The SUL (Secret Underground Lair) has been in a bit of turmoil. This past year, in the space of a month, two of my computers have died. In your world, perhaps, this might not be a disaster. Then again, in your world, you might be off to the Apple Store, weeping inconsolably. If the latter is you, this blog is not for you.
So, a PC died several months ago. No biggie-- I put a spare in as a replacement (note to Apple fans: how many of you have 2-3 in spares?)
Unfortunately, my spare died as well.
To be honest, it didn't really die- it just lost internet connectivity. So. I was living off of my laptop, and Mr. T. and I have decided we're going to build a new desktop. For me.
I started writing this several months ago, and not long after that, my laptop battery gave in. Not a big deal- just another kick in the shins.
In the interim, I pulled another PC out and swapped out the hard drive. In short order, it, too, gave up. Mind you, both of these desktops were originally XP boxes which had been upgraded to Win7; that should give a hint as to their age.
Fast forward several months and I am running on Great White, a massive box with a tiny non-Ryzen AMD mobo. How tiny is the mobo? Well, the case is so large and the mobo is so tiny that the front case usb cable does not reach the usb header on the mobo. The specs of the board unsurprisingly are fairly underwhelming, as one might expect: 16GB (2 sticks) of DDR3, for starters- and this is maxed out.. Well, it does have a 550 watt 80+ EVGA platinum certified modular PSU, 120GB flash boot drive, 2TB internal HDD (with room for five more HDD's) and a 5 channel fan controller. Other than that, 3 external USB HDD's and... well, the graphics are on the CPU (AMD APU). On the bright side, the APU graphics are much better than I experienced on the previous APU-supported mobo.
Fast forward....
So, I was on amazon.com Wednesday and saw a graphics card that seemed pretty decent for the price. I mentioned it to Mr.T, and he was at first unimpressed. After a few cups of tea, though, it looked like a better deal, and then he looked into some cards. Now, truth be told, I do not absolutely need a graphics card right now, but the graphics card will probably be the next upgrade to this system as it is the only other stand-alone component which can be added before upgrading to a Ryzen.
Interestingly enough, it's now the wee hours of Tuesday morning and I'm *finally* getting around to finishing this. Among other things, I got some work done on 42 (in case you are new to this blog or have forgotten, 42 is my personal database project). Progress has been predictably slow, as my keyboarding skills are not really skills; I think I'd say I'm more familiar with a keyboard than skilled. J and I got new keyboards in November, and I'm loving my new mechanical keyboard. Cherry MX blue switches are absolutely to wonderful to type on, and for some reason I find myself making fewer mistakes on this keyboard.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Showing posts with label SUL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SUL. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 18, 2018
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
MMXVII
I've always liked Roman numerals.For those unfamiliar, I'll save you a few seconds of searching: this post is titled "2017" in Roman numerals.
So, this is my first "official" post of 2017, and as I was looking at my blog stats earlier, I noted with pleasure and amazement that I had acquired a reader in... MONGOLIA! It ranked up there in amazement with my first African reader!
Now, I hope no one is thinking that I'm some... I'm not sure- fill-in-the-blank person from North America. Quite the opposite- I'm a casual writer who has, over the course of a few short years, had the privilege to have his stuff read in ~50 countries around the globe. And a fair percentage- if not an outright majority- do not claim English as their native tongue. So to all of my readers, old and new, I wish you a Happy New Year, Thank You and WELCOME to my blog... my little corner of the internet!
For those completely new to this blog, it has more of a "unifying theme" rather than a plot, theme or storyline. I try to keep it a safe place- no vulgarity or situations requiring the reader to agree or disagree with any political, moral or religious opinion. It sounds a bit like milk toast, but honestly, this blog is nothing more than my attempt to tell a few stories, chronicle some events and just communicate what Life looks like through my eyes... and the unifying theme is the Secret Underground Lair (SUL).
I'll reveal what is surely a pretty poorly kept secret: the SUL is a room in the basement of a modest home in the NW suburbs of Chicago (GO CUBS!). Our home is also the location of the Dungeon. our physical fitness training area- currently overrun by clutter. The rest of the basement is not named, with the exception of the Pantry, which currently is home to some chicken stock, canned tomatoes and a few other edible sundries.
The SUL is an office area, walled off from the rest of the basement and accessible by a door which has a bell on a string (we have four cats- three have learned how to use the bell. The 4th doesn't care). During our waking hours, Mr. T and I conduct business here. We pretty much sit kitty corner and back to back of each other. Both of our areas of control are in a fair amount of disarray, although the office is starting to come together. I'm not one of those folks who makes New Year's Resolutions, but I'm thinking that this will be the year when we FINALLY get the office in shape. We've made a few small steps already, discarding a few things and doing some organizing.
On the negative side, we're 18 months (at least) behind on this project.
I've noticed that Life seems to be a project, and the SUL is a great microcosm of this concept. I've already replaced some older Cat 5e cabling which was throttling network performance- I have one more switch on the way which will take care of a few other issues. I also have two older PCs which I'm thinking of adding a second gigabit NIC (network interface card)- which would theoretically double available bandwidth and throughput to the PCs. That's a question for later.
The last paragraph is a good example of my unifying theme. I shoot for data, but as I'm a hands-on SOHO I.T. guy, you'll often seen see speeds and feeds here. I hope everyone reading this will continue, possibly looking at some of my previous posts, and hopefully returning for more!
Lastly, I'm hoping we can dye the elephant this week.
????????
A year or so ago, I bought a plush elephant from a local retailer. I eventually also purchased a bottle of yellow dye. Why? Hadoop, of course! The unifying theme of this blog really is DATA... well, it tries.
It's time to put this to bed. I've read lots of articles, posts and blogs that were difficult to read, simply because they were presented as the dreaded "walls of text". No fear here- I try to keep my paragraphs short. I hope you've enjoyed this overview/review- please come back again!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
So, this is my first "official" post of 2017, and as I was looking at my blog stats earlier, I noted with pleasure and amazement that I had acquired a reader in... MONGOLIA! It ranked up there in amazement with my first African reader!
Now, I hope no one is thinking that I'm some... I'm not sure- fill-in-the-blank person from North America. Quite the opposite- I'm a casual writer who has, over the course of a few short years, had the privilege to have his stuff read in ~50 countries around the globe. And a fair percentage- if not an outright majority- do not claim English as their native tongue. So to all of my readers, old and new, I wish you a Happy New Year, Thank You and WELCOME to my blog... my little corner of the internet!
For those completely new to this blog, it has more of a "unifying theme" rather than a plot, theme or storyline. I try to keep it a safe place- no vulgarity or situations requiring the reader to agree or disagree with any political, moral or religious opinion. It sounds a bit like milk toast, but honestly, this blog is nothing more than my attempt to tell a few stories, chronicle some events and just communicate what Life looks like through my eyes... and the unifying theme is the Secret Underground Lair (SUL).
I'll reveal what is surely a pretty poorly kept secret: the SUL is a room in the basement of a modest home in the NW suburbs of Chicago (GO CUBS!). Our home is also the location of the Dungeon. our physical fitness training area- currently overrun by clutter. The rest of the basement is not named, with the exception of the Pantry, which currently is home to some chicken stock, canned tomatoes and a few other edible sundries.
The SUL is an office area, walled off from the rest of the basement and accessible by a door which has a bell on a string (we have four cats- three have learned how to use the bell. The 4th doesn't care). During our waking hours, Mr. T and I conduct business here. We pretty much sit kitty corner and back to back of each other. Both of our areas of control are in a fair amount of disarray, although the office is starting to come together. I'm not one of those folks who makes New Year's Resolutions, but I'm thinking that this will be the year when we FINALLY get the office in shape. We've made a few small steps already, discarding a few things and doing some organizing.
On the negative side, we're 18 months (at least) behind on this project.
I've noticed that Life seems to be a project, and the SUL is a great microcosm of this concept. I've already replaced some older Cat 5e cabling which was throttling network performance- I have one more switch on the way which will take care of a few other issues. I also have two older PCs which I'm thinking of adding a second gigabit NIC (network interface card)- which would theoretically double available bandwidth and throughput to the PCs. That's a question for later.
The last paragraph is a good example of my unifying theme. I shoot for data, but as I'm a hands-on SOHO I.T. guy, you'll often seen see speeds and feeds here. I hope everyone reading this will continue, possibly looking at some of my previous posts, and hopefully returning for more!
Lastly, I'm hoping we can dye the elephant this week.
????????
A year or so ago, I bought a plush elephant from a local retailer. I eventually also purchased a bottle of yellow dye. Why? Hadoop, of course! The unifying theme of this blog really is DATA... well, it tries.
It's time to put this to bed. I've read lots of articles, posts and blogs that were difficult to read, simply because they were presented as the dreaded "walls of text". No fear here- I try to keep my paragraphs short. I hope you've enjoyed this overview/review- please come back again!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Monday, January 2, 2017
So, what did your NOC get for Christmas?
So, it's Christmas here in the SUL, and of course I'm playing Christmas music. The SUL is home to our very modest- meaning there is a sparse amount of equipment, and not shy- NOC (network operations center). As is the case most, if indeed not all years, our NOC is on the "NICE" list rather than the "other" list. So, because a couple of PCs were on the "other" list because of hard drive failures, I resolved that I would be a better SOHO I.T. manager in 2017.
It is now the 2nd of January. I'm happy (but slightly drained) as I report that I've been a very good giver of gifts to the network in general and the NOC in particular. It all started out with our family Christmas present. I should note that over the years, we've scaled back our Christmas celebrations to a few Christmas cards, a nice dinner and Christmas music. Much less stress, much less expense (commercialism), and with a few cats, no destroyed decorations to clean up.
