The State of the Blog, v.04 (2016)

Well, it has been four years of writing... well, blogging. I sometimes question the literary validity of blogging versus other literary pursuits. I think blogging will be (or may be currently) viewed as a legitimate literary form, and so I throw up my feeble thoughts into the blogosphere every so often for amusement and evaluation.

Before I forget, I'd like to say "Thanks!" to all of my readers, loyal and occasional, new and old. And, in keeping with internet survey options which really make no sense, those who would answer "Other" also get my thanks.

I'm afraid this is going to be one of "those" posts, the sort I'd guess most blog writers dread: I've gotta write something, but I've got absolutely no clue as to what it will be.

I suppose I could go with the "ever-popular" "Year In Review" theme. Except I don't think anyone enjoys reading those- especially folks who don't know me or my family personally.

For a change, I'd like to say that this year has been pretty exceptional. Unlike last year when I had cataract surgery, we've not had and major illnesses or injuries- and we're quite thankful for this! Jennifer's Dad has been the exception, and out of respect for her family I'll leave it at that.

Daniel is no longer a newb at his job, and has scored some pretty impressive hours for a newcomer. Amanda and Mike are still at the ranch. Mr. T is ISO employment, and sharpening his graphics skills in the interim.

Jennifer and I are still knee-deep in home improvement projects. With the roof out of the way and the mulberry trimmed, we can now (hopefully!) turn our attention to other projects- more on these later.

And finally, one might ask: what's up in the wonderful world of data and programming?

Well, my latest endeavor I've been trying to do something which seems pretty simple- download and install Microsoft Visual Studio. We have an internal project or two at work which would benefit from multiple programmers poking at it, but I have as yet been able to successfully download and install Microsoft Visual Studio completely on my (personal) laptop. I've downloaded it to my work laptop and Jennifer's computer, so I'm more or less in business.

I've not done much with R or Python, but hopefully that will change in 2017. Who knows? For now, Merry/Happy Christmas! Here are a few recent photos I hope you enjoy!

Meerkat at home

New cat tree- Kenji on top, Tinka below

Meerkat, somewhere north of Springfield, IL

Om the road again- Dec, 2016

The Secret Underground Lair is once again abuzz with activity as Jennifer and yours truly have just returned from an epic- and somewhat unplanned-  trip. My original plan for the remainder of my vacation time was to take care of some personal business in mid-December, but a family situation in November in which our assistance was requested took precedence.

As it was Jennifer's immediate family, I agreed that we would help and rearranged my vacation. Thanksgiving (this year, Thursday, November 24, 2016) is a holiday that the boys like to celebrate as a family with Jennifer and I and special meal, so we had dinner with them, did the dishes and then packed our luggage and made snacks for the trip.

Friday morning (Black Friday), we got up at 0600. Jennifer made final checks on everything and got our breakfast together, and I packed Meerkat, our trusty Subaru Outback. Our journey would be approximately 950 miles (~1530km), and take us through four states: Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.

Our first rest stop was in southern Illinois. It was a relatively quick one at a rest stop named "Homestead". Note the grass- it is late November, and the grass is still green!

We've done this route a few times before, so we had a rough idea of how far we needed to travel on the first day of the journey. We generally stop in Springfield, Missouri  and overnight there. However, on this trip, because we were making such excellent time, we blew past Springfield and spent the night in Joplin, Missouri, adding 70 miles to our normal 1st day! Saturday was relatively easy, mostly because we were able to avoid most of the construction in Dallas!

I won't bore you with the details of our visit... suffice it to say that I can't remember the last time I did so much yard work! At one point, we realized we needed a chainsaw, and we purchased an electric one.

Long story short: we  busted our buns in that yard!

So, we worked (much family drama deleted!). and a week later, snow had fallen. The pictures are not of the same places, but both were taken in southern Illinois, a week apart!

We busted our buns at Jennifer's folk's home that week. At one point, I (literally) could not walk and my hands barely worked. Still, all of the work was for family, and it was fun, so I have no complaints.

That's all for this trip. As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

The morning after

As a blogger with a worldwide readership base (well, excepting Antarctica... c'mon my loyal readers- someone has got to know someone [or someone who knows someone] in Antarctica- please recommend my blog... I'M BEGGING!), I suppose I should comment on the events of November 8, 2016, a.k.a., the General Elections in the United States of America.

But first, my blog title.

