Father's Day 2015- a contrarian view

This past Sunday we observed Father's Day here in the United States. As I understand it, a very well-meaning young lady had an idea that Mothers should have a special day set aside for them, and Mother's Day came into being. After that, greeting card companies caught on, and then (I'm OVERSIMPLIFYING here and probably making a ton of assumptions)... and then came Father's Day, Grandparent's Day, Mother in Law Day and Law Day, just to highlight a few of the myriad of (fill in the blank) Days.

Now, before anyone gets all upset about my seemingly callous position, let me backtrack just a bit. If someone wishes me a happy Father's Day, I'll gladly accept it. I really think its neat to have a special day to honor Moms and Motherhood, and Fathers and Fatherhood, and you can probably extend that a bit in a lot of different directions. According to Wikipedia, though, Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mother's day was concerned about the commercialization of the holiday not long after it had become established- and I think she and I might have some similiar thoughts about what are now known as "greeting card" holidays. Jennifer and I have three kids, and I can't remember the last time I got a card from any of them. And honestly? I could care less. I think Jennifer feels pretty much the same way. We generally try to do a little something special on these days (meals, mostly), but its more about family time than spending money on cards and gifts.

I think one of the best gifts one can give is time. This past Sunday was hot AND humid, so Jennifer was in no mood for going outside to do much of anything.  On the other hand, it was not raining, so I thought it would be a great opportunity to go out and take some photos of the tollway expansion. I asked her to be polite, pretty much expecting what her response would be. She did not disappoint, but suggested Mr. T be invited.  Much to my surprise, when I told him where I planned to go, he cheerfully accepted. When the spare batteries for my trusty Nikon D3200 were charged, I grabbed the backpack and we were off.

Mr. T was quite interested in the construction. What's happening is somewhat out of the ordinary: this is not a new highway. It is the widening by one lane in each direction of an existing highway. We were probably out for two hours or less, but had a blast! He's not a photographer, but has a bit of graphic design experience, so he makes a great assistant. And, he was ready for a bit of adventure. As my gear is really lightweight and all fits neatly into a small backpack, I kept it with me on my back. There were one or two shots where the tripod would have been nice, but in the end I had ~140 frames, several of which were very nice.

We also had the opportunity to climb up hill and down dale, so to speak. 

And lastly, as I am fond of saying in this blog, we come to data. Except today, I don't want to talk about data per se, but rather data handling.

As frequent readers may be aware, the Secret Underground Lair (SUL) is in the midst of a major overhaul. Furniture has been moved out, and furniture has been moved in. Up until now it's been something of a minor disaster (think S.S. Minnow rather than R.M.S. Titanic). Still, it's been quite the challenge as displaced items seem to occupy more space than they used to. So, I suppose it isn't so much data handling even as it is data display: we've eliminated al of the CRTs in the SUL and now only have flat panels. This means we'll soon be goint to visit our local Goodwill donation center with eight monitors- the oldest one was manufactured in 1990!

I still need to hook up the Raspberry Pi- we might be back in programming mode soon! Also, with the new setup, I can easily jack my work laptop into one of the new monitors and work effectively from home. There's also room on the desktop for my personal laptop, so I can get back to the Arduino as well!

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

The SUL at the crossroads

Does anyone remember the 1986 movie Crossroads? It had some great big name talent in it, but I'll always remember it for Ralph Macchio (with his stupid big city hat), Steve Vai, and the really cool guitar battle at the end of the movie... sort of like the Charlie Daniels Band's song The Devil Went Down To Georgia, except for most of the details!

By this time, some of you gentle readers may have become accustomed to my segues, where I attempt to create a humorous, clever, or tenuous transition from the introduction to the main topic of the post. As "crossroads" is an apt description of where our beloved Secret Underground Lair is right now, I thought I'd start things out with the movie reference.

Everything started the Saturday before this last (April 11). I went down to the Secret Underground Lair (SUL) and logged in to a computer or two. After a bit of catching up on twitter, I started moving things around. At some point, Mr. T joined the party and ended up cleaning out the rolltop desk which is next to his computer desk. We would have done more, but it was way past my bedtime.

Sunday started out as a beautiful, sunny day which gradually clouded over and eventually saw some light rain. Meerkat, our trusty Subaru Outback, reminded me that I had not taken any pictures in quite some time, and there were a few subjects in the neighborhood that were under construction that were just BEGGING to be photographed. Who was I to argue with our car? I proceeded to charge camera batteries, and not long after that I was in search of photographic adventure!

I love construction- during the course of our church's renovation, I shot ~1500 frames on a compact digital point and shoot camera. These days, my "weapon of choice" for digital photography is the Nikon D3200. This camera is considered an entry level digital single lens reflex camera (DSLR), but I can't think of a way in which it doesn't completely blow away any of my old 35mm Minolta film cameras. When I went out this past Sunday, I shot ~170 frames of some building construction and of my main subject, the (literal) expansion of the tollway that runs through our city; they're adding a lane in each direction. The thing that is most interesting to me about the project is the fact that the roadway is elevated on a sort of berm rather than being at ground level, so there is a MASSIVE amount of construction going on.