The family Christmas present this year was a Steam Link and a Steam Controller. What is Steam? Check it out here. By the way, this is also the simplest way to explain the Cloud to folks. In a nutshell, the Steam Link is a device that is on your network. It will automatically detect any computer that is running that has Steam, and then let you play your Steam-hosted games on your TV. So, I tasked Mr. T with installing the device. Valve (the makers of the Link) have provided everything one needs to get the Link operational quickly. They included several electrical adapters, an HDMI cable and a flat CAT 6 cable.
And this is where the dominoes started to fall.
The ethernet cable was about 2 meters short. Not a problem- I had a spare in the SUL that was going to be replaced by another, longer cable that we had received that same day. I gave Mr. T the cable from the SUL and it was 1 meter short. We searched a bit for a dimly remembered cache of ethernet cables, but it proved to be as real as the city of El Dorado. So, I traded the flat cable for my shiny new purple cable. All was good with the Link.
Mr. T then gave the Link a functional test, discovering the computers on our network. Unsurprisingly, all three of my PCs had huge lag issues- I had observed this before. However, over the network, my Steam games were unplayable. So, I went back down to the NOC, and after a few simple tests I was reminded that the NOC's primary (8 port) switch had a dead port. I looked at my other (5 port) switch. I noted at least one CAT 5e cable was in use, so I went beck and ordered more CAT 6 cables and another 8 port switch.
Its now Monday night, and I've done all that I can. The 5 port switch has been replaced by an 8 port switch. I was about to say all was up to date on the new switch, when I decided to take one more look at the cabling.
FRACK! One more CAT 5e cable to replace!
Well, that's done. There's actually one more CAT 5e cable, but its attached to a printer that has a 10/100 NIC, so it can stay. In another few days the other switch will arrive, and after its installation our NOC will be up to date. I still need to complete the configuration of our NAS (network atttached storage) device, but there's no rush on that.
My brain is officially on overtime- that's all for now from the SUL.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
It is now the 2nd of January. I'm happy (but slightly drained) as I report that I've been a very good giver of gifts to the network in general and the NOC in particular. It all started out with our family Christmas present. I should note that over the years, we've scaled back our Christmas celebrations to a few Christmas cards, a nice dinner and Christmas music. Much less stress, much less expense (commercialism), and with a few cats, no destroyed decorations to clean up.
The family Christmas present this year was a Steam Link and a Steam Controller. What is Steam? Check it out here. By the way, this is also the simplest way to explain the Cloud to folks. In a nutshell, the Steam Link is a device that is on your network. It will automatically detect any computer that is running that has Steam, and then let you play your Steam-hosted games on your TV. So, I tasked Mr. T with installing the device. Valve (the makers of the Link) have provided everything one needs to get the Link operational quickly. They included several electrical adapters, an HDMI cable and a flat CAT 6 cable.
And this is where the dominoes started to fall.
The ethernet cable was about 2 meters short. Not a problem- I had a spare in the SUL that was going to be replaced by another, longer cable that we had received that same day. I gave Mr. T the cable from the SUL and it was 1 meter short. We searched a bit for a dimly remembered cache of ethernet cables, but it proved to be as real as the city of El Dorado. So, I traded the flat cable for my shiny new purple cable. All was good with the Link.
Mr. T then gave the Link a functional test, discovering the computers on our network. Unsurprisingly, all three of my PCs had huge lag issues- I had observed this before. However, over the network, my Steam games were unplayable. So, I went back down to the NOC, and after a few simple tests I was reminded that the NOC's primary (8 port) switch had a dead port. I looked at my other (5 port) switch. I noted at least one CAT 5e cable was in use, so I went beck and ordered more CAT 6 cables and another 8 port switch.
Its now Monday night, and I've done all that I can. The 5 port switch has been replaced by an 8 port switch. I was about to say all was up to date on the new switch, when I decided to take one more look at the cabling.
FRACK! One more CAT 5e cable to replace!
Well, that's done. There's actually one more CAT 5e cable, but its attached to a printer that has a 10/100 NIC, so it can stay. In another few days the other switch will arrive, and after its installation our NOC will be up to date. I still need to complete the configuration of our NAS (network atttached storage) device, but there's no rush on that.
My brain is officially on overtime- that's all for now from the SUL.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Sunday, September 4, 2016
Labor Day 2016
Its that time of year again... the "unofficial" end of summer. I'm not sure how it started, but in the United States, summer unofficially starts with Memorial Day and ends with Labor Day. I'm fairly certain that its not meterologically or astronomically accurate, but it certainly is convenient.
I'm not concerned with the calendar- I'm just waiting for the cooler temperatures!
Speaking of cool, Mr. T and I spent a good part of last Sunday working on organizing the Dungeon, which naturally spilled over to the SUL. Well, it wasn't really cool, but it was necessary... and months in the making! I'm not certain we gained any space, but the space we have is now much better organized.
Speaking of space, I've decided to fill a bit of the empty space between my ears with... wait for it..., R! Yes, it’s R, strange programming language from another planet that came to earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of other languages. R, which can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in a few lines of code. And that, disguised as a mere programming language, fights a never ending battle for truth, justice and the American way. And now another exciting episode in the adventures ofSuperman..., er, R (Sorry, I was thinking of Superman and the never-ending "battles" between programming languages.)
So, yeah, I'm taking a stab at R. There's a pretty neat tutorial that's been developed called "swirl" that's callable within the R IDE. I haven't gotten very far, but I think I'll pop back to the beginning for a bit of a refresher.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For those familiar with this blog, you should not be surprised surprised that I started writing this particular entry a week ago. Here in the United States, this past Monday was Labor Day, and also my birthday. Having a Monday holiday is always a nice thing- especially when it's one's birthday! Now, to set the record straight, at our house we don't do much for birthdays more than acknowledging that someone is a year older! Still, it's nice to have the day off.
However, press schedules are relentless....
I worked four days this week, but I put in hours for almost six days. So, for once I have a fairly legitimate excuse for a delayed blog entry.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Software and stuff-
Not much to report, unfortunately. I'm schlepping along in R... weeks like this are not conducive to learning!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
I'm not concerned with the calendar- I'm just waiting for the cooler temperatures!
Speaking of cool, Mr. T and I spent a good part of last Sunday working on organizing the Dungeon, which naturally spilled over to the SUL. Well, it wasn't really cool, but it was necessary... and months in the making! I'm not certain we gained any space, but the space we have is now much better organized.
Speaking of space, I've decided to fill a bit of the empty space between my ears with... wait for it..., R! Yes, it’s R, strange programming language from another planet that came to earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of other languages. R, which can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in a few lines of code. And that, disguised as a mere programming language, fights a never ending battle for truth, justice and the American way. And now another exciting episode in the adventures of
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For those familiar with this blog, you should not be surprised surprised that I started writing this particular entry a week ago. Here in the United States, this past Monday was Labor Day, and also my birthday. Having a Monday holiday is always a nice thing- especially when it's one's birthday! Now, to set the record straight, at our house we don't do much for birthdays more than acknowledging that someone is a year older! Still, it's nice to have the day off.
However, press schedules are relentless....
I worked four days this week, but I put in hours for almost six days. So, for once I have a fairly legitimate excuse for a delayed blog entry.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Software and stuff-
Not much to report, unfortunately. I'm schlepping along in R... weeks like this are not conducive to learning!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Monday, March 14, 2016
Meanwhile, back in the Secret Underground Lair....
Those kind folk who have been following this blog for a bit may be aware that our home office, the Secret Underground Lair (SUL), is undergoing a bit of a reconfiguration. That's actually a "bit" of an understatement.
Before going to work last Monday evening (3/7 or 7/3 depending on your calendar), Mr. T and I spent about a hour of quality time grunting, straining and sweating as we resituated eighteen cartons of books. While moving the books, I discovered a few things: not all of the boxes or plastic storage containers were properly or efficiently packed, and more importantly, there are MANY books in storage that I need access to, so we will be swapping some books out.of storage and replacing them with books which really should be in storage. It was worth it, though: for the moment, we have TWO walkways in the office. Mr. T tried some scenarios in Microsoft Visio, though, and is currently of the opinion that we will not be able to maintain this corridor if we want the best use of our limited space. I hope to do a bit of work in the Dungeon to free up some additional space. As we are on the cusp of Daylight Saving Time (ugh!), it's nearly midnight, so any more SUL work will take place tomorrow (Sunday 3/13 or 13/3!). And if anyone is doing the math, it has taken me seven days to get this far with this latest blog entry... overtime is great for our bottom line, but it definitely puts a damper on other things- like blogging!
Data!
In my previous post Working with someone else's data, I mentioned that I'm using peeron.com's data as the basis for my Lego data. I also indicated that although it's a great list, I have a good amount of work to do before it is useful to me. The following two lines are a sampling of consecutive rows copied from the .txt file, and illustrate quite well my "issues" with their data:
3001px2 Brick 2 x 4 with Eyes and Wavey Mouth Pattern nose, nostril, snout
3001px20 Brick 2 x 4 with Red Danger Stripes and Two Horizontal Stripes Pattern
For starters, peeron.com has done a nice job of making a list of Lego parts. Their website is excellent, and their search engine is very nice. However, I'm not interested in their frontend, or even their instruction scans.
I'm cataloging and categorizing MY data, and their part number list is what I need. And although I've also mentioned before that this list is at LEAST four years out of date, up to date is not what I initially need. I need the basics first. And although peeron's 18,511 rows of data may seem impressive to someone who isn't an Adult Fan of Lego (AFOL), for me the list is horribly incomplete as I have purchased sets that were manufactured after 2012. Also, it has a lot of data that is extraneous for me, primarily part numbers for sticker sheets and parts which have somehow been redesignated, renumbered or somehow made obsolete. So, I need to do a bit of rework on their data.
The red bolded text above is two consecutive rows of data copied from their .txt file. Based on these two lines, I hope to show how much work I have cut out for me.
