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.

More "Pause" than "End"

Some years back, on a particularly busy night, a new hire rubbed eyes and blearily asked the Nightstalker crew, "Just how long DO you work?"

I answered in the only possible way: "Until the job is done."

That, truly, is what makes the overnight hours in Data Services interesting. I say "overnight" because my hours can be a bit fuzzy- and this is true for everyone in our department. Some folks come in fairly early, some come in around the traditional office start time of 0800, and some come in at 2200 or even later. We have one person who works a traditional second shift, and the remainder of the crew work something of a hybrid 3rd shift, starting anywhere from 1800 to almost 2300. I don't believe there's anything like an official policy regarding this; it's more of a rule of thumb: as long as one works one's 40 hours, everyone is happy. But, back to "until the job is done."

I think I may have previously mentioned that our plant can be considered a "job shop" or "contract manufacturer." In other words, the product that we manufacture- direct mail- does not "belong" to us. You will typically not see our name on it anywhere. We may have some involvement in the design process, and we are often involved in the postal and logistics components of a job, but at the end of the day, we're simply the folks who manufacture something for someone else.

Sometimes...

Sometimes things just need to get done. One of our top clients has a job that runs every month, and it keeps the programmer pretty busy for around a week. However, once the client approves the job, yours truly ("me") typically swings into action. This particular job requires a lot of hard copy:  proofs for press and prepress, and tray tags for press. Printing, collating and marking up of this takes ~12 hours, and is best done when the office is empty. Why? Because one simply needs a lot of space to do the job correctly and efficiently, as well as tying up two printers.

So, the Friday before last, I came in with the expectation that I would be working on this job. I had put a dent in it when I left Saturday morning, and came back Saturday evening. I got home around midnight, and everything was done.

In a nutshell, my weekend was more of a pause than an actual end to the week. The obvious downside to weekends like this is that they are short. Jennifer and I got in a nice walk on the following Sunday- almost three miles. I did a bit of work in the Secret Underground Lair, as did Mr. T, and great progress has been made. My plan for the weekend, though, had been to get to the unused desk and hook up my Raspberry Pi. That hadn't happened yet, but we're on the cusp of it!

One other huge thing that happened the previous week was the Great Book Cull, during which time a few hundred books were donated to our local library. Although both Jennifer and I hate getting rid of actual paper books, there were a few compelling reasons for eliminating these particular volumes from our collection:

1) They were classics (Shakespeare, Tolstoi, etc)- these are readily available online and downloadable as plain text files

2) Cold War fiction- entertaining reading when it was written, but no longer plausible.

3) Out of date software texts- bye, bye, Windows 95 For Dummies, etc... I  kid you not.

So that was the two weekends ago. I visited the opthamologist for the last post surgery follow up for my right eye. (all is good- come back in a year). Don't get me wrong- if you're in the Des Plaines area, Dr. Winkler is the best. I'm just ready to get on with my life!

Pause, continued... this past weekend (Dec 19-20): I got out on time on Saturday morning for a change, but I knew I'd be coming back on Saturday evening. I figured a few hours would take care of a few quick production QC's- boy was I wrong.

The first job went smoothly, and it was done fairly quickly. The second, though, took much longer, as some paperwork was missing. It's not unusual for this to happen with this particular job, though. The third job was unexpected, but pretty easy- especially since the lead programmer was also in the office to explain a few things. The last job, though.

In a nutshell, it was programmed correctly but the output was set up incorrectly, and consequently compiled incorrectly, and the output was just plain wrong. As it was late and hadn't brought my meds to the office, I remade the files and recompiled the job, but did not perform the production QC.  

Finally, data.

I need to say something about my writing process, which will eventually relate to data. I promise.

When I write a blog, I generally have an idea of where I want it to go. Sometimes it goes there, sometimes it doesn't. This blog is a case of: IT DOESN'T CARE WHERE I WANT TO GO.

Point: my idea for this blog actually had to do with a concept for music opinion data analysis.

Way back when, in my college days, I started my music database. It was on looseleaf paper, and it was unwieldy and incredibly difficult to update or edit. At some point, I decided I'd create something of a personal "Top 40". Only looking at my stats was somewhat biased, I quickly surmised.  Undaunted, I expanded my pursuit to include what others were interested in. When I shared my results, however, some (many) of the participants were upset when I told them the results were weighted. That is, their top votes received 10 points, and their bottom votes received one point. Huh?

Participants in the survey were asked to vote for up to 10 of their favorite albums, and 10 of their favorite songs. I asked that they please put them in order of preference. When the results had been tabulated, I shared them. In my circle of friends and acquaintances, no one could believe that "Bread's Greatest Hits"  was more popular than "Barry Manilow Live" (joke).

