It's my thinking that new blogs are often gestated in the final closing thoughts of a blog that is on the cusp of publication. Such is the case with this post.
I got off work fairly late this past Saturday morning, which was fine as we had a scheduled appointment with our HVAC guy to have our furnace checked out. As I pulled into our driveway, I decided that autumn had officially arrived, as there was a light coating of frost on the grass which was still in shadow. Once our furnace was given a clean bill of health, I finished editing my previous post, published it and went to bed.
The previous evening, Mr. T did something he had not done in some time- he got up on his soapbox and donned his virtual "little professor" white lab coat (I've been doing some cinema/television references of late- the "white lab coat" is an homage to The Angry Beavers "Stinky Toe" episode in which Norb acquires the dreaded "stinky toe", and Daggett vows to find a cure; Dagett finds and dons a white lab coat, and one of the scientists observes that Daggett MUST be a scientist because he's wearing a white lab coat). I was pinned to my chair in the Secret Underground Lair for fifteen minutes while Mr. T waxed eloquently about video games and video game characters, specifically comparing and contrasting Deadpool and Duke Nukem. To be honest, I have scant familiarity with either, but Deadpool has been in the news of late, as there is a Deadpool movie coming out sometime next year. This is particularly interesting to me, as actor Ryan Reynolds will play the Deadpool character, and my good IRL buddy comedian Ryan D. Reynolds is a huge Deadpool fan.
In actuality, Deadpool has been a fairly hot topic for over a week. When Ryan's not doing stand-up comedy, he supports himself by being a custodian. As his job is not particularly fast-paced, we sometimes have time to discuss things like Deadpool. Ryan's been on a quest to lose weight, and to date has dropped a significant number of pounds- I don't have exact numbers handy, but I believe he's dropped ~10% of his mass YTD (and he's NOT a small fellow). In any event, the casual reader is by now thinking, "WTF does this have to do with Deadpool?"
For starters, I love the concept of "the aside", even though I don't always return to the topic at hand. As Ryan has lost weight, his clothes have started fitting differently. He's been cinching up his belt so much that his beloved Punisher buckle broke and so he was forced to purchase a new buckle... you guessed it: Deadpool.
He and I had been discussing all of this when the topic of the Deadpool movie came up. Now, frequent readers of this blog have probably grown to be accustomed to my writing style and the fact that I keep it pretty clean. I've addressed this at least once before- its not because I'm a prude, but because I want as many folks of all ages and backgrounds to be entertained and informed by my blog. However, "WTF" came up in the discussion Ryan and I were having about Deadpool, so it is worth at least a quick recap here....
Here's the rub: the proposed rating for the upcoming Deadpool movie in the United States is PG-13. As I've said, I know little about Deadpool, but apparently he's quite the snarky, womanizing, violent one-liner wielding human weapon of mass destruction, and many an interwebz commentator has been so dumbstruck at the PG-13 rating as to respond in the only way possible: WTF?
I, however, do my best to keep my online persona pretty clean. Even though I might be thinking "WTF?", I generally make every attempt to be polite. In light of the fact that there are so many three-latter organizations out in the world- many of which few have heard of- I came up with my own: the World Trade Federation. Ryan said he would use Whisky-Tango-Foxtrot to get around the autosensors, but when he heard my solution, he had to laugh and said it was brilliant.
That's it for today. No data to report; I did spend some quality time in our IRL archives and culled out quite a bit of old billing statements, so I give myself a pass.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Showing posts with label Ryan D. Reynolds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ryan D. Reynolds. Show all posts
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Sunday, October 5, 2014
The October Sexperiment and Blogger's Rules
It's high time I coined a word, and "sexperiment" seemed like a good one... except it turns out I didn't coin it. There's a book that was written a few years ago by Ed and Lisa Young with "Sexperiment" being the main word in the title. I've obviously not read the book, so I am not equipped to comment on it. My sexperiment is my previous blog, "My Night In a Cage with a Hot Woman", in which I sought to see if a suggestive title and a bit of teasing, along with accompanying keywords, would boost readership by a significant amount. As of right now- a little more than a day after publishing it, the answer is a guarded "maybe".
The numbers have not been huge, but there's been a bit more geographic diversity than I've seen of late- France, Poland, Canada and a country in Africa (the country in Africa has experienced some unrest over the past few years, so I won't be giving it a shout out). Before I forget Jennifer corrected me on a particular datum from that post- our anniversary is in a few days, not a few weeks. It's not that I don't know the date; I'm not the stereotypical husband when it come to that, at least. Then again, in the U.S. date convention, October 10, 1987, is rendered 10/9/87, so there is absolutely NO reason for me to forget it. Of course 10/9/14 falls on a Thursday this year (it was a Friday when were wed), so chances are good we won't be doing anything special on our "special" date, as Thursday night is our busiest night of the week, and I work nights, so we'll try to do something special on Saturday or, more likely Sunday.
