a writer with a terminal illness, and the other as a memorial to a child. The other one was claimed to be autobiographical by the artist, but the writer (not the same person) said it definitely was not. So, without further ado...
#3- Leaving Las Vegas by Sheryl Crow. I'm not a huge fan of Sheryl, but she has produced a couple of songs that I really like which I can only classify as "slacker" songs (if you know Soak Up The Sun) you get the idea. This was the song which was claimed to be autobiographical. I don't know- she just slumbers emotionlessly through this thorough waste of 5:10.
#2 All Of My Love by Led Zepplin. It was written in honor of Robert Plant's son, who died of a stomach infection at the age of 5. It's just a horrible song.
#1 The Greatest Love Of All by Whitney Houston. I like most all of Whitney's work, but this song is horrid. Composed by a woman with a terminal illness, it should just never have been recorded. Whitney sings it badly, the video is ...odd, and the verses just fly in the face of my beliefs: the greatest love is not self love. We have a word for that in English- it's narcissism. It is unholy and unhealthy.
And that's a wrap for now. Comments are welcome, especially if you know of any other flops- just keep to the rules: big artist, commercially successful song, bad song.
No data tonight!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
*Around every five entries, I provide links to some older posts you may have missed- here's today's crop-
Sunday, August 25, 2013
#notsobigdata- an epiphany of sorts
I recall writing recently that I was going to lay off of the data-focused posts for a bit and get back to the format of life in and around the Secret Underground Lair for a bit. I was even ready to go with a new topic, a music topic that is near and dear to my heart: why did (fill in the name of a popular and talented musical artist- singer or band) record that atrocity? Furthermore, why did it sell and why did it receive massive airplay? Alas, that will have to wait for another day, because I had one of those moments, and now the Secret Underground Lair's Data Vault will never be the same.
As I had briefly mentioned in an earlier blog, I had updated a table which had the effect of blowing out all of my queries. This is not important right now, as the total amount of data is still under 5Mb(!) and there are still fewer than 900 records in the main data table. For the purpose of updating this table, though, I decided to make a query which would simply list movie titles and formats. So, I sat down with the query wizard and proceeded to make a simple query which would output an alpha list of only movies, as well as their formats.
Simple, right? Muahaha, I guess the air in the Secret Underground Lair was a bit thin when I tried to do this, because I kept on trying the same thing and I kept on getting the same error. Suddenly, as I was staring at the Criteria in Design View, it hit me: it was not working because when I tried to run with the criterion I had selected, the criterion was not recognized. In plain English, I wanted what I thought was data, but Access interpreted it as a displayed name.
Since there are only two pieces of data in the table, I figured out that Access wanted to see the record's autonumber rather than the name displayed in the target table. I switched the so that Criteria==9 (where 9==the record number of the piece of data that I actually wanted to use), and it worked. Which means, if I'm feeling adventurous, I'll save a copy of the database and figure out how the relationships are set up, and then correct so they are pointing to the desired field in the source table. Then, I will eliminate the autonumber field, setting up the only remaining data as the primary key.This will lighten the database a bit, and make it much easier to write queries, as the criteria will all be in plain English. And going forward, all new single field tables will not have an autonumber.
Next time, I'll try to get those songs out, as well as an idea for a relatively ultralight database that I had some ideas about. Until then,...
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
As I had briefly mentioned in an earlier blog, I had updated a table which had the effect of blowing out all of my queries. This is not important right now, as the total amount of data is still under 5Mb(!) and there are still fewer than 900 records in the main data table. For the purpose of updating this table, though, I decided to make a query which would simply list movie titles and formats. So, I sat down with the query wizard and proceeded to make a simple query which would output an alpha list of only movies, as well as their formats.
Simple, right? Muahaha, I guess the air in the Secret Underground Lair was a bit thin when I tried to do this, because I kept on trying the same thing and I kept on getting the same error. Suddenly, as I was staring at the Criteria in Design View, it hit me: it was not working because when I tried to run with the criterion I had selected, the criterion was not recognized. In plain English, I wanted what I thought was data, but Access interpreted it as a displayed name.