As the gentle reader may be aware, my blog titles are often tied directly to my subject matter, but also can be puns or cultural references. In this particular case, it is a bit of all three. Most importantly, it has absolutely nothing to do with RU-486, which became available in the United States in 2000, and was known as the "morning after" pill.

It is, in fact, a reference to the Maureen McGovern song from the original 1972 Irwin Allen classic disaster movie "The Poseidon Adventure". In a way,this movie symbolized the beginning of the demise of the hippie era, but it also shows that, when faced with dire straits, we all need to come together.

In a very broad way, this ties in rather well with U.S. politics and elections.

To some readers, this might seem rather odd, but please bear with me- I hope give a short, understandable explanation of the U.S. election process.

For starters, the basics: the United States is often referred to as a "constitutional federal republic". That's a mouthful, and quite honestly, many U.S. citizens would refer the the U.S. as a "democracy". This is inherently incorrect, as it merely says that the people participate in the government- primarily by electing proxies, or representatives. These "representatives" can be called representatives, senators, sheriffs, or any of a host of other titles.

"Constitutional" means that all of our laws are based upon a common document upon which all of our laws are derived. "Federal" means there is a strong central (national) government, and smaller (states) local governments. "Republic"- the head of state is elected or nominated by the people or their representatives.

Having said all of that, we have a new leader who will be installed as the President in January, 2017.

For what its worth, I did not support either candidate.

Anyway, its the morning after. I have a crashed HDD to deal with. In all honesty, the hard drive is more of a concern than the election.

...and for all those who follow this for my data snippets... nothing today, I'm sorry to report.

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

Don't just do well... Excel!

I'm going to talk a bit about some of my favorite Excel tips and tricks in a bit, but first I'd like to explore a certain fantasy of mine.

In another, more perfect world, I'd be an acclaimed, excruciatingly well-paid (and well-off) director of cinema with such an impeccable track record, I could write my own ticket for ANY movie. In this "perfect" world, I would have unlimited finances for my signature movie: a fantasy... or possibly sci-fi epic. This movie would be so epic that highly regarded movies such as "Gone With The Wind", "Citizen Kane" or "The Godfather" would pale in comparison to my movie. Sci-fi and fantasy standards such as Harry Potter (all of them), Star Wars (the complete series), Star Trek (the original TV series, every TV variant, and ALL of the movies), Blade Runner, the Peter Jackson LOTR epic or any other classic or standard one could think of would be mere footnotes in the story of the greatest fantasy epic ever filmed.

It would be so awe-inspiring, in fact, that, that Congress would unanimously pass the "hochspeyer Cinematic Protection Act" which would make the mere mention of Sting or Dune on my property a Class A misdemeanor, as this aberration of a movie could seriously undermine the morale of everyone associated with my movie, which in the law would be defined in the wording of the law as "property theft over 1000USD" (Legalese, in my own words).

In fact. my movie would be so perfect that I'd have to pay the leading actors and actresses of the day NOT to come and waste everyone's time by coming to my casting call, because I'd already have hand-picked my cast. I do know one thing, though: the soundtrack has already been recorded... in my mind. All of these songs are already in my collection. These songs would be so perfect for my movie that when I'd announce them, the folks who own the rights to the songs would would give me 75% of the royalties, and record companies would gift me their entire catalogs just to get one or two more tracks included. In my mind, ...

(hint: read the following in Superhero Speak)- that's Just. How. AWESOME (my movie will be). But... back to the soundtrack.

I'm actually a bit conflicted as to exactly what I should use as the main theme orchestral music, although I'm leaning pretty heavily towards Sibelius' Symphony #1. Why Sibelius... or, probably better, who is Sibelius?

Jean Sibelius is, from the narrative on the linked site above, a hero of Finland. I'm not an expert on classical music- and I'm using the term "classical music" in the popular, rather than the technical sense- but I think of his works as a bit "lighter" than German composers, but not as "sweet" as French or Italian folks. There would be other classical pieces, of course. Orff's intense "O Fortuna" would be prominent, as would several other easily recognizable pieces.  

There would also be rock... symphonic, metal, epic, the very best of the best, curated, so to speak, by me- lots of it. There would be some obvious choices (to me, anyway). Uriah Heep would contribute The Wizard, Lady In Black, Stealin', and Easy Livin', at least. From Styx, I'd have Lords of the Ring, Castle Walls, Born For Adventure and Snowblind. Scorpions add Send Me An Angel, No Pain No Gain. Nazareth provides Please Don't Judas Me. Axe gives us Silent Soldiers, and Jennifer. Moody Blues? Nights In White Satin and For My Lady. Pink Floyd gives us Breathe and One of These Days.