For starters, I took their .txt file and copied it into an Excel spreadsheet. My first task is to make two columns out of this data- one for the part number, and one for the description. I'm using 3001- this is the Lego designation for the ubiquitous 2x4 brick which nearly every human being has stepped on at least three times. The next few characters describe the variation/description of the brick. So far, so good. First problem: I don't know of an easy way to separate the part numbers from the descriptions- I'm certain there's some software that can parse the data, find the first empty space, and move the next set of characters into a new column. So, until I find a software solution, I'm doing CRTL+X, CRTL+V to manipulate things. Second problem: Once they are separated, I can't sort these, because although px2 comes before px20, px20-23 come before px3 in Excel. And some of these numbers run into the hundreds. So, nearly every suffix will need to be reformatted to actually display in numeric order. To do this, I'm going to create a new part number that my database will use; if I ever create my own Lego website, only the original Lego part numbers will be used.
After the columns are created (and before I start tweaking the part numbers), I'm going to pull out the extraneous part numbers and put them in a separate worksheet. After that, the remaining data descriptions will get trimmed down and standardized with a few hits with Find and Replace.
I've currently got 2,022 rows separated- roughly 11% of the 1st stage is complete. That's it for now.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Before going to work last Monday evening (3/7 or 7/3 depending on your calendar), Mr. T and I spent about a hour of quality time grunting, straining and sweating as we resituated eighteen cartons of books. While moving the books, I discovered a few things: not all of the boxes or plastic storage containers were properly or efficiently packed, and more importantly, there are MANY books in storage that I need access to, so we will be swapping some books out.of storage and replacing them with books which really should be in storage. It was worth it, though: for the moment, we have TWO walkways in the office. Mr. T tried some scenarios in Microsoft Visio, though, and is currently of the opinion that we will not be able to maintain this corridor if we want the best use of our limited space. I hope to do a bit of work in the Dungeon to free up some additional space. As we are on the cusp of Daylight Saving Time (ugh!), it's nearly midnight, so any more SUL work will take place tomorrow (Sunday 3/13 or 13/3!). And if anyone is doing the math, it has taken me seven days to get this far with this latest blog entry... overtime is great for our bottom line, but it definitely puts a damper on other things- like blogging!
Data!
In my previous post Working with someone else's data, I mentioned that I'm using peeron.com's data as the basis for my Lego data. I also indicated that although it's a great list, I have a good amount of work to do before it is useful to me. The following two lines are a sampling of consecutive rows copied from the .txt file, and illustrate quite well my "issues" with their data:
3001px2 Brick 2 x 4 with Eyes and Wavey Mouth Pattern nose, nostril, snout
3001px20 Brick 2 x 4 with Red Danger Stripes and Two Horizontal Stripes Pattern
For starters, peeron.com has done a nice job of making a list of Lego parts. Their website is excellent, and their search engine is very nice. However, I'm not interested in their frontend, or even their instruction scans.
I'm cataloging and categorizing MY data, and their part number list is what I need. And although I've also mentioned before that this list is at LEAST four years out of date, up to date is not what I initially need. I need the basics first. And although peeron's 18,511 rows of data may seem impressive to someone who isn't an Adult Fan of Lego (AFOL), for me the list is horribly incomplete as I have purchased sets that were manufactured after 2012. Also, it has a lot of data that is extraneous for me, primarily part numbers for sticker sheets and parts which have somehow been redesignated, renumbered or somehow made obsolete. So, I need to do a bit of rework on their data.
The red bolded text above is two consecutive rows of data copied from their .txt file. Based on these two lines, I hope to show how much work I have cut out for me.
For starters, I took their .txt file and copied it into an Excel spreadsheet. My first task is to make two columns out of this data- one for the part number, and one for the description. I'm using 3001- this is the Lego designation for the ubiquitous 2x4 brick which nearly every human being has stepped on at least three times. The next few characters describe the variation/description of the brick. So far, so good. First problem: I don't know of an easy way to separate the part numbers from the descriptions- I'm certain there's some software that can parse the data, find the first empty space, and move the next set of characters into a new column. So, until I find a software solution, I'm doing CRTL+X, CRTL+V to manipulate things. Second problem: Once they are separated, I can't sort these, because although px2 comes before px20, px20-23 come before px3 in Excel. And some of these numbers run into the hundreds. So, nearly every suffix will need to be reformatted to actually display in numeric order. To do this, I'm going to create a new part number that my database will use; if I ever create my own Lego website, only the original Lego part numbers will be used.
After the columns are created (and before I start tweaking the part numbers), I'm going to pull out the extraneous part numbers and put them in a separate worksheet. After that, the remaining data descriptions will get trimmed down and standardized with a few hits with Find and Replace.
I've currently got 2,022 rows separated- roughly 11% of the 1st stage is complete. That's it for now.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Sunday, December 6, 2015
The State of the Blog, v.03
If it's December, then it must be time to...
Celebrate. Commemorate. Conjugate...?
Well, maybe not conjugate, but it's the THIRD anniversary of this blog! I'm somewhat e-excited about this. I can honestly say I never expected it to go this long, or have so many entries. Here's the quick recap, from the 1st blog The Final Frontier to the still strangely most popular one Why, 2K to the one that slipped through the proverbial e-cracks A Red Letter Day In History.
The unifying theme of this blog is data. A casual observer might not notice this, but I did say "unifying theme". So, if you're looking for the golden data nuggets of wisdom check out the twitters or websites of my good e-buddies Kirk Borne Ph.D. Lee Baker Ph.D. or Gregory Piatesky Ph.D.
For those who think my data science is a bit sexist, please check out my good e-buddies Diego Kuonen Ph.D., Carla Gentry and Carol Lynn Curchoe Ph.D.
(In the FWIW column, these folks are some of my followers on Twitter). Not to drop names, of course! :)
In any event, I did drop a few names there, so I should probably clarify things a bit. Some of my more recent posts have been of a somewhat personal nature, and not much data was presented. For the (I'm sure this is a very small percentage of my) readers who were expecting some data in those posts, I apologize.
In actuality, most of my "data" occurs on Twitter, with some on Pinterest. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure what my most impactful social medium is these days... Twitter is the easiest, Blogspot is the deepest, and Pinterest is the broadest. And, most importantly, it's hobby, so I'm not paying for analytics!
I suppose I enjoy blogging the most, as it is the most creative. Pinterest is lots of fun- and easy. However, there's very little original content. Twitter is fun, but once again, not much original content, as I'm generally more of a repeater rather than an original content contributor. Blogger... this is my "original" e-home. To quote AC/DC- "No stop signs, speed limits...." Not that I'm an AC/DC fan.
An update on the SUL (Secret Underground Lair)....
This is my corner of the SUL. If you're curious, the two leftmost PCs are Win7 machines, and the other is an HP workstation running Ubuntu 12.10, I think. There's actually a 4th screen (which is off camera to the right) for Raspberry Pi use and testing), and there are two additional PCs- one of which is another Win7 box, and the last one is an offline XP machine. In fairly big SUL news, we've been getting rid of old tech boxes (those of the cardboard variety, to clarify), and have reclaimed nearly a square meter of floor space.
That's all for now. Oh... still hoping someone in Antarctica will pick this up!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Monday, October 5, 2015
"How was your weekend?"
A typical Monday-at-work will often early on experience the "How was your weekend" question. It's pretty safe, really, and it's pretty much a soft question- there's almost NO way that this ice breaker can fail. Please note- I said ALMOST.
"Weekend" means the end of the workweek: no work, no school. Downtime. Sometimes, occasionally, it means that despite prior commitments, stuff that needs to get done at home, or an astronomical event that last occurred in 1982 and won't happen again until 2033, you have to work.
I'm trying really hard not to sound like I'm complaining, but the plain fact is this: I do not relish working on Sundays. Sunday has always been the quieter day of the week for me- relax, maybe catch a sporting event on TV, and do a bit of home-related stuff (grass mowing, etc.).
Not this weekend, though. This weekend was nonexistent for me.
I rolled into the office around 2230 on Friday night. It looked like a fairly busy night from the start; I had no way of knowing exactly HOW busy it would be. Busy ended up being NINE hours of overtime of Friday, and another SEVEN on Sunday. The downside to all of this was no weekend. The upside is overtime pay. We just had a few medical expenses (optometrist, veterinarian), so the extra buckazoids are much appreciated. Still, my "weekend" is shot. Gone. Nonexistent.
It's now Monday, approximately 1000. I had stuff I wanted to do that won't get done today because my sleep is totally hosed. Yes, the money is great- and needed- but the time lost to work cannot be recovered. Friday ended up being a 15 hour day, and Sunday was another seven hours (hmm, that sounds familiar!).
It is now Tuesday. We're so busy that I already have 21.5 hours on the clock, and only eight of these are "straight" time- the majority are overtime. And this week shows no promise of slowing down... I predict major overtime for at least the next three days.
Wednesday update- sixteen hours of straight time, and nineteen of overtime. Crazy night.
Thursday- I think the O.T. now is ~22 hours. And my supervisor has even more.
Friday- The week has officially ended with 29.5 hours of overtime. I am going in to work (tomorrow) for the second Sunday in a row.
So, here I sit on Saturday afternoon, decompressing. I'm in the Secret Underground Lair, trying to finish this blog on one computer and playing Railnation on another PC. I'm tired beyond words, but not exactly sleepy... I still have things on my mind.
Sunday- One is not required to work overtime in my company, but as the reader can see, we've been busy. My supervisor has put in as much overtime as I have (and possibly more), so I went in to the office today. I had anticipated a "light" day- boy, oh boy, was I ever mistaken. I ended up working on three projects in addition to the one I was there for. Total time on Sunday? 13.5 hours. Adding insult to injury, Jennifer had a lovely roast for dinner which I missed out on. I had also planned on a nap- which obviously never happened. Lastly, as I had anticipated a "light", short day, I didn't bring a lunch. Fortunately, I am prepared for situations such as this, and grabbed a canned pasta meal from my emergency office supply.
The last day I had off was two Sundays ago. Not bragging. Not complaining- I get paid to do this. I'm just stating a fact.