Since there are only two pieces of data in the table, I figured out that Access wanted to see the record's autonumber rather than the name displayed in the target table. I switched the so that Criteria==9 (where 9==the record number of the piece of data that I actually wanted to use), and it worked. Which means, if I'm feeling adventurous, I'll save a copy of the database and figure out how the relationships are set up, and then correct so they are pointing to the desired field in the source table. Then, I will eliminate the autonumber field, setting up the only remaining data as the primary key.This will lighten the database a bit, and make it much easier to write queries, as the criteria will all be in plain English. And going forward, all new single field tables will not have an autonumber.
Next time, I'll try to get those songs out, as well as an idea for a relatively ultralight database that I had some ideas about. Until then,...
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
What's in a name? Or, for Bowie fans, Changes.
As I progress through a deeper experience (and hopefully a greater understanding) of not-so-big-data, I've come to realize that Ye Olde Blogge needs a bit of a tech refresh. Nothing really out of my comfort zone, but a few changes to make that old, familiar sweater feel more comfortable in 2013. Therefore, I've made a few minor changes to the look, and updated the title- which now more closely aligns with my philosophy on data.
I'd like to take a few steps back and try to explain why #notsobigdata is vitally important, possibly even more than Big Data or Megatrends. By the way, I did not read John Naisbitt's Megatrends, but I do remember seeing it in bookstores (does anyone remember bookstores?)
#notsobigdata, though, is both important and timely. It does not necessarily appeal to larger corporate consumers, but rather to ordinary folks, SOHOs and SMBs... a whole lotta acronyms that identify data producers and consumers... folks that, if they knew how to gather or interpret data, could possibly compete more successfully with the big players in their respective industries, or budget money better.
My #notsobigdata is focused on insurance and entertainment at this particular moment. Insurance and entertainment may seem like strange bedfellows to the casual observer, but have you ever considered how much media you have purchased in the past year? Have you ever considered how you would replace it should something catastrophic happen? In other words, if you have a collection of media that is stolen or destroyed, how would you recoup that loss?
The "cloud" is a consideration, I suppose. You could store all of the data about your collection(s) there. The problem I have with the cloud is that its hardly private- and this is true of all of your web-based email as well. I've never been really comfortable with posting all sorts of photos on the internet, which is the primary reason I don't post many pictures- and the ones that I do post are generally not of persons. I also take steps to control PII (personally identifiable information)- which is why nicknames are often used in this blog.
Not to belabor the point, as I've mentioned this at least a few times- the biggest problem I have with data is actually entering it into the tables or worksheets (I'm currently using both Excel and Access for this project). It's not that I mind doing it, it's just that I'm not particularly quick (~30 wpm). And, I don't have enough data in some of the tables yet to justify making some nice-looking front-end which could speed the data entry process. I do see a future for dashboards, though, and possibly some sort of map-like application. Alas, those things are the toys which may be in the database of my future- but for now, I have to be content with building my as yet to be glorious database one cell at a time.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
I'd like to take a few steps back and try to explain why #notsobigdata is vitally important, possibly even more than Big Data or Megatrends. By the way, I did not read John Naisbitt's Megatrends, but I do remember seeing it in bookstores (does anyone remember bookstores?)
#notsobigdata, though, is both important and timely. It does not necessarily appeal to larger corporate consumers, but rather to ordinary folks, SOHOs and SMBs... a whole lotta acronyms that identify data producers and consumers... folks that, if they knew how to gather or interpret data, could possibly compete more successfully with the big players in their respective industries, or budget money better.
My #notsobigdata is focused on insurance and entertainment at this particular moment. Insurance and entertainment may seem like strange bedfellows to the casual observer, but have you ever considered how much media you have purchased in the past year? Have you ever considered how you would replace it should something catastrophic happen? In other words, if you have a collection of media that is stolen or destroyed, how would you recoup that loss?
The "cloud" is a consideration, I suppose. You could store all of the data about your collection(s) there. The problem I have with the cloud is that its hardly private- and this is true of all of your web-based email as well. I've never been really comfortable with posting all sorts of photos on the internet, which is the primary reason I don't post many pictures- and the ones that I do post are generally not of persons. I also take steps to control PII (personally identifiable information)- which is why nicknames are often used in this blog.