At this point, some purists may take offense, but I'm going with Guns N' Roses' version of Hair of the Dog. I've got nothing against the original- it's just that I like Slash's Day Tripper riff and Axl's laugh at the end of their cover. Speaking of GNR, November Rain and You Could Be Mine are on the list. Poison contributes Every Rose Has Its Thorn. Cinderella gives me Don't Know What You've Got and Nobody's Fool. From Bad Company, Bad Company and Seagull. Bruce Springsteen has Badlands. Deep Purple provides Burn. Kix' Don't Close Your Eyes is a must. Queen, of course, gives us '39, Don't Lose Your Head. There are probably several few dozen more, at least.

You're probably wondering how one (exceedingly long) movie could have so much music. Pretty simple, really: technology. On current blu-ray discs, the viewer can select the language, subtitles or not, and in some cases even the camera angle. My movie will probably be a direct to video release, and will allow the viewer to select the soundtrack based upon their preferences and my impeccable offerings for them to choose from- and they'll choose from a list of songs for any given scene, if they so choose.

Whew! That was a bit more lengthy than planned. And now, a few of my favorite Excel Tips and Tricks.

I don't know about you, but I use the Microsoft Office suite quite a bit... primarily Excel.

I'm not trying to be a Microsoft pitch guy, but their Office suite does offer a lot of useful business tools. I regularly use Excel, Word, Access and Powerpoint, in that order. Here are a few of my favorite Excel tips and tricks.

White text- I'm starting off with a weird "in plain sight" trick.  I have a spreadsheet that I use fairly often, and I need to track a quantity manually. As this quantity is unimportant to anyone but me, I don't want to draw attention to it so I've made the text in the cell the same color as the background- white.

"CTRL + ~"- If you know nothing about Excel except for constructing simple calculations, this is a vital shortcut. For those readers who are fairly new to Excel users, when you're working in a cell, you can see what you're doing in a cell by looking at the formula bar. When you type "CTRL + ~", you will see what is in every cell in your active spreadsheet- this is great for troubleshoooting.

Conditional formatting- a very sweet tool. It can be used in any number of ways. In a spreadsheet I currently co-manage, I use conditional formatting to alert me to when I need to reorder printer supplies. I also use it to manage my personal overtime.

Lastly, a just for fun bit of formatting.

You can make even a boring spreadsheet look a bit nicer by getting rid of the grid in some places, "simply" by changing the fill color.

Lastly, the most important trick is NEVER, ever do this in a production spreadsheet... that's tech talk for a spreadsheet which you really care about or would be lost without: ALWAYS MAKE A COPY, and work in the copy. I often need to use the data in a .csv or .xls/.xlsx file, and the first thing I do is copy the file to my desktop, rename it as a COPY_currentdata.xlxs, and then work from the copy. Never use the source file, unless your organization prohibits file copying. In that case, seek guidance from I.T. For all others, make that copy, and then delete it when you're done. If you have hardcopies (as I do), please be kind and deposit them in the shred bin.

That's all for now. I hope you've enjoyed my little movie fantasy, and can use one or two of my Excel "tricks". As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management do you don't have to.

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.

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.

    

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.

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.

Labor Day 2016

Its that time of year again... the "unofficial" end of summer. I'm not sure how it started, but in the United States, summer unofficially starts with Memorial Day and ends with Labor Day. I'm fairly certain that its not meterologically or astronomically accurate, but it certainly is convenient.

I'm not concerned with the calendar- I'm just waiting for the cooler temperatures!

Speaking of cool, Mr. T and I spent a good part of last Sunday working on organizing the Dungeon, which naturally spilled over to the SUL. Well, it wasn't really cool, but it was necessary... and months in the making! I'm not certain we gained any space, but the space we have is now much better organized.

Speaking of space, I've decided to fill a bit of the empty space between my ears with... wait for it..., R! Yes, it’s R, strange programming language from another planet that came to earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of other languages. R, which can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in a few lines of code. And that, disguised as a mere programming language, fights a never ending battle for truth, justice and the American way. And now another exciting episode in the adventures of Superman..., er, R (Sorry, I was thinking of Superman and the never-ending "battles" between programming languages.)