That's all from the SUL (Secret Underground Lair) for now. No data news to report, no Arduino progress report, and no Raspberry Pi update.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
"Weekend" means the end of the workweek: no work, no school. Downtime. Sometimes, occasionally, it means that despite prior commitments, stuff that needs to get done at home, or an astronomical event that last occurred in 1982 and won't happen again until 2033, you have to work.
I'm trying really hard not to sound like I'm complaining, but the plain fact is this: I do not relish working on Sundays. Sunday has always been the quieter day of the week for me- relax, maybe catch a sporting event on TV, and do a bit of home-related stuff (grass mowing, etc.).
Not this weekend, though. This weekend was nonexistent for me.
I rolled into the office around 2230 on Friday night. It looked like a fairly busy night from the start; I had no way of knowing exactly HOW busy it would be. Busy ended up being NINE hours of overtime of Friday, and another SEVEN on Sunday. The downside to all of this was no weekend. The upside is overtime pay. We just had a few medical expenses (optometrist, veterinarian), so the extra buckazoids are much appreciated. Still, my "weekend" is shot. Gone. Nonexistent.
It's now Monday, approximately 1000. I had stuff I wanted to do that won't get done today because my sleep is totally hosed. Yes, the money is great- and needed- but the time lost to work cannot be recovered. Friday ended up being a 15 hour day, and Sunday was another seven hours (hmm, that sounds familiar!).
It is now Tuesday. We're so busy that I already have 21.5 hours on the clock, and only eight of these are "straight" time- the majority are overtime. And this week shows no promise of slowing down... I predict major overtime for at least the next three days.
Wednesday update- sixteen hours of straight time, and nineteen of overtime. Crazy night.
Thursday- I think the O.T. now is ~22 hours. And my supervisor has even more.
Friday- The week has officially ended with 29.5 hours of overtime. I am going in to work (tomorrow) for the second Sunday in a row.
So, here I sit on Saturday afternoon, decompressing. I'm in the Secret Underground Lair, trying to finish this blog on one computer and playing Railnation on another PC. I'm tired beyond words, but not exactly sleepy... I still have things on my mind.
Sunday- One is not required to work overtime in my company, but as the reader can see, we've been busy. My supervisor has put in as much overtime as I have (and possibly more), so I went in to the office today. I had anticipated a "light" day- boy, oh boy, was I ever mistaken. I ended up working on three projects in addition to the one I was there for. Total time on Sunday? 13.5 hours. Adding insult to injury, Jennifer had a lovely roast for dinner which I missed out on. I had also planned on a nap- which obviously never happened. Lastly, as I had anticipated a "light", short day, I didn't bring a lunch. Fortunately, I am prepared for situations such as this, and grabbed a canned pasta meal from my emergency office supply.
The last day I had off was two Sundays ago. Not bragging. Not complaining- I get paid to do this. I'm just stating a fact.
That's all from the SUL (Secret Underground Lair) for now. No data news to report, no Arduino progress report, and no Raspberry Pi update.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Father's Day 2015- a contrarian view
This past Sunday we observed Father's Day here in the United States. As I understand it, a very well-meaning young lady had an idea that Mothers should have a special day set aside for them, and Mother's Day came into being. After that, greeting card companies caught on, and then (I'm OVERSIMPLIFYING here and probably making a ton of assumptions)... and then came Father's Day, Grandparent's Day, Mother in Law Day and Law Day, just to highlight a few of the myriad of (fill in the blank) Days.
Now, before anyone gets all upset about my seemingly callous position, let me backtrack just a bit. If someone wishes me a happy Father's Day, I'll gladly accept it. I really think its neat to have a special day to honor Moms and Motherhood, and Fathers and Fatherhood, and you can probably extend that a bit in a lot of different directions. According to Wikipedia, though, Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mother's day was concerned about the commercialization of the holiday not long after it had become established- and I think she and I might have some similiar thoughts about what are now known as "greeting card" holidays. Jennifer and I have three kids, and I can't remember the last time I got a card from any of them. And honestly? I could care less. I think Jennifer feels pretty much the same way. We generally try to do a little something special on these days (meals, mostly), but its more about family time than spending money on cards and gifts.
I think one of the best gifts one can give is time. This past Sunday was hot AND humid, so Jennifer was in no mood for going outside to do much of anything. On the other hand, it was not raining, so I thought it would be a great opportunity to go out and take some photos of the tollway expansion. I asked her to be polite, pretty much expecting what her response would be. She did not disappoint, but suggested Mr. T be invited. Much to my surprise, when I told him where I planned to go, he cheerfully accepted. When the spare batteries for my trusty Nikon D3200 were charged, I grabbed the backpack and we were off.
Mr. T was quite interested in the construction. What's happening is somewhat out of the ordinary: this is not a new highway. It is the widening by one lane in each direction of an existing highway. We were probably out for two hours or less, but had a blast! He's not a photographer, but has a bit of graphic design experience, so he makes a great assistant. And, he was ready for a bit of adventure. As my gear is really lightweight and all fits neatly into a small backpack, I kept it with me on my back. There were one or two shots where the tripod would have been nice, but in the end I had ~140 frames, several of which were very nice.
We also had the opportunity to climb up hill and down dale, so to speak.
And lastly, as I am fond of saying in this blog, we come to data. Except today, I don't want to talk about data per se, but rather data handling.
As frequent readers may be aware, the Secret Underground Lair (SUL) is in the midst of a major overhaul. Furniture has been moved out, and furniture has been moved in. Up until now it's been something of a minor disaster (think S.S. Minnow rather than R.M.S. Titanic). Still, it's been quite the challenge as displaced items seem to occupy more space than they used to. So, I suppose it isn't so much data handling even as it is data display: we've eliminated al of the CRTs in the SUL and now only have flat panels. This means we'll soon be goint to visit our local Goodwill donation center with eight monitors- the oldest one was manufactured in 1990!
I still need to hook up the Raspberry Pi- we might be back in programming mode soon! Also, with the new setup, I can easily jack my work laptop into one of the new monitors and work effectively from home. There's also room on the desktop for my personal laptop, so I can get back to the Arduino as well!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Now, before anyone gets all upset about my seemingly callous position, let me backtrack just a bit. If someone wishes me a happy Father's Day, I'll gladly accept it. I really think its neat to have a special day to honor Moms and Motherhood, and Fathers and Fatherhood, and you can probably extend that a bit in a lot of different directions. According to Wikipedia, though, Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mother's day was concerned about the commercialization of the holiday not long after it had become established- and I think she and I might have some similiar thoughts about what are now known as "greeting card" holidays. Jennifer and I have three kids, and I can't remember the last time I got a card from any of them. And honestly? I could care less. I think Jennifer feels pretty much the same way. We generally try to do a little something special on these days (meals, mostly), but its more about family time than spending money on cards and gifts.
I think one of the best gifts one can give is time. This past Sunday was hot AND humid, so Jennifer was in no mood for going outside to do much of anything. On the other hand, it was not raining, so I thought it would be a great opportunity to go out and take some photos of the tollway expansion. I asked her to be polite, pretty much expecting what her response would be. She did not disappoint, but suggested Mr. T be invited. Much to my surprise, when I told him where I planned to go, he cheerfully accepted. When the spare batteries for my trusty Nikon D3200 were charged, I grabbed the backpack and we were off.
Mr. T was quite interested in the construction. What's happening is somewhat out of the ordinary: this is not a new highway. It is the widening by one lane in each direction of an existing highway. We were probably out for two hours or less, but had a blast! He's not a photographer, but has a bit of graphic design experience, so he makes a great assistant. And, he was ready for a bit of adventure. As my gear is really lightweight and all fits neatly into a small backpack, I kept it with me on my back. There were one or two shots where the tripod would have been nice, but in the end I had ~140 frames, several of which were very nice.
We also had the opportunity to climb up hill and down dale, so to speak.
And lastly, as I am fond of saying in this blog, we come to data. Except today, I don't want to talk about data per se, but rather data handling.
As frequent readers may be aware, the Secret Underground Lair (SUL) is in the midst of a major overhaul. Furniture has been moved out, and furniture has been moved in. Up until now it's been something of a minor disaster (think S.S. Minnow rather than R.M.S. Titanic). Still, it's been quite the challenge as displaced items seem to occupy more space than they used to. So, I suppose it isn't so much data handling even as it is data display: we've eliminated al of the CRTs in the SUL and now only have flat panels. This means we'll soon be goint to visit our local Goodwill donation center with eight monitors- the oldest one was manufactured in 1990!
I still need to hook up the Raspberry Pi- we might be back in programming mode soon! Also, with the new setup, I can easily jack my work laptop into one of the new monitors and work effectively from home. There's also room on the desktop for my personal laptop, so I can get back to the Arduino as well!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Suburbia 302: Nightstalkers
"He says there's a storm coming."
"Tell him I know. I know," Sarah Connor replies to the gas station owner at the end of the original Terminator movie just before she drives off towards the mountains, the storm and the epic Terminator music score.
I sorta knew what Sarah Connor was thinking when I pulled into my driveway this past Saturday morning. I opened the door of Meerkat, our trusty Subaru Outback, and did a quick survey of our yard. Yep, the grass was due for mowing- and the local meteorologists all agreed that the Chicago area was going to be hammered by wind, heavy rain and hail on Sunday- all day. Four letter words, each and every one of them!
Time for an aside here.... Back in my college days, I used to do a fair amount of creative writing, both for class and for personal enjoyment. Stream of consciousness was often used, partly because my typewriter (my manual typewriter) was horrid, and the "t" did not work properly. It was so bad that I once wrote a short paper for a freshman English class and I was struggling so badly that I slipped into stream of consciousness (SOC) without even knowing what SOC was whilst writing this essay. The paper itself was bad, but my salvation was my viewpoint- after several typos, I started SOC and the paper ended up getting a very good grade simply because I took the topic and a bad situation, and managed to get a laugh out of my classmates and our instructor through my commentary.