Not to belabor the point, as I've mentioned this at least a few times- the biggest problem I have with data is actually entering it into the tables or worksheets (I'm currently using both Excel and Access for this project). It's not that I mind doing it, it's just that I'm not particularly quick (~30 wpm). And, I don't have enough data in some of the tables yet to justify making some nice-looking front-end which could speed the data entry process. I do see a future for dashboards, though, and possibly some sort of map-like application. Alas, those things are the toys which may be in the database of my future- but for now, I have to be content with building my as yet to be glorious database one cell at a time.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Monday, August 19, 2013
Chores vs. work
I've officially appointed my cohort in contracting, Ryan, to be my Blogger Muse, Level I. It seems that every time I feel the need to update this blog and the proverbial well is dry, Ryan somehow seems to bring something out. Thanks, Ryan!
However, this post is a totally new, un-Ryan inspired post. It actually goes back to the week before last week, when Jennifer and I were making the final preparations for her visit with her parents. She and I had gone over everything weeks in advance, on-and-off, in preparation for this. She had explained some of her daily tasks, and shown me the ones I needed to do. Most of this was fairly low-level stuff, as she had a laptop and internet access, but I needed to do it to make her visit less stressful.
When all was said and done, and she was back home, I graded the boys' and my stewardship of the Secret Underground Lair with an approximate 85%+; her grade was closer to 70%, I think. The difference in the grades is not surprising: we got an immediate 10 point deduction for a rules violation. After that, I think the pluses and minuses came close to giving us the relative percentages previously mentioned.
However, this brings me back to the title. I've occasionally thought about chores, and have come to the conclusion that most folks think chores are those uncompensated jobs performed by under-18 year-old minions. I've refined my definition of chores a bit over the years, as I have come to realize that chores are the bits of housework that make a household function- in fact, they do not even require a family. They simply require execution. Part of my attitude about chores goes back to my childhood, particularly my preteen ("tween"... ugh- that's such a goofy word) and teen years. My Mom died just after my fifth birthday, so my Dad and I moved in with his parents. I had "chores" to do, but I think I was okay with doing them because they weren't called chores- they were just things which needed to be done. I always dried the dishes, and when I was old enough, I cut the grass. I also shoveled the snow. I eventually graduated to washing the dishes and doing the laundry, as my grandfather was horrible with both of these tasks. I guess that's why I don't mind doing these things today.
Which leads me to think they should be executed to the best of one's ability. They should also be done by the person who does them best... I started washing clothes after my grandfather washed a pair of my fairly new blue jeans in hot water, totally ruining them in the process. These days, I cut the grass. But in the winter, Jennifer operates the snow blower (I shovel). Jennifer normally does the bills and budget stuff. She and I both do the dishes, but she does almost all of the cooking and meal preparation. I do all of the computer, printer and network stuff. There are other things, but we avoid a lot of tension by working things the way we do.
Database stuff: Data entry is the focus for the moment. The queries need to be rebuilt, but there's no rush. I have 125 new entries (spread through three tables) from the last time I counted (Aug 9- yes, there's a spreadsheet for this... after all, I do write about data analysis AND management), which isn't a huge amount, but it's progress.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
However, this post is a totally new, un-Ryan inspired post. It actually goes back to the week before last week, when Jennifer and I were making the final preparations for her visit with her parents. She and I had gone over everything weeks in advance, on-and-off, in preparation for this. She had explained some of her daily tasks, and shown me the ones I needed to do. Most of this was fairly low-level stuff, as she had a laptop and internet access, but I needed to do it to make her visit less stressful.
When all was said and done, and she was back home, I graded the boys' and my stewardship of the Secret Underground Lair with an approximate 85%+; her grade was closer to 70%, I think. The difference in the grades is not surprising: we got an immediate 10 point deduction for a rules violation. After that, I think the pluses and minuses came close to giving us the relative percentages previously mentioned.
