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.
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