That was English 102. Fast forward thirty-odd years to 2015. I present Suburbia 302: Nightstalkers. And actually, this is not really for Nightstalkers. It is about Nightstalkers, and why we do things in the manner that we do.
Let's set the stage properly. At 0700, do you want to be wakened or have your morning disturbed by a lawnmower? Of course not! I'm not certain if this is a local ordinance, but the convention seems to be no mowers or other noisy equipment are to be in operation prior to 0800. I generally arrive home sometime between 0500 and 0700. Apart from the fact its bloody early, its also generally fairly wet, as the grass is covered with dew. So, I have the following windows available for grass cutting: Tuesday through Friday 1700-1900, Saturday 1800-2000 and pretty much all day Sunday and Monday. (And Sunday is the only full day of the entire week that I do not normally have to work for my employer.)
The bottom line, though, is that the grass does get cut, although sometimes because of meteorological conditions, it sometimes gets a bit shaggier than some of our neighbors' lawns who employ lawn services. For example, in May when Jennifer was out of town, I was always behind in my grass cutting because of Mother Nature's gleeful demonstrations of deluges, downpours and general dampness. Many of our neighbors had lawn services that seemed to suddenly appear with their high-powered self-propelled mowers the moment the rain stopped. Me? I had to wait until the grass dried- often a day or more. I once cut the grass in the rain, just because it was in dire need.
Its not quite like I see our suburb anywhere near the Monkees' Pleasant Valley Sunday, but I try to make our home and property look nice. And yes, I am aware that the song is NOT about nice or pretty (for 60's fans, please see also Proud Mary)
On the data front, not much has been going on. As some may be aware the Secret Underground Lair (SUL) has been undergoing a remodel. Mr. T., in an honest effort to move things along, committed a tactical error which has created a setback. In my previous blog, (Around) 2.5 Years Ago, or, my personal Interwebz v2.1, I had noted that the major moves were complete, and what was left was arguably the hard part- getting everything back in the office. Mr. T. decided to expedite the process by unboxing a great deal of old software to save some room. The net result of this was the complete occupation (wasted space) of nearly two shelves of formerly unoccupied space. It has been a week since he did this, and I'm still trying to figure out the best way to re-package this software.
Lego data has not been worked on. But- some Lego elements have been organized for ease of counting.
Lastly, Jennifer came to me with an odd problem- she was trying to read a document, but it would not download properly. At first, the website was blamed, but after a bit of troubleshooting, I discovered a much simpler error: Microsoft Office was not installed on her PC. Fiften minutes later, everything was good.
Now if I could only find the interface cable for my DSLR....
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
"Tell him I know. I know," Sarah Connor replies to the gas station owner at the end of the original Terminator movie just before she drives off towards the mountains, the storm and the epic Terminator music score.
I sorta knew what Sarah Connor was thinking when I pulled into my driveway this past Saturday morning. I opened the door of Meerkat, our trusty Subaru Outback, and did a quick survey of our yard. Yep, the grass was due for mowing- and the local meteorologists all agreed that the Chicago area was going to be hammered by wind, heavy rain and hail on Sunday- all day. Four letter words, each and every one of them!
Time for an aside here.... Back in my college days, I used to do a fair amount of creative writing, both for class and for personal enjoyment. Stream of consciousness was often used, partly because my typewriter (my manual typewriter) was horrid, and the "t" did not work properly. It was so bad that I once wrote a short paper for a freshman English class and I was struggling so badly that I slipped into stream of consciousness (SOC) without even knowing what SOC was whilst writing this essay. The paper itself was bad, but my salvation was my viewpoint- after several typos, I started SOC and the paper ended up getting a very good grade simply because I took the topic and a bad situation, and managed to get a laugh out of my classmates and our instructor through my commentary.
That was English 102. Fast forward thirty-odd years to 2015. I present Suburbia 302: Nightstalkers. And actually, this is not really for Nightstalkers. It is about Nightstalkers, and why we do things in the manner that we do.
Let's set the stage properly. At 0700, do you want to be wakened or have your morning disturbed by a lawnmower? Of course not! I'm not certain if this is a local ordinance, but the convention seems to be no mowers or other noisy equipment are to be in operation prior to 0800. I generally arrive home sometime between 0500 and 0700. Apart from the fact its bloody early, its also generally fairly wet, as the grass is covered with dew. So, I have the following windows available for grass cutting: Tuesday through Friday 1700-1900, Saturday 1800-2000 and pretty much all day Sunday and Monday. (And Sunday is the only full day of the entire week that I do not normally have to work for my employer.)
The bottom line, though, is that the grass does get cut, although sometimes because of meteorological conditions, it sometimes gets a bit shaggier than some of our neighbors' lawns who employ lawn services. For example, in May when Jennifer was out of town, I was always behind in my grass cutting because of Mother Nature's gleeful demonstrations of deluges, downpours and general dampness. Many of our neighbors had lawn services that seemed to suddenly appear with their high-powered self-propelled mowers the moment the rain stopped. Me? I had to wait until the grass dried- often a day or more. I once cut the grass in the rain, just because it was in dire need.
Its not quite like I see our suburb anywhere near the Monkees' Pleasant Valley Sunday, but I try to make our home and property look nice. And yes, I am aware that the song is NOT about nice or pretty (for 60's fans, please see also Proud Mary)
On the data front, not much has been going on. As some may be aware the Secret Underground Lair (SUL) has been undergoing a remodel. Mr. T., in an honest effort to move things along, committed a tactical error which has created a setback. In my previous blog, (Around) 2.5 Years Ago, or, my personal Interwebz v2.1, I had noted that the major moves were complete, and what was left was arguably the hard part- getting everything back in the office. Mr. T. decided to expedite the process by unboxing a great deal of old software to save some room. The net result of this was the complete occupation (wasted space) of nearly two shelves of formerly unoccupied space. It has been a week since he did this, and I'm still trying to figure out the best way to re-package this software.
Lego data has not been worked on. But- some Lego elements have been organized for ease of counting.
Lastly, Jennifer came to me with an odd problem- she was trying to read a document, but it would not download properly. At first, the website was blamed, but after a bit of troubleshooting, I discovered a much simpler error: Microsoft Office was not installed on her PC. Fiften minutes later, everything was good.
Now if I could only find the interface cable for my DSLR....
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Thursday, June 4, 2015
(Around) 2.5 years, or, my personal Interwebz v2.1
Around two and a half years ago, I posted my first blog- December 4th, 2012 (it's a pretty short post- even by my current blogging standards!). Even way back then (figuratively speaking) I strove to keep data in the mix as the unifying theme of this blog. And at the end of May, 2015, I'm still blogging about life in general with data as the underlying theme.
It's June of 2015 now, and I've been working on my Twitter account. I consider Twitter serious work primarily because it is an integral element of my online presence strategy- and two and a half years ago, I didn't even know what an online presence strategy was, let alone seeing the need for one. After all, Twitter is one of the places where this blogs posts, but more importantly, it's where I interact with the world of #bigdata and #IoT.
I'm a firm believer in cross-pollenization and shameless self-promotion when it comes to creating a larger presence on the internet, so here's an invitation: if you have an understanding of any of the following terms, have a personal or professional interest in them, or possibly have heard one or more of them before and would like to learn more about them... here's a sample of the topics I address on my (hochspeyer) account on twitter:
#bigdata, #notsobigdata, #smalldata, #microdata, #database, #analytics, #stats, #IoT (Internet of Things), #IoE (Internet of Everything), #M2M (machine to machine), #machinelearning and, of course, #hadoop and #python. I touch on a lot of related topics on that account, but if Big Data and the Internet of Things are topics which you are interested in, you may enjoy following.
My other twitter account (hochspeyer1) still has a tech focus, but has more of a personal touch, looking more at #maker and #programming topics, as well as life in general.
Whew!
The state of the state of my microdata projects: as of today (Jun 4, 2015), the SUL (Secret Underground Lair) is still theoretically experiencing remodeling; by this I mean that while all of the furniture and shelving are in their (probable) final positions, everything that came out and came from upstairs still is in need of homes. Forty-two. my database project, is currently on hold. The Lego database (currently an Excel 2007 workbook) is currently in a data entry phase, and will eventually be a part of Forty-two. Even the Raspberry Pi, Arduino and Python projects are all on hold pending the completion of the SUL upgrade/remodel. Lastly, I'm building my media library, one song at a time. I'm using Windows Media Player, which I suppose is extremely lazy, but the interface is familiar and it does pretty much all that I want, so for now it suffices.
That's all from the SUL for now. As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
It's June of 2015 now, and I've been working on my Twitter account. I consider Twitter serious work primarily because it is an integral element of my online presence strategy- and two and a half years ago, I didn't even know what an online presence strategy was, let alone seeing the need for one. After all, Twitter is one of the places where this blogs posts, but more importantly, it's where I interact with the world of #bigdata and #IoT.
I'm a firm believer in cross-pollenization and shameless self-promotion when it comes to creating a larger presence on the internet, so here's an invitation: if you have an understanding of any of the following terms, have a personal or professional interest in them, or possibly have heard one or more of them before and would like to learn more about them... here's a sample of the topics I address on my (hochspeyer) account on twitter:
#bigdata, #notsobigdata, #smalldata, #microdata, #database, #analytics, #stats, #IoT (Internet of Things), #IoE (Internet of Everything), #M2M (machine to machine), #machinelearning and, of course, #hadoop and #python. I touch on a lot of related topics on that account, but if Big Data and the Internet of Things are topics which you are interested in, you may enjoy following.
My other twitter account (hochspeyer1) still has a tech focus, but has more of a personal touch, looking more at #maker and #programming topics, as well as life in general.
Whew!