However, this brings me back to the title. I've occasionally thought about chores, and have come to the conclusion that most folks think chores are those uncompensated jobs performed by under-18 year-old minions. I've refined my definition of chores a bit over the years, as I have come to realize that chores are the bits of housework that make a household function- in fact, they do not even require a family. They simply require execution. Part of my attitude about chores goes back to my childhood, particularly my preteen ("tween"... ugh- that's such a goofy word) and teen years. My Mom died just after my fifth birthday, so my Dad and I moved in with his parents. I had "chores" to do, but I think I was okay with doing them because they weren't called chores- they were just things which needed to be done. I always dried the dishes, and when I was old enough, I cut the grass. I also shoveled the snow. I eventually graduated to washing the dishes and doing the laundry, as my grandfather was horrible with both of these tasks. I guess that's why I don't mind doing these things today.
Which leads me to think they should be executed to the best of one's ability. They should also be done by the person who does them best... I started washing clothes after my grandfather washed a pair of my fairly new blue jeans in hot water, totally ruining them in the process. These days, I cut the grass. But in the winter, Jennifer operates the snow blower (I shovel). Jennifer normally does the bills and budget stuff. She and I both do the dishes, but she does almost all of the cooking and meal preparation. I do all of the computer, printer and network stuff. There are other things, but we avoid a lot of tension by working things the way we do.
Database stuff: Data entry is the focus for the moment. The queries need to be rebuilt, but there's no rush. I have 125 new entries (spread through three tables) from the last time I counted (Aug 9- yes, there's a spreadsheet for this... after all, I do write about data analysis AND management), which isn't a huge amount, but it's progress.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Peace, Love & TQM
After a couple straight database-laden posts, I thought I'd go back to the somewhat more familiar format I've been following- that is, the larger part of the post being about life in the Secret Underground Lair, followed with a bit of database news. That's a polite way of saying: until I get back to rebuilding my queries, it's pretty much going to be data entry for a while!
My cohort in contracting has said on several occasions that to force writing is to end up with forced writing. Well, something along those lines. As I was leaving the office this morning, I said to him in parting, "Peace, Love and TQM!" It's such an odd phrase, coined by yours truly in Germany, in the halcyon days of The Drawdown following the end of Desert Storm. And this is the crux of today's musings.
In any environment where the same folks gather on a regular basis- whether it be professional, social or casual, a common vocabulary will emerge as these individuals get to know each other and become comfortable and maybe friendly. Beyond lingo, jargon or truisms, a certain "groupspeak" will emerge. Groupspeak, according to wiktionary.com, is "The jargon used by a particular group." They go on to define jargon as,
There are a few different ways in which we announce that we are leaving for the day. "I don't know about you all, ..." is Adrian's phrase; Jimmy Z's is, "I gotta get out of here" and mine is, "I've had enough fun for one day".
A great deal of what we do at night and overnight is quality control, which sometimes requires us to engage with folks from different departments or even facilities in different parts of the country. One evening, we were checking some work for a job we were doing for another facility, and we had to call the Customer Service Representative (CSR) for advice on this particular job (this particular CSR has long since left the company). First we asked about some counts, and the CSR said, "Is that really important?" Uh, yes, it is. Next, there was another issue and the response was," Do you think they'll notice?" Uh, yes. The last question was answered with, "Does it really matter?" These legendary, epic responses have become a regular part of our groupspeak and are invoked whenever something that obviously needs to be fixed shows up.
There are many others, of course, but one final group is the ones which just don't really mean anything- things like "Where do I sign?" (where something should be done, but the speaker indicates that another person has thoroughly checked something out), "He's off my Christmas card list", which indicates someone has done something particularly inane. And then there's the Jimmy Z all-time classic, "It's a setup!" in cases where something has gone horribly wrong, or where someone else has started a job, and then goes on vacation, leaving all sorts of potential disaster on the table (as well as all of the responsibility).
That's it for today. As mentioned, I'm pretty much to data entry mode, so no database news today.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
My cohort in contracting has said on several occasions that to force writing is to end up with forced writing. Well, something along those lines. As I was leaving the office this morning, I said to him in parting, "Peace, Love and TQM!" It's such an odd phrase, coined by yours truly in Germany, in the halcyon days of The Drawdown following the end of Desert Storm. And this is the crux of today's musings.
