Childhood, reclaimed?

Growing up in Chicago in the 1960's, I never realized it but I was quite blessed to be exposed to an incredible variety of not-necessarily-traditional-mid-American foods. My family's heritage (on my Dad's side) is primarily Polish- and we're talking 2nd generation, so a fair amount of Polish was spoken in my home when I was growing up (my first "colorful" words and phrases were Polish, in fact!). My Mom's family was German and Swedish, but I did not have a great deal of exposure to that culture- probably owing to my Mom's passing at a very early age (she was in her early 30's- not long after my 5th birthday).

Anyway, fast forward a few years. My Dad and I are living with his parents in a typical Chicago bungalow on a 30' (~10M) lot on the Northwest side of Chicago- Cragin or Hanson Park..., depending on how you demarcate those those neighborhoods. There's a Kroger grocery store (later to be Dominick's) directly across Central Ave. from our house. The prices are good and it's the neighborhood grocery store, and it's across the street, so we shop there fairly often.  Sure, there was Pauli's just a block to the north, and an A & P near our church, and later on a Jewel in the Brickyard Shopping Center. But the Kroger/Dominick's was right across the street, so that's where we did most of our shopping back then.

Remember the T.V. series Quantum Leap? Well, in this post, I'm reprising Dr. Sam Beckett's character, time traveling within my own lifetime! Keep a mental bookmark on that bungalow in Chicago on Central Ave across the street from Kroger/Dominick's, and fast-forward to 2015. For the past few months, I've been looking around for a childhood sandwich staple that my Dad and I used to purchase there nearly every week: minced ham.

As far as I have been able to determine, minced ham was one of those "working class" foods- something that your Mom or Grandma would have made a samwich or two out of for your dad or granddad, which would have been taken to the factory or construction site or some other dirty, honest, blue collar locale. It was a pretty large, as sausages go- probably around six inches (a little over 15cm) in diameter with a medium mottled sausagy/meaty coloring and flavor. It was slightly softer in texture than bologna (where the bologna I'm accustomed to is a bit firmer than einfachwurst), and had a bit more complex and slightly darker flavor. We ate a lot of this in sandwiches for lunch, and it was a fishing trip staple in our family....

A couple of Fridays ago, Jennifer and I were at Shop and Save, and I was perusing their most excellent deli. I had previously established that they do not carry anything called minced ham, but have something which looked very similar called "beer sausage with garlic". I tried a sample, and it was very close to what I remembered minced ham tasting like. We bought some and I had a few sandwiches for lunch. In the "for what it's worth column", balogna has always been fairly inexpensive. Minced Ham, as I recall, was also inexpensive, but the beer sausage we purchased was close to $7 per pound, around three or more times the price of balogna!

Later on at work, I asked on of my coworkers if he had mined ham when he was a kid. Yes, he replied, but he had also not see it for some time. So, I decided to get to the bottom of my puzzle. I started searching online and came to the Crawford Sausage Company's homepage. They make their sausage under the "Daisy Brand". What's interesting is that they make both minced ham and beer sausage, so my next task is to find a local deli that sells the Daisy Brand of minced ham AND beer sausage, and do a taste comparison.

Back in the wonderful world of data...

I've been trying to get back to this blog for a bit, but have been stymied for a number of reasons. There are two main culprits, Twitter being the first and the Secret Underground Lair being the other one. I like to look at Twitter as much more than a way to "toot my own horn"; indeed, very little of what I tweet on @CjoelHarrison is original- my raison d'etre on that site is the exploration and promulgation of Big Data and the Internet of Things (by "promulgation", I mean "to make widespread").

Data work has been slow but has started to pick up lately. I have a project which involves the manual renaming of ~46GB of data (around 15K file names); this project also has some additional file organization involved. I'm also starting to do more programming at work, which is especially nice as my job title includes "Programmer"! I've also started more regular updates of my blog viewers spreadsheet: it's not Big Data by any stretch, but I'm enjoying watching the readership increase. Still no one in Antarctica- shameless plug for someone, ANYONE, in Antarctica to please read this blog!

