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. 

Analog data is not entirely useless

To paraphrase The Boy Wonder of the classic 60's American TV series Batman, "Wholly I.T., Batman, data in the blog title!"

Yup, 'tis true, we're talking data today... and an epiphany about data, as well.

I was at the gym yesterday, pumping iron while the snow swirled outside (say that with your inner Arnold Schwarzenegger voice). I have a logbook which probably holds two or more years worth of lifting and cardio data. It's all very good, clean, raw data- ink on paper. I kinda feel Indiana Jones is ripping through my stream of consciousness, "It belongs in a database!"

Yes, it does. And therein lies a fundamental problem of data: no matter HOW good it is, it is no good if it is not accessible. And if it is accessible, it needs to be usable. The problem has an immediate partial solution: even though the data is analog, it is still searchable- it only requires a bit of patience on the part of the end user. And potentially a good amount of page turning, not to mention deciphering the gibberish written after a particularly intense training session.

As the person who is the owner of the data, the DBA and the end user, I should have a great deal of clarity here. After all, I recorded the data, and I have a rough idea of what I want the data to show me. Its just that... well, often in the data entry phase of my little databases, things change. Ad hoc queries lead to different ways of looking at the data, and so even though Jennifer would be the far better candidate for data entry, she will not do a better job because she cannot provide the feedback I need from perusing the raw data.

And so, this task falls upon my shoulders... more to follow.

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

Don't forget to check some golden oldies-

http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/02/only-page-3-in-google-search.html
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/02/it-isnt-data-entry-exactly.html
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/03/midnight-at-noc.html
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/03/midnight-at-noc.html
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/03/dont-panic.html

2100? Time for a Monster!

My job requires a certain amount of flexibility; more importantly, as a contractor I must be cognizant of time worked in a given week. And, the state of the economy being what it is, my week is typically capped at forty hours. Which is reasonable, and fine by me.

Occasionally, though, circumstances will dictate otherwise, and today was one of those circumstances.

I had a pretty simple plan for today. I had two jobs to finish, and I expected they wouldn't take more than four hours, which would leave enough daylight to cut the grass and do a bit of yardwork. After that, dinner and world domination (*more on that in a bit).

I arrived @1215, and got down to business- after all, I had a Plan. After a bit of initial difficulty, I started moving rapidly through the first of the two jobs. The door behind me opened and in walked the imaging tech that was on duty. "There's been a change to this job," he said. He put two mockups on the desk, one marked "Old" and the other "New" and began to relate how the customer came in ON SUNDAY and wanted changes made AFTER the job had started printing! He then began to describe how heads needed to be move to different RIPS, and something about blankets and the next thing I knew a Romulan Bird of Prey had blown open half the roof, and the two Romulan sisters were shimmying down ropes, obviously intent on doing no-good to Marty McFly and Indiana Jones... of course, they had not counted on Yoda who was crouched on top of one of the presses blocking their way.

"How long do you think it'll take" the imaging tech asked. "Probably two to three hours," I replied almost instinctively. "But, there's no one here that can do it. I'm on overtime as it is- let me make a phone call." This satisfied the tech, and he left me the mockups and departed.

I called the programmer but got no response. Next, I called my boss, and he said he was aware of the changes, and the imaging tech should call his boss. At which point I said that these were new changes from the customer. That phone call pretty much ended with my boss telling me to get details and get back to him. I got all of the info I needed from the pressroom supervisor and then relayed it to my boss. The twenty-five words or less answer from my boss was NO WAY.

Time for another trek to the pressroom supervisor. He called the customer service supervisor, and on speakerphone, we tossed some ideas around. The customer service supervisor finally decided he would get one of the customer service reps that is on this account team to come and get a new press layout, and would talk to my boss. The pressroom supervisor had prepress shooting new plates for the press, and making backgrounds for my department. Now that everyone had a Plan, I went back to my office and finished working on my Plan, which would be torpedoed before the next paragraph is concluded.

I finished the second job, put everything away, and was getting ready to fill out my timesheet when the phone rang. I answered it... I will NEVER learn. The pressroom supervisor asked how long it would take to reprogram. "About three hours", I replied- it's got to be some sort of autonomic reflex! Fine. I hung up and went back to getting ready to leave- my four hours were up. The phone rang again. I picked it up-again. This time it was my boss. "How late can you stay?" Hmmm, Plan vs money. I'll take the money. He said he was able to contact the programmer, who would be in ~1900-1930.

The programmer arrived at 2000; at 2100 I popped open a Monster Absolutely Zero. At this point it doesn't matter, because as Rufus said, "the clock is always running in San Dimas." My boss said take all of the overtime you need to do the job right- this is on the customer.

So I apologize for no programming, spreadsheet or exciting data updates. In the time waiting for the programmer, I got as much prep work as possible done, and then spent the remaining time researching web hosts; I think I found one that I like, but need to bounce it off Jennifer first.  And speaking of Jennifer... we're supposed to get storms tomorrow, so no grass cutting or yardwork; dinner didn't happen tonight, but we may get to continue our game of Civilization V which we started yesterday. And, best of all, we're going to pick up some catfish nuggets tomorrow.

Timehack (2nd posting) 1810

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