In any environment where the same folks gather on a regular basis- whether it be professional, social or casual, a common vocabulary will emerge as these individuals get to know each other and become comfortable and maybe friendly. Beyond lingo, jargon or truisms, a certain "groupspeak" will emerge. Groupspeak, according to wiktionary.com, is "The jargon used by a particular group." They go on to define jargon as,
- (uncountable) A technical terminology unique to a particular subject.
- (countable) Language characteristic of a particular group.
- (uncountable) Speech or language that is incomprehensible or unintelligible; gibberish.
There are a few different ways in which we announce that we are leaving for the day. "I don't know about you all, ..." is Adrian's phrase; Jimmy Z's is, "I gotta get out of here" and mine is, "I've had enough fun for one day".
A great deal of what we do at night and overnight is quality control, which sometimes requires us to engage with folks from different departments or even facilities in different parts of the country. One evening, we were checking some work for a job we were doing for another facility, and we had to call the Customer Service Representative (CSR) for advice on this particular job (this particular CSR has long since left the company). First we asked about some counts, and the CSR said, "Is that really important?" Uh, yes, it is. Next, there was another issue and the response was," Do you think they'll notice?" Uh, yes. The last question was answered with, "Does it really matter?" These legendary, epic responses have become a regular part of our groupspeak and are invoked whenever something that obviously needs to be fixed shows up.
There are many others, of course, but one final group is the ones which just don't really mean anything- things like "Where do I sign?" (where something should be done, but the speaker indicates that another person has thoroughly checked something out), "He's off my Christmas card list", which indicates someone has done something particularly inane. And then there's the Jimmy Z all-time classic, "It's a setup!" in cases where something has gone horribly wrong, or where someone else has started a job, and then goes on vacation, leaving all sorts of potential disaster on the table (as well as all of the responsibility).
That's it for today. As mentioned, I'm pretty much to data entry mode, so no database news today.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Monday, August 12, 2013
#notsobigdata Query fail
As Mel the cook on (the television show) Alice is purported to have said, "The best D fence is a good O fence". If true, that Mel was a man wise beyond his years. I'll bet he also moonlighted as a data analyst when he wasn't flipping greasy burgers.
Once again, I've lead off with a comment that is seemingly unconnected to anything- but when it comes to relational databases in which most everything is related to nearly everything in some way, shape or form, as the administrator, manager or designer one needs to be constantly aware of what is going on with the Precious. Er, I mean, the data.
A few days ago I had the opportunity to do a little bit of Show and Tell with a buddy and my database. As the database started out as a catalog of our audio and video collections, it's still very heavy with those sorts of records. My buddy was fairly amazed at the amount of movies we have (I'm not sure I've mentioned this before, but I coined the term "videot" with our son Daniel in mind, as he's constantly spurting out factoids and sundry other movie trivia... if I didn't know better, I'd think the "D" in IMDB.com stood for "Daniel" rather than "Data"). I've tried very hard from the onset to make the database accessible (no pun intended) and logical, and judging by my buddy's reaction, I think I succeeded. We were looking at all sorts of records and I was explaining as we went along some of the features and why it had been set up in the way that it was. Then he said, "Wouldn't it be pretty easy and useful to add another column in here that tells where each item is stored?" That, gentle readers, was an epiphany: in a instant he went from one who had never seen a database before and barely knowing what it could do, to making a suggestion to make it more powerful and useful. I told him, "Yes, thanks- I'd been planning on doing that, but it will take one or two more tables to do it properly."
Here's where planning and design come into play. I could add a column, and have a drop-down list for my locations... IF the number of locations was immutable and fairly small. I've done this in other databases where the dataset itself was finite and would not ever shrink or grow. In my situation, our organization is sometimes quite good, and at other times nonexistent. Additionally, we're always looking for ways (well, I am, at least) of improving storage... it does not always work as planned. In fact, a thought just occurred to me that involves the P-Touch. The more I think about this particular idea, the more I feel the need to utilize Visio and Excel- I have a rudimentary asset tag system, but it needs a bit of tweaking....
STOP! Find a happy data place, find a happy data place, find a happy data place.