The state of the state of my microdata projects: as of today (Jun 4, 2015), the SUL (Secret Underground Lair) is still theoretically experiencing remodeling; by this I mean that while all of the furniture and shelving are in their (probable) final positions, everything that came out and came from upstairs still is in need of homes. Forty-two. my database project, is currently on hold. The Lego database (currently an Excel 2007 workbook) is currently in a data entry phase, and will eventually be a part of Forty-two. Even the Raspberry Pi, Arduino and Python projects are all on hold pending the completion of the SUL upgrade/remodel. Lastly, I'm building my media library, one song at a time. I'm using Windows Media Player, which I suppose is extremely lazy, but the interface is familiar and it does pretty much all that I want, so for now it suffices.
That's all from the SUL for now. As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Batch v2.0
I figured I'd go with a very "I.T.-sounding" title for a change, and quite honestly, anytime you throw out verbiage resembling "v2.0", it implies that this is the new and improved version of something, and it should be checked out. I'm glad you've stuck with me thus far, as I'm about to possibly let some of the wind out of your sails of enthusiasm: this is not about a new an improved app or some software product. It's not a Python library or a Hadoop project.
Actually, it's short for the decidedly unsexy sounding "Bachelorhood Revisited", which is more less where I find myself this morning. The short version of the story is this: Jennifer's Mom had an upcoming medical procedure which required at least a one day hospital stay, and then some assistance once she got home. As Jennifer was pretty much the only family member available for these tasks, she flew over and is spending pretty much all of May with her folks.
So this leaves me in an odd state of quasi-bachelorhood: on the one hand, I can come and go whenever, turn the lights on in the bedroom at all hours, and generally don't have to be to quiet when I come in. Those are the "pluses".
In the debit column, I have to take care of the bills, meter reading, garbage- pretty much everything household related that Jennifer normally does (of course, she helps out tremendously in a remote capacity). I do some of the cooking and food prep... not much, really, but much more that when she's here. I do the vast majority of the dishes, and all of the laundry. And I have to warm the bed up all on my own. This all happens before or after work and on what passes for a weekend.
In summary: this bachelor thing is for the birds. I can't wait for her to get back!
Data news: I've been watching the (free) Google analytics for my blog, and I'm at a loss for this month's performance, which is a personal best for me in terms of viewership: with a little over a third of the month elapsed, I've surpassed my previous record month by 9.2%. And there are over two weeks to go! Woo hoo!
Lego data news: The Lego spreadsheet continues to grow and evolve. I finished the count on the white 3001 elements (the basic, ubiquitous 2x4 Lego brick); next on the list are the red 3001 elements. The current grand total stands at 1792 pieces. I should note here that when you're holding some of those nifty molded ABS plastic toys in your hand, they are not parts or pieces or bricks... they are elements.
SUL news: The Secret Underground Lair officially has all of its furniture repositioned in the new and improved floorplan. There have been some unofficial murmurings, however, that one more move may be in the offing, although this would require disassembling my half of the office. The jury is still out on this... more news as it becomes available.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Actually, it's short for the decidedly unsexy sounding "Bachelorhood Revisited", which is more less where I find myself this morning. The short version of the story is this: Jennifer's Mom had an upcoming medical procedure which required at least a one day hospital stay, and then some assistance once she got home. As Jennifer was pretty much the only family member available for these tasks, she flew over and is spending pretty much all of May with her folks.
So this leaves me in an odd state of quasi-bachelorhood: on the one hand, I can come and go whenever, turn the lights on in the bedroom at all hours, and generally don't have to be to quiet when I come in. Those are the "pluses".
In the debit column, I have to take care of the bills, meter reading, garbage- pretty much everything household related that Jennifer normally does (of course, she helps out tremendously in a remote capacity). I do some of the cooking and food prep... not much, really, but much more that when she's here. I do the vast majority of the dishes, and all of the laundry. And I have to warm the bed up all on my own. This all happens before or after work and on what passes for a weekend.
In summary: this bachelor thing is for the birds. I can't wait for her to get back!
Data news: I've been watching the (free) Google analytics for my blog, and I'm at a loss for this month's performance, which is a personal best for me in terms of viewership: with a little over a third of the month elapsed, I've surpassed my previous record month by 9.2%. And there are over two weeks to go! Woo hoo!
Lego data news: The Lego spreadsheet continues to grow and evolve. I finished the count on the white 3001 elements (the basic, ubiquitous 2x4 Lego brick); next on the list are the red 3001 elements. The current grand total stands at 1792 pieces. I should note here that when you're holding some of those nifty molded ABS plastic toys in your hand, they are not parts or pieces or bricks... they are elements.
SUL news: The Secret Underground Lair officially has all of its furniture repositioned in the new and improved floorplan. There have been some unofficial murmurings, however, that one more move may be in the offing, although this would require disassembling my half of the office. The jury is still out on this... more news as it becomes available.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Saturday, May 9, 2015
Life in the Twittersphere
I'm not going to do the parody lyrics here, but bring up the Eagles' "Life In The Fast Lane" from their "Hotel California" album and you can sort of hum along- it pretty much works. I used to do a lot of parody lyrics, as a matter of fact, but as far as this blog goes, I really didn't make the connection with the Eagles until I actually saw the title of the blog.
For what its worth, this was going to be another "Hoodie Migration" blog, but that was before I read a few posts from the Outmannedmommy blog. To be fair, the Outmannedmommy blog is quite funny, but it may be NSFW (not safe for work) as F-bombs occasionally detonate- especially from guest writers! Still, I enjoy Mary Widdicks' writing- because her style is great, and I can relate to her writing.
Also, strangely (or not?), I don't read a lot of other blogs, Mary's is the only funny one I normally read; most of the rest are retweets on Twitter (nothing wrong with that) about the IoT and bigdata.
And here's the crux, the nexus of this post: Me and Twitter (if you ant to try your hand at parodying this, try Tom T. Hall's most excellent "Me and Jesus" or "Faster Horses, Younger Women, Older Whiskey and More Money".
Twitter is by far the number one reason for my dearth of blogs as of late. I've been contributing a fair amount to the Twittersphere, focusing primarily on Big Data and the Internet of Things. One of my coworkers constantly tells me that I'm a fraud (he's kidding... mostly) because I'm not a PhD, a data scientist, a statistician, or any number of other things associated with Big Data and the IoT... and at that point I always remind him that I make no claims to be anything more than a catalyst or a conduit for ideas. And even though I'm no expert, I've become fairly adept at picking interesting and informative stories, factoids, infographs and blogs. This is evidenced by several folks that ARE PhD's, data scientists and statisticians who follow (and retweet) me.
That's the really short version of Life in the Twittersphere, but I need to get to bed, so I am going to close this and hopefully get another blog out very soon.
News from the Secret Underground Lair (SUL): I think I had mentioned that Mr. T and I were planning a bit of remodeling in the SUL. I'm happy to report that the majority of that work is now complete. Well, the furniture moving is done. Everything that got moved out now needs to be moved back in- I wish there was a defrag utility for small offices... press a button on the wall, and all of the books, boxes, doodads, computer components, computers, etc would find the optimal place to rest and automatically go there.
Finally, data news (this blog is about data, right?) I've got a spreadsheet roughed out, and have put a bit of test data in. So far, everything looks good: according to my flat database, I have 71 Lego elements.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
For what its worth, this was going to be another "Hoodie Migration" blog, but that was before I read a few posts from the Outmannedmommy blog. To be fair, the Outmannedmommy blog is quite funny, but it may be NSFW (not safe for work) as F-bombs occasionally detonate- especially from guest writers! Still, I enjoy Mary Widdicks' writing- because her style is great, and I can relate to her writing.
Also, strangely (or not?), I don't read a lot of other blogs, Mary's is the only funny one I normally read; most of the rest are retweets on Twitter (nothing wrong with that) about the IoT and bigdata.
And here's the crux, the nexus of this post: Me and Twitter (if you ant to try your hand at parodying this, try Tom T. Hall's most excellent "Me and Jesus" or "Faster Horses, Younger Women, Older Whiskey and More Money".
Twitter is by far the number one reason for my dearth of blogs as of late. I've been contributing a fair amount to the Twittersphere, focusing primarily on Big Data and the Internet of Things. One of my coworkers constantly tells me that I'm a fraud (he's kidding... mostly) because I'm not a PhD, a data scientist, a statistician, or any number of other things associated with Big Data and the IoT... and at that point I always remind him that I make no claims to be anything more than a catalyst or a conduit for ideas. And even though I'm no expert, I've become fairly adept at picking interesting and informative stories, factoids, infographs and blogs. This is evidenced by several folks that ARE PhD's, data scientists and statisticians who follow (and retweet) me.
That's the really short version of Life in the Twittersphere, but I need to get to bed, so I am going to close this and hopefully get another blog out very soon.
News from the Secret Underground Lair (SUL): I think I had mentioned that Mr. T and I were planning a bit of remodeling in the SUL. I'm happy to report that the majority of that work is now complete. Well, the furniture moving is done. Everything that got moved out now needs to be moved back in- I wish there was a defrag utility for small offices... press a button on the wall, and all of the books, boxes, doodads, computer components, computers, etc would find the optimal place to rest and automatically go there.
Finally, data news (this blog is about data, right?) I've got a spreadsheet roughed out, and have put a bit of test data in. So far, everything looks good: according to my flat database, I have 71 Lego elements.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
No plan of battle survives first contact with the enemy
Well, that's how I learned this particular truism. According to von Moltke the Elder, "No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter
with the enemy's main strength" (or "no plan survives contact with the
enemy"). His idea of warfare seemed to be plan, plan and then make some more plans- maybe not too bad an idea for business? Such has been my experience with the first day of Mr. T's and my grandiose plan to bring Order and Balance to the Chaos which is currently the Secret Underground Lair (SUL) in only seven days. Monday is done, and quite honestly, our chances for success are looking rather bleak.
Still, I'm an optimist.