I should also mention a couple of rules I try to follow in blogging. I try to avoid writing anything that may be morally questionable. This is generally not difficult to do, as I generally filter my writing and have no natural inclination to expound on salacious themes. Whenever I write on a topic that causes the hair on my neck to rise, I ask Jennifer to proof it before publishing. I'm certainly not a prude, but I write under the understanding that- I.R.S. assertions about emails aside- nearly everything that happens on the interwebz is stored somewhere. And I do not want my writing to come back and bite me. I also do not want to embarrass her. I'm also fairly certain that I've never used anyone's name without their permission. Jennifer, Anna and Ryan, for example, have all given me verbal permission to use their names. And apart from Ryan, I never use last names. Ryan D. Reynolds is a special case- he's an aspiring comedian, so this is publicity for him. Mr. T is also an exception of sorts: he's our youngest son. When he was first mentioned in a blog, he was under eighteen (the age of majority in the U.S., a.k.a. "adulthood"), so I felt a certain amount of anonymity was required. He is now eighteen, but his persona of "Mr. T" has been established in this blog, so he remains to be known as Mr. T.
I've also always had a very compact, terse writing style, so I try to keep my blogs relatively short and readable, although as I look at this particular blog, there are atypically large chunks of words. My writing style has pushed me to the brink in the past.
I've never been a model student, but have always had an interest in history. In high school, even though I was in the top third of my class, I had to beg, plead and petition to get into the senior Advanced Placement European History class (and for the record, I also applied for the A.P. English class, but my high school cancelled the class because they had decided that the incoming seniors' writing skills were deficient). Near the end of the school year, I took the AP History test, and decided to take the English test- even though I had absolutely no idea of what to expect. The AP classes not only taught the subject, but prepared the students for the test. At the time, the tests were graded on a scale of one through five, with a three generally guaranteeing college credit. I scored a four on the history test. On the other hand, I "only" scored a two on the English test. I should mention that I got this score with zero prep or mentoring, and I was the ONLY senior in a class of approximately 330 that even took the test.
Flash forward to freshman year of college. My then-girlfriend Dolores (sorry, Dolores, I couldn't find you on Facebook) and I were sitting in the Student Government office one day, and she casually asked if I had a term paper that was due soon. I looked at my planner- she was correct.
I had a paper due the next day.
The thing that I often forget to mention in this story (which has been told a number of times) is that the instructor was quite the feminist, so much so that she was know to grade males harsher than females, The college had been, until quite recently, an all-women's institution.
When the assignment was first given, I immediately had an idea for the topic. Each member of the class was to pick a Renaissance leader and show or prove how they fit the criteria as defined in class. The problem was this: the leader I had picked was Napoleon Buonaparte (as I write this, I have a red squiggly line under the word Buonaparte; however, this is not a misspelling- when he first joined the French army he was a Corsican and only in his mid-twenties changed his name to the more French-sounding Bonaparte). Discounting the popular feeling that he was not particularly "enlightened" and that he came to power at the dawn of Romanticism I felt I could successfully argue my case.
I had my work cut out for me. And the paper was due tomorrow.
Now, in my defense, when the paper was first announced, I hauled myself over to Rebecca Crown Library, and as was (and still is) my standard practice for doing research, I pillaged the shelves for anything related to the subject. Because of my daily ritual of visiting The Sutlers' Wagon, I had a good background in the Napoleonic period. However, because of my as yet undiagnosed ADHD, those books ended up sitting in a rather tall stack in the Student Government office. What happened next was the stuff of which legends and epic songs would be written.
As this was in the days of prehistory (that is, before computers), my paper needed to be typed out. I had an outline in my mind, and wrote as I found information to support my ideas. When I finished a page of handwriting on a looseleaf page, Dolores would type it. We labored for several hours, and in the end I had eight and a half pages of double-spaced text- Sister Kaye Ashe's minimum was ten pages.
To summarize: I wrote a paper the day before it was due, a page and a half short of the minimum, well outside the specified period, and handed in a rough draft which was submitted to an instructor who was known to be a rough grader.
The paper got an "A". Like I said, I'm a terse writer.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
The numbers have not been huge, but there's been a bit more geographic diversity than I've seen of late- France, Poland, Canada and a country in Africa (the country in Africa has experienced some unrest over the past few years, so I won't be giving it a shout out). Before I forget Jennifer corrected me on a particular datum from that post- our anniversary is in a few days, not a few weeks. It's not that I don't know the date; I'm not the stereotypical husband when it come to that, at least. Then again, in the U.S. date convention, October 10, 1987, is rendered 10/9/87, so there is absolutely NO reason for me to forget it. Of course 10/9/14 falls on a Thursday this year (it was a Friday when were wed), so chances are good we won't be doing anything special on our "special" date, as Thursday night is our busiest night of the week, and I work nights, so we'll try to do something special on Saturday or, more likely Sunday.
