Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Can't. Sleep.

Ugh. Every so often, one gets one of those nights when one simply cannot fall asleep. Of course, in my case, it's one of those days. Regular followers of this blog will recall that my "day" starts when most civilized folk are settling into their after-dinner routine, be that retreating to the comfort of a sofa and catching one's favorite program on the telly, possibly curling up with a newspaper, periodical or book, spending quality time with the spouse and kids, participating in a sport or hobby, or possibly just a good old-fashioned snog... North Americans will probably have to Google that last one!

But, yeah, here I sit in the Secret Underground Lair. The birds and insects have long since given up on their calls and buzzes, and the survivors of that particular breakfast are more than likely sleeping the morning away.

Me? Not so lucky.I should set the stage here- I've been working a fair amount of overtime lately (where FAIR AMT=6 out of the past 7 days, and 7 out of the past nine, where WEEK= 7 days), and those of you gentle readers who are not members of the elite community of Nightstalkers may have a bit of trouble understanding my point of view, but tighten your seatbelts and I'll try and illuminate things for you. My evening typically begins anywhere from 2000 to 2200, depending on how the previous "day" had gone. Like most other folks in the West (well, the USA, at least), I put in an eight hour day. I work in a job shop, though- that is, we don't make the same thing every day until a new design comes out or a new model year. We contract to produce a product for a customer, and the salesforce works very diligently to ensure that the presses have enough work to run 24/7. These men and women do a good job, as downtime is typically at a premium.

So, here's the soap opera domino effect that was set in motion late last week: the lovely J (a kindred spirit of sorts) was slammed last week by the influx of six jobs from one customer. Not a huge deal, normally, except that this particular customer is a "Group"; that is, several companies are owned by this customer. So, three different companies with jobs that were quite close together in our order numbering system. I was asked to come in Saturday to do the second proof QC on one of these jobs, but we got slammed with uncharacteristically severe thunderstorms, so the lovely J was unable to remotely log in and get the proofs ready. That was okay, as it turned out she had some other work for the Group that needed to get done. I finished that, and was back on Sunday night. More ugliness had surfaced, and I ended up grabbing some food for her: while my weekend was ~14 hours, she put in 10 hours on Sunday. I delivered the food, and we talked about the jobs- my task was to run production and QC. She went home, and I sprung into action. I was moderately excited as I launched production on four different machines. My excitement turned to despair, though, as one by one, the program bombed. I frantically hit the communicator and shouted, "Scotty, warp factor 9- NOW!"

To no avail, of course, as I don't have a communicator button. Sheesh! Can't a guy get a break? After taking a few deep breaths, I figured out the problem, and proceeded to fix it. There are more hilarious details, but I will not belabor my gentle readers with them. In the end, I got everything to work.

Monday was fine, and then Tuesday rolled around and a whole new soap opera opened. It's mid-Wednesday morning as I write this, and the Tuesday soap opera has come to its exciting climax, with the performance of yours truly being nominated for an Emmy. Stay tuned- the ride doesn't get any smoother, but it's a doozie- guaranteed!

Lastly- data. Hah! You probably thought you were off the hook and/or I forgot.

I'm the black sheep of the Subaru family, apparently. We bought our Outback in April, and I've gotten at least two notices to come in for scheduled 3,750 mile (6,000 km) service. I've been putting it off because, well... overtime. We just hit 2,000 miles (3,200 km), so next week we'll hopefully be taking Meerkat in for her 1st service. I need to contact Sandy and see if we can take some test drives while we're there.

Real data: one of the neat instrumentation features of the Outback is a real time MPG calculator. This miles per gallon calculator resets every time you refill the tank, and gives you a pretty good idea of how you're driving. When we first got the car, we didn't use it, as the estimated cruising range seemed like a decent metric. Jennifer had suggested trying the MPG setting, and I've left on there since. It's become something of a game, getting over 21 MPG  in mostly short trip, stop and go suburban driving with an AWD vehicle.  Which brings me to what would have been the original title of this blog: "How Much Data Is Too Much?"

Subaru engineers decided to make the MPG increments .3 of a MPG. At first, this bothered me, as I'm all for the smallest practical range- .1 MPG. However, after about a week of watching this metric and making informal mental notes of my behavior, I decided that .3 is a good and useful number, not so much as it is significant, but because it does not distract the "data-enhanced" driver.

More words than usual- thanks for your patience. I've got a new database I'm experimenting with at work- I got the idea from Frank. I'll post updates if it becomes useful.

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

Sunday, August 17, 2014

Mind == Blown.

As mentioned in a previous blog, Quantum Leaping for non-physicists.html, I occasionally have issues with time. I could not be a Time Lord- for the record, Tom Baker was "my" Doctor. And also, for the record, I'm not a quantum physicist, although I enjoy both the Quantum Leap and The Big Bang Theory television series. Today, however, I felt more than just a twinge of sympathy with Quantum Leap's Dr. Sam Beckett- for a good thirty seconds, I actually lived his life. Here's what happened.

A few months ago, I had the misfortune of parking under some pine trees at work. As a result, Meerkat (our trusty Subaru Outback) acquired several globs of pine tar. For those unfamiliar with this substance, think of it as a very pleasant smelling substance, lighter than honey in color, but on an order or several times more viscous than said honey. Here's a formula for shear viscosity I found online-  F=\mu A \frac{u}{y}.  Pretty cool- I don't have the foggiest notion what it means, but since I mentioned quantum physics, I figured I'd throw a bit of science out there, and see what sticks (*oh yes, pun truly intended).

