A conundrum

I had thought of using the plural of conundrum in the title of this, the 126th edition of A homegrown DBA exploring #notsobigdata, but I ran into a small problem: it seems that there is some disagreement as to exactly what the proper plural is. Not having a foundation in any language from whence this word may or may not have originated, I will defer to the OED's verdict: conundrums. And, for those of you who never knew a world without the internet, Google did not put a red squiggly line under the OED version, so it must be correct. Now, if only the Urban Dictionary (sorry, no link; I tried to keep this safe for viewing anywhere) would second this motion....

I suppose the thing that brought all of this up was a situation that happened at work recently. A few months back, my boss asked me to confirm or deny a certain habit of a coworker. This made me somewhat uncomfortable, and my boss was quite aware of it, but it was an important matter and he needed to get an answer specifically from me, as I was the only human being who could verify the matter (it probably could have been settled through the review of certain electronic records, but for some reason that avenue was not explored). I told my boss quite honestly that I could not confirm the allegation. Recently, however, I found myself in a position to revisit the question- hence, the curiosity of the plural of conundrum. My problem was this: I was quite uncomfortable when the topic was first broached, and I answered the questions honestly, all the while giving my colleague the benefit of the doubt. Recent events, however, put me in a position to conclusively verify what my boss had suspected, and so I found myself with no choice but to reopen the matter and confirm the allegation.

To say that things like this make me uncomfortable is an understatement. I can usually "fake it 'til you make it" in most social or business settings, but when it comes to coworkers and serious stuff, I'm an invertebrate.

In other news, I'm in the final "era"of my very favorite online game, Rail Nation. I say this also with mixed feelings, as this will probably be the last round I play for some time. Rail Nation is an RTS (real-time strategy) game, and has players from all over the world. I love the game- what's not to like: it's trains. Think the original Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon- if you liked that game, chances are you'd love this one. But, as much as I love this game, I need to take a break from it, as it's a major time suck.

Continuing from my previous topic, there are two programming languages which were not on my laundry list of things to learn. I can't believe I omitted HTML5 and CSS3. I actually have a tiny bit of experience with HTML, having once had as one of my many job responsibilities the title of "website administrator" for a company that really didn't want to do business on the web. And these folks were all engineers!

No data news to report- this work situation has really unsettled me. And there's a reason for it, but I'm currently not at liberty to discuss it.

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

Not Quite 2.0

For those who have visited blog in the past, you'll notice a new look and feel to the blog; I intend for the changes to make it a little more readable. As always, your thoughts and suggestions are welcome (as well as ideas from newcomers). And as much as I would have liked to call this new look v2.0, so far all I've done is used Google's tools and images. I'm not sure if any other sites out there (Wordpress, for example) are any better or easier, but my first experience with a fairly major update to this blog was pretty painless.

For starters, there's the new background, which features a bunch of chrome dumbbells. I selected it not merely because I'm an on again, off again weightlifter, but because of the symmetry and neutral colors that shows text nicely. Speaking of text, I'm not 100% settled on any of the colors. As this is blog v1.5, the colors chosen were standard Google recommendations. When I'm ready to do this again, I think I will consult with Jennifer. And even though I'm the designated color-picker in our home, only a fool does not seek the counsel of others. I've also changed the background color of the blog to a shade of grey, which looks more readable, as well as making the area available for text slightly wider. It is my hope that these changes will result in a more enjoyable blog reading experience. I've also put solid backgrounds on the sidebars for the same reason.

 I worked on both the database and the Lego spreadsheet yesterday, but don't have numbers to post. I did discover something that needs a bit of tidying up in a table, though. The Songs table, which contains nothing but song titles has a number of records that start with "The"- "The Word" (The Beatles, Yesterday... And Today). My naming convention is for articles (a, an, the) to go at the end of the record (Word, The), so I've got a small amount of fixing to do. Like many things, I found this totally by accident: I was entering a title, and before completing the entry scrolled up to check if had already been entered. And there they were. So, either tonight or tomorrow this will get fixed. 

Well, one of the cats is having her illogical morning crazies, looking up longingly at the intersection of two walls near the front door, occasionally yapping- and then suddenly darting towards an imagined something-or-other.And, although I can't see the bottom of the mug just yet, my tea is nearly gone, which can only mean one thing: time to pack it up and head off to work.

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