I should also mention a couple of rules I try to follow in blogging. I try to avoid writing anything that may be morally questionable. This is generally not difficult to do, as I generally filter my writing and have no natural inclination to expound on salacious themes. Whenever I write on a topic that causes the hair on my neck to rise, I ask Jennifer to proof it before publishing. I'm certainly not a prude, but I write under the understanding that- I.R.S. assertions about emails aside- nearly everything that happens on the interwebz is stored somewhere. And I do not want my writing to come back and bite me. I also do not want to embarrass her. I'm also fairly certain that I've never used anyone's name without their permission. Jennifer, Anna and Ryan, for example, have all given me verbal permission to use their names. And apart from Ryan, I never use last names. Ryan D. Reynolds is a special case- he's an aspiring comedian, so this is publicity for him. Mr. T is also an exception of sorts: he's our youngest son. When he was first mentioned in a blog, he was under eighteen (the age of majority in the U.S., a.k.a. "adulthood"), so I felt a certain amount of anonymity was required. He is now eighteen, but his persona of "Mr. T" has been established in this blog, so he remains to be known as Mr. T.
I've also always had a very compact, terse writing style, so I try to keep my blogs relatively short and readable, although as I look at this particular blog, there are atypically large chunks of words. My writing style has pushed me to the brink in the past.
I've never been a model student, but have always had an interest in history. In high school, even though I was in the top third of my class, I had to beg, plead and petition to get into the senior Advanced Placement European History class (and for the record, I also applied for the A.P. English class, but my high school cancelled the class because they had decided that the incoming seniors' writing skills were deficient). Near the end of the school year, I took the AP History test, and decided to take the English test- even though I had absolutely no idea of what to expect. The AP classes not only taught the subject, but prepared the students for the test. At the time, the tests were graded on a scale of one through five, with a three generally guaranteeing college credit. I scored a four on the history test. On the other hand, I "only" scored a two on the English test. I should mention that I got this score with zero prep or mentoring, and I was the ONLY senior in a class of approximately 330 that even took the test.
Flash forward to freshman year of college. My then-girlfriend Dolores (sorry, Dolores, I couldn't find you on Facebook) and I were sitting in the Student Government office one day, and she casually asked if I had a term paper that was due soon. I looked at my planner- she was correct.
I had a paper due the next day.
The thing that I often forget to mention in this story (which has been told a number of times) is that the instructor was quite the feminist, so much so that she was know to grade males harsher than females, The college had been, until quite recently, an all-women's institution.
When the assignment was first given, I immediately had an idea for the topic. Each member of the class was to pick a Renaissance leader and show or prove how they fit the criteria as defined in class. The problem was this: the leader I had picked was Napoleon Buonaparte (as I write this, I have a red squiggly line under the word Buonaparte; however, this is not a misspelling- when he first joined the French army he was a Corsican and only in his mid-twenties changed his name to the more French-sounding Bonaparte). Discounting the popular feeling that he was not particularly "enlightened" and that he came to power at the dawn of Romanticism I felt I could successfully argue my case.
I had my work cut out for me. And the paper was due tomorrow.
Now, in my defense, when the paper was first announced, I hauled myself over to Rebecca Crown Library, and as was (and still is) my standard practice for doing research, I pillaged the shelves for anything related to the subject. Because of my daily ritual of visiting The Sutlers' Wagon, I had a good background in the Napoleonic period. However, because of my as yet undiagnosed ADHD, those books ended up sitting in a rather tall stack in the Student Government office. What happened next was the stuff of which legends and epic songs would be written.
As this was in the days of prehistory (that is, before computers), my paper needed to be typed out. I had an outline in my mind, and wrote as I found information to support my ideas. When I finished a page of handwriting on a looseleaf page, Dolores would type it. We labored for several hours, and in the end I had eight and a half pages of double-spaced text- Sister Kaye Ashe's minimum was ten pages.
To summarize: I wrote a paper the day before it was due, a page and a half short of the minimum, well outside the specified period, and handed in a rough draft which was submitted to an instructor who was known to be a rough grader.
The paper got an "A". Like I said, I'm a terse writer.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
The (Official) End of Winter
March 8, 2014.
As I write this, it is officially the last day of winter here in North America. As I stepped out of my workplace around 0630 this morning- just over an hour ago- there was a chill breeze and snow was flying in every direction. And while the snow really was light, and the temperature was not mind-numbingly frigid, I still had to chuckle to myself as I brushed some snow off of my vehicle, "Last day of winter? Right."
For those who are faithful followers of this blog, I offer my sincerest apologies for the lack of recent posts. I believe I have addressed this at least once recently, bemoaning the fact that a day has no more than twenty-four hours: when one works the overtime hours such as I have been blessed with lately, some sacrifices have to be made. In my case, the blog is one of my sacrifices.
Before I get on to data, I wanted to relate something that made me chuckle. About two weeks ago, Ryan was doing some cleaning in the office. Jennifer had made some borscht, and I was heating it up in the microwave. As Ryan is something of a foodie, he stopped what he was doing and sniffed the air. "Hmm, I'm not sure what that is, but it smells red- do you have tomato soup?"