Lastly, there's the SUL. I've finally reclaimed a corner of the Lair and have a small cluster (a group, not a "real" cluster) of three HP PC's and a workstation. The SUL is more of a no budget operation than a low budget operation- one of the monitors is an ancient 14" CRT! I've got a couple of Trendnet KVMs which enable all of the equipment to operate simultaneously. The two with the silver bezels are Win7 boxes, the next runs Ubuntu and the last one is an unnetworked WinXP box. The only work left in this corner is the spaghetti mess between the two monitors! Well, there's also a spaghetti mess of power cables on the workstation where I'm writing this as well, but that stuff can wait, as this is only the 1st phase of some very exciting stuff going on in the SUL.
(cue the John Wayne voice)-

"So buckle up tight, kiddos, it's gonna be a wild ride!"

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

Mind == Blown.

As mentioned in a previous blog, Quantum Leaping for non-physicists.html, I occasionally have issues with time. I could not be a Time Lord- for the record, Tom Baker was "my" Doctor. And also, for the record, I'm not a quantum physicist, although I enjoy both the Quantum Leap and The Big Bang Theory television series. Today, however, I felt more than just a twinge of sympathy with Quantum Leap's Dr. Sam Beckett- for a good thirty seconds, I actually lived his life. Here's what happened.

A few months ago, I had the misfortune of parking under some pine trees at work. As a result, Meerkat (our trusty Subaru Outback) acquired several globs of pine tar. For those unfamiliar with this substance, think of it as a very pleasant smelling substance, lighter than honey in color, but on an order or several times more viscous than said honey. Here's a formula for shear viscosity I found online-   Pretty cool- I don't have the foggiest notion what it means, but since I mentioned quantum physics, I figured I'd throw a bit of science out there, and see what sticks (*oh yes, pun truly intended).

Back to the story- we've only had Meerkat since April. The tar is on both glass and painted surfaces. As it was a cool day, Jennifer had suggested that I mow the lawn. I mowed the lawn, and then figured I had time to try to get the tar off of the car. I had some Bug and Tar remover in the garage, so I got it out, read the instructions and then tried it on the windshield. I didn't get all of the gunk off, but the product was several years old and had been stored in the garage. And as the Chicago area is not known for mild winters, I decided to get a new bottle. I asked Jennifer if she'd like to go to the auto parts store with me, and we could stop at Aldi afterwards (note to European readers: Aldi has stores in the United States). So, I changed clothes and we were off. It was near 1700- rush hour- and I was going to cross a busy street- two lanes northbound and two lanes southbound traffic. I could not believe our fortune- it took probably less than thirty seconds to cross the street! We went in to the auto parts store, purchased the bug and tar remover, and then were off to Aldi. As we strolled down the first aisle of Aldi... I don't recall exactly how the topic came up, but it did: somehow, in an instant, my brain turned into Dr. Sam Beckett's Swiss-cheese-right-after-a-leap brain.

It was Sunday, not Monday.

Now, I've mentioned before- and probably more than once- that I often will ask Jennifer what day it is. This, however, was the first time that I've gone through the day believing that it was a weekday rather than a weekend day. Jennifer found the whole affair quite amusing, and in retrospect I suppose it was. But for me, the thirty seconds or so after that revelation were disorienting- it weirded me out more than a little, to be completely honest. Scoring an extra twenty-four hours is cool, to be certain. But- and this is a big "but"- my reality changed. Not in a bad way... more like an odd, momentary lapse into the indescribable... I was in The Twilight Zone. Not Golden Earring's Twilight Zone. Rod Serlings' black and white Twilight Zone. And I couldn't change the channel.

I've got nothing else. The memory of the event already has developed that soft patina that time is kind enough to paint onto events such as this. On the plus side, there's no lightning bolt scar on my forehead.

Before I forget: some small news on the I.T. front. Not really data related, but this past Monday I got to actually do some programming at work: I got to run a job, start to finish. This made me quite happy, as my nights are generally filled with doing all sorts of important stuff, but most of which has little to do with my actual title!