This week's goal is to continue with data entry and to work on the physical area around Jennifer's PC, as I have some stacks of paper that need to go to a better place. Also, ALL of the queries need to be rebuilt. Although I do use ad hoc queries fairly often, I rely quite heavily on permanent queries for many things, such as deduping and making lists to output to Excel for analysis and counting. And yes, I am aware that in the #notsobigdata world, these tasks could be done in Access, but my little black book of best software practices says that one should use the best tool for the job. The reason for all that? I was going to show my buddy how queries worked, but I had broken all of them when I added a new lookup table to the primary table, so now they are all gone and need to be reconstructed. Vigilance is the price one must pay for clean data.
And now, it's time to wrap this up. I'm checking out of the Inn at the Stream of Consciousness and getting back to work. And, ...
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Postscript- Every so often, I will feature some older posts- here are today's group.
Once again, I've lead off with a comment that is seemingly unconnected to anything- but when it comes to relational databases in which most everything is related to nearly everything in some way, shape or form, as the administrator, manager or designer one needs to be constantly aware of what is going on with the Precious. Er, I mean, the data.
A few days ago I had the opportunity to do a little bit of Show and Tell with a buddy and my database. As the database started out as a catalog of our audio and video collections, it's still very heavy with those sorts of records. My buddy was fairly amazed at the amount of movies we have (I'm not sure I've mentioned this before, but I coined the term "videot" with our son Daniel in mind, as he's constantly spurting out factoids and sundry other movie trivia... if I didn't know better, I'd think the "D" in IMDB.com stood for "Daniel" rather than "Data"). I've tried very hard from the onset to make the database accessible (no pun intended) and logical, and judging by my buddy's reaction, I think I succeeded. We were looking at all sorts of records and I was explaining as we went along some of the features and why it had been set up in the way that it was. Then he said, "Wouldn't it be pretty easy and useful to add another column in here that tells where each item is stored?" That, gentle readers, was an epiphany: in a instant he went from one who had never seen a database before and barely knowing what it could do, to making a suggestion to make it more powerful and useful. I told him, "Yes, thanks- I'd been planning on doing that, but it will take one or two more tables to do it properly."
Here's where planning and design come into play. I could add a column, and have a drop-down list for my locations... IF the number of locations was immutable and fairly small. I've done this in other databases where the dataset itself was finite and would not ever shrink or grow. In my situation, our organization is sometimes quite good, and at other times nonexistent. Additionally, we're always looking for ways (well, I am, at least) of improving storage... it does not always work as planned. In fact, a thought just occurred to me that involves the P-Touch. The more I think about this particular idea, the more I feel the need to utilize Visio and Excel- I have a rudimentary asset tag system, but it needs a bit of tweaking....
STOP! Find a happy data place, find a happy data place, find a happy data place.
This week's goal is to continue with data entry and to work on the physical area around Jennifer's PC, as I have some stacks of paper that need to go to a better place. Also, ALL of the queries need to be rebuilt. Although I do use ad hoc queries fairly often, I rely quite heavily on permanent queries for many things, such as deduping and making lists to output to Excel for analysis and counting. And yes, I am aware that in the #notsobigdata world, these tasks could be done in Access, but my little black book of best software practices says that one should use the best tool for the job. The reason for all that? I was going to show my buddy how queries worked, but I had broken all of them when I added a new lookup table to the primary table, so now they are all gone and need to be reconstructed. Vigilance is the price one must pay for clean data.
And now, it's time to wrap this up. I'm checking out of the Inn at the Stream of Consciousness and getting back to work. And, ...
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Postscript- Every so often, I will feature some older posts- here are today's group.
Saturday, August 10, 2013
#notsobigdata
Yes, I did create the twitter hashtag #notsobigdata in the wee hours of Wednesday, August 7. It is for my Not-so-big-data theme. And even though I realize that Big Data is the future, Not-so-big-data is the here, and the now, ... and the foreseeable future.
Not-so-big-data can still be a lot of data. For example, I once worked as a data analyst for a Wal Mart vendor. This was back in the Excel 2000 days, when Excel had a limitation of 65,536 rows. Even though I reported on only six to eight SKUs on each weekly report, there were weeks where the data exceeded Excel's capabilities, and I had to grab the data in Access, and then slice and dice it into chunks that the Excel of the day could handle. It was also at this time that I became familiar with what is seriously the best mouse ever devised- the Logitech Trackman Marble. I had never had to select 60,000+ rows of Excel data before, but this mouse made that task easy. We own four of them.