To be fair, neither Ryan, Jennifer or I is Russian, so none of us can vouch for the "authenticity" of the recipe that Jennifer found online, but I have to say that it was delicious. Ryan may have been faked out by the spices, herbs and vegetables in the soup. I just found his comment, well- tasty.
"No, it's borscht," I said. "And I think that you think that you can smell a what a color smells like is pretty funny." I then told him about Chris Rice's "Smell The Color 9" song, and we both had a good chuckle.
And with that, we proceed down the rabbit hole into to the wonderful world of I.T. and data....
For starters, I learned a new application this week. It's proprietary to a couple of other systems which we use that are also proprietary to my company, but the tool itself is all about data and is somewhat cool. Generally speaking, it's a viewer for print output. The programmer plugs in some instruction files, adds a small data file, and is able to see what the imaging heads will lay down onto paper.
Mr. T and I have a Sunday afternoon project. After what seems like a month, we have all of the necessary components, and are planning on building Jennifer a new computer. We bought a bundled "bare bones" kit from Newegg, and it contains the following components: Rosewill Galaxy (black) case- not really big or high end, but pretty nicely designed with a pair of 120mm fans and bottom mounted PSU space. And both side panels are removable, making for some nice cable management possibilities. The PSU is also from Rosewill, a modular 650W Hive unit that is 80 Plus Bronze certified for energy efficiency. Mobo is an ASUS A88XM Plus; this board is designed for the AMD FM2 APU. This is our first "modern" AMD processor, and I am pretty excited to see how it will perform. Mr. T and I had consulted extensively before choosing this bundle- the APU was the deciding factor for us. It's a 3.5GHz (overclockable to 3.8GHz) Kaveri quad core processor with a Radeon 7700 integrated in the same processor package. We are planning on replacing the stock AMD fan and heatsink with a dual fan, four pipe (direct contact) cooler from Thermaltake, the NiC F4. When we got this, Mr. T said it was huge. Jennifer said the same thing. When I saw it, I had to agree: it is huge. However, I really like it, and the reviews I have read all agree that this is a pretty quiet fan. So, if it doesn't fit in the case, we may be getting a different case. The reason for this is that it is memory friendly; that is, it is tall enough to clear the tops of the memory heat sinks. Storage and memory: the bundle had some nice parts here. We have a pair of G.Skill Ripjaws X series 4GB DDR3 (PC3 12800), a Crucial 120GB SSD and a 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM HDD with 64MB cache. This will be a Win7 system.
Pretty sweet, but slightly incomplete.
While we were waiting for this techo wonderland to arrive at our doorstep, Mr. T casually mentioned that we might need an adapter for the SSD. Frack! He was right. I researched these, and found a nice one from Icy Dock- their EZ Fit MB082SP PRO- which has room for another SSD, should the need arise. The other missing item from the Newegg bundle was an optical drive. So, I ordered a SATA LG Blu Ray burner. I've had good results from LG optical drives in the past, so I thought this would be a good fit with the rest of the system.
Design philosophy: Jennifer uses her PC primarily for two things- surfing and video. I'm hoping that the APU will be able to handle the Chrome activity (Chrome is quite the memory hog, and she likes to have lots of tabs open). Additionally, because of where the PC is physically located in our home, I often use it for a bit of surfing, opening up a Pale Moon browser and or a database or spreadsheet- often all three.
The Blu Ray is more for playback than recording.
Finally, I've gotten back to work on the database. The last time I updated the database statistics was way back in August, 2013. That's a long time, but also an indicator as to how busy I've been! In that time, one new table was added, and the database grew by a total of only 253 pieces of unique data- this is pretty sad and weak. On the other hand, normalization is the standard for this database, and as nearly everything except for date fields is table driven, the database is actually much larger- it lives up to that truism, "The total is greater than the sum of the parts." For example, the Music Recordings table currently has fourteen entries, but apart from the Last Played (date) fields, every single field in the table (including the Plays_# fields) pulls data from another table. It is truly a thing of beauty.
That's all for now from the Secret Underground Lair. My next entry should detail the adventures of PC building, and hopefully more data!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
As I write this, it is officially the last day of winter here in North America. As I stepped out of my workplace around 0630 this morning- just over an hour ago- there was a chill breeze and snow was flying in every direction. And while the snow really was light, and the temperature was not mind-numbingly frigid, I still had to chuckle to myself as I brushed some snow off of my vehicle, "Last day of winter? Right."
For those who are faithful followers of this blog, I offer my sincerest apologies for the lack of recent posts. I believe I have addressed this at least once recently, bemoaning the fact that a day has no more than twenty-four hours: when one works the overtime hours such as I have been blessed with lately, some sacrifices have to be made. In my case, the blog is one of my sacrifices.
Before I get on to data, I wanted to relate something that made me chuckle. About two weeks ago, Ryan was doing some cleaning in the office. Jennifer had made some borscht, and I was heating it up in the microwave. As Ryan is something of a foodie, he stopped what he was doing and sniffed the air. "Hmm, I'm not sure what that is, but it smells red- do you have tomato soup?"