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

Tuddi Toots redux and waitress errata

Mark and I had been trading emails regarding the latest blog post, and I mentioned to him what I had related in a previous post- that my brain is like Swiss cheese; specifically, my memory is somewhat holey, and sometimes the facts get lost in the holes (the holes in Swiss cheese are formed by carbon dioxide; I think mine are formed by laughing gas [nitrous oxide]; apparently this is the same stuff used in high performance motors... there may be some correlation there). So, without further ado, I present Mark's errata.

For starters, Dave (a.k.a Wiz- which is another story altogether) had his back to the audience to symbolize Stu Sutcliffe who played bass with the Beatles during their very years. As Stu tragically died of a brain aneurism, Wiz symbolized this by spending our entire short set with his back to the audience. Another Wreakles oversite: Mark played lead guitar, and I played rhythm (partly because I'm not sure Mark- who is highly educated- probably still doesn't know how to spell rhythm); Matt "sang", Jimbo- who was completely without rhythm- played drums, and Wiz strummed with his back to the audience.

Then, there's Tuddi Toots/Wreakles facts.

As a rule, we were pretty predictable, with Mark and I arriving around 2100, Dr. Dave around 2115, and Matt arriving after Dallas (the T.V. show) concluded, usually around 2130 (all times -0600 GMT). We usually sat at a table in the main part of the establishment, in the main floor area- pretty much kitty-corner to the bar and about as far back from the dance floor as one could get without being in the dining area along the wall.

As mentioned in the title, I have some (a lot) of waitress errata, courtesy of Mark. For starters, Terri, the owner of the subliminal earrings, was tipped by Mark and thanked Matt. Along with Terri, our "regular" servers were Renee, Wanda, Cindy Lou, Jeannie, and Jody. We're not 100% sure, but agree that Jeannie (a good friend of Cindy Lou) was the server that was "deported" back to Tennessee for being underage (to serve alcohol).

In other news, the odometer countdown is M-300- in other words, Road Trip time! We're getting close to Memorial Day (May 26th this year), a holiday which is generally considered the unofficial start of summer here in the United States. It was actually created to honor and remember the war dead of the American Civil War. It was once known as Decoration Day, because folks would visit cemeteries and decorate tombstones. Today it honors all U.S. war dead.

Today is the 1st of May, and for once I remembered to flip the page over on my Lego calendar, and this month's featured Lego creation is a scale model of the famed WW1 Sopwith Camel.

Finally, from the Wonderful World of Data (yes, I typed that with a straight face), I have no news and some good news. As far as "no news" goes, I've been pretty busy at work, and Jennifer and I have started making more regular visits to the gym. Good news? I've had the opportunity to do a bit more with data at work, using a program called FirstPrep. It's a pretty nifty utility- I'd link some information about it, but I can't find much that is useful.

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

A database, by any other name...

Some data news, and a question, if anyone has an answer.

It seems like a long time since my last blog was posted, but in reality its only been a few days (*I wrote this four days ago!). I've mentioned this before, but I often feel like Quantum Leap's Dr. Sam Beckett right after a leap: my brain is Swiss cheese, and I find myself asking Jenifer- at least once per week- what day it is. I'm usually okay on the weekends, but most other days are up for grabs. Since our garbage and recycle is picked up on Tuesday, when I get home after working on Monday, I know it's Tuesday. I have no such landmarks for the rest of the week, though... except for our whiteboard.

The whiteboard is mounted on the wall directly behind and slightly above Jennifer's monitor. We've had it for a number of years. Its original purpose was homeschooling, but it gradually evolved into a family messaging center. Jennifer will usually put tomorrow's activities on the board, and I will put my wakeup time there also.

As far as data news goes, I'm happy to report that no data was lost in the recent, unexplained database meltdown. I still don't know what happened ( and expect that I never will), but I suddenly lost the ability to add data to several tables. I ended up exporting all of the tables into Excel spreadsheets, and then importing them back into an empty Access database. I had a few issues with this (the problem resurfaced!), but I was able to fix this, and in my spare time over the past few days have been formatting the new tables. As this is done, my next task is getting rid of old data that was based on table relationships. The final phase in the restoration of the database will be the rebuilding of relationships.

That's all for this blog. I hope (work permitting) to get another blog up in the next few days. Until then...

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