Back to the story- we've only had Meerkat since April. The tar is on both glass and painted surfaces. As it was a cool day, Jennifer had suggested that I mow the lawn. I mowed the lawn, and then figured I had time to try to get the tar off of the car. I had some Bug and Tar remover in the garage, so I got it out, read the instructions and then tried it on the windshield. I didn't get all of the gunk off, but the product was several years old and had been stored in the garage. And as the Chicago area is not known for mild winters, I decided to get a new bottle. I asked Jennifer if she'd like to go to the auto parts store with me, and we could stop at Aldi afterwards (note to European readers: Aldi has stores in the United States). So, I changed clothes and we were off. It was near 1700- rush hour- and I was going to cross a busy street- two lanes northbound and two lanes southbound traffic. I could not believe our fortune- it took probably less than thirty seconds to cross the street! We went in to the auto parts store, purchased the bug and tar remover, and then were off to Aldi. As we strolled down the first aisle of Aldi... I don't recall exactly how the topic came up, but it did: somehow, in an instant, my brain turned into Dr. Sam Beckett's Swiss-cheese-right-after-a-leap brain.

It was Sunday, not Monday.

Now, I've mentioned before- and probably more than once- that I often will ask Jennifer what day it is. This, however, was the first time that I've gone through the day believing that it was a weekday rather than a weekend day. Jennifer found the whole affair quite amusing, and in retrospect I suppose it was. But for me, the thirty seconds or so after that revelation were disorienting- it weirded me out more than a little, to be completely honest. Scoring an extra twenty-four hours is cool, to be certain. But- and this is a big "but"- my reality changed. Not in a bad way... more like an odd, momentary lapse into the indescribable... I was in The Twilight Zone. Not Golden Earring's Twilight Zone. Rod Serlings' black and white Twilight Zone. And I couldn't change the channel.

I've got nothing else. The memory of the event already has developed that soft patina that time is kind enough to paint onto events such as this. On the plus side, there's no lightning bolt scar on my forehead.

Before I forget: some small news on the I.T. front. Not really data related, but this past Monday I got to actually do some programming at work: I got to run a job, start to finish. This made me quite happy, as my nights are generally filled with doing all sorts of important stuff, but most of which has little to do with my actual title!

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

Monday, August 4, 2014

A slow email day

My spam folder is empty- in fact, it's been empty for over twelve hours. Even taking into consideration that it's late Sunday night as I write this and Sundays seem to thankfully be slow email days, it's pretty odd for the spam folder to be empty for such a "long" period. So, here are a few thoughts on why this might be happening.

1. They're Christians. Well, after all, many Christians do worship on Sunday. Of course, I don't suppose that very many who call themselves Christian would be engaged in the spam industry. Not real ones, in any event.

2. Canadian pharmacies are closed on Sunday. Possibly a better theory; then again, I'm an American that lives relatively far away from Canada, so I could not say with any degree of certainty one way or the other whether this is true. If it is true, I'll have to plan on purchasing misspelled, hyphenated pharmaceuticals on Monday.

3. They're spending quality time with their families. This is actually plausible; after all, there are probably a fair number of folks who appear to be good, upstanding members of their community... elected officials, unfortunately, come immediately to mind in this category.

4.  They're working on a new version of the Nigerian Letter. This also seems pretty reasonable, although a bit less probable than #3. Reason?  The Nigerian Letter has been around for some time- at least since the time of the French Revolution; according to the Boston Globe, it became the "Spanish Prisoner letter" around the time of the Spanish-American War. Sad but true, the average American who falls for this con coughs up ~5,000 USD. The best one I ever received was "from" Yassir Arafat's widow. I kid you not.

5. They've got a hot date. Um... I don't think so.

6. Polish spammers- see #1, #2, and #3. I'm not sure why I get foreign-language spam, but I've been getting one or two Polish languages spams per week.

7. Russian email order brides- see #1, #3 and especially #5. Even if the *ahem* "ladies" in the spam are real, they more than likely have diseases... and the email probably will get your PC viruses.

8. Political parties and politicians- see #1 and #3. For some strange reason, I get a lot of this. I'm sure they're all out on Sunday, going to church, giving interviews and kissing babies. Simultaneously.

Well, that's all I've got on spam. I generally just empty my spam folder without reading any of it, but there are one or two exceptions. There's one political email that is so radical and ridiculous- it just begs to be read. The other is a Nigerian letter; these are often quite interesting. And, believe it or not, there's actually one type of spam that I almost miss: the one with the random words in the title, followed by random, gibberish text.

Data. As I need to keep on reminding myself, the underlyng theme of this blog is data. I've not done much on that front since my database crashed. In my defense, there are a couple of reasons for this. First, work- I've been putting a lot of hours recently, and right now there's no relief in sight until September. Then, there's the actual database itself. As we don't have any network attached storage (NAS) or a file server, my data had been stored on a portable, external drive and worked on at one of three Win 7 or 8 PCs, each with a different version of Microsoft Office (2007,2010 and 2013). I'm going to change my policy and only use my Win8 laptop with Office 2013. This should take care of things.

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