So, yeah, I'm taking a stab at R. There's a pretty neat tutorial that's been developed called "swirl" that's callable within the  R IDE. I haven't gotten very far, but I think I'll pop back to the beginning for a bit of a refresher.

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For those familiar with this blog, you should not be surprised surprised that I started writing this particular entry a week ago. Here in the United States, this past Monday was Labor Day, and also my birthday. Having a Monday holiday is always a nice thing- especially when it's one's birthday! Now, to set the record straight, at our house we don't do much for birthdays more than acknowledging that someone is a year older! Still, it's nice to have the day off. 

However, press schedules are relentless....

I worked four days this week, but I put in hours for almost six days. So, for once I have a fairly legitimate excuse for a delayed blog entry.

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Software and stuff- 

Not much to report, unfortunately.  I'm schlepping along in R... weeks like this are not conducive to learning! 

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

R U Experienced?

As mentioned in the past blog, R and U (as well as many other letters in the English alphabet) are programming languages.

In my current work environment, our primary programming software is a pretty nifty composition and layout tool which is customizable through a C++ based scripting capability. The scripting is often utilized to create sample pieces or to compensate for data which- for whatever reason- does not perform as expected.

Like most things, the best way to learn something is to do/use it. In my role- working at night- there is some opportunity for programming, but for reasons which should be obvious, not a great deal. As a consequence, I do a small amount of programming (actually creating jobs), a lot of quality control, and some break-fix. I've acquired a great deal of QC experience over the years, and have gotten quite good at it. My programming skills- in this particular environment- are below many, but not all, of my peers. I'm not bad at break-fix, and rather enjoy this particular aspect of my position, because it involves both the "hard" skill of actually working with a program and coming up with a solution, as well as the "soft" skills of interfacing with imaging techs, press personnel and/or supervisors and becoming an integral element of keeping a project on time. And, in direct mail, time is an element which cannot ever be ignored. Our clients spend time and resources on creating campaigns that will execute within a certain timeframe. In military terms, we and the client combined are like artillery: we're most effective when we're on time and on target!

I've mentioned my peers here once or twice, and like most industries, not everyone arrives at their current position via a straight path. Some actually studied programming in school and have a degree in it. Others worked in some capacity in either direct mail or printing, and made their way into programming. One of our programmers started out as a minor league (professional) baseball player who had a degree in graphic arts and came to us via the prepress department. My background is sales, databases and spreadsheets. Go figure.

But... as I don't have a programming background, I thought it would be expeditious to beef up my programming skills. I had initially poked around in Python- and will get back to that- but right now I am trying my hand at R. And yes, for those uninitiated, R is indeed a programming language. R has been around for awhile, and was developed out of S. In any event, this is a mountain for me, for a number of reasons.

For starters, R is designed with statistical computing in mind. Statistical computing is the bailiwick of the likes of my good e-buddy Prof. Dr. Diego Kuonen, not a former math-as-a-last-resort sort of person such as I used to be. On top of that, I've NEVER had a stats course at any level, and do not regularly use it. And, my job has absolutely nothing to do with stats.

Still, I took it up as a challenge. Languages one does not regularly speak, read or write are not called foreign without reason. And here's where it gets interesting: I've got a metric ****-ton of experience with foreign languages. I speak English natively, but have studied at least four Slavic languages, two Romance languages and one other Germanic language. One of the languages needed the learning of a new alphabet.  So, why not a computer language?

I've found, as I look at languages, that the more one studies, the closer one looks, and starts to see similarities and patterns that may have been seen before ... and so, I find myself looking at R.

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

Git outta here! "U" is a language?

Straight up, bro. U is indeed a language, as are R, S and T. Really? Yes- google any of them. They are all real programming languages.

And I bring this up ... WHY?

There are a couple of reasons. For starters, "coding" is still considered to be an arcane skill. In many ways, this can be seen as true.

Next, for some reason, coding in one language is sometimes held in a higher esteem than coding in another language.

Lastly, among programmers, even environments and specialized interfaces can cause a certain amount of elitism. If one cannot code a certain task in a certain IDE, one is an a**tard,

So, one attempts self-improverment after well-intentioned coworkers have slammed one to the ground.

Their myopia damns them and in the end does nothing to assist their coworkers.

I tire of some of my coworkers' belittling my efforts to me become a better programmer- their petty complaints and insults have been relegated to "mosquito" stage- annoying, but ineffective.

Sorry about the negative tone here. The next post will be more interesting!