We've decided to tackle the project in fairly easily manageable stages. The first stage involved the relocating of a small bookcase and its base from the east wall (next to Mr. T) to the west wall. Not a big deal, but Jennifer is also moving things outside of the SUL. What she is doing is important in our little world and needs to be done, but our home is not large (by American standards) so my progress was greatly hindered, but in a good way. I ended up tackling another area in the SUL, which needs to be tackled and will help out with the upcoming work of the next few days. Still, at the end of the first day, I had hope for more progress. But, as Vivien Leigh (as Scarlett O'Hara) said in "Gone With the Wind", "After all, tomorrow is another day". And Tuesday is done.
It's Wednesday evening, and this is my last SUL update for this entry. Jennifer and I got up early today and took our trusty Subaru Outback, Meerkat, for a Springtime checkup. We drove down to Grand Subaru for an oil change, tire rotation and a surprise complimentary wash- which included our epically salt-encrusted floor mats. On the way home, Jennifer heard about a special sale a local bakery was having, and although we knew of them both by their reputation and having sampled their products, we had never been there before. We decided to check the sale out, as it was not too far out of our way home.
Chicago's National Hockey League (NHL) franchise, the Blackhawks, is in the playoffs for the Stanley Cup- the League championship. So, Central Continental Bakery is having a merchandise promotion: when the Hawks win, Continental Bakery will have a special discount on one of their items the following day. The Hawks won last night, so today's special was a 20% discount on eclairs. Let me state firmly and without reservation that I love eclairs. As a family, we seldom have desserts, and when we do they are generally something Jennifer has made. So, to go out of the way to actually purchase a dessert is nearly unheard of.
Still, I'm an optimist.
We've decided to tackle the project in fairly easily manageable stages. The first stage involved the relocating of a small bookcase and its base from the east wall (next to Mr. T) to the west wall. Not a big deal, but Jennifer is also moving things outside of the SUL. What she is doing is important in our little world and needs to be done, but our home is not large (by American standards) so my progress was greatly hindered, but in a good way. I ended up tackling another area in the SUL, which needs to be tackled and will help out with the upcoming work of the next few days. Still, at the end of the first day, I had hope for more progress. But, as Vivien Leigh (as Scarlett O'Hara) said in "Gone With the Wind", "After all, tomorrow is another day". And Tuesday is done.
It's Wednesday evening, and this is my last SUL update for this entry. Jennifer and I got up early today and took our trusty Subaru Outback, Meerkat, for a Springtime checkup. We drove down to Grand Subaru for an oil change, tire rotation and a surprise complimentary wash- which included our epically salt-encrusted floor mats. On the way home, Jennifer heard about a special sale a local bakery was having, and although we knew of them both by their reputation and having sampled their products, we had never been there before. We decided to check the sale out, as it was not too far out of our way home.
Chicago's National Hockey League (NHL) franchise, the Blackhawks, is in the playoffs for the Stanley Cup- the League championship. So, Central Continental Bakery is having a merchandise promotion: when the Hawks win, Continental Bakery will have a special discount on one of their items the following day. The Hawks won last night, so today's special was a 20% discount on eclairs. Let me state firmly and without reservation that I love eclairs. As a family, we seldom have desserts, and when we do they are generally something Jennifer has made. So, to go out of the way to actually purchase a dessert is nearly unheard of.
The bakery is commonly known as Continental Bakery, and features a dizzying variety of what seems to be primarily pastries of central European origin (Danish, German, Polish, Austrian, Slovak, Moravian, Czech, Swiss). When we first walked in, our experience was this: we were smacked upside the head with EUROPE. It was like walking into Dr. Who's Tardis in Chicago and stepping out in Hochspeyer, Echternach or Tønder. The bakery's customer area is laid out in an L shape, and not a bit of space is wasted- even the decor drew us into a happier time across the Atlantic... had I looked out the window, I would not have been surprised to see a German vendor selling Itälienisch Eis from his little truck or a Citroën 2CV idling at the stoplight.
I said I had tried their wares before. Continental Bakery is famous throughout Chicagoland as THE baker and purveyor of pączki. The interesting thing about this pastry is that it is only available on one day each year at Continental Bakery: the day before the Catholic feast of Ash Wednesday, or "Fat Tuesday". On this day, the bakery is open and operating for twenty-four hours, cranking out pączki. This event is often featured on local television news.
So, we walked into the bakery with very high expectations and were not disappointed. The eclairs were beyond my words to describe, and we also picked up some soft cheesy garlic breadsticks, as well as sampling a few of their butter cookies. To quote Arnold; "I'll be back".
This is a bit lengthier than my usual posts, so I'm calling this a wrap- data next time!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Sunday, April 19, 2015
The SUL at the crossroads
Does anyone remember the 1986 movie Crossroads? It had some great big name talent in it, but I'll always remember it for Ralph Macchio (with his stupid big city hat), Steve Vai, and the really cool guitar battle at the end of the movie... sort of like the Charlie Daniels Band's song The Devil Went Down To Georgia, except for most of the details!
By this time, some of you gentle readers may have become accustomed to my segues, where I attempt to create a humorous, clever, or tenuous transition from the introduction to the main topic of the post. As "crossroads" is an apt description of where our beloved Secret Underground Lair is right now, I thought I'd start things out with the movie reference.
Everything started the Saturday before this last (April 11). I went down to the Secret Underground Lair (SUL) and logged in to a computer or two. After a bit of catching up on twitter, I started moving things around. At some point, Mr. T joined the party and ended up cleaning out the rolltop desk which is next to his computer desk. We would have done more, but it was way past my bedtime.
Sunday started out as a beautiful, sunny day which gradually clouded over and eventually saw some light rain. Meerkat, our trusty Subaru Outback, reminded me that I had not taken any pictures in quite some time, and there were a few subjects in the neighborhood that were under construction that were just BEGGING to be photographed. Who was I to argue with our car? I proceeded to charge camera batteries, and not long after that I was in search of photographic adventure!
I love construction- during the course of our church's renovation, I shot ~1500 frames on a compact digital point and shoot camera. These days, my "weapon of choice" for digital photography is the Nikon D3200. This camera is considered an entry level digital single lens reflex camera (DSLR), but I can't think of a way in which it doesn't completely blow away any of my old 35mm Minolta film cameras. When I went out this past Sunday, I shot ~170 frames of some building construction and of my main subject, the (literal) expansion of the tollway that runs through our city; they're adding a lane in each direction. The thing that is most interesting to me about the project is the fact that the roadway is elevated on a sort of berm rather than being at ground level, so there is a MASSIVE amount of construction going on.
When I got back to the house, Mr. T asked me if I was ready to move the desk. I said I was, and I think we spent close to four hours on that part of the project, cleaning, disassembling, moving and reassembling as necessary.
The SUL is not currently pretty, but what would one expect from any location with "Lair" in its name? We successfully were able to move both pieces of furniture with a relative minimum of difficulty: at the end of the day, no furniture was broken, no humans were injured, and most importantly, no cats were stepped on. After catching our collective breath, Mr. T was quick to point out that current location of the entertainment center (the "After" picture) would not suit our purposes, because the television s really not viewable in its current location (we do not intend to watch broadcast programming on this TV; it will be used for videos and games). This (hopefully) final phase will start Monday, as I've taken some vacation time more or less for this task.
You may have read the rumor (started by me!) somewhere that the unifying theme of this blog is data... well, it really is! I am happy to report that my new pedometer is broken in and functional, and I have accumulated ten days worth of data. I have the older data on another computer, and intend to move these .csv files over and put everything together in a new .xlxs file at some point. I've done next to nothing with my main database project, so nothing new to report there. Data tracking for the blog is being continuously updated, and I'm hoping to hit the next "magic number" of viewers (10K) within the next few months- I'm currently averaging ~320 viewers spread across forty-eight countries and six continents... shameless plug here: does anyone know anybody in Antarctica? It's the last frontier, and my only "untapped" continent!
My plans for the coming week include (of course) a complete makeover of the SUL- there should be at one new blog from this adventure, so stay tuned!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
By this time, some of you gentle readers may have become accustomed to my segues, where I attempt to create a humorous, clever, or tenuous transition from the introduction to the main topic of the post. As "crossroads" is an apt description of where our beloved Secret Underground Lair is right now, I thought I'd start things out with the movie reference.
Everything started the Saturday before this last (April 11). I went down to the Secret Underground Lair (SUL) and logged in to a computer or two. After a bit of catching up on twitter, I started moving things around. At some point, Mr. T joined the party and ended up cleaning out the rolltop desk which is next to his computer desk. We would have done more, but it was way past my bedtime.
Sunday started out as a beautiful, sunny day which gradually clouded over and eventually saw some light rain. Meerkat, our trusty Subaru Outback, reminded me that I had not taken any pictures in quite some time, and there were a few subjects in the neighborhood that were under construction that were just BEGGING to be photographed. Who was I to argue with our car? I proceeded to charge camera batteries, and not long after that I was in search of photographic adventure!
I love construction- during the course of our church's renovation, I shot ~1500 frames on a compact digital point and shoot camera. These days, my "weapon of choice" for digital photography is the Nikon D3200. This camera is considered an entry level digital single lens reflex camera (DSLR), but I can't think of a way in which it doesn't completely blow away any of my old 35mm Minolta film cameras. When I went out this past Sunday, I shot ~170 frames of some building construction and of my main subject, the (literal) expansion of the tollway that runs through our city; they're adding a lane in each direction. The thing that is most interesting to me about the project is the fact that the roadway is elevated on a sort of berm rather than being at ground level, so there is a MASSIVE amount of construction going on.
When I got back to the house, Mr. T asked me if I was ready to move the desk. I said I was, and I think we spent close to four hours on that part of the project, cleaning, disassembling, moving and reassembling as necessary.
 |
| Before |
 | |||
| After |
You may have read the rumor (started by me!) somewhere that the unifying theme of this blog is data... well, it really is! I am happy to report that my new pedometer is broken in and functional, and I have accumulated ten days worth of data. I have the older data on another computer, and intend to move these .csv files over and put everything together in a new .xlxs file at some point. I've done next to nothing with my main database project, so nothing new to report there. Data tracking for the blog is being continuously updated, and I'm hoping to hit the next "magic number" of viewers (10K) within the next few months- I'm currently averaging ~320 viewers spread across forty-eight countries and six continents... shameless plug here: does anyone know anybody in Antarctica? It's the last frontier, and my only "untapped" continent!