When I got back to the house, Mr. T asked me if I was ready to move the desk. I said I was, and I think we spent close to four hours on that part of the project, cleaning, disassembling, moving and reassembling as necessary.

Before

After

The SUL is not currently pretty, but what would one expect from any location with "Lair" in its name? We successfully were able to move both pieces of furniture with a relative minimum of difficulty: at the end of the day, no furniture was broken, no humans were injured, and most importantly, no cats were stepped on. After catching our collective breath, Mr. T was quick to point out that current location of the entertainment center (the "After" picture) would not suit our purposes, because the television s really not viewable in its current location (we do not intend to watch broadcast programming on this TV; it will be used for videos and games). This (hopefully) final phase will start Monday, as I've taken some vacation time more or less for this task.

You may have read the rumor (started by me!) somewhere that the unifying theme of this blog is data... well, it really is! I am happy to report that my new pedometer is broken in and functional, and I have accumulated ten days worth of data. I have the older data on another computer, and intend to move these .csv files over and put everything together in a new .xlxs file at some point. I've done next to nothing with my main database project, so nothing new to report there. Data tracking for the blog is being continuously updated, and I'm hoping to hit the next "magic number" of viewers (10K) within the next few months- I'm currently averaging  ~320 viewers spread across forty-eight countries and six continents... shameless plug here: does anyone know anybody in Antarctica? It's the last frontier, and my only "untapped" continent!

My plans for the coming week include (of course) a complete makeover of the SUL- there should be at one new blog from this adventure, so stay tuned!

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

Goodbye Summer, 2014... the affair is officially over

Summer officially ended in North America (Sep 21, 2014). I can't say that I'll miss it, in part because of the amount of overtime I put in at work, and also in part because it's not my favorite season. Yeah, I'm not a fan of the combination of heat and humidity. On the other hand, I do enjoy photography, and I do think summer has the inside track on being the easiest season to take pictures- after all, its the season when everything is green or blooming and wildlife is plentiful. For photographers, its a win-win. Spring and Autumn, of close, are close seconds when it comes to photographic topics.


As we're pretty much "officially" out of panic mode at work, I had this past Saturday off. This was really nice, as strong thunderstorms had been predicted for our area. We were thankfully spared from getting hit by the storms and had a quiet night. Sunday ended up being a "heavy" day- the humidity seemed to be off the scale, and we moped around for the better part of the day. I turned the television on around 1330, hoping to catch a part of the Chicago Bears' game. I mentioned in a previous blog that I enjoy watching the Bears. At noon on Sunday. Last week they played @1900; this week they're playing on Monday night. I work on Monday night- at this rate, I may not ever get to see a game this entire season. I could care less.

The photo above was taken with my Samsung Galaxy SIII; it shows my Nikon D3200  with dual battery grip, tripod, wired shutter release, 40mm Micro Nikkor lens and hotshoe mounted tri-axis level. It's a nice combination of equipment- I shot ~120 frames in 90 minutes. In a previous blog, I had introduced Darth Anna, Defiler of Planets. This past Friday I had brought my camera in to show her the battery grip. She seemed to be a bit puzzled about the need for two batteries, and I didn't try to explain my reasoning for the battery grip; suffice it to say that I shot for ninety minutes this afternoon without doing anything except for swapping a lens.

It turned out to be a glorious late afternoon photoshoot. There were definitely some photos that just did not happen because l had "lost the light"... that's one of those stock phrases that is SOOOOOO true; it's especially important in my subject area- railroads, where browns and reds predominate. Before this gets too boring, I want to pop in a photo that is important to me right here and right now- the very first image I captured with a DSLR (earlier this year).

No data to report, but one number: 2489. Not even a prime number... I thought it might be, but the internet said otherwise. It's the number of photo files I moved over to Adobe Lightroom. I had hoped to do a bit more than move files, but Adobe wanted updates, so I did the updates instead of real work. I have a few thousand more files on another couple of harddrives that also need to be moved over for renaming and archiving as well. One of those drives also has my music library, which is in serious need of deduping. I STILL need to replace the motherboard in Jennifer's computer. And, last but not least on my I.T. laundry list.... Mr. T. has apparently given up on his dream of building a computer with DDR4. It is his considered opinion that this new memory will not be reasonably priced in the foreseeable future. Last night, he said he had seen a 4GB stick for around 100USD; I laughed and told him that our first Windows computer had a pair of 4MB sticks that cost 78USD- and that was cheap!

In any event, Mr. T. has suggested that he can build a DDR3 PC pretty inexpensively. His plan is to wait for the Black Friday sales. In the interim, he'll be researching options... for building a dual graphics card box. I'm not seeing the "inexpensive" here.

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