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

The ABC's of programming

This past Thursday/Friday started out quietly enough at the office.

We were short-handed this week, as the Fresh Prince of Data Services was on vacation. He-Whose-Name-Shall-Never-Be-Mentioned (HWNSNBM) therefore reassumed the mantle of command on Thursday night and guided the projects ("The Big Show") to fruition that the Fresh Prince normally has a major hand in.  For the first time in as long as I can remember, though, none of these projects was "HOT", and during our Friday morning impromptu turnover meeting, I informed both the Stig and the Princess that if they were not able to get to The Big Show, then HWNSNBM and I would take care of it on Friday night.

I worked late on Thursday, so I came in later on Friday night, which is pretty much the norm for our office. When I arrived, HWNSNBM and I had a brief meeting, and someone had done one production QC on the Big Show, and he had done one on all of the others. So, as I had also done one on Friday morning, this left me with two to complete, along with two other jobs. Friday night was shaping up to be quite uneventful.

It would have stayed that way except for printer drivers. Our I.T. department has been optimizing the drivers for one of our printers, and I've been doing some testing of these drivers. The easiest way to test them is to print out .pdf's. The results of a particular test were not great, so the Lurker suggested using a different printer.  I did this, and discovered that when the Man-With-Three-First-Names (MW3FN) created this particular file, he did not account for white space at the top of the document. Normally, this would not be an issue, but for this particular job we needed to do a type of duplexing, and although the program was set up correctly with the imaging falling in place nicely, the white space (~2.5", or 5cm) that had not been cropped off the top of the background overlapped when duplexed, causing 2.5" of the bottom of one page to be obscured by the top of the second page.

Bottom line: it took me close to 2 hours, but I finally got the background cropped properly and outputted acceptable proofs.

That's it for printers and Thursday night drama. Next up: taking a chance on programming.

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

Windows 10, PCs 4

In my world, today is August 6  August 14. My last post was on the 24th of July, and much has happened since then... more in a following post!

For starters, on the very last day that the free Windows upgrade was available (July 29), I upgraded one of our PCs in the SUL. I might have upgraded more, but only one of the PCs we tried actually worked.

I'm very happy with the upgrade.As it was a workday for me, Mr. T had the privilege of babysitting the install process. It  was very smooth, according to him, and seemingly unlike every other new OS install, the HDD was untouched save for the OS. Had I the slightest clue it would be this easy, I would have installed it on at least one other machine. Alas, that time has passed.

So,how is performance?

The machine in question is an HP/Compaq DC7600 Pentium 4 3.4 GHz with 4GB (max, I believe) and a 1TB HDD.  

From a cold start, I think I get a login screen in 10 seconds or less. This is a 50% or better improvement. The interface is very nice- Win 7/8 users should have no problem transitioning to this OS.

On the minus side, MY experience with the new Edge browser has not been good. It is no better than the last iteration of IE, which is VASTLY inferior (that's the polite way of saying it absolutely SUCKS) to Chrome, Pale Moon or Vivaldi. As a side note- if you've never tried the Pale Moon or Vivaldi browsers, give them a try.

That's it for now- just a few notes on Win10.

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

Professional email addresses... and other terminally flawed data

I'm sorry. That's a pretty bloody lame title. And I'll also forgive you if you didn't read my previous post on this subject... which had such a clever title that I can't find it either!

Every so often, though, I read something that makes me wonder: why did the writer go into business at all?

Last week we received a flyer from a realtor whom I'll call "John Doe". John obviously is pretty good at selling homes- after all, he's been in business for over 10 years with the same firm in the same office (we'll say he works for "Acme"). So, with a proven track record of solid business acumen and a professionally written and laid out color flyer, why would I do business with him?

I wouldn't. Why? He's got a winning smile, a good track record, and a really nice flyer.

Why? Because of his amateur, second-string personal email address- johndoe477@hotmail.com.

R U pulling my leg?

I'm sorry, but this is one of those things that just get me going. This IS the 21st Century, after all. And unless you're the only game in town, I'm not going to contact someone who has a throwaway email address- that's no way to run a business. So, my advice to the SOHO and SMB readers who may see this is this: get a domain that has your name in it. Give everyone in the firm a standardized email address, like john.doe@acme.com or jane.doe@acme.com. If your web presence is lame or nonexistent, hire a designer. Trust me on the website- believe it or not, I have "webmaster" in my list of credentials.

