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.