Getting back to not-so-big-data...
Not-so-big-data is what we deal with on a daily or weekly or monthly basis. Some of it is eclectic and ad hoc, often never gracing a ledger or spreadsheet... data like fuel economy or utility usage, but maybe bits and pieces of the family or organizational budget. The bottom line is that these dollars and cents (or whatever one's local currency happens to be) are important, at least for the day or week or other short period of time in question. Jennifer is a perfect example of a not-so-big-data consumer.
And not only is she a perfect example of the not-so big-data consumer, she's also an expert not-so-big-data manager and analyst. As an example, our has meters for gas, water and electricity. Even though these utilities employ meter readers, we send in our readings every month, because when the utilities don't read the meters, they estimate usage. And sometimes, the meter readers just plain make mistakes. We were on the wrong end of a meter reading error once- a 100 USD mistake. Jennifer caught this, and the mistake was corrected.
Along a similar line of thought, I was doing some data entry in one of my Access tables on Thursday before going in to work, and I ran into some duplicate records, or "dupes" for short. There were at least six sets of dupes. Egad! I was not happy to find them, as I am typically pretty vigilant about my rules. This particular table ("Names") currently only has two columns- the autonumber and the name. Right now, the only purpose the table serves is to force normalization in the current primary ("Media") table. The Names table is the sole source of data for the Artist/Author column in the media table- I do not allow free data entry into areas that are prone to seeing repetitive data. As I was working with some books, I glanced over at the bookshelf and replaced the dupes with authors which had not yet been entered into this table. Adding insult to injury, I know exactly when and how the errors occurred.
I had been entering the data of some compilation music cassettes a few weeks ago, and as each cassette has a number of artists, I got a bit careless and just entered several- instead of checking to see if there already was a record. And so for a moment's complacence, I had to spend time fixing rather than creating. I hope to eliminate this from ever happening again by double-checking to see that there are no more dupes in the table, and then setting the duplicates property of the field to == no duplicates.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Not-so-big-data can still be a lot of data. For example, I once worked as a data analyst for a Wal Mart vendor. This was back in the Excel 2000 days, when Excel had a limitation of 65,536 rows. Even though I reported on only six to eight SKUs on each weekly report, there were weeks where the data exceeded Excel's capabilities, and I had to grab the data in Access, and then slice and dice it into chunks that the Excel of the day could handle. It was also at this time that I became familiar with what is seriously the best mouse ever devised- the Logitech Trackman Marble. I had never had to select 60,000+ rows of Excel data before, but this mouse made that task easy. We own four of them.
Getting back to not-so-big-data...
Not-so-big-data is what we deal with on a daily or weekly or monthly basis. Some of it is eclectic and ad hoc, often never gracing a ledger or spreadsheet... data like fuel economy or utility usage, but maybe bits and pieces of the family or organizational budget. The bottom line is that these dollars and cents (or whatever one's local currency happens to be) are important, at least for the day or week or other short period of time in question. Jennifer is a perfect example of a not-so-big-data consumer.
And not only is she a perfect example of the not-so big-data consumer, she's also an expert not-so-big-data manager and analyst. As an example, our has meters for gas, water and electricity. Even though these utilities employ meter readers, we send in our readings every month, because when the utilities don't read the meters, they estimate usage. And sometimes, the meter readers just plain make mistakes. We were on the wrong end of a meter reading error once- a 100 USD mistake. Jennifer caught this, and the mistake was corrected.
Along a similar line of thought, I was doing some data entry in one of my Access tables on Thursday before going in to work, and I ran into some duplicate records, or "dupes" for short. There were at least six sets of dupes. Egad! I was not happy to find them, as I am typically pretty vigilant about my rules. This particular table ("Names") currently only has two columns- the autonumber and the name. Right now, the only purpose the table serves is to force normalization in the current primary ("Media") table. The Names table is the sole source of data for the Artist/Author column in the media table- I do not allow free data entry into areas that are prone to seeing repetitive data. As I was working with some books, I glanced over at the bookshelf and replaced the dupes with authors which had not yet been entered into this table. Adding insult to injury, I know exactly when and how the errors occurred.