(Pause for effect)

Most readers will not know me personally, but on my best of days, I have trouble even spelling HTML. I'm kidding, of course. Just a bit. For example, if I see the tag <!DOCTYPE html> at the top of a page, I know I'm looking at an HTML 5 page. I also know how to recognize and change colors, as well as edit text and import or delete images. I told you that so I could tell you this: don't hire me or anyone like me to manage your online presence. There are pros out there who will do it better and for a fair price. If your business is your livelihood, you owe it to yourself.

But please do it.

Speaking of addresses, data and names, I'd like to share one more pet peeve. I don't consider pride to be a major fault of mine, but when it comes to business, please take the time to spell my name correctly... and get the city I live in right. The city I live in is a suburb of Chicago, with a population of approximately 60,000. It has three ZIP codes, one of which is shared by a village that is 1/15 our size and is strongly mob connected. I cannot tell you how INSULTING it is to get a piece of mail addressed to me, with the proper ZIP code and +4, but with that other village's name on it. Mail like this goes DIRECTLY to the garbage.

I work in an industry very closely associated with direct mail; most of our business is from folks doing direct mail. Every day, I look at mail data, and am constantly reminded of the old programming axiom GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). However, from a personal perspective, I tend to scrutinize the mail we receive at home... and Jennifer has also taken an interest in it. The USPS (United States Postal Service) depends on direct mail, but does not often see fit to enforce its own regulations. I see so much direct mail that is so out of spec that it really IS junk mail, and yet the USPS just accepts the money for the postage rather than enforcing its regulations.

That's not my beef, though.

Even though we live in a 24*7 world, take the time to get stuff right. Get the easy (data) stuff right- for example, it's spelled Coeur D'Alene. not Coeur Dalene. It's not <frigging> rocket science, folks. Then, when you get the easy stuff right, spell my name correctly- at least get my gender right! My name is a little long, and in an address block is often truncated. How about just truncating it to a standard, shortened (nickname?) name rather than just arbitrarily chopping letters off?

Okay, I'm putting the soapbox away now.

Data: 42 (my personal database project) is inching along. I got some data entry done over the last week, and did a few table upgrades. I think I'm currently up to seven complete CD entries, and quite honestly the last one was a bear!

I'm not a huge Elvis Presley fan, but I picked up a SEALED copy of his 30 #1 Hits CD from our local Goodwill store a few months ago for a buck (1USD). When I first built the table for CDs, I had included seventeen track titles. I knew I'd need more, as classical music tends to have LOTS of tracks. The Elvis CD, though, has thirty tracks, so I added thirteen tracks to the table, only to realize that there is one unnumbered track at the end! In unrelated database news, I added 885 pieces to my Lego collection, courtesy of the Amazon Prime sale on the 12th. As I was thinking about Lego and the database, I decided to only include Lego part numbers for parts that I actually possess.

That's it for now, fellow datacampers. As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

Big Data, Small Data, and 42 Data

Its been a bit since I've written, so a quick update is in order.

Work had not been particularly busy as of late; my reason for the delay in writing has more to do with software than anything else. I finally had the opportunity to upgrade my laptop to Microsoft Office Pro 2010 from 2007, which has been on my to-do list ever since the hard drive replacement a while back. With the installation of 2010, I've FINALLY gotten back to working on the database.

I seem to be unable to stop referring to von Moltke the Elder, and I'm not stopping now. I found an older, saved version of the database, and decided it was not usable, so I'm starting afresh (again!) with Forty-Two, with a much-improved (I hope!) design.

Before I got too deep into this database, I thought I'd do a bit of web scraping and see if I could find a "music template" for an Access database. After a fair amount of searching, I discovered that Access templates- generally speaking- do not exist... at least not in the same league as Excel or Word templates. The best explanation that I've found for this was on an Access board, and I paraphrase here: "Access is pretty much a sandbox developer's environment. You won't find many templates. Period."

So, I'm back to doing it the way I've always done it: making it up as I go. Well, LEARNING as I go.

I suppose I should take this opportunity to make once of my periodic disclaimers: I'm not an expert, but I have a deep interest in Big Data, the Internet of Things (sometimes referred to as the Internet of Everything), data analysis, databases, STEM and the Maker Movement. Okay, back to our regularly scheduled program.

