Happy birthday, Meerkat! (*and: my Bacon number!)

I haven't mentioned Meerkat, our trusty Subaru Outback, in some time. It's a good time, though, as Meerkat's 2nd birthday was the 2nd of April. Granted, she's a bit older than that... but not much- that's the day we brought her home. And for those who may be wondering why I refer to our car with a feminine pronoun, it's merely borrowing from the naval tradition of referring to ships with a feminine pronoun.  And Jennifer reminded me that much like that day two years ago, it snowed. So, Happy Birthday, Meerkat!

Oh, and we just turned 11,000 miles (17,600 km) on the odometer. Now, that doesn't sound like a lot, and in truth it really isn't. According to http://project.wnyc.org/, the average commute for my ZIP (postal) code is around 28 minutes, which is above the national average of 25.4 minutes. My average commute is under eight minutes; on a bad day, getting caught by a train, my commute time will still be under twelve minutes.

In an effort to keep this from becoming a database changelog, I'm just going to say that work on the Lego datasaet is proceeding nicely. I haven't done anything with Forty-Two lately, but that's okay as my time has gone into the dataset.

Lastly, I'd like to introduce you to a term I use quite often IRL: "my good e-buddy". I use this most often when I'm referring to someone whom I've never met except for online contact, or someone I do know IRL, but who is more of an acquaintance than anything else. The reason I mention this is my good e-buddy @lindaregber had an interesting tweet the other day which I liked well enough to RT. She posted a study from Research at Facebook which states that there is an average separation of 3.57 for Facebook users; in other words, you are only separated from ANY Facebook user by <4 persons. That's pretty cool; I'd like to see something along the lines of The Oracle of Bacon for "ordinary folks". Although I'm not a famous person, and I have never acted, I have a Bacon number of 3, which means I'm closer to Kevin Bacon than I am to any random Facebook user! How? Alex Trebec was in Dying Young  with Vincent D'Onofrio, who was in JFK with Kevin Bacon. So, how do I get the 3? Alex has a Bacon number of 2; I met Alex in Frankfurt a.M. after trying out for Jeopardy in a Stars & Stripes sponsored event.

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

Super Bowl L

I did not watch this year's Super Bowl.

For what it's worth, I have not watched a Super Bowl since the Chicago Bears humiliated, dominated, and destroyed the cheating, the Clam-bakes..., er... New England pre-Deflate-gate Patriots 46-10 in Super Bowl XX.

If the Bears are not there to win, or the Packers are not there to lose, the Super Bowl is unimportant to me.

In a way, I am a true sports fan. Not in the way that most folks would define a sports fan. I am a fan and a follower of teams that are MY teams. Da Cubs. Da Bears. Da Hawks. Ferrari. Subaru. I could care less about all other sports or teams. And, if you don't know what sports the previously mentioned teams are players in, that's okay.

So, you might be wondering how I spent "Super Bowl" Sunday? For starters, Mr. T. and I had a little adventure.  We made a pilgrimage to the Central Continental Bakery, where we procured some exquisite pączki. The interesting thing about Central Continental Bakery is this- when you step through the door, a part of you steps into Europe. Mr. T had enjoyed pączki before, but they were from a different bakery. Once he had experienced "the real deal", though, his taste buds were forever tuned to the "real deal"

That's all for now- the next post is #200. It should  be special.

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

The (inevitable) post-game weight-loss analysis

Almost four weeks ago I started a fitness program somewhat of my own design with the quantitative goal of losing 10 lbs (~4.5kg) in four weeks, and the qualitative goal of be fitter overall. As I was sitting here getting ready to write this, a few analogies came to mind.

If you're acquainted with American football or the Sony Playstation, you may have heard of John Madden, former NFL coach and television commentator. This, in turn, led me further down into the rabbit hole until I ran into the Batman television series of the 60's. The connection here is that Madden used to do "chalk talks" on interesting plays during a game, in which he would quickly outline a particular play on a whiteboard or other device, often punctuating the action with "BIF!" "BAM!" "POW!" just as the Batman series would do every time the Caped Crusader (the REAL Batman, btw) landed a righteous uppercut on a villainous villain or one of his or her henchmen.

So, ... Madden + Batman = weight loss?

Not quite. I'm not dieting- I'm getting fit. I've made some lifestyle changes which have resulted in success: the goal was to lose 10lbs in four weeks- I lost 17 (~7.72kg)!

As my tracking was over the course of four weeks, a tie-in with American football was almost a natural. There are four quarters in a football game, and all of my data tracking was based of a four week period. In fact, one might even go so far as to think of this first "game" as a preseason game, in which I put of ideas forth, get some training in, experiment with diet, and get the Excel spreadsheet up to speed. The only difference between MY preseason and a football preseason game is that in my "preseason", the results count.