To be fair, neither Ryan, Jennifer or I is Russian, so none of us can vouch for the "authenticity" of the recipe that Jennifer found online, but I have to say that it was delicious. Ryan may have been faked out by the spices, herbs and vegetables in the soup. I just found his comment, well- tasty.
"No, it's borscht," I said. "And I think that you think that you can smell a what a color smells like is pretty funny." I then told him about Chris Rice's "Smell The Color 9" song, and we both had a good chuckle.
And with that, we proceed down the rabbit hole into to the wonderful world of I.T. and data....
For starters, I learned a new application this week. It's proprietary to a couple of other systems which we use that are also proprietary to my company, but the tool itself is all about data and is somewhat cool. Generally speaking, it's a viewer for print output. The programmer plugs in some instruction files, adds a small data file, and is able to see what the imaging heads will lay down onto paper.
Mr. T and I have a Sunday afternoon project. After what seems like a month, we have all of the necessary components, and are planning on building Jennifer a new computer. We bought a bundled "bare bones" kit from Newegg, and it contains the following components: Rosewill Galaxy (black) case- not really big or high end, but pretty nicely designed with a pair of 120mm fans and bottom mounted PSU space. And both side panels are removable, making for some nice cable management possibilities. The PSU is also from Rosewill, a modular 650W Hive unit that is 80 Plus Bronze certified for energy efficiency. Mobo is an ASUS A88XM Plus; this board is designed for the AMD FM2 APU. This is our first "modern" AMD processor, and I am pretty excited to see how it will perform. Mr. T and I had consulted extensively before choosing this bundle- the APU was the deciding factor for us. It's a 3.5GHz (overclockable to 3.8GHz) Kaveri quad core processor with a Radeon 7700 integrated in the same processor package. We are planning on replacing the stock AMD fan and heatsink with a dual fan, four pipe (direct contact) cooler from Thermaltake, the NiC F4. When we got this, Mr. T said it was huge. Jennifer said the same thing. When I saw it, I had to agree: it is huge. However, I really like it, and the reviews I have read all agree that this is a pretty quiet fan. So, if it doesn't fit in the case, we may be getting a different case. The reason for this is that it is memory friendly; that is, it is tall enough to clear the tops of the memory heat sinks. Storage and memory: the bundle had some nice parts here. We have a pair of G.Skill Ripjaws X series 4GB DDR3 (PC3 12800), a Crucial 120GB SSD and a 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM HDD with 64MB cache. This will be a Win7 system.
Pretty sweet, but slightly incomplete.
While we were waiting for this techo wonderland to arrive at our doorstep, Mr. T casually mentioned that we might need an adapter for the SSD. Frack! He was right. I researched these, and found a nice one from Icy Dock- their EZ Fit MB082SP PRO- which has room for another SSD, should the need arise. The other missing item from the Newegg bundle was an optical drive. So, I ordered a SATA LG Blu Ray burner. I've had good results from LG optical drives in the past, so I thought this would be a good fit with the rest of the system.
Design philosophy: Jennifer uses her PC primarily for two things- surfing and video. I'm hoping that the APU will be able to handle the Chrome activity (Chrome is quite the memory hog, and she likes to have lots of tabs open). Additionally, because of where the PC is physically located in our home, I often use it for a bit of surfing, opening up a Pale Moon browser and or a database or spreadsheet- often all three.
The Blu Ray is more for playback than recording.
Finally, I've gotten back to work on the database. The last time I updated the database statistics was way back in August, 2013. That's a long time, but also an indicator as to how busy I've been! In that time, one new table was added, and the database grew by a total of only 253 pieces of unique data- this is pretty sad and weak. On the other hand, normalization is the standard for this database, and as nearly everything except for date fields is table driven, the database is actually much larger- it lives up to that truism, "The total is greater than the sum of the parts." For example, the Music Recordings table currently has fourteen entries, but apart from the Last Played (date) fields, every single field in the table (including the Plays_# fields) pulls data from another table. It is truly a thing of beauty.
That's all for now from the Secret Underground Lair. My next entry should detail the adventures of PC building, and hopefully more data!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
New Year's Day- a relatively useless holiday
If one were to give honest consideration to the relative importance of holidays, I'm not certain New Year's Day would rate very highly. It's somewhat akin to being the Seinfeld of holidays- a holiday about nothing. I'll grant you that the date does have usefulness: it tells how old someone (or something is), and it tells accountants and other number crunchers that its time to reset their counters to zero. But its value as a holiday is pretty much a zero. Here's a brief rundown of some holidays celebrated in the United States; I'll let you be the judge of how New Year's Day stacks up.