Some time ago- not long after I'd discovered the joy of caring for and feeding databases- I ran into a statement which I thought was a bit curious. It was about database design, and the author stated that the best way to design a database is with pencil and paper. I eventually understood his premise and agreed with him up to a point. My personal perspective is that this can be a great starting point, especially if you're completely new to databases, are looking at a completely new database, or if you're designing with a certain goal in mind. I've built small databases, for example, that were for crunching data in a small project (<200 data points) of mostly text. I've used existing databases and added my own queries to provide quality and efficiency reports for ISO 9001:2008 (at least, I THINK that's the spec!). There have been others as well, but my project....

Let me introduce (or reintroduce) everyone to my pet project, Forty-Two. It's called that quite simply because its ultimate function will be to answer the question, "What is the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything?", which, for those who who are not immersed in in-print memes, is a reference to Douglas Adams' "The Hitchikers' Guide to the Galaxy".  And this was before I had even heard of Python, and Guido van Rossum's homage to Monty Python's Flying Circus. This is THE truth that I have found: I.T. and literature are strange bedfellows.

So here I sit writing about the database.

Once again back to von Moltke: the best plan can fail. Vis à vis my database. I had a grand thought for normalization: make a names table.The names table is as simple as it sounds: first name, middle name or last name- all are contained in one table.  The problem with this theory reared its ugly head almost immediately: music groups do not fit this model. So, there is a new- unplanned  table: music groups. Although the individual members of said groups may be part of the database at some shining point in the future, for now there is a groups table that just lists the names of groups- its the only way to make soundtracks and other compilations work.

That's it for now- I want to publish this entry.

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

.

Music from The Boss- digital and otherwise

Just when you think you had something figured out, the economy throws you a curve ball.

Case in point: music. Specifically, digital music.

Like many folks of my generation, I have music on cassette or LP that I do not have a digital copy of. This leaves me a few options. I can try to find it on the resale market, or I can bite the bullet and purchase a digital copy.

I've gotten lucky on the resale market occasionally. However, when I'm in search of a specific album, I often hit the digital catalogs. Case in point:

Darkness On The Edge Of Town, by Bruce Springsteen.

I once had a manager (at Schaak Electronics, in the Brickyard Mall in Chicago) named Mike who was a HYUGE fan of The Boss.  Me... not so much. I've never been much of a fan of celebrities who espouse causes, and Bruce happens to be one of those. But... the guy has made some great music. Darkness On The Edge Of Town and Born To Run are probably his best albums (IMHO), and they deserve a place in any rock music collection. Born To Run is probably the "better", more "hit-worthy" of the two, but Darkness has an honest, less polished, raw quality, which is surprising as it came out after Born To Run. However, I digress.

I had some money in my Google Play account and I thought this would be a good thing to use it on. For $8.99 (USD) I could buy the MP3 from Google, or $9.99 from Amazon. However...

For $6.99, I could get the CD from Amazon, and because I have a Prime membership, I got the MP3 version for free. Born To Run cost me a bit more, and did not have the download option, but I'm pretty much set as far as classic Bruce Springsteen essentials go.

When I'm not buying music on Amazon or Google Play, I like to visit our local Goodwill store. Its a fantastic place to fill holes in one's music collection, if you don't mind wading through absolute chaos- a CD typically sells for a dollar.

That's all for now. To all of my readers in the U.S.A., have a happy and safe 4th. I hope to do some data entry and database work this weekend- with any luck, I should have some speeds and feeds to report soon!

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

Zombies!

Well, you should have expected this one.

After three and a half years, I finally have an excuse to go somewhat all-out "geek-pop" and be the geek writer society thinks I should be and talk geek pop culture topics. I need to start out by clarifying a meme I just referenced, and that is the "What (fill-in-the-blank) thinks I do" meme-

There are a ton of these out there, and some of them are so spot on they could almost be classified as infographs. This one is one of those. I've chosen this particular topic, however, because of a conversation that Mr. T and I had recently on our way to our local Shop And Save.

WARNING: GEEKINESS IS ABOUT TO ENSUE.

So, we got into Meerkat, our trusty Subaru Outback, and headed off on our short journey. We had barely gotten to the first stop sign when Mr. T announced that he had been mulling a fairly original concept (reinvention or tangent, perhaps) for a video game. He had a working title, Initial Z. Now, if this reminds anyone of a 1990's manga or anime, it should. Parody runs strong in our family. In Mr. T's reimagining of Initial D, the player is still a drift racer in the 90's, but you're pretty much drifting for your life, as you need to take out zombies with your car while racing. I found the concept interesting and suggested an even wilder variant: Initial B, in which a cloning experiment in Raccoon City goes awry, and as a result, a massive army of clones of a certain youthful Canadian pop entertainer becomes infected with the t virus, turning them into zombies which must be destroyed.  His next idea was for a 1950's-era zombie game. We agreed that it would need to be monochrome and have a cheesy 1950's monaural soundtrack, complete with hisses and pops. There were several other ideas put on the table, but they strayed off into the completely ridiculous, and do not bear repeating.