The analogy can be extended even deeper. In the NFL (American football), teams generally either have a dominant air (passing) offense or a ground (rushing) game. In my world, the "air" attack is mainly diet-based loss, whilst the ground game (running in the NFL [American football]) is walking in my analogy. So, how'd I do?

Week 1 (1st quarter): Weigh-in.  Not much much data, just setting down some baselines. First official (results) weekend. Three pound loss- a field goal?

Week 2 (2nd quarter)- A huge loss (8.6lbs- 3.9kg) This took me totally by surprise- I weighed myself FIVE ties to verify that that this number was correct!

Week 3 (3rd quarter)- A smaller loss, mostly due to a lack of my ground game (walking).

Week 4 (4th quarter)-  Pretty much maintenance.  So, as a recap: I've got four weeks "on the books". How did I do?

Ausgezeichnet! Of course! I am SO happy, joyous! These results were unexpected, to say the least.

A quick flashback to Friday morning appropriate. I was putting my stuff in Meerkat (our trusty Subaru Outback) just as my boss was pulling into the parking lot. He got out and we exchanged "good mornings".I then told him I had started a fitness program, with the intent of losing 10lbs in four weeks.

"Wow, that's quite a goal." (I'm paraphrasing here, but he meant that, as he's a pretty slender fellow). When I told him I had already lost 15lbs, he was nearly speechless! Frequent readers may have noted this in passing, but I tend to keep my language and situations "G" rated. But, damn, Damn, DAMN!

I LOST 17LBS IN 4 WEEKS!

I am sitting at my computer (obviously) in the SUL listening to Elvis' "Way Down". I'm not a huge Elvis fan, but I love this song,and it seems to be such an appropriate wrapping this up.

That's all for now. Another exciting "chapter" is just around the corner!

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

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.

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.

Before

After

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.

Meerkat's first snow

As you may have surmised, it's been a slow news month here in the Secret Underground Lair. In the Chicago area, we had our first snowflakes on Halloween. For the record, there was no measurable accumulation. Tonight, however, I think we have a "real" snowfall".  Back up a few steps....

As I was crossing the street to go to church earlier Saturday evening, a thought came to me that "maybe a good idea for a blog might be a comparison and contrast piece between churchgoing now and when I was a kid". I'm not certain how this might be received in my little corner of the blogosphere though, as well over 25% of my readers are reading this somewhere outside of North America. However, I'll give you the short version.

I had parked Meerkat (our trusty Subaru Outback) across the street from The Bridge Community Church. I locked the doors and set the alarm, and Jennifer, Mr. T and I walked across the street. I was wearing a layered combo of a Scottevest hoodie and vest.  The Bible I currently use is the English Standard Version (ESV) and it was in the right pocket of my vest on my Amazon Kindle Fire. In my left hand I held a Monster in a nondescript Rubbermaid container.

Okay- the "commercial" is over. The point is this: none of this stuff even existed when I was a kid. In fact, none of it even existed when our kids were... kids.

But, I digress. Tonight was Meerkat's first official snow.  And for those out of the loop, there's a difference between "snow" and "official snow". I googled "recordable snow" and found a link from NOAA to Chicago snowfall statistics. Mmmmmm.... DATA! The problem is- it did not answer my question: what is an officially recordable snowfall (from the FWIW department, I think it is one inch [2.54 CM]). NOAA seems to categorize snowfall as being either "trace", "measureable" or "1 inch or more". This year's first snowfall occurred on October 31, and it was definitely a trace. Tonight's snowfall (November 15) has not ended as far as I know, but is definitely at least an inch... by any standard, this is a "recordable" snowfall!

While I'm on the topic of data, I'd like to share an epiphany (from my FWIW department, a few years back, IBM did a few television commercials with the theme "epiphany", and the whole concept of epiphany stuck from that point on). Several months ago, my cell phone died. However, in the nature of cell phones, it did not loose all of its functionality- it just could not make or receive telephone calls. So, being a modern day Renaissance Man, I repurposed it as an MP3 player. It seems to be happy in the role of an MP3 player, but its software needed a bit of figuring out.

When it comes to music, I'm all about the music, of course- but after that, there's the data. The music player software on the phone is pretty user-friendly (BASIC!), and it does what it should do- play music. A cool feature for me, though, is "playlists". Even though I have less than 400 songs in my library, there are some that I listen to more than others. I like the Top 50 played songs playlist more than all of the others, and I had been using it for a few weeks before I realized that no matter how much I played with it, the order of the songs on the list did not change. So, I had pretty much wasted those weeks, trying to influence something which turned out to be static. In order to change the order of the songs ( and eliminate some from that list), I had to go back to the library (library= all songs) to influence the Top 50.