I did it this way for a couple of (what I thought) were very good reasons. First: everyone probably has a favorite song. Hey, if its YOUR fave, why not weight it? Second, I wanted to be able to track which songs were actually more popular than which songs were most often voted for. Taking the two most "popular" songs of this era (from my polls), the hands-down winners were The Beatles' "Hey Jude" and Led Zepplin's "Stairway To Heaven". As my survey was quite small, let's say I had 10 voters: 4 went with the Beatles, and 4 with Led Zepplin. Let's say the other two went with Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird" as their favorite. If Hey Jude == 1, and Stairway == 1 and Freebird == 1, then we have 4 to 4 to 2. What matters next is what is the next greatest song.  So, two of the "Beatles" guys vote for  "I Saw Her Standing There", and a couple of Zepplin fans vote for "Rock and Roll". After that, each of the other Beatles and Zepplin fans votes for Hey Jude and Stairway, furthering the tie. Then, we factor in the Skynyrd fans, who generally might like the Zep guitars, but can sing to Hey Jude. So, the final score ends up being Beatles: 5.8 (among Beatles fans), Zep: 5.8 (among Zepplin fans). The two Skynyrd fans, though, both vote Hey Jude #2, and Stairway #3, giving the Beatles a total of 6.6 and Led Zep 5.8. Therefore, in this tiny, theoretical sample, "Hey Jude" is the greatest rock and roll song of all time.

Sorry about the length of this... I told you all of that to tell you this: I have a new data project which is based on my previous data project.

I know what songs I like and those which I don't like. I plan to quantify this data and publish my findings in a new format.

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

My night in a cage with a hot woman

My life is pretty conventional- boring by some standards, I suppose. In a few weeks, Jennifer and I will celebrate our twenty-seventh wedding anniversary (yay, us!). Well, all things considered, maybe we're not conventional in that sense. Conventional more in the manner of Bilbo Baggins: no drama, no adventures. We mean what we say and we say what we mean.

This past Wednesday night was different, though- at least for me.

I work nights, of course. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but the "double-wide in the sky" is a secured office. Our entire facility is secured, of course, requiring credentials just to enter the building, but because of the nature of the work and the data that is handled in my department, there is additional security. I naturally can't go into the specifics, but only a small percentage of employees in the plant can simply walk in.

Chloe (not her real name, but in certain circles it might be thought of as exotic and sexy) came up to the office Wednesday night and knocked on the door. As she is well-known in the plant, she was admitted.

I should also mention that our plant is quite noisy, and I have a rather large fan on my desk because the HVAC in our office is challenged, to be polite. I was engaged in a project, and between the noise of the factory and my fan, I didn't hear the short conversation that took place between Chloe and Hagar (also not a real name- he asked to remain anonymous!), even though his desk is barely 15' (~5M) away  from mine. Out of the corner of my left eye I thought I saw something apprehensive in his face, and then he gestured toward me. She seemed to sashay  over from Hagar's desk to mine. She was casual but comfortable in her walk. The clap of her dust spotted, stained, steel-toed black boots seemed to accent her faded, form-fitting blue jeans and ink-stained t-shirt. I looked up, and she explained what she needed in her been-around-the-world alto voice. I looked up at Hagar, and he gave me that all-knowing "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do" look. I said to her, "Sure."

I pushed my work aside, and we went off to the cage. This was the first time in my life that I'd ever been alone with someone of the opposite sex in any cage, and this one was watched 24/7 by cameras. In the harsh fluorescent  lighting, I could see the glitter of the gold pixie dust on her face mixed with sweat which accented her plaintive eyes.  When we arrived, she showed me her problem: her box. I hoped no one was watching (remember, there are cameras everywhere). I grabbed the box, and gently blew on it. Some- okay, a lot of dust came off, but the LED on the front panel continued to flash yellow. Paraphrasing the spokesperson from a popular Dell commercial from several years back, I said, "Dude! You got a Dell!" Even though her problem was not fixed, she laughed at this.

I'm not an A+ technician... in the real world where I work, HR doesn't even know what to do with me and my coworkers, so I like to think of myself as semi-I.T. On a good day I'm not too bad at problem-solving, so I thought this through: if I had a PC with a flashing yellow light under the power button that wouldn't boot- what would I do? The best answer that came to mind was this: untangle the spaghetti mess in the back of the PC: USB, power, Ethernet, and monitor cables all snaking around each other like in an Indiana Jones movie.

However, in the real world of home and church, I do provide technical support, so I did what anyone would have done: I got rid of the spaghetti mess. I unplugged EVERYTHING from the back of the PC, and then, after untangling the cable mess under the table, I blew on the all of the I/O ports and reinserted each cable.

I was not surprised when the PC booted normally.

She thanked me, and I returned to Data Services and my waiting project.

It is said that "sex sells". Well, to be perfectly honest, I don't really know how to write about sex- this little true story was my first foray into "off-color" writing- I hope a few laughs came out of it.

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