My plans for the coming week include (of course) a complete makeover of the SUL- there should be at one new blog from this adventure, so stay tuned!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Sunday, April 12, 2015
On new specs
I (finally) had/made the opportunity to get a long overdue eye exam this past Tuesday. For those who do not live in the United States of America, I'd like to offer a bit of a background on healthcare in the good old U.S. of A. before getting into my new spectacles.
For starters, you may be familiar with or at least have heard of the debate that has been going on for the past several years about the atrocious state of the "health care system" here. Well, in a rare occurrence for this blog, I'm dipping a toe into political waters and voicing my opinion on a political topic. There's an old saying: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." To which I would add, "You can't fix what doesn't exist."
So in short, there is NO such thing as "the U.S. Health Care System". Really? Yup. Truth is, excellent, best in class health care is available in the United States if one can afford it- I guess the Shah of Iran could.
In any event, medical care here in the USA can be both high tech AND high touch. Over the years I've had a number of good experiences with the medical community. Where we (patients in the USA) run into problems is when the medical community, the insurance industry and various levels of government bureaucracy intersect. All of these intersections add complexity and cost to one's healthcare bill. My recent eye exam and glasses purchase are a typical example of this.
For starters, unless your particular healthcare provider consults feathers twirling in a boiling pot of river water for your diagnosis, its likely that he or she has been vetted through some sort of residency program, accredited by a school of higher learning, and then licensed by some sort of governmental agency. I'm personally all for some sort of vetting or certification process.
Likewise, your insurer probably wants to keep costs down, and over time has developed a table of reasonable and customary charges and procedures for any given diagnosis or course of treatment. This is also reasonable- in theory, these cost savings should be passed along to the insured.
And, government entities, in their stated best interest of the people, have put reasonable restraints on the insurers so that the consumers' (patients') rights are protected.
Which brings me back to my particular situation with a relatively simple durable healthcare appliance, namely eyeglasses.
The last time I had a vision exam was approximately four years ago. For some, this may be unremarkable, and for others it may be shocking. There's one thing I can say about vision and the patient: the patient pretty much has 24/7 feedback and is constantly observing (if not actively monitoring) key aspects of their eye health.
Four years ago, I knew I needed new glasses. I'd been wearing reading glasses since I was eighteen (I was my fifties then and now). We searched through our insurer's in-network list of providers and found one. We drove out and he was actually quite good. The lab that made our lenses, though, stank. As I understand it, reading glasses are a more simple prescription, but I had to have mine redone twice; Jennifer has a more complicated prescription and hers were redone three times. This is important. Why?
Mostly because the lab totally goofed up and really should be out of business because of their incompetence and shoddy manufacturing techniques.. The real complaint I have, though, is that there is an eye doctor within walking distance of our house. Four years ago, they were not in our insurance network. This year, they were. I'm not certain that four years ago we would have had any different results with the lenses, but we would have not have had to waste an hour driving to get the glasses. In the end, though, the glasses were fixed, and they lasted me for four years.
Fast forward to today. My employer has changed vision insurance providers, and the folks that are within walking distance are now in our provider network. We visited them this past Tuesday for my exam. We actually stopped by and made the appointment on Monday, and I actually could have been seen that same day, but we had "stuff" to do, so the exam was scheduled for Tuesday.
I found the exam to be interesting. They did the routine "looking" tests with the letters on the wall, and then many of the standard optometry tests. There were one or two which I was not acquainted with- especially the one with the blue light that apparently touches the surface of your eye.... BLAARGH! Blech! Yuck!
In the end, though, my eye health was deemed pretty good. We then got to the tough part: choosing frames and lenses.
I've been wearing specs for thirty + years, so this part of the process is familiar. However, in each of the past three exams, I had thought each time it might be the time to take the step from readers to "seeing" glasses. The first two times I was wrong. This time, my distance vision was still very much in the "doesn't need correction" range, but would benefit in certain circumstances- specifically in night driving and artificial lighting (pretty much night driving). So, as I work at night, I opted for the new and improved gradient lenses, which are essentially trifocal lenses: the top half of the lens is for distance; there will be an area in the middle for "computer" vision", and and an area near the bottom for reading. I want to make a small side comment here, because we don't typically note our own eccentricities: the lady that fitted my frames seemed to be very good at her job, and noted that I typically wear my glasses a bit lower than most folks. I suppose I might, and it would certainly not surprise me if this was the case.
In any event, I selected a frame that had sunglasses included as a magnetically attached sunglasses element- they look pretty cool, and eliminate the need to purchase a separate pair of prescription sunglasses or clip on shades.
So that's my week in a nutshell. I should have my glasses in another week or so, and to be honest I'm kinda excited: these lenses should allow me to see everything in and around the car with equal clarity!
Data news: I have to keep on reminding myself (and my readers) that the unifying theme of this blog is DATA! I finally configured my new pedometer last night. Its the same model Omron pedometer; the previous one died after ~ two years of use. I did a test of it, and it downloads data without a hitch.
Stay tuned for the SUL upgrade, which will be covered in painful detail in the next edition of this blog.
Until then, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
For starters, you may be familiar with or at least have heard of the debate that has been going on for the past several years about the atrocious state of the "health care system" here. Well, in a rare occurrence for this blog, I'm dipping a toe into political waters and voicing my opinion on a political topic. There's an old saying: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." To which I would add, "You can't fix what doesn't exist."
So in short, there is NO such thing as "the U.S. Health Care System". Really? Yup. Truth is, excellent, best in class health care is available in the United States if one can afford it- I guess the Shah of Iran could.
In any event, medical care here in the USA can be both high tech AND high touch. Over the years I've had a number of good experiences with the medical community. Where we (patients in the USA) run into problems is when the medical community, the insurance industry and various levels of government bureaucracy intersect. All of these intersections add complexity and cost to one's healthcare bill. My recent eye exam and glasses purchase are a typical example of this.
For starters, unless your particular healthcare provider consults feathers twirling in a boiling pot of river water for your diagnosis, its likely that he or she has been vetted through some sort of residency program, accredited by a school of higher learning, and then licensed by some sort of governmental agency. I'm personally all for some sort of vetting or certification process.
Likewise, your insurer probably wants to keep costs down, and over time has developed a table of reasonable and customary charges and procedures for any given diagnosis or course of treatment. This is also reasonable- in theory, these cost savings should be passed along to the insured.
And, government entities, in their stated best interest of the people, have put reasonable restraints on the insurers so that the consumers' (patients') rights are protected.
Which brings me back to my particular situation with a relatively simple durable healthcare appliance, namely eyeglasses.
The last time I had a vision exam was approximately four years ago. For some, this may be unremarkable, and for others it may be shocking. There's one thing I can say about vision and the patient: the patient pretty much has 24/7 feedback and is constantly observing (if not actively monitoring) key aspects of their eye health.
Four years ago, I knew I needed new glasses. I'd been wearing reading glasses since I was eighteen (I was my fifties then and now). We searched through our insurer's in-network list of providers and found one. We drove out and he was actually quite good. The lab that made our lenses, though, stank. As I understand it, reading glasses are a more simple prescription, but I had to have mine redone twice; Jennifer has a more complicated prescription and hers were redone three times. This is important. Why?
Mostly because the lab totally goofed up and really should be out of business because of their incompetence and shoddy manufacturing techniques.. The real complaint I have, though, is that there is an eye doctor within walking distance of our house. Four years ago, they were not in our insurance network. This year, they were. I'm not certain that four years ago we would have had any different results with the lenses, but we would have not have had to waste an hour driving to get the glasses. In the end, though, the glasses were fixed, and they lasted me for four years.
Fast forward to today. My employer has changed vision insurance providers, and the folks that are within walking distance are now in our provider network. We visited them this past Tuesday for my exam. We actually stopped by and made the appointment on Monday, and I actually could have been seen that same day, but we had "stuff" to do, so the exam was scheduled for Tuesday.
I found the exam to be interesting. They did the routine "looking" tests with the letters on the wall, and then many of the standard optometry tests. There were one or two which I was not acquainted with- especially the one with the blue light that apparently touches the surface of your eye.... BLAARGH! Blech! Yuck!
In the end, though, my eye health was deemed pretty good. We then got to the tough part: choosing frames and lenses.
I've been wearing specs for thirty + years, so this part of the process is familiar. However, in each of the past three exams, I had thought each time it might be the time to take the step from readers to "seeing" glasses. The first two times I was wrong. This time, my distance vision was still very much in the "doesn't need correction" range, but would benefit in certain circumstances- specifically in night driving and artificial lighting (pretty much night driving). So, as I work at night, I opted for the new and improved gradient lenses, which are essentially trifocal lenses: the top half of the lens is for distance; there will be an area in the middle for "computer" vision", and and an area near the bottom for reading. I want to make a small side comment here, because we don't typically note our own eccentricities: the lady that fitted my frames seemed to be very good at her job, and noted that I typically wear my glasses a bit lower than most folks. I suppose I might, and it would certainly not surprise me if this was the case.
In any event, I selected a frame that had sunglasses included as a magnetically attached sunglasses element- they look pretty cool, and eliminate the need to purchase a separate pair of prescription sunglasses or clip on shades.
So that's my week in a nutshell. I should have my glasses in another week or so, and to be honest I'm kinda excited: these lenses should allow me to see everything in and around the car with equal clarity!
Data news: I have to keep on reminding myself (and my readers) that the unifying theme of this blog is DATA! I finally configured my new pedometer last night. Its the same model Omron pedometer; the previous one died after ~ two years of use. I did a test of it, and it downloads data without a hitch.
Stay tuned for the SUL upgrade, which will be covered in painful detail in the next edition of this blog.
Until then, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
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