That's all for now. As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

Can't. Sleep.

Ugh. Every so often, one gets one of those nights when one simply cannot fall asleep. Of course, in my case, it's one of those days. Regular followers of this blog will recall that my "day" starts when most civilized folk are settling into their after-dinner routine, be that retreating to the comfort of a sofa and catching one's favorite program on the telly, possibly curling up with a newspaper, periodical or book, spending quality time with the spouse and kids, participating in a sport or hobby, or possibly just a good old-fashioned snog... North Americans will probably have to Google that last one!

But, yeah, here I sit in the Secret Underground Lair. The birds and insects have long since given up on their calls and buzzes, and the survivors of that particular breakfast are more than likely sleeping the morning away.

Me? Not so lucky.I should set the stage here- I've been working a fair amount of overtime lately (where FAIR AMT=6 out of the past 7 days, and 7 out of the past nine, where WEEK= 7 days), and those of you gentle readers who are not members of the elite community of Nightstalkers may have a bit of trouble understanding my point of view, but tighten your seatbelts and I'll try and illuminate things for you. My evening typically begins anywhere from 2000 to 2200, depending on how the previous "day" had gone. Like most other folks in the West (well, the USA, at least), I put in an eight hour day. I work in a job shop, though- that is, we don't make the same thing every day until a new design comes out or a new model year. We contract to produce a product for a customer, and the salesforce works very diligently to ensure that the presses have enough work to run 24/7. These men and women do a good job, as downtime is typically at a premium.

So, here's the soap opera domino effect that was set in motion late last week: the lovely J (a kindred spirit of sorts) was slammed last week by the influx of six jobs from one customer. Not a huge deal, normally, except that this particular customer is a "Group"; that is, several companies are owned by this customer. So, three different companies with jobs that were quite close together in our order numbering system. I was asked to come in Saturday to do the second proof QC on one of these jobs, but we got slammed with uncharacteristically severe thunderstorms, so the lovely J was unable to remotely log in and get the proofs ready. That was okay, as it turned out she had some other work for the Group that needed to get done. I finished that, and was back on Sunday night. More ugliness had surfaced, and I ended up grabbing some food for her: while my weekend was ~14 hours, she put in 10 hours on Sunday. I delivered the food, and we talked about the jobs- my task was to run production and QC. She went home, and I sprung into action. I was moderately excited as I launched production on four different machines. My excitement turned to despair, though, as one by one, the program bombed. I frantically hit the communicator and shouted, "Scotty, warp factor 9- NOW!"

To no avail, of course, as I don't have a communicator button. Sheesh! Can't a guy get a break? After taking a few deep breaths, I figured out the problem, and proceeded to fix it. There are more hilarious details, but I will not belabor my gentle readers with them. In the end, I got everything to work.

Monday was fine, and then Tuesday rolled around and a whole new soap opera opened. It's mid-Wednesday morning as I write this, and the Tuesday soap opera has come to its exciting climax, with the performance of yours truly being nominated for an Emmy. Stay tuned- the ride doesn't get any smoother, but it's a doozie- guaranteed!

Lastly- data. Hah! You probably thought you were off the hook and/or I forgot.

I'm the black sheep of the Subaru family, apparently. We bought our Outback in April, and I've gotten at least two notices to come in for scheduled 3,750 mile (6,000 km) service. I've been putting it off because, well... overtime. We just hit 2,000 miles (3,200 km), so next week we'll hopefully be taking Meerkat in for her 1st service. I need to contact Sandy and see if we can take some test drives while we're there.

Real data: one of the neat instrumentation features of the Outback is a real time MPG calculator. This miles per gallon calculator resets every time you refill the tank, and gives you a pretty good idea of how you're driving. When we first got the car, we didn't use it, as the estimated cruising range seemed like a decent metric. Jennifer had suggested trying the MPG setting, and I've left on there since. It's become something of a game, getting over 21 MPG  in mostly short trip, stop and go suburban driving with an AWD vehicle.  Which brings me to what would have been the original title of this blog: "How Much Data Is Too Much?"

Subaru engineers decided to make the MPG increments .3 of a MPG. At first, this bothered me, as I'm all for the smallest practical range- .1 MPG. However, after about a week of watching this metric and making informal mental notes of my behavior, I decided that .3 is a good and useful number, not so much as it is significant, but because it does not distract the "data-enhanced" driver.

More words than usual- thanks for your patience. I've got a new database I'm experimenting with at work- I got the idea from Frank. I'll post updates if it becomes useful.

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