Although I don't have a deadline as a blogger, I do realize that more posts == more readers. My experience tells me that a post every 5-7 days leads to increased readership. However, that is a schedule which I'll more than likely never keep. After all, I am an artiste! At least, I tell myself I am.

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

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.

Axl Rose, and Data.

It's been busy at work lately. And the rain has been frequent. And... it's Springtime in my little corner of the world. Consequently, our lawn got a "little" out of control.

(Spoiler alert: this post contains references to Guns 'N' Roses and their songs... 

and a few other musical references!)

Jennifer was kind enough to help out and mow the front lawn, which is what everyone passing our home sees. The back... well, that's another story- and my bailiwick.

My time had arrived. It had not rained for over a day. I looked out the back window and saw the grass blowing like Dust in the Wind. As my gaze landed upon the compost bins, I had to rub my eyes because I thought I saw a black tophat sitting on top of one of the compost bins, and a bandana on top of the other. I shook my head, blinked and looked again. Without warning, the yard had gone from broad daylight to a starless night. The yard's verdancy had turned to a monochrome with rough-cut video quality- I kid you not!. Our neighbor's white fence had been replaced by a gaggle of Marshall stacks, spotlights were illuminating the compost, and Slash, with trademark shades, ciggie and Les Paul, and partially obscured by the output of several smoke machines was furiously spewing out riff after riff, while Axl crooned, "You're in the jungle, baby" as he seemed to float over the grass. I covered my eyes, and shook my head. When I looked again, the moment was over. My yard was green, and back.

Seven Marshall stacks- fourteen cabinets and seven heads 

 Sheesh! Less Monster, more cowbell... maybe.

So, I cut the grass. Yes, it was long- long overdue for cutting. I'm not certain how long it took to complete the task, but I had to make several trips to the compost to empty the mower's bag. When that was done, I decided to tackle another yard task: the ivy. And, to be fair to the myriad of horticulturalists, botanists and assorted green thumbs in my audience, I'm not really certain what this plant is. It has dark green leaves, a woody stalk, and will sprout roots along the stalk. It's also quite capable of climbing. So, we've decide that it must go.

I got most of it off of the red mulberry. Now, technically the mulberry should be a bush, as it has multiple trunks. This one, though, is ~30' (over 9 meters) tall, so I call it a tree. Many websites also call it a tree.

Our Mulberry last Winter

I put the mower back in the garage, and grabbed a pair of leather gloves, a few yard waste bags and some clippers, and proceeded to tear into the ivy. For reference, the bags are constructed of a double walled heavy brown paper, and are approximately 16" x 12" x 35" (40.6cm x 30.5cm x 88.9cm). I filled five of them, and I'm probably only about one-third of the way done. This was sometime last week, and since then, we've had rain at least four times, so the next time I tackle this project, the stubble from the first round should be visible, which should make the next phase a bit easier.

Finally- data! (Sorry, no data pictures!)

On Saturday morning (May 14th), I FINALLY completed the 1st phase of the Lego Peeron data normalization! Speeds and feeds are appropriate here, so here we go!

The original Peeron database I'm using is from March 19, 2012. It contains 18,510 parts (rows). After the first passes through the data- in which the data started out as a text file, and then was converted to an .xlxs file, and then the data had its initial cleansing where a "base" part number was created- the data ended up totaling 16,218 parts. It should be noted that this not a fixed number, as there are more parts that need to go to the "Stickers etc" worksheet. I also want to emphasize that I am cleaning data and not normalizing; after all, all of this data still resides in an Excel file, so it is still a flat file. My next task is to impose order onto this file, so that will require the creation of a unique part number. This part number will be the primary key once it is imported into Access.  

Before any of this happens, I need to come up with a standardized format for my unique part number- currently called the "DB_Tracking_Number". Ugly, but good enough for now. I can't really automate this, once again because of the lack of standardization in the Peeron data, and my attempt to impose my own personal spin on Lego organization.

So, for now, I have ~ 16,000+ part numbers to create.

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