I had been entering the data of some compilation music cassettes a few weeks ago, and as each cassette has a number of artists, I got a bit careless and just entered several- instead of checking to see if there already was a record. And so for a moment's complacence, I had to spend time fixing rather than creating. I hope to eliminate this from ever happening again by double-checking to see that there are no more dupes in the table, and then setting the duplicates property of the field to == no duplicates.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Driver's Seat
A discussion occurred at work a few days ago, and true to form, it was not linear. It started out well enough. A coworker- actually a fellow contractor- was relating a story to me about a chance encounter a friend of his had with a celebrity. Both his friend and the celebrity were in the green room of a radio station getting ready to tape interviews with a nationally syndicated talk show host which I'm guessing neither one liked. However, there is a saying that goes something like, "No publicity is bad publicity".
The celebrity in question was big in the Eighties for a while, and had put out some music which I like, and this was still on my mind as I left work a short time later. I loaded my gear in truck, fired up the engine and headed home. A song was playing on the radio, and I thought to myself, "That song just isn't appropriate to drive to." I don't remember the song, but it was around 0400, and at that time of the morning not all songs really strike a chord. The two songs after that were Stevie Nicks' Edge of Seventeen and Little River Band's The Night Owls. Both of these I regard as being excellent nighttime driving songs. Another great one, of course, is the title of this post, Driver's Seat by Sniff 'n' The Tears. Don Henley's Boys of Summer and even Donna Summer's Hot Stuff fit into the category of driving songs, as well as selections from Johnny Cash, George Thorogood, The Cars and a host of others.
Of course, whether one is going out or coming back also weighs heavily on the music selection. Don Felder's Heavy Metal (Takin' A Ride) and John Fogerty's Centerfield are both great going out songs, but for the return trip, something a bit more mellow and introspective is often appropriate- and this is where it gets a bit complicated. Barry Manilow is almost never driving music, but Neil Diamond might be. Similarly, the Eagles did a lot of great driving music, but great care must be taken in choosing their music. Just for starters, James Dean and Already Gone are definitely outbound songs, but Ol '55 is definitely a return trip song, as is New Kid In Town. Otis Redding's Sittin' By The Dock Of The Bay also fits in the return trip category.
And then there are the songs that just will play well whether the sun is just going down, or the birds are just starting to chirp. The Blues Brothers' Sweet Home Chicago and most of the collected works of Abba and Shania Twain fit here.
Database news: I've done a bit of light data entry recently, but nothing worth updating any statistics as of yet. I'm kicking around some ideas for a new table, but as it will include computers (and their innards, software and peripherals) I need to actually spend a bit of time and thought on this, and actually design it before building the table. In the interim, I'll be adding names to the Publisher/Manufacturer table.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Of course, whether one is going out or coming back also weighs heavily on the music selection. Don Felder's Heavy Metal (Takin' A Ride) and John Fogerty's Centerfield are both great going out songs, but for the return trip, something a bit more mellow and introspective is often appropriate- and this is where it gets a bit complicated. Barry Manilow is almost never driving music, but Neil Diamond might be. Similarly, the Eagles did a lot of great driving music, but great care must be taken in choosing their music. Just for starters, James Dean and Already Gone are definitely outbound songs, but Ol '55 is definitely a return trip song, as is New Kid In Town. Otis Redding's Sittin' By The Dock Of The Bay also fits in the return trip category.
And then there are the songs that just will play well whether the sun is just going down, or the birds are just starting to chirp. The Blues Brothers' Sweet Home Chicago and most of the collected works of Abba and Shania Twain fit here.
Database news: I've done a bit of light data entry recently, but nothing worth updating any statistics as of yet. I'm kicking around some ideas for a new table, but as it will include computers (and their innards, software and peripherals) I need to actually spend a bit of time and thought on this, and actually design it before building the table. In the interim, I'll be adding names to the Publisher/Manufacturer table.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
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