1/19/2014- Martin Luther King Day**
2/14/2014- Valentine's Day
2/16/2014- President's Day**
3/4/2014- Mardi Gras
3/17/2014- St. Patrick's Day
4/20/2014- Easter Sunday
5/26/2014- Memorial Day**
6/14/2014- Flag Day
7/4/2014- Independence Day
*I think in August we just sweat
9/1/2014- Labor Day**
10/31/2014- Halloween
11/27/2014- Thanksgiving
12/25/2014- Christmas
**These are Federal holidays and are observed on a Monday, so the dates move.
Looking at this list, I say that New Year's Day is pale and insignificant. Of course, that's just my opinion. How am I celebrating it? Well, I get to go to work tonight. Although the presses are shutting down in the late afternoon, a few hardy coworkers and yours truly will keep the fluorescent lights burning in Data Services, staying ahead of the proverbial curve and some time around midnight we're calling it a day. I'll probably put the finishing touches on this blog (proofreading and rewriting), and then work on the database (or, maybe start work on the fitness workbook that I've been threatening myself with for months- Ryan and I have a plan which we roughed out last night), and maybe play a bit of Civilization V. As far as celebration goes, I'm going to whoop it up, taking down the 2013 Lego calendar, and unwrapping and hanging up the 2014 Lego calendar. Yes, we certainly know how to properly observe the flipping of a calendar page here in the Secret Underground Lair. I almost forgot- I've got some pickled herring in the fridge...in the immortal words of Abe Lincoln (as uttered in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure)-
"Party on, Dudes!"
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
*The End-Of-Year-Addendum (not quite like The End Of Days or anything like That)
Okay, I admit to writing everything above this on the 31st of December. Its now officially January 1st, so its time for hoopla and stuff. First of all, Happy New Year. I think you got my ideas on New Year from what I wrote above, but if you're a big New Years fan, Happy Day! As some of you may be what are known as "resolutioners"- that would be those who want to get in shape in the New Year, might I suggest Iron Sanctuary. This is a weight lifting site dedicated to strength and overall wellness. If you like lifting, this is a great site.
Lastly, here (in no particular order) are the Top 5 blogs of 2013- I hope you enjoy and share them!
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/05/why-2k.html
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/02/normal-is-town-in-illinois.html
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/01/something-new.html
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/01/like-data-we-are-in-it-sense-fully.html
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/01/who-does-that-anyway.html
1/19/2014- Martin Luther King Day**
2/14/2014- Valentine's Day
2/16/2014- President's Day**
3/4/2014- Mardi Gras
3/17/2014- St. Patrick's Day
4/20/2014- Easter Sunday
5/26/2014- Memorial Day**
6/14/2014- Flag Day
7/4/2014- Independence Day
*I think in August we just sweat
9/1/2014- Labor Day**
10/31/2014- Halloween
11/27/2014- Thanksgiving
12/25/2014- Christmas
**These are Federal holidays and are observed on a Monday, so the dates move.
Looking at this list, I say that New Year's Day is pale and insignificant. Of course, that's just my opinion. How am I celebrating it? Well, I get to go to work tonight. Although the presses are shutting down in the late afternoon, a few hardy coworkers and yours truly will keep the fluorescent lights burning in Data Services, staying ahead of the proverbial curve and some time around midnight we're calling it a day. I'll probably put the finishing touches on this blog (proofreading and rewriting), and then work on the database (or, maybe start work on the fitness workbook that I've been threatening myself with for months- Ryan and I have a plan which we roughed out last night), and maybe play a bit of Civilization V. As far as celebration goes, I'm going to whoop it up, taking down the 2013 Lego calendar, and unwrapping and hanging up the 2014 Lego calendar. Yes, we certainly know how to properly observe the flipping of a calendar page here in the Secret Underground Lair. I almost forgot- I've got some pickled herring in the fridge...in the immortal words of Abe Lincoln (as uttered in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure)-
"Party on, Dudes!"
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
*The End-Of-Year-Addendum (not quite like The End Of Days or anything like That)
Okay, I admit to writing everything above this on the 31st of December. Its now officially January 1st, so its time for hoopla and stuff. First of all, Happy New Year. I think you got my ideas on New Year from what I wrote above, but if you're a big New Years fan, Happy Day! As some of you may be what are known as "resolutioners"- that would be those who want to get in shape in the New Year, might I suggest Iron Sanctuary. This is a weight lifting site dedicated to strength and overall wellness. If you like lifting, this is a great site.
Lastly, here (in no particular order) are the Top 5 blogs of 2013- I hope you enjoy and share them!
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/05/why-2k.html
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/02/normal-is-town-in-illinois.html
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/01/something-new.html
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/01/like-data-we-are-in-it-sense-fully.html
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/01/who-does-that-anyway.html
Monday, December 2, 2013
Data never sleeps
Hey, hey, my, my. I'm not a fan of Neil Young, but that's a great song. It was Saturday night, and I found myself at one of the Secret Underground Lair's remote sites. It was close to midnight- relatively late for this particular Saturday. I had a serious case of the nods, and my trusty Logitech G105 keyboard was threatening to tattoo QWERTY into my forehead if I didn't shut down soon. Just one more small task, really- I had a few titles to enter into the database, then off to La La Land.
I have at least hinted in the past, I think, that we are strong embracers of the dull edge of technology- the bleeding edge moves too fast, costs too much, and loses its sheen in a hurry. So on Black Friday, Daniel hiked over to our local Gamestop in search of a few games, and to get a 1st Gen Wii, RVL 001. As I have a deep and abiding dislike of lines (queues), I opted to drive out closer to midnight. When I arrived, I was shocked to see a group of about forty people waiting in freezing temperature to get into the store, several later emerging with the just released Xbox One. While waiting I ran into Ryan, my cohort in comedy, and we chatted for some time. Well, up until the point where he started freezing- at that point, he went home, and I continued to wait. After about forty minutes, Daniel emerged with a case of the happys. We walked over to the Target store, and browsed around a bit before going home, and then off to bed.
Which catches me up to where I started. We ended having to go back to Gamestop on Saturday, as the Wii was a later Gen, and did not have... wait for it... Gamecube ports. So, he exchanged it, and because of the model, got some store credit- more games were acquired. I decided to enter all of this into the database and call it a night. I clicked the NEW RECORD arrow, and noticed that I had not alpha sorted the table, so I sorted it and much to my surprise, there was a dupe record! I went into Design View, and much to my shock, this field was not indexed. I'd been duped! I went back into datasheet view, and replaced the dupe with one of the new titles. Then, I went back and changed the field property to Indexed (No Duplicates) and saved.
Well, I tried to save. To make a long story short, there were close to twenty duped records in that table of 900+. It took nearly an hour to find all of them and replace them with new data. I was really upset, because I thought I had this under control... as Buford Tannen said, "Ya thought wrong, Dude". Never assume anything- even about your own data!
Which brings me to today (Monday). As I'm working this evening, I'm going to catch a nap. But before that, just a quick peek at the database. Everything is working properly, but I need a query to generate a simple checklist for digital video media (DVDs and Blurays), so I made a simple one and printed... yeah, it wouldn't print. That was ~45 minutes ago. I've had more than enough fun for one day with this- it is nap-thirty.
On a happy note, this post marks the one year of this blog. I'd like to thank the Academy, etc., and cutting to the chase, "AND WORLD PEACE". Yippie kay yay, folks.
Most significantly, I just recently achieved the only objective I had set for this blog: at least one view on each continent (Antarctica doesn't count).
AS always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
I have at least hinted in the past, I think, that we are strong embracers of the dull edge of technology- the bleeding edge moves too fast, costs too much, and loses its sheen in a hurry. So on Black Friday, Daniel hiked over to our local Gamestop in search of a few games, and to get a 1st Gen Wii, RVL 001. As I have a deep and abiding dislike of lines (queues), I opted to drive out closer to midnight. When I arrived, I was shocked to see a group of about forty people waiting in freezing temperature to get into the store, several later emerging with the just released Xbox One. While waiting I ran into Ryan, my cohort in comedy, and we chatted for some time. Well, up until the point where he started freezing- at that point, he went home, and I continued to wait. After about forty minutes, Daniel emerged with a case of the happys. We walked over to the Target store, and browsed around a bit before going home, and then off to bed.
Which catches me up to where I started. We ended having to go back to Gamestop on Saturday, as the Wii was a later Gen, and did not have... wait for it... Gamecube ports. So, he exchanged it, and because of the model, got some store credit- more games were acquired. I decided to enter all of this into the database and call it a night. I clicked the NEW RECORD arrow, and noticed that I had not alpha sorted the table, so I sorted it and much to my surprise, there was a dupe record! I went into Design View, and much to my shock, this field was not indexed. I'd been duped! I went back into datasheet view, and replaced the dupe with one of the new titles. Then, I went back and changed the field property to Indexed (No Duplicates) and saved.
Well, I tried to save. To make a long story short, there were close to twenty duped records in that table of 900+. It took nearly an hour to find all of them and replace them with new data. I was really upset, because I thought I had this under control... as Buford Tannen said, "Ya thought wrong, Dude". Never assume anything- even about your own data!
Which brings me to today (Monday). As I'm working this evening, I'm going to catch a nap. But before that, just a quick peek at the database. Everything is working properly, but I need a query to generate a simple checklist for digital video media (DVDs and Blurays), so I made a simple one and printed... yeah, it wouldn't print. That was ~45 minutes ago. I've had more than enough fun for one day with this- it is nap-thirty.
On a happy note, this post marks the one year of this blog. I'd like to thank the Academy, etc., and cutting to the chase, "AND WORLD PEACE". Yippie kay yay, folks.
Most significantly, I just recently achieved the only objective I had set for this blog: at least one view on each continent (Antarctica doesn't count).
AS always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Sunday, November 17, 2013
More thoughts about words- including a bit of geekspeak.
A few days ago I was conversing with Ryan, our resident full-time custodian and occasional comedian. I'm not sure how the topic arose, but at some point the word "scanner" was used. "You know what's funny about 'scanner?'" I said.
"No, what's that?"
"Well, I know about four different ways which that word can be used." And with that, I proceeded to describe the various scanners with which I was acquainted. In no particular order, the first one is the barcode scanner. These devices are ubiquitous- at stores, information kiosks... most smartphones have a QR and/or barcode app that can be utilize the phone's camera as a scanner. Here in the United States, the Post Office uses these scanners to scan the Intelligent Mail Barcode (IMB) which is found on most mail. While barcodes found on merchandise usually has a code that is attached to a single item and doesn't vary from one identical item to the next, IMBs are serialized- that is, within a mailing (say, for example, a monthly advertising piece), each IMB has a unique serial code. Some of these scanners can also read 2D barcodes. The 2D barcodes are the ones which look like square mazes or puzzles; they are capable of carrying all sorts of information. In contrast to an IMB, which has numeric information such as the postal data, a serial number and the ZIP code, a 2D encodes alphanumeric information; the addressee's full name, street address, city, state, ZIP code, and (depending on the size of the 2D), additional information.
Next is another type of optical scanner- the computer scanner (and the closely related photocopier, and fax). They all do pretty much the same thing: take a picture of something and make a paper copy of it. The duties of these machines have blurred quite a bit, with copiers able to fax or copy to file, faxes able to copy, and multifunction printers can even output photographs from file, hardcopy, or even old photonegatives or slides.
Next is the RF, or radio scanner. This is the classic "police radio" that is often talked about in older movies, where the whiz-kids hear a dispatch on their radio and end up nabbing the crooks before the cops can get there, or more recently, when Mr. Incredible and Frozone hang out on "bowling night" waiting for a police dispatch so that they can be super heroes again in a world where super heroes are outlawed. I used to sell these, so I'm a little familiar with their use.
Lastly, the CSRs where I work use scanners. These are a mystery to me... I'm not sure even if they're made out of paper or acetate, or what their purpose is. And while I realize that's pretty lame, its still another legitimate use of the word.
I had another data epiphany a few days ago, and this one solved an issue I had raised one or two blogs back- that being how do I know when a title has a corresponding entry (or entries) in the main Media table? I tested out adding a "check" column to the Media_Title table, but almost immediately discovered its Achilles' Heel: I could tell if the title was in use, but I could not tell exactly how, or for that matter, how many times. The new method uses the same table that the main Media table uses to categorize a piece of media- CD, DVD, etc., but allows for multiple entries. This is a god thing, as titles tend to repeat.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to,
"No, what's that?"
"Well, I know about four different ways which that word can be used." And with that, I proceeded to describe the various scanners with which I was acquainted. In no particular order, the first one is the barcode scanner. These devices are ubiquitous- at stores, information kiosks... most smartphones have a QR and/or barcode app that can be utilize the phone's camera as a scanner. Here in the United States, the Post Office uses these scanners to scan the Intelligent Mail Barcode (IMB) which is found on most mail. While barcodes found on merchandise usually has a code that is attached to a single item and doesn't vary from one identical item to the next, IMBs are serialized- that is, within a mailing (say, for example, a monthly advertising piece), each IMB has a unique serial code. Some of these scanners can also read 2D barcodes. The 2D barcodes are the ones which look like square mazes or puzzles; they are capable of carrying all sorts of information. In contrast to an IMB, which has numeric information such as the postal data, a serial number and the ZIP code, a 2D encodes alphanumeric information; the addressee's full name, street address, city, state, ZIP code, and (depending on the size of the 2D), additional information.
Next is another type of optical scanner- the computer scanner (and the closely related photocopier, and fax). They all do pretty much the same thing: take a picture of something and make a paper copy of it. The duties of these machines have blurred quite a bit, with copiers able to fax or copy to file, faxes able to copy, and multifunction printers can even output photographs from file, hardcopy, or even old photonegatives or slides.
Next is the RF, or radio scanner. This is the classic "police radio" that is often talked about in older movies, where the whiz-kids hear a dispatch on their radio and end up nabbing the crooks before the cops can get there, or more recently, when Mr. Incredible and Frozone hang out on "bowling night" waiting for a police dispatch so that they can be super heroes again in a world where super heroes are outlawed. I used to sell these, so I'm a little familiar with their use.
Lastly, the CSRs where I work use scanners. These are a mystery to me... I'm not sure even if they're made out of paper or acetate, or what their purpose is. And while I realize that's pretty lame, its still another legitimate use of the word.
I had another data epiphany a few days ago, and this one solved an issue I had raised one or two blogs back- that being how do I know when a title has a corresponding entry (or entries) in the main Media table? I tested out adding a "check" column to the Media_Title table, but almost immediately discovered its Achilles' Heel: I could tell if the title was in use, but I could not tell exactly how, or for that matter, how many times. The new method uses the same table that the main Media table uses to categorize a piece of media- CD, DVD, etc., but allows for multiple entries. This is a god thing, as titles